This episode focuses far more on the Mist and the dangers around it - but it does involve the cast all making some pretty major leaps and a definite fast-forwarded apocalypse. And we’ve already split this huge cast into several groups which is slightly annoying. There’s also a lack of brutal murders despite some people being really annoying.
Anyway, begin with The Police Station where Kevin, Adrian, Mia and I’m-sure-this-wasn’t-his-name-last-week Bryan are hunkered down in the police station. Kevin wants to go out in the Mist and get to the Mall to be with his family (reasonable) and also because they have supplies there.
Supplies? Kevin you can’t have been hunkered down there more than a couple of hours. Why do you need supplies?! This is what I mean when we talk about fast-forwarded apocalypses. Why does Kevin believe they’re going to be hunkered down that long? I wonder how TVlandia works, you get a power cut and everyone starts raiding the local shops and stockpiling? The slightest thing and everyone prepares for the end!
Mia is the only one who thinks this is a bad idea, but she doesn’t want to be left alone. This seems to be a major theme of hers because she almost panics when Bryan discovers she’s an addict and tries to take her pills: she begs him not to tell anyone and he agrees so long as she leaves the pills behind, because a heavily withdrawing woman is just what they need.
They leave the station, get in a car and have Mia drive (see this is why in crisis situations some information needs to be shared). They’re ambushed on the way by men with guns which Mia deals with by accelerating - which works. But her withdrawal means sh also keeps on accelerating until they have a car crash
And they have a weird moment when they all freak out a little at the glass cracking - they’re acting like the Mist itself is dangerous. But then they forget that and get out and head to the nearby church after Mia hallucinates her mother just appearing and speaking to her. Except her mother is dead and she also moves faster than any person can - appearing in front and behind
At the Church Father Romanov is comforting hippie Nathalie who is obviously pretty shaken by her husband’s death. Connor the cowardly police chief arrives after driving his car into a moose (causing it to drop both its poutine and its Timbits). Once there he promptly makes up all the excuses why he should hide in the church rather than get out there and find killers/monsters etc.
When the police station gang arrives all kind if pissed at him for abandoning them to die - to which he responds by lying (caught by Father Romanov) and cuffing Mia. This guy is a class act. When does something eat him? Or I’ll settle for his jaw being ripped off, totally not picky here.
Nathalie has a series of beautiful moments talking about her husband (and I like how the fluffy hippie is also more than that, she’s a real person and grounded in reality) and she asks everyone to drink in her husband’s memory - the cheap wine he loved.
And Connor stops Adrian drinking because Kevin should know about the dangers of underaged drinking. Yes he said that. Yes he did. No something didn’t eat him. Yes something should.
They eat (and one of the faithful is going full on apocalypse about the whole thing and gives Adrian grief about not saying grace. This show continues to mishandle Adrian’s character - making him a snarking wiseass rather than analysing why a bisexual teen may feel hostile towards organised religion, uncomfortable in a church. This is what happens when you have “inclusion” but no willingness to put in any kind of work)
Before they go to bed, Bryan tells Mia he saw her mother as well - so it wasn’t a hallucination
And to The Mall where everyone is pretending that locked glass doors can keep out whatever monster is out there.
Gus, the mall manager steps up and he’s actually a really good leader, confident and calming and sensible; even keeping it calm when one of the people gathered decides randomly to accuse a shop owner of middle eastern descent of terrorism because of course they do. This is way out of Gus’s paygrade but he steps up. We also meet Kimi who kind of joins Eve and Alex. Jay is also in the Mall which is going to be increase the awkwardness 1000%
While looking round they find a hallway full of Mist - and another body in there. The hallways locked. The problem is that their one means of connecting to the outside world, an emergency radio, is down there
They grab a drone from the electronic’s store and find a small open window and another body - this corpse has managed to write “Arr.,,” in his own blood which isn’t creepy at all. No-one seems to note that the window doesn’t actually seem big enough to allow anything that big and scary through.
They need someone to go in and find the radio - and decide to draw lots. Eve loses - but she doesn’t go alone because a guy called Clint volunteers to go with her.
Lots of tension but no drama when they reach the radio and Clint tries to contact various people and fails. Before finally trying “Arrowhead” (whatever that is but possibly related to the bloody writing) and giving himself a highly suspicious callsign. It also doesn’t work. My evil senses are tingling. So is Eve’s and she decides she needs to not be there. He tries to stop her and they fight over his gun: Clint loses.
Ok, question - we just had a scene in which they had to chose who goes into the misty corridor - if he wanted to go alone he could have volunteered them. Instead he arranged to have an awkward witness?
Eve returns to the others, very shaken and claims she and Clint got separated - but radio doesn’t work. She also asks Gus about Clint’s friends because she’s never seen them before in their small town
She keeps the gun
That night when Jay goes to the bathroom he sees 2 of Clint’s friends - hanging from the ceiling. It looks like they’ve killed themselves. I'm voting for shadowy government conspiracies
Things are heating up and I like the greater action focus and looking at the actual horror out there - but they’ve gone from “someone’s dead” to “WORLD IS ENDING!” awfully quickly
