We start with a loving pan across our criminally attractive (and criminally insane) psycho threesome as they languish in bed on a sunny Hudson Valley morning. Paul (Adan Canto) tries to spoon Jacob (Nico Tortorella), but Jacob gets up to hit the bathroom, so Paul spoons Emma (Valorie Curry) instead. Hey - any sociopath in a storm, amiright? She's all over it, having just spent the evening scrubbing her delicates on his abs in the shower (which sounds far dirtier than I meant it to).
Paul asks, "Jacob's freaking out, isn't he?" Dude, I think that ship sailed about ten dead bodies and three gay years ago.
Jacob has lots of tattoos, by the way. Character's? Actor's? Enquiring minds wanna know!
Meanwhile, Joey climbs the library bookshelf, and in a sequence exactly as suspenseful as an ad for DuPont Stainmaster Carpeting manages to get the phone from its hiding space and call Claire (Natalie Zea) while hiding under the kitchen table. Don't tell Mom, the babysitter's a f*cking nutjob! He describes the house in detail ("Well, it's a big, pretty house - it's white, and long, and it kind of looks like a big Tylenol!") while the useless Feds try to get a trace, but Paul grabs him and pulls him away, screaming.
Mike Weston (Shawn Ashmore) tells them that the signal was scrambled, blah blah blah (cell phone hijinx again, Kevin? We've all seen Scream 2!) but he'll try to fix it. Emma explains to Joey that the police are the bad guys and his father is actually a good guy.
Suddenly Joe's lawyer, Olivia, shows up. They figure he's up to something. She meets with Joe (James 100%PureFoy) despite the fact that she doesn't seem to like him very much. He says she owes him favors or something and we get a really vague flashback about her dropping him as a client - but there's nothing illegal or wrong about that, so I'm not sure what the point was. She says, "I don't follow." You're one of the few, apparently! He tells her he wants her to spy for him, and for some reason she seems to accept his orders. Wait, what?
Downstairs, Paul tells Meghan (Li Jun Li) that she's never going home. He then tries to lift Jacob's killing spirits by helping him to select a knife with which to kill Meghan, but Jacob isn't feeling it. Jacob flat-out says, "I'm not gay" and Paul counters that he was pretty gay last night. Jacob says he can't be what Paul wants him to be - or what Emma wants him to be, or what anyone wants him to be, apparently. He asks Paul to kill Meghan for him, but Paul stands firm.
It turns out Joe's orders for Olivia are for her to stage a dramatic reading of The Masque of the Red Death at a press conference. Well, compared to an ice pick in the face I guess she got a relatively easy assignment. Upon seeing the poem read on television, some guy picks up the phone and calls some other guy and says, "It's time."
The Feds figure out that the poem was a cue of some sort for the cult to act, and Debra Parker (the at this point criminally underused Annie Parisse) deputizes Ryan (Kevin Bacon) - or should I say "Debutizes" him? No, I should not. They're busy trying to find out which giant farmhouses in Duchess County are set back from the road, have two stories, and are white with black shutters. Uh - anyone heard of Google Earth at the FBI?
Ryan apologizes to Claire, telling her that after he saves Joey they're gonna have a nice long talk. But just let me go do this super-dangerous manhunt first, k? Be right back!
Emma says that she called Roderick and left him a message. You know, Roderick - the guy with all the answers who they have all managed to never mention once up until this point. Joey overhears them, because Paul is the Mayor of Eavesdropped Village and therefore incapable of having a private conversation. Jesus.
Olivia tells Claire that Joe says if she wants to see Joey again she has to do a flashmob in front of the VCU Pinkberry at noon, or something. Claire tells the Feds that she's got a craving for Chipotle and they can't stop her from getting a Burrito Bol, because this is still a free country, dammit.
Jacob can't kill Meghan - he storms out, and Paul follows. Emma goes to get Joey for lunch (to serve it to him, not to eat him), only to find that he's left the house to find an actual plotline for himself. And he finds one, in the form of a kindly older couple who are going to let him use their phone. But Emma crashes the party and takes Joey away - even though Joey knows Emma is a liar and the woman recognizes Joey from THE NATIONAL KID HUNT ON THE TELEVISION. Good God. Emma tells Paul and Jacob to "go thank" the nice couple - which means killing them with a hoe. Luckily they're able to get a call off to the cops first.
Meanwhile, the local cops recognize Paul from the security footage of Meghan's store the night of her disappearance. Wait, they've already established that the Trio Loco's photos have been widely publicized, by this point - why would this be such a surprise? Oh - because they didn't have Photoshop, which Mike Weston happily shows them. Thanks, FBI!
Emma locks Joey in his room, and then she gets scared when she hears someone in the house. It's the guy from earlier: "Roderick sent me. We need to go." Is he from the future? Somebody give Sarah Connor a ten-minute head start!
Claire has lunch with a friend. It's every bit as compelling as it sounds. And I love how the Feds who are tailing her have giant signs that read EFF BEE EYE on the back of their chairs. Subtle! She sneaks off to the ladies' room, and the guy trailing her almost catches her but doesn't.
Meanwhile, Ryan and Local Cop have responded to the call from the Robinson couple, and they arrive at the house to find all quiet. Ryan says "I'm gonna check the back" - which should at this point be the frigging tagline for the show, it gets said so often - and he finds the nice couple dead in their handsomely appointed farmhouse living room. The blood's still dripping, so Ryan follows the trail to the farm next door, with his cop companion turning greener by the second. He IDs Jacob and Paul and they call it in.
Hank - the neckless mystery Folllowinger - tells Trio Loco that they have ten minutes to pack. He calls Roderick - a name I'm already tired of typing - and asks if he has "the mother" yet. No, she's late. Hank spots the cop in the woods and breaks out a bag of massive uzis. He ambushes the cop in the barn and shoots him, but Ryan shoots him right back before he can finish the cop off. My first thought is that Hank must be wearing body armor because he just must, right? He probably wears it in the shower. But later we find out that no, he's actually dead. What kind of a fixer guy is he? Lame. Oh - and the nice cop dies. Thanks, Ryan - add another notch to your bedpost.
Parker wonders if the cult could have any direct connection to Duchess County. What, other than THE MASSIVE HOUSE THEY ARE STAYING IN? Probably not.
Jacob freaks out at the gunshots, so Emma gives him guns. It's like lemons and lemonade!
Joey realizes that he's locked in and he freaks out, eventually breaking the knob off the door with a curtain rod and prying the door open with a skateboard. At least someone's resourceful around here.
Olivia tells Joe that the press has carried his message far and wide, as he wanted. We then see that in 2010 Joe sent Hank to her office with a set of clippers, and he cut off two of her fingers. Um ... okay? How is it even remotely possible that she kept that a secret? Did she wear mittens to work for the last year? Good grief.
Roderick pulls up to Claire on the street corner and tells her to get in. She does, because her script tells her to.
Ryan, meanwhile, breaks into the basement (why? no idea.) and finds Meghan tied up. He ungags her and she starts freaking out, so he leaves her there. Doesn't bother untying her or anything, nope. She's much more useful as a sitting duck. Ryan goes upstairs and spots Joey on the second floor. He stands WITH HIS BACK TO THE WIDE OPEN FRONT DOOR and talks to Joey, and of course moments later Paul has a gun to the back of Ryan's head. Now I understand why he lost his badge to begin with - and he's not even drunk yet!
SCENE
What We Know
- Richmond, VA has a lively downtown dotted with charming cafes perfect for a casual lunch with friends and/or Federal agents.
- Apparently working at a law firm near the beltway is hazardous enough that you can lose a few fingers in the office and nobody bats an eyelash.
What We Don't Know
- Who the hell Roderick is
- Which of the Feds is going to turn out to be a Followinger (cause you know they are)
- What the hell Masque of the Red Death - a ghastly cautionary tale about a plague, a rich jerk, and a hell of a party where all the guests get killed - had to do with anything. Seriously, if you're gonna shoehorn Poe into this story, can you at least try to make it fit?
- How a senior FBI agent can lose a woman at lunch and still look at himself in the mirror without crying
Notably Dead: Cop, the Robinsons, Hank
Notably Absent: Jenny
Notably Gay: Not Jacob, that's for damned sure! Right, bro?
Notably Following: Emma, Jacob, Paul, Roderick, Hank (RIP)
Well, at least it was a little better than last week's episode, in my humble opinion. But still, nothing in the last several hours has compared to the awesomely shocking gut-punches doled out by the wonderfully ghoulish pilot and subsequent few episodes. Somehow the show has gone from Dexter to Prison Break in only four eps. Do you remember how scary the first episode was?! Can they at least try to make Joe a little more sinister or creepy? Right now he comes off like a moderately smarmy talk show host who shoots in a prison.
As for the specifics of this week, am I the only one who was hoping that when Joey went missing and Joe told Claire that the FBI was wrong about where Joey was, that Joe had activated a whole new crew of Followingers to wipe out Emma, Jacob and Paul and start anew? That would have been kind of awesome, if only because I'm officially over Three's Company: The Revenge. Also, it would have been a heck of a table-turner - which is exactly what the show has been lacking lately.
Also, Meghan? The first thing you need to do when you get out of that basement is fire your agent.
I'd give it six out of ten That's So Ravens:
