Damien is all sad and tortured doing lots of research and
freaking about Revelations because of his 666 tattoo on his scalp, his dead
friend Kelly and lots of memory flashbacks. I think they need to lean on the
flashbacks to the film to convince us why Damien has so rapidly gone back into
the deep end.
Amani is there to help drag him out of his pit and to
Kelly’s funeral (this is actually lampooned with Simone, Kelly’s sister,
commenting about Amani is there to clear up Damien’s mess. Does the show get
points for realising what it’s doing to its POC? Nope nope it does not) which
he was going to skip because Manpain. Amani points out that would be epic
arseholery so it’s off to the church with lots of ominous music, flashbacks,
Damien struggling and in pain and windows breaking before he’s driven out –
because churches and the antichrist don’t mix
He is dragged to the wake where all the reporters talk
about their various war wounds and we find Damien got through all the terrible
things he’s seen (despite always being in the middle of the worst situations)
completely unscathed because OBVIOUS REASON CAN WE NOT WITH THE FORESHADOWING
ALREADY?!
Anne Rutlidge is also at the church and, well, everywhere. She just follows him around and says vaguely cryptic ominous things. Over and over and over. OMINOUS GUYS! Listen to the music! Ominous
He also has a loud, tasteless argument with a priest at the wake that has him run into the night because yelling about there being no god while everyone’s grieving is kind of tacky. Though, to be fair, the priest approached him and continues talking god talk to him when it was clear Damien wasn’t buying his bullshit. Take a hint padre and back off.
Instead Damien goes into the night-time streets, finds
some poor areas and homeless people to take photos of without their consent
because treating people like zoo animals is totally ok, right? Yeah, I know he’s
a journalist, but he’s not writing a story here and it’s equally clear part of
his career is taking photos of Big Dramatic Tragic Moments and selling them
without commentary like some kind of vulture feeding off people’s pain. Rich
people then buy his art and comment on the Big Special Feelings that
poor-people pain makes them feel probably saying how powerful or moving it is
without actually adding any kind of commentary, awareness or productive help
being given to the actual victims depicted.
Sorry, side rant.
Anyway, he takes photos and we have a ranting homeless
person say ominous things because Ominous Ominous Ominous and a creepy one eyed
girl draws “666” in a window because nothing says horror like creepy children.
While he has been doing all that, a priest has recruited
a guy (apparently a war victim) with a magical dagger of Meggido to give Damien
a good stabbing. Murderer guy questions whether stabbing is all that godly and
prays for a sign – at which point the priest dies and all the candles go out.
He then leaves and plans to stab Damien
Wait, what? You prayed desperately for a sign and then
the priest advocating murder dropped dead and all the candles went out. I call
that a sign – and not a sign of approval. Seriously, does god have to break out
the burning foliage or something?
So guy tries to stab Damien and gets hit by a car instead
(car swerved off the road to avoid a demon dog. Can I also say that I find this
breed of dog to be rather unmenacing? I’m not sure why). That’ll learn him. The
police show up and decide This Is Suspicious because the plot says so – I mean
guy was hit by a car that swerved off the road, what did they think Damien did?
Anne Rutlidge swoops in to make him look REAL suspicious
by declaring herself to be his lawyer (which he doesn’t object to, because
ominous stalkers pretending to be your legal counsel is totally fine) and after
more cryptic ominous hints about his childhood (and being adopted) she invites
him back to her place for some answers
There he sees that she’s an obsessive collector of his
photos (see my above rant) which he finds kind of creepy and stalkerish. So she
takes him to her basement full of photos and childhood toys to confirm that she’s
way way way worse a stalker than he ever imagined. The objects prompt a whole
lot more childhood flashbacks – including his dad trying to stab him with
another Dagger of Meggido
While Damien is being hosted by his stalker, Amani and
Simone look through Kelly’s notes and find lots of apocalyptic religious stuff
in relation to Damien – and the video clip of the woman in Syria saying Ominous
Things to him
I think this show is so concerned with pushing
atmosphere, it misses actually advancing plot, developing characters or doing
anything else. Like Ann Rutlidge who just appears literally to say cryptic and
ominous things so the show can be a bit more cryptic and ominous. Or we spend a
LONG TIME on scenes for them to be ominous – like Damien being uncomfortable in
a church seemed to go on for a very long time. Again, I actually admire the
acting that they can manage to work with this – that they can spend these long
scenes really pushing the emotion and feel even though nothing is happening.
They (well, he) literally has to stare at the camera and EMOTE. That’s like all
he has to go all the time and he’s given nothing to work with except an
over-active music department
