Previously on Miracles: all the "God is nowhere/now here" crap.
There's some kid with a bad haircut sitting in a car while it rains, and he says, "Look, I think what we're doing is wrong," and you might think this kid is Catholic and he just had sex or something, only since the shot is of just him, you know he's crazy and is going to turn out to be talking to himself. "People are starting to get hurt!" he wails. Sure enough, the camera pulls around to reveal that this nutbar is by himself in the car. But apparently the voice in his head is very convincing, as he starts saying, "You're right, you're right!" and "Just tell me when to go." The spirit voice apparently says, "Go now, you idiot," as the kid pulls his hood up, grabs a toolbox and heads out into the rain, and walks up to the front door of a house. He knocks.
"Who is it?" "Angel of Death, ma'am." "Just a second, I'll get my purse."
Well, what actually happens is that he pretends to be the landlord's nephew and explains that he's here to install low-flow showerheads. "No charge to you!" he says helpfully. "What about my dishwasher?" she says, and starts whining that the dishwasher's been broken for a month and that if he's coming in, he's fixing her damn dishwasher. Essentially.
Let's see. Strange kid shows up at your door in the middle of the night in a torrential downpour, ostensibly to install low-flow showerheads, then comes in to fix the dishwasher, then appears clueless as to how to actually fix said dishwasher. At what point might one become suspicious? As the woman blathers on about not getting a call back from her landlord, the boy says "what?" as if the voice is speaking to him again. He turns toward the woman, tape measure pulled out (yes, really, a tape measure), and he's holding it like one would hold a garrote or some other strangulation instrument. "I'm gonna need some help," he says.
Cut to woman lying dead on the floor while cops mill about, and one says, "She was strangled with a tape measure," while another struggles to come up with a Lenny Briscoe-esque witticism like, "Give 'im an inch…" or "Looks like she just didn't measure up." You know. In that vein. The cop whose job it is to ferret out cryptic non-clues has found the woman's journal, and he finds a page with "God is nowhere" scrawled on it. So of course he calls over "Detective Krantz" because he "better see this." Krantz comes over, has a look, and gets an arrest warrant for Jean-Paul Sartre. I mean, what the hell? Flipping through the journal, they come across a rough sketch of Skeet, entitled "The Skeet Face." "So who the hell is Skeet?" asks Detective Krantz.
Majorly truncated opening credits that don't seem nearly as creepy.
Skeet's all sweaty and playing basketball by some giant cathedral with someone who is suspiciously never seen onscreen but who scores a disturbingly easy lay-up on Skeet. Protect the basket, Skeet! Box out! He's finished being schooled, so he walks off the court, where he's accosted by Det. Krantz, who says "good game." Oooh. Way to gain his trust, Detective! He asks if Skeet works there. "More like an indentured servant," says Skeet. "Father Claro says good things," says the detective, which makes Skeet suspicious, and Det. Krantz introduces himself and says, "Claro says you're a guy who likes to help out," and asks if Skeet knows a woman named Gretchen Albright. Skeet says no. Gretchen is dead. Skeet's sorry to hear that. Gretchen was murdered in her kitchen last night. Skeet wonders if there's a reason Krantz is telling him this. There is. Skeet wonders if Krantz wants to know what he was doing at the time of the murder. Det. Krantz says, "Why not?" So Skeet says he was in this old Victorian house, but why he was there is kind of difficult to explain, which is always a good thing to say to a cop investigating a homicide. "I was sitting alone in the dark waiting for the walls to talk," says Skeet. "No kiddin'!" says Krantz, who seems almost impressed, as Skeet asks if the detective has three or four hours, then says he can give him the short version: the people he works with investigate strange things. "I'm not liking what I'm hearing," says Krantz, and Skeet says, "If it helps, I didn't kill anyone," and the detective says, "It might," and swaggers off, thus ending one of the lamest interrogations ever. Then he pulls a Columbo and turns back to ask if the words "God is nowhere" mean anything to Skeet. Skeet looks like someone just stuck a crucifix up his ass, but still says, "No." The detective tells him to save some time tomorrow: "I'd like to hear the long version." He gives Skeet his best Tough Cop Glower and peels on out of there.
Over at SQHQ, Keel's doing Keel-esque things like stacking old books when Skeet walks in. "Who is Gretchen Albright?" asks Skeet. Keel's all, "Don't you mean, who was Gretchen Albright? Dude, she was murdered." Skeet brilliantly deducts that cops were already there, and Keel's all, duh, who do you think ratted you out? Skeet looks less than impressed, and whines that a little warning would have been nice, and Keel blah blah blahs about how police can tell when you're expecting them and that leads them down "certain unfortunate mental paths." Skeet doesn't have time for Keel's smug know-it-all-ness, so he just says, "Who was she, Keel?" And Keel launches into a story about Gretchen making a cake (and this is illustrated by a helpful recreation) when the glass bowl she was using shatters in the sink and she cuts herself. So she wraps her hand in a dishtowel while she goes to greet some arriving guests (you know, Keel's stories are usually chock-full of unnecessary details). When she unwrapped the dishtowel a few moments later, the phrase "God is nowhere" was written in her own blood on the towel. Skeet looks stricken and admits to lying to the police about recognizing the phrase, possibly because he was scared. Anyway, to make a short story long, as Keel is wont to do, he explains that Krantz connected Gretchen to Keel because he Googled the phrase "God is nowhere" and came up with a paper Keel wrote on hemography (writing in blood). "He wanted to know what the phrase meant. I thought it was rather self-explanatory." Skeet wants to know a couple of things: A) Why did Krantz need to talk to Skeet if he'd already spoken to Keel, and B) why Skeet's seen "God is now here" while everyone else's messages say "God is nowhere." Keel's response is that A) the detective was probably just being thorough, and B) "it's the kind of message that reveals the reader, isn't it?" Skeet considers this, while listening to the tinkly piano swelling up. "Maybe. Maybe I read it wrong." Possibly. I read "Daniel needs more beer," myself.
Later. Paul walks Evelyn to the door, and she asks him if he's working late, and he says "yeah" and says he's looking for the hemography files, and she tells him they're in Alva's office because he's been working on them. She says good night, and he tells her to say hi to "Maddie," whoever that is. And once Evelyn leaves, he tries to jimmy open the little window to Keel's office, and breaks one of the panes of glass. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, so he breaks the other pane. And instead of crawling carefully through the window, he more or less hurls himself through the window onto the shards of broken glass all over the floor. Normally Skeet would bleed all over the place, but this time he seems to be okay. He dusts himself off and finds the box marked "Hemography/X-mas lights" and starts rifling through papers and photographs of bloody messages (including his own on the shattered windshield). He also finds a terrible sketch of himself. It looks nothing like him. He reads transcripts of people's dreams in which they recount meeting a man named Skeet, including one that involves Skeet and his father.
Confrontation time, with Skeet yelling at Keel for lying to him about how much Keel knows; turns out every single one of the "God is nowhere" people also dreamed about Skeet. That's not paranormal! That's the general population of TWoP's Miracles bulletin boards. Keel, meanwhile, keeps trying to change the subject to the broken window. "Why didn't you tell me?" says Skeet. "It wasn't necessary," says Keel. Skeet kicks a cabinet and calms down, and tells Keel that he's tracked down the "God is nowhere" people. Four of them have been murdered in the past week. "You didn't know that," says Skeet, upon seeing Keel's reaction. No, Keel did not. He asks if Skeet's going to tell the police. Skeet figures he'd better let them know before they make the connection themselves. "This could become very dangerous for you, Skeet," says Keel, leaning in all ominously. "I think it already has," says Skeet.
Skeet's apartment. He's packing. There's a knock on the door. Well, at least we know it's not Tommy! It's Evelyn, who wants to know what the hell happened between him and Keel, like these two are boyfriends. "He's been lying to me since day one," complains Skeet. He fills her in on the GIN people and says the last two are a woman in Denver and a guy who's changed his name and disappeared. So he's off to Denver to warn the woman and try to find out what the hell is going on. And Evelyn has shown up mainly to tell him he's crazy because he could be on the killer's list too, like, no kidding, Evelyn. Meanwhile, Skeet's "left a message" for the police telling them everything he knows. Evelyn wants to know why he's so keen to protect the woman. Skeet tells her the woman's had a couple of dreams about Skeet that turned out to be true, including one about Skeet getting pneumonia, and another about him getting hit by a train and healed by a boy. "That's the third," says Skeet, giving her the transcript. She of course reads it aloud. It's about Skeet sitting at a sidewalk café by a fountain with his dad. "The man is saying something, Skeet is angry and" -- dramatic pause goes here -- "the water in the fountain turns red." This is, of course, significant to Skeet, who's never met his father. Evelyn wants to know if she can tell Keel where he's going. "Don't tell anyone," he says. "I don't like this, Skeet," she says. "I know," says Skeet. "We agree," says ABC.
In case anyone has forgotten where we're going, the shot is of the big "Welcome to Denver" sign at the airport, while some neo-goth-industrial or whatever plays and we watch a slow-motion shot of travelers milling about and just as you're ready to say, "Why are we watching this?" the travelers eventually clear out of the camera frame and we see the tape-measure killer from the beginning. And maybe we'd be a little more scared of this supposed Angel of Death if he weren't quite so doofy looking.
Well, you want scary? How about this scene with the helpful-to-the-point-of-accessory-to-murder gun shop owner who happily shows this teenager his fine selection of handguns? The kid tries to buy one, but he only has an out-of-state driver's license, so the shop owner informs the kid that federal law states he can't buy a handgun. The Angel of Death looks crestfallen. After a pause, the shop owner says, "Would you like to buy a rifle?" Ladies and gentlemen, guest episode writer Michael Moore.
MORE TALKING. This time it's between Keel and Evelyn. Evelyn's laying into Keel for withholding information from Skeet, and Keel's defending himself by blah-blah-ing about Skeet's spiritual journey and junk and whether Paul is predestined for good or evil, and it would be dangerous for Paul to get the idea that he's predestined for evil. Evelyn suggests convincing Skeet that he's predestined for good, but Keel doesn't think that means much, since even those predestined for good can come to an evil end: "JFK, Martin Luther King, Joan of Arc…" He pauses. "Even John Lennon." Um, okay. The gabfest continues with Evelyn wondering aloud what would happen if Paul gets involved with the GIN people now, and Keel takes a half hour to say "I don't know" and that he doesn't think there's anything to be gained from getting involved. Other than, you know, the fact that your little SQ group specifically INVESTIGATES STRANGE PHENOMENA. And then Det. Krantz shows up all glowery goatee, saying that Skeet's not at his apartment, and Keel gets all "is there a problem" and the cop says "damn right!" and explains that Skeet left a message saying there was going to be another murder in Denver, and Krantz wants to know how Skeet's so sure: "Where is he?" And Evelyn totally rats him out, flight number and everything.
So in the Denver airport, Paul arrives, sees two uniformed cops, does that shifty look-away thing that only makes people look more suspicious, and then he's picked up by two plainclothes detectives anyway.
A little house. Family pictures. Broken glass on door to gain entry. Angel of Death on phone, whining to his mother about college being harder than he thought. Well, kid, I don't want to tell you how to live your life, but I think most academic advisors would agree that college is a lot easier when you're not running around all over the country killing people.
Police station, interrogation room. Cops want to know how Skeet is so sure Danielle Franklin is going to be murdered. "It's not going to make any sense," warns Skeet, but the cop points out, "It already doesn't." So Skeet explains about the hemography, and seems a little hurt when the cops exchange skeptical glances at the idea of blood forming itself into words. "The Catholic Church considers this a possible sign of a miracle!" he says. Oh, well, then. That's different. After Skeet says that all the dead people (along with himself) have experienced it, one of the detectives informs him that this sounds even worse than he thought it might.
Danielle's house. Angel of Death waits, polishing his rifle, when Danielle calls in to retrieve her messages from her machine while she's in the beauty salon, sitting with her head under one of those helmet things. The first message is from the Denver police, asking her to give them a call. The second is from Skeet, telling her the same thing. Upon hearing Skeet's name, both Danielle and the Angel of Death look very surprised. The AoD doesn't have much time for surprise, though, as he sees a police cruiser pull up outside. So he grabs Danielle's day planner, which she seems, luckily for the Angel, to have left at home, and he finds out she's got a 3:30 appointment for "color & set" at "Mile High Style."
Police station. Skeet's doing his best to convince the cops that despite his connection to all the victims, he's in town just to warn Danielle, and not to kill her himself. His cell phone rings. It's Danielle, finished at the salon and absolutely thrilled to hear from him. "I can't believe it's really you!" she burbles, and note that Paul telling her he's at the police station barely fazes her. She just says she can find it. Then she asks if he's okay, not because he's at the cop shop, but because she had another dream about him, "a bad one," she says. Skeet makes a subdued Skeet Face and tells her to get to the police station as quickly as she can. She gets in her car and is rather surprised to see the Angel of Death call her name from outside the passenger window. Commercials.
How is it that McDonald's appears to have trademarked the word "smile"?
Police crime scene, otherwise known as Danielle's car. An officer is explaining to the detective that Danielle was killed by a rifle shot to the head. "Sniper?" asks the cop. "Not exactly," says the cop, saying the range was only three feet. So "no," then.
Interrogation room. The older cop comes in to tell Skeet that Danielle's dead. Skeet looks upset for a moment, then lays into the cop, saying that if they hadn't held him there, he might have been able to save her. He gets his jacket and goes to leave, but the cop tells him he isn't going anywhere. Skeet reminds the cop that he was at the police station when Danielle was killed, so he can't possibly be a suspect. The cop reminds him that he seemed to know an awful lot about a murder before it even took place, and he should plan on being there for a while. But here comes the cavalry! And you can't spell "cavalry" without "Alva," who's got a writ of habeas corpus for Skeet, and the cop grudgingly lets Skeet go. But you know what? I'm guessing this isn't over. Notice the annoyed way the cop tosses the papers aside. Thank you, Gruff Detective.
Diner. Angel of Death is listening to some song on his headphones. Cop car pulls up outside. Angel gets up to go, but he didn't see the car or anything; he just seems to be ready to leave. And he didn't see the cop inside either, but he bumps into him right now.
Back at the police station, Skeet thanks Keel for getting him out of there, but figures Keel's the reason he was in there in the first place. And Keel rats out Evelyn for ratting out Skeet. "I'm sorry about Danielle Franklin," says Keel, but Skeet's unimpressed, saying that if Keel had been straight with him, she might still be alive. Their happy reunion is cut short by one of the detectives, who says they caught the guy who killed Danielle; he had a pocketful of her credit cards. They go into a room looking into the interrogation room with a two-way mirror so they can see the guy, despite Skeet's protests that there's no point since he's never met the guy (although he can't really know that, can he?). Given this episode's ham-handed attempt to pretend that the Angel of Death had been captured, was there anyone who was surprised when the camera panned over to reveal that they'd arrested the wrong guy? Keel asks to interview the guy, but the cop says no.
Leaving the station, Keel says something about petitioning for an interview, but Skeet's still pretty pissed, and Keel asks if he's having "second thoughts" about his "new job." Skeet says he thinks they're just looking for different things. Are we sure these two aren't boyfriends yet? And Keel blurts out the most recent information about the sixth GIN person, although he advises against Skeet tracking him down, and even goes so far as to apologize for withholding information from Skeet, but he thought it might be detrimental to him. Skeet reminds Keel that it would be his own problem if that were the case. And by this point I've already downgraded my initial rating of this episode just for the sheer volume of blah-blah going on. Is this what recapping The West Wing feels like?
Anyway, Skeet's off to Oregon to track down the sixth GIN person, but not before Keel harangues him some more outside the police station, yammering on about how everything has meaning, and things eventually add up. And he goes on about making field recordings of ravens while he was at Cambridge while trying to figure out their language or whatever, and hearing his dead mother's voice on a tape. And his mom called him Mango! Skeet couldn't look more bored, and maybe that's because this speech takes half an hour, I swear. So now Keel believes in God. And he started SQ, which has led him to Paul. These two should just do it already. Paul leaves while Keel contemplates. Perhaps he feels guilty about ripping his life off of Friedrich Jurgensen. Special thanks to Kirsten K. for the catch and the link.
Estacada, Oregon. Skeet drives up to a house, gets out of his car, and knocks on the door, which is opened by…the Angel of Death, holding an iron? What is it with the irons on this show? Skeet introduces himself to Angel, who he thinks is "Mr. Webster," and asks if he can come in. Commercials.
"So, you're Skeet," says the Angel, "the one they all dreamed about." "You didn't?" says Skeet, and the Angel says he didn't. Skeet notes that Webster looks a lot younger than he figured, but the kid starts getting nervous, since "he's going to be here any second, you shouldn't be here. Unless you want to help." Skeet offers to help with whatever the kid needs, but the kid changes his mind again. Skeet says if he's worried about the killer, Denver police caught him. "No, they didn't," laughs the kid. "Trust me," says Skeet, like, WAKE UP, SKEET! The kid tells him to leave again, but they're interrupted by an older man coming in the door. Upon seeing Skeet, he looks surprised and says, "What are you doing in my house?" Confused, Skeet turns back to the kid -- who clonks him in the face with the iron.
Skeet slowly regains consciousness to see Angel pounding the real Webster to a bloody pulp in the kitchen. Skeet tackles him, and they fight, with the kid proving to be surprisingly strong. But Skeet is, after all, Skeet, and he tosses the littlest psychopath to the floor and starts absolutely whaling on him before he comes to his senses and stops himself from actually killing the kid. He pulls himself off and calls the police, apparently, instead of an ambulance for the dying Webster.
Skeet and the Angel are put in the back of a police car. "I know who you are, Skeet," says the kid. "Who am I?" asks Skeet. "Tommy comes to me too," he says, which naturally gets Skeet's attention. And the kid starts babbling about how it's over for him, that he's never going to spend another free day as long as he lives, and that he needs to know it wasn't all for nothing. He asks Skeet if he did the right thing. Naturally, Skeet's all, "I don't know what the hell you're talking about." "It's up to you now," continues the kid, who reveals that God's voice told him to do what he did. He saw the words "God is now here" written in his own blood! Just like you, Paul! You two should totally be best friends! "We're the good ones, right?" says the kid. Hey, officers in the front seat, are you paying any attention to this? The kid gives a little timeline: six months ago, he sees "God is now here" in his blood. Then Tommy shows up, talking about Paul; then, a few weeks ago, God starts chatting him up, showing him what the nine GIN people are going to do to everybody. "Now it's up to you, Skeet." Skeet's all, "'Nine'?" Yup. There are three more out there, says the kid. Tommy calls them "the darkness," he says, and God said to kill 'em all, "before they can get their act together." The kid starts crying. "I never knew God talked like that," he says. You'd prefer Alanis Morissette? The kid tells Paul he shouldn't have stopped him from killing Ken Webster, as that leaves four for Skeet to kill.
The Marilyn Manson song kicks in again, as Skeet and the kid are led into the police station (in slow motion!) to be photographed and fingerprinted, which necessitates the removal of the handcuffs. Skeet sees the kid look at an officer's gun, but the cops miss it. And they're too slow to stop the kid from actually grabbing the gun, pointing it at his head, and giving a little farewell speech that takes about half an hour. "It's up to you now, Skeet," he says for at least the third time. "Tell my mom I'm sorry," he says. If she's anything like my mom, she's going to be pissed. I lose my mittens when I'm four, my mom STILL brings it up.
Skeet's getting his Face Wound of the Week dressed by a doctor, who blabs on and on about how the iron was graphite and weighed only two pounds, but that Skeet would be dead if the kid had used an old-timey iron, which weighs at least five pounds. Man! Even the tertiary characters get to tell long, pointless stories on this episode! Skeet asks about Mr. Webster. "He's in intensive care, but we're hoping for a full recovery. Either way, you saved his life." Um, even if he doesn't recover? I beg to differ!
Skeet, watching a sleeping Mr. Webster in his hospital bed. He walks over to the beside, then grabs a pillow and starts to smother him, all the while telling him to shush in one of those "I'm pretty sure this is a dream sequence, but if it's not, damn!" dream sequences that ends after Skeet kills Webster and the doctor arrives. "Hey! Get off him!" he yells, and Skeet snaps back to reality, watching Mr. Webster from the doorway.
SQHQ. Skeet arrives, finding Keel sitting on the stairs. "You took a few days off, that's healthy," says Keel. "I understand you were standing right there when it happened. You saw it all." Skeet says that's true. Keel asks if he and the kid talked at all before he killed himself. Skeet says they did, and Keel asks what he said. "Nothing. He was out of his mind," says Skeet. Keel regards him as though he doesn't quite believe him, but decides not to press the issue. "I take it that you've decided to stay on," he says. "No, I haven't," says Skeet. Keel looks sad, but Skeet says, "So, what have you got?" And Keel outlines his newest unsolved mystery as the camera pulls back, and Skeet takes his coat off.
Then the sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the magnates and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, recapper and poster and head of programming, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one seated on the throne and from the wrath of ABC; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?"
And the clouds parted and the almighty voice came down from on high: "John Ritter."