Previously on Miracles: well, everything. If you don't know Skeet by now, you will never, never, never know him. No, you won't!
So the first episode almost a year after ABC pulled the plug opens with a real X-Files vibe, all dark and stormy night, zooming into a house that doesn't appear to have any lights on. We pan across the kitchen to a shot of the cellar door, then cut to a woman in the bedroom reading a newspaper with many lamps a-blazin' in what looked to be a completely dark house. Specifically, she's reading the column by someone named "Rebecca Webb," who I'm guessing is the titular "A Broad Abroad," a column name that must have seemed hilarious at first, but subsequently more annoying. Well, scratch that. It's the first time I've seen it, and I already find it quite irritating.
Then, the cellar door rattles. And the woman on the bed (who apparently is the Broad Abroad herself) looks scared enough to shakily pull on a sweater and tentatively go check it out. And despite the fact that it's supposed to be night outside, there's a square of light on the wall above the bed thrown by the bedroom window. I know this is shot on a set, but still, that kind of goof-up ruins the vibe for me, you know?
So the broad opens the cellar door, and she hears the lilting strains of "You Are My Sunshine" coming from down below. And the way the flashes of lightning are illuminating her face, it looks like the lightning is coming from the cellar. It's not that it's supposed to appear that way, it just does. And we all know that when you're in the house alone on a dark and stormy night and your cellar door starts rattling and unexplained old-timey music starts playing from down below, you're supposed to walk downstairs and yell, "Hello?" so that's exactly what the broad does. Not surprisingly, the door slams shut behind her. She turns in shock, then falls backwards down the stairs, knocking herself out, but fortunately sending her flashlight rolling back and forth, so the shadows play across her face.
Full opening credits, which was kind of nice. I love Creepy Sideways Frozen Kid, even if he hasn't been in an actual episode yet. OR HAS HE? No, he totally hasn't.
Now, I taped this on a Canadian Christian television channel, so y'all might be curious about what sorts of commercials they show. So here goes: we get a commercial for the Pasta Pro, which you can order by calling a 1-800 number. I would make fun of it, but my parents have one and it works pretty well. Not that a regular old colander doesn't work just as well, but still. A regular Cover Girl makeup commercial. A commercial for one of those Bose Wave radios that I've never seen in real life. "Now also available with built-in CD player!" Maybe the radio has great sound, but it kills me that they're trying to pretend it's amazing advanced technology when they've just finally gotten around to adding a CD player to the damn thing. Maybe twenty years from now it'll play MP3s. up is an ad for what appears to be the station's music program, and since it's the Christian channel, we see clips of videos from Sixpence None the Richer and some other bands who I don't recognize at all and who suck almost as hard as Sixpence. Apparently Sixpence has a list of my all-time favourite songs and are intent on sucking the life out of all of them. I knew they sang "There She Goes," but I was unaware that they also sing "Don't Dream It's Over." And commercials for…some television show where Dan Aykroyd played a reverend? The hell? Ad for A River Runs Through It. And that's it.
Back at Miracles HQ, Keel and Skeet are fighting, and apparently haven't spoken a word to each other in weeks. At least, that's what Evelyn tells us. And when Keel and Skeet fight, I guess they like to sit at a table and glare at each other, like they're doing here. And Evelyn feels she needs to remind them that Skeet's angry because Keel withheld information from him, and Keel's angry because Skeet still hasn't told him what happened with the Angel of Death, and we flash back to the Angel of Death telling Skeet that there are "three more out there" and that he should kill them all. This would be the "God is nowhere" people, whom Tommy referred to as "the darkness." Was everyone as surprised as I was when "the darkness" turned out to be a glam-metal band that's rapidly growing on me?
Skeet's cell phone rings, and the woman on the other end asks for Skeet, who is listed as the emergency contact for Rebecca Webb. He's momentarily surprised, and is told that Rebecca's in the hospital in Saugerties, N.Y.
How nice for Evelyn that she can drop everything and drive Paul wherever he needs to go, as she's doing here, as well as taking the time to quiz Paul on his friend. When she asks her name and Paul says only "Rebecca," we get the stupid done-to-death "is that like Cher?" joke, and then Paul responds to her grilling by saying he could have taken a cab, and Lord knows why Evelyn didn't come right back with, "That's right, you could have." She deduces that Rebecca broke his heart, and Skeet says he never felt that "out of control" before, even though it was great. "But it turned me into a different person. I didn't like who I was with her," he says. Y'all might want to write that statement down, as it'll take on greater significance later. Trust me on this one. And Evelyn tells him to "be careful" and then tells him not to sleep with her, and I guess I missed the episode where the SQ Crew grew so close that they've started offering advice on each other's sex lives, and Skeet pretends to not even be thinking about going after a little sex with the ex, since he's a "different person now."
Skeet's watching over Rebecca as she sleeps in her hospital bed, and she turns over and wakes up, and there's very little that I can think of that would be more unnerving than to see Skeet staring at me as I woke up, and she wonders what he's doing there. "I heard you had a little fall," he says, and she says yes, and asks how she looks, and he says that considering that she's "five years older" and just had a "wrestling match with a flight of stairs," she looks pretty good. And she laughingly calls him a jerk, and she wonders if it's really been five years, and their little catch-up routine is interrupted by the doctor coming in. At least, I think he's a doctor. He introduces himself to Skeet as "John" like maybe he actually isn't a doctor. And "Dr." John is playing with Rebecca's hands to see how her strength is, and Rebecca seems to be enjoying it, and Skeet really seems to be hating this, because, oh yeah, he never got over this soul mate of his, of whom WE HAVE HEARD NOTHING up to this point. And Rebecca stops flirting with the doctor for two damn seconds long enough to ask Skeet who called him, and he says the hospital did, since he's still on her emergency contact card. "And you drove all the way up here from Boston?" and instead of giving Evelyn the credit she's due, Skeet decides to say, "It's not that far." And "Dr." John interrupts to tell Rebecca that he's sending her home today, and wonders if she has someone at home to help out while she gets used to the crutches. Rebecca glances at Skeet, and then pretends to be all brave and says, "I'll manage," but Skeet says he'll help, and Rebecca half-heartedly says she couldn't ask him to do that. "You're not asking, I'm offering," he says. I wouldn't worry about it, Skeet. After all, Rebecca's apparently all alone, but somehow she got back up the stairs to phone the hospital, despite having a crutch-worthy injury.
So much for even trying to use the crutches, I guess, since here's Skeet carrying Rebecca across the threshold of her home, and she makes some joke about gallivanting all over the world but breaking her leg here at home, while Skeet turns this way and that, looking for a place to set her down, and he jokingly tells her he can't hold her much longer because she's put on a few pounds. So from his Sex with the Ex playbook, Skeet dusted off the Crack Jokes About Weight Gain end rush, which always makes women hot, I guess. They flop down on the couch. She apologizes for all this, and he says it's okay, since he needed to get away anyway, and she can be his excuse. He asks her what she wants for supper, and she tells him to "surprise" her, like something tells me she's not exactly going to complain about being waited on hand and foot.
It's a dark and stormy night. Skeet's chopping vegetables. He puts a pot of water on the stove, and fiddles with the burner. "This stove not working?" he says to Rebecca, who's reading in the living room. She tells him to give it a while, since "it's got a mind of its own." So Skeet leaves the gas on, and goes back to chopping vegetables. And I was wondering about the fact that it was light out when Skeet started making supper and now it's pitch black, but I'm going to guess it's because he chops so slowly. Despite this, he manages to cut himself, and we get a shot of the carrots and onions with blood all over them, which really would only happen if he stood there with his wound dripping all over the place for a few moments. And he's examining his wound, which judging from the blood is a severed fingertip, and the lightning flashes and outside we see someone smoking a cigarette, and William B. Davis calls his lawyer. Then the gas ignites on the stove, and Skeet says, "A mind of its own."
Later, we've moved to the bedroom for some reason to eat, and she's telling some story about being holed up in some village waiting for some fighting to subside, whilst surviving on "oxblood and corn meal," which is not as gross as it sounds -- pick up a little Oxblood Helper at the grocery store, and you're good to go. Oh, and I like how she calls her own story "amazing." Lucky for her she didn't break the arm she uses to toot her own horn. She says it's one of the stories that's going in her book. Skeet's mildly surprised, as she never sat still before long enough to write anything more than a column. She says that's why she rented this house, and she's not leaving until the book's done. She asks what he's been up to, and he tells her about spending some time in the seminary, although he never took his vows. "You did go," she says, then she says she hopes it wasn't because of her, and he assures her that it wasn't. And now I work with a group that investigates miracles, he says. And she says, "You don't really believe in that stuff, do you?" and how nice of her to denigrate what he does for a living, and he says he tries to "stay open." So she asks him if he's seen any miracles. "Not at first," he says. "And now?" "It's been picking up." She considers this, then tells him that he's more open than she is, since she doesn't even believe in therapy, which I guess is supposed to be a joke. They both laugh, and I start to nod off, since things are moving at a glacial pace this episode.
Later, Rebecca's in the bathroom brushing her teeth, which is the perfect time for Skeet to…go through her mail. And among the letters and bills is a picture of Rebecca in a bikini on the beach with some dude. Skeet gazes at it for a moment, then hastily sticks it back into the pile when Rebecca hobbles out of the bathroom. He helps her into bed and jokes that she's enjoying it, with her protesting that it took her twenty minutes to brush her teeth. He asks how it was that she fell down the stairs, and you're thinking, "Hey, yeah…wasn't she freaked out by the old-timey music that was never explained? What happened with that?" but she just says that she thought she heard a noise in the basement and went to check it out, and then the cellar door slammed shut (due, she figures, to a gust of wind), scaring the hell out of her. But enough about the lone paranormal aspect thus far of this allegedly paranormal show -- wasn't that some good pasta? Skeet deflects her compliment by calling pasta "the single man's specialty," at which point I cough awkwardly into my fist. Rebecca's playing with Skeet's shirt now, and wonders how it is that a "beautiful man" like Skeet is still single. Because he's ignored all the proposals from TWoP posters? "You broke my heart," he tells her, smiling. She smiles back. "Right," she says. Then she says she's glad he's here, since it would "be weird" to be alone like this. I can't see how having a broken leg would feel any weirder than hiding out in a war-torn village eating nothing but cornmeal, but I guess we live in different worlds. Then they get kind of awkward with each other, and you figure they're about to start doing it, until Skeet breaks off by saying "good night." And in the window, the cigarette-smoking man watches them. God, doesn't it seem like a hundred years since The X-Files went off the air? Jessica's Mulder and Scully action figures just got a divorce, for crying out loud.
The day, a sleepy Skeet walks into Rebecca's bedroom, and is completely agog when he finds out it's 12:30. "You should have woken me," he says, although I would kill to be able to sleep in that late, which I haven't done since college. I've turned into a disgusting morning person, I hate to admit. On weekends, I'm usually up around 7 AM, and that's sleeping in for me. She says she figures he needed the rest. Plus, she needs him to drag her invalid ass everywhere. I mean, she doesn't say that. But it's true. He tells her that it doesn't mean she can laze around all day. "I know what you need," he says, only it turns out to be walking lessons, not anything dirty, unfortunately. Although, once he gets her up on the crutches, they continue the flirting that was interrupted last night by Skeet getting all broody. Here he's all charming and attentive, and the walking lessons don't last very long before they start sucking each other's faces. They collapse onto the bed and start doing it. And now the cigarette-smoking man is inside the house. And he's smoking! And maybe the miracle on this one involves Skeet not freaking out over second-hand smoke.
Canadian Christian television commercials. Insurance commercial, featuring a Canadian Hey! It's That Guy! I think he might have played a father on Degrassi Junior High at some point. The Bose commercial again. A commercial for a show that appears to examine the conflict between religion and science -- I wonder which one wins. Zest commercial, which I won't complain about, since sudsy naked women showering always makes for good television.
Rebecca and Skeet are still doing it, only when they roll over, it's not Skeet at all! It's the cigarette-smoking guy! Ahhh! Butt-breath! And he looks over and we see Skeet, wearing an identical tank top, watching them. And cigarette-smoking man starts laughing his arse off.
And Skeet wakes up. In bed, to Rebecca, who stirs and wonders what's wrong. Skeet says he was just having a dream, and she asks what about. "You in bed with another man," he says all creepily. She makes a joke about the broken leg apparently not slowing her down any. "Were you with someone else?" he says, and instead of pointing out that they've been broken up for five years, she says he should know that she was always traveling around so as not to have to deal with that kind of stuff. She kisses his shoulder, then wrinkles her nose and sniffs him. "You smell like smoke. You don't smoke," she says. "No, I don't," he says. And then she teases him to admit it: "Secret smoker! Secret smoker!" she whispers, and he snaps at her to quit it and gets out of bed, and she looks a little distraught by his sudden crabbiness, although whispering, "Secret smoker!" in bed at someone is rather annoying.
Skeet opens the medicine cabinet in the bathroom to…get…something, I guess, and when he closes it again, he sees, reflected in the mirror, a redhead with bleeding wounds all over her face. "See what you did?" she hisses, and Skeet's understandably freaked out and yells, "Okay, I'll put the seat down!" Or…well, most likely not.
In the kitchen, Rebecca's fiddling with the gas on the stove and swearing. Skeet appears to have shaken off the terror of seeing a bloody ghost in the bathroom mirror as he walks in and asks what's wrong. She says she thinks there's something wrong with the gas, as the house is freezing and the stove isn't working. Handyman Skeet asks where the gas shut-off valve is, and Rebecca says, "In the cellar, I think," instead of, "In the cellar, of course, where it is IN EVERY HOUSE."
Skeet wanders down into the murky, cobwebby basement, which apparently doesn't have a light, so he uses a flashlight. The first thing he sees is a collection of dusty ice picks, ice tongs, ice hooks -- but no ice cube trays, no Ice Cube -- on a table. He finds the gas shutoff valve and turns it, and yells up at Rebecca to see if the gas is working now. He yells a couple of times, as he gets no response. Then he turns around. Maybe it's because of a noise, but I can't tell if that noise was supposed to be in the basement or just part of the soundtrack. Whatever the reason, his attention is drawn to a splotch of bright red paint -- er, I mean, "blood" -- on the wall. And he does what anyone would do: he places his palm right on it. He closes his eyes while this gibbering starts up, then opens his eyes again and shuts the flashlight off. But there's a lingering light effect in his eyes, which was kinda subtle and cool.
Since he forgot to get Rebecca anything for Valentine's Day, he brings an ice pick upstairs with him. And also, he can make endless I Know What You Did Last Summer jokes! He drags the pick along the counter, which makes Rebecca smile instead of freaking out that she's not going to get her damage deposit back. "What the hell is that?" she says, and Skeet says he doesn't know, but jokes that maybe it belongs to one of her boyfriends. "The guy who used to live here was some kind of iceman," says Rebecca, whatever "some kind of" means. He probably got his dairy products from some kind of milkman. She figures that was one of his tools, and it must be that kind of sharp observation that's serving her in good stead in her chosen profession as a writer. For some reason, Skeet glares at her, only she doesn't seem to notice. His cell phone rings, and he moves into the living room to answer, all the while still giving Rebecca the stink-eye (with her not noticing). It's Evelyn. "What?" he snaps at her. "It's Evvy!" she says brightly. "You said that already!" he snaps, like maybe he's upset at the roaming charges he's going to get stuck with. "Paul?" she says, uncertainly, and he mimics her: "Paul?" At some point, maybe Evelyn clues in that something might be wrong, as when Paul says, "She's screwing the iceman!" which is the only time you'll hear the line of dialogue in any movie or television show made after the 1920s (other than in the upcoming X-Men 3: Ice, Ice Baby). Then he says, "I have an idea, Evvy. Why don't you go mind your own --" and we cut back to Evelyn, so I guess we're supposed to think he finished with "fucking business." Evelyn hangs up, and chews on her fingernail thoughtfully. And sexily! Keel asks if that was Paul. Yep. "Is everything okay?" "I don't think so," she says, having no doubt put her skills as a cop to good use to deduce that all is not well in the mind of Skeet.
And here he is, thumbing through one of Rebecca's photo albums, and the photos are a real mish-mash of places and people, like maybe Rebecca takes only one photograph on every trip she takes. "Is everything all right?" asks Rebecca as she hobbles down the hallway. "You've had a lot of adventures," snarls Skeet, and Rebecca's all, guess so! And Skeet starts reminiscing about how he'd wait for months for her to come back from one of her jaunts, and then she would act as if she never left. Skeet asks if she ever thought of him. "Sometimes?" she offers. He pulls out of a picture of Rebecca hugging some dude. "Is this him? The Russian photographer? What was his name?" and Rebecca says that dude was her editor, and I can't say I have any pictures of Sars hugging me like that (they were seized as evidence in her upcoming sexual harassment trial). ["In Geragos we trust." -- Sars] Skeet accuses her of sleeping with the Russian photographer. "It's been five years! You're not seriously going to bring all this up again, are you? We've done this already!" she says, and he barks, "No, we haven't!" He wants the truth. She looks at him for a long moment, obviously wondering if he can handle the truth. "It was a mistake," she says, finally. Skeet gets quiet, then walks over to a knick-knack shelf, where he reaches up and pulls down a dusty cigarette case and a lighter. "Tell me something, Rebecca," he says, blowing the dust off the cigarette case. "Have you ever made anyone happy? Just one person? I'd like to know." She wants to know what's going on. And why he's lighting one of those cigarettes. "You tell me. We are supposed to be in love," he says. "'Are'?" says Rebecca, and she reminds him that she was never able to be out of his sight without him taking it as some kind of rejection. "It wasn't working, Paul!" she says, and he seems to come back to the present day and is an ex-boyfriend who never got over her again. "I could have come with you! You never asked!" he says. "Maybe I wanted to be alone!" she says, which really hurts. "You want to be alone? Fine," says Skeet, and he walks out. Rebecca slumps against the wall, and in a mirror, we see (she doesn't) the same bloodied woman Skeet saw in the bathroom mirror.
Sun goes down, sun comes up. Skeet's in a vehicle (Rebecca's?) across the street from the house. He's smoking and drinking and he hasn't shaved. He looks a lot like I did after filling in on a few 7th Heaven recaps. The wood-paneled SQ station wagon pulls up, and Evelyn and Keel get out.
In the kitchen, Rebecca tells Evelyn and Keel that Skeet left after they had an argument. "What was the fight about?" says Keel, and Rebecca just says, "The past," which is another line that takes on a whole new meaning by the end of the episode. She asks if Paul seems okay to them. Clearly he must, Rebecca. They drove all the way out here because Paul is fine. Keel notices the chopped onion on the cutting board. The onion's now black (although the rest of the vegetables seem fine, but…weren't those for the pasta that they ate?). Evelyn says that Skeet's been under a lot of stress, but Rebecca says Skeet seems different, angrier. Speak of the devil! Here's Skeet, playing the "I'm okay, and also pleasantly surprised to see my pals!" card with Keel and Evelyn. And he cannot bee-leeeve that they drove all the way up here just because of the way he spoke to Evelyn (frankly, neither can I, but that's okay -- it's not exactly the most incredible thing that's happened on this show). Evelyn says she kept trying his cell phone but he didn't pick up. Skeet apologizes for being rude, and says he and Rebecca just needed to work things out and he needed some space. No biggie! And he's going to stay here a couple of days to help Rebecca get things sorted out. Hey, why don't you guys stay the night? If that's okay with Rebecca, that is. She's fine with it, since she's no doubt worried about being alone with Psycho Skeet. Keel declines the invitation, saying they just wanted to make sure everything was okay. He puts his hand on Rebecca's shoulder as he says it was nice to meet her, and here comes Skeet's stink-eye again! Keel and Evelyn leave, with Skeet apologizing again for worrying them. After they go, Rebecca says they seem really nice, and quite concerned about Skeet. "'Concerned'?" he says. "When they heard that you stayed out all night?" she says. He apologizes. "That's okay," she says. "No. I'm sorry I didn't do this," he says, and punches her in the face, knocking her to the floor. He squats beside her. "You know, time you wanna hump somebody, make sure I'm not on my way home, sunshine. Let's see how many men you look at now," he says. He walks over to the phone and rips it out of the wall.
I'm sorry. Did he just say "hump"?
, "You Are My Sunshine" plays while Skeet hammers boards over all the windows. And she says he never does anything around the house! Of course, maybe this isn't what Rebecca had in mind. Especially since she's tied to the radiator while Skeet smokes and hammers. Commercials.
That same insurance company has another commercial. The Pasta Pro commercial again. Another promo for A River Runs Through It. THAT SAME BOSE COMMERCIAL. That same Dan Aykroyd promo. Is it me, or does Vision TV need some better salespeople?
Evelyn and Keel are driving away, with Evelyn apologizing because something seemed off with Skeet before. And it doesn't anymore? Now he seems perfectly fine to you? Something seems off to Keel, but not because Skeet's acting weird. No, it's because of the black onion in the kitchen, which could be the sign of an "evil presence." Or it could be a sign of "food gone bad." I mean, if mouldy food is the sign of an evil presence, I'd better call the Ghostbusters to exorcize my fridge. Evelyn wonders if Keel is saying the house is haunted. Keel figures the house is, or Paul is, or both. Which raises a question, says Evelyn: why are we driving away? Keel needs to find out the "history" of the house. Ohhhh-kaayyyy…well, you just go on your little sojourn to the land titles office, and let's hope Skeet doesn't go batshit crazy in the meantime.
Back in the kitchen, Rebecca is pouring this jug of oil, I guess, into a pot, and she says she thought she'd make fried chicken for dinner, and Skeet's all, "You look gooood," and wonders if this is a "date" and she hesitates but then says it is, while The Piano of Alarming Psychosis tinkers bravely on in the background. Skeet hangs the keys up a nail that I guess is supposed to be out of her reach, even though I think she's taller than he is.
And Keel has driven halfway across the county to find the real estate agent who rented out the cabin, and she's currently at an open house, telling people lies about resale value. She rebuffs Keel's initial general inquiry about the house, since it's already been rented, but gets all shifty-eyed when Keel says he's interested in the history of the house because he's writing a book on haunted houses in the area. "Who says it's haunted?" she asks. Keel just looks at her. She says "Mrs. Spencer" lived in that house until she was 81 years old and died peacefully in her sleep a year ago. Keel wants to know if she knew Mrs. Spencer. She says Keel probably heard kids refer to her as "Spooky Spencer," and tells him that Mrs. Spencer's husband ran off with another woman years ago, breaking her heart. She boarded up all the windows and became a bit of a recluse. Keel's not convinced that's the whole story. "Why is the rent so cheap? Something else happened in that house, didn't it?" She says nothing, just stares at him.
Skeet's busy watching television, so Rebecca pulls a chair over to where Skeet has so ingeniously hung the keys. Then she fumbles through the ring (school janitors have fewer keys than this thing), trying all of them in the front door. Skeet sneaks up behind her and watches her for a moment, before scraping the front-door key along the wall. He accuses her of sneaking off to meet her English boyfriend, since she was always a sucker for a foreign accent. She starts to speak, but he tells her to shut up. "I'm going to do what I should have done to all your boyfriends," he says. She looks terrified -- probably scared of Skeet's patchy stubble. "Keel and I need to talk. We have some issues to work out," he says, then slams her against the wall. "So that means we need to put you on ice," he says.
Why is Evelyn the only member of the SQ team who doesn't have a cell phone? She's calling Keel from a pay phone outside a police station, where she learned that some dude from Albany rented the Spencer house six months ago, and he hanged himself in the cellar. People figured he'd just skipped out on the rent until the smell started "seeping through the floorboards." Keel says the house could be "exuding negativity," whether that's anger, jealousy, what-have-you. He says a bunch of garbage about the house amplifying Paul's dark side. Oh, of course! Keel's going to come by to pick up Evelyn, who hangs up. She turns around, and is startled that Paul's right there. He's a little anxious, and wants to know where Keel is, since he and Rebecca had a fight and she locked herself in the cellar. Evelyn all suspiciously says, "The cellar?" Skeet says he should have listened to her, since Rebecca's been acting really weird, saying they'd both committed terrible acts and were both going to die. And Evelyn falls for it, of course, and tells Skeet that terrible things happened in the house and Keel doesn't think it's safe for Skeet to be there. Skeet doesn't want to leave Rebecca there, so he tells Evelyn to call Keel and have him meet them there. It would make a lot more sense for Skeet to call Alva on his cell phone, but Evelyn of course turns her back so she can use the pay phone and Skeet can give her the evil eye some more.
So Skeet and Evelyn arrive back at the house. As they enter, Evelyn wonders why the windows are all boarded up. Skeet says he wondered about that until he realized it was the only way he could keep her out of trouble. "What's going on?" says Evelyn, and Skeet says, "She's doing every guy in town," and by "doing" I'm sure he means "humping." And Evelyn yells for Rebecca, who starts yelling for help from the basement. Evelyn orders Skeet to let Rebecca out, but he's all, nuh-uh! "She needs to learn her lesson. And you do too," he says. Evelyn has to play a good cop/bad cop routine all by herself, and when that doesn't work, she winds up throwing Skeet to the floor. Unfortunately, she gets distracted with yelling some reassurances to Rebecca, so Skeet manages to throw her off him and slam her against the wall and then into the cellar, locking her in with Rebecca and laughing like a mofo.
Commercials. Another infomercial-type spot for some sort of hand-held sewing machine. THAT DAMN BOSE WAVE RADIO COMMERCIAL AGAIN.
Skeet's singing "You Are My Sunshine" softly to himself, and just getting to the "if you leave me for another, you'll regret it all someday" part as the gas comes on under the pot on the stove. I just found the whole thing "affected," but let's see what Randy and Paula think.
Down in the hole, Rebecca's wondering just what the hell is wrong with Skeet. Evelyn says it's hard to explain, but there's something in the house that's bringing out the worst in him. "He's special, but he's vulnerable to things like this," she says. "I have to get out of here," says Rebecca. More than Evelyn does, sweetheart? Evelyn finds a section of the wall that looks like it has been filled in, possibly an old doorway. They find a handy-dandy E-Z Escape Tool Set sitting on a table and start chipping away at the wall.
Upstairs, Keel arrives and peers through. Skeet watches him, takes a drag, takes a swig.
Downstairs, Evelyn pulls out a few bricks, and they see some sort of door behind the wall.
Upstairs, Skeet lets Keel in. "Hey, Keel," he says, like Alva's showing up to watch the game. Off-campus kegger! Skeet does offer him a drink, but Keel declines. He asks where "Evvy" is. "Locked in the basement," says Skeet. Say what you will about the demon currently possessing Skeet; at least it's honest. "Did you put her there?" says Keel, which is kind of a dumb question, if you ask me. Skeet lets Keel in on the "secret" that he thinks Rebecca likes him. But she's totally embarrassed so she couldn't say anything herself, but wants to know if U like her 2. Check one: Yes or No. Keel calmly removes his coat as he asks if Rebecca is down there too. "As a matter of fact she is," says Skeet, who then takes Keel's coat like he's going to hang it up, then throws it over his shoulder. Heh. Keel suggests bringing the girls back upstairs, but Skeet says nuh-uh to that, since he doesn't think Keel's ready -- just like Keel didn't think Skeet was ready to see the stupid files in his office, and maybe Skeet's got a few things that he doesn't want Keel getting his hands on either. Skeet says he was jealous thinking of Keel with Rebecca, but then realized that Keel is actually jealous of Skeet. After all, Skeet saw his name written in his own blood, while all Keel got was a tape of his dead mother saying, "Alva…Alva…" Keel punches him in the stomach, but lest anyone think Skeet just pissed him off, he's doing it to try to overpower Skeet to get him out of the evil house. Skeet punches him back, and the battle is well and truly joined.
Downstairs, Evelyn's finished doing her best Andy Dufresne, and she and Rebecca open the metal door. "What's that smell?" she says. Dude, it's gonna be dead bodies. On scary shows, whenever somebody says, "What's that smell?" it's always dead bodies. Evelyn ventures into the passage. It's freezing -- you can see her breath. Rebecca's too scared to follow her. Evelyn opens a hatch in the wall -- and here are the dead bodies. They're blackened and quite suitably creepy, and appear to be locked in an embrace. Evelyn recoils, and Rebecca slams the passage door shut, trapping Evelyn inside. Despite Evelyn's shouts and frantic scrabbling, Rebecca won't let her out. As creepy bloody redhead stands beside her, Rebecca says, "You've put your hands on me for the last time."
Upstairs, Skeet and Keel are having a rather athletic fight; they're tossing each other onto counters, slamming heads in sinks, and breaking more furniture than a Chris Farley retrospective. Skeet grabs the ice pick, and is about to bring it down on Keel's head when Keel grabs a bowl or ashtray or some sort of breakable -- perhaps a very large Hummel -- and smashes it over Skeet's head, knocking him out.
Downstairs, Evelyn's own little plotline comes to a bit of an anticlimax, as Keel just -- opens the door and lets her out. That was a close one! Keel tells her that Rebecca's upstairs, and she's a little shaken up. Then he sees the corpses. "I guess the iceman and his mistress didn't run off after all," says Evelyn.
Upstairs, Rebecca's frying up that big ol' pot of hot oil again, while Keel jabbers on his cell phone and Evelyn tends to Skeet's injuries. After getting off the phone, Keel tells Rebecca that it's all over and that the ambulance is on its way. Evelyn wants to know what happened upstairs, like it takes a genius to figure out that maybe Skeet fought Keel just like he fought her, but whatever. Keel stumbles off to…I don't know, he doesn't say. Rebecca takes the pot off the stove and slowly starts walking toward Evelyn and Skeet. The scene fades into the past, with Rebecca becoming the bloody woman from the mirror (although she's not bloody right now), and she's walking toward the iceman (the same cigarette-smoking dude that Skeet saw in his dream) and his mistress, carrying what looks like a cast-iron pot of boiling water, while the iceman and the mistress dance to "You Are My Sunshine." At the very last moment, the iceman sees her; she says, "See what you did?" and tosses the water over the two of them.
And now they're dead. I guess. The water killed them, I suppose, because they're now two dead bodies and the redhead is dragging them downstairs. Maybe there was a struggle that we didn't get to see, because she's been injured, a bloody wound over one eye. Somehow this wee thing stuffs the two bodies into the coal chamber or whatever and seals up the passageway.
Back in the present day, Rebecca's rather far away from Skeet and Evelyn, when Evelyn notices her and shrieks, instead of doing ANYTHING ELSE. Fortunately, Keel's on his way back from taking a whiz or wherever it was that he went, and he tackles Rebecca. The oil splashes onto the stove, igniting an instant four-alarm fire, and everybody hustles outside to watch it burn. Crazy whispers over the soundtrack, with the sounds of a door creaking. No! The rocking chair burns up! The photo albums burn up! My cool Scarface poster goes up! Heh. No, my Scarface poster would not burn, because that's the first thing I'd save. Um, assuming my girlfriend was safe and sound, that is.
The day, Skeet and Rebecca sit in her truck and reminisce about all the fun times they just had. Skeet asks what she's going to tell her sister. "That my ex-boyfriend became possessed and tried to kill me," says Rebecca. Is there a Haagen-Dazs flavour a sister can whip out to make that all better? Rebecca says she might have to start believing in therapy, "among other things," and Skeet says that if even one person starts believing in miracles after he goes psycho and locks her in the basement, it was all worth it. Rebecca says he's lucky, since his friends came all the way up here and risked their lives for him. Then she does some "what if we met for the very first time, would things be different" speculation that frankly seems a little silly once you've tried to douse a guy in hot oil. Skeet just says, "I'd like to think so." He gets out of the truck, and Rebecca says, "I really did love you," and drives off, forcing Skeet to brood in the direction of her taillights.
Back in Boston, Skeet strolls into the office and says he needs to talk to Evelyn and Keel. "What I did was unforgivable. I wish I could say that I don't remember any of it. I wish I could it wasn't me back there, but --" and Evelyn cuts him off with, "It wasn't," and Keel adds, "Not entirely." Skeet says he understands if they don't want him to continue working there, but they won't hear of it. After all, it could have been worse, says Keel, and Evelyn agrees, before catching herself and wondering exactly how it could have been worse. "We could all be dead," says Keel. There must be something liberating in working for someone who's happy with your work so long as you don't wind up killing everybody. Keel then goes on to say that it's encouraging that the house allowed Skeet access to the "darkest corners" of his soul, and Skeet still didn't have it in him to kill someone. Wouldn't you say that had more to do with them fighting back than Skeet holding back? I know I would. Anyway, welcome back to work, Skeet, from the most forgiving co-workers ever. I know I feel like going postal when somebody uses the office break room microwave to make stinky popcorn. And then they start joking about the whole thing, like, Skeet says, "Maybe I just don't have it in me to kill you," and Evelyn says, "I told you not to sleep with her," and they're all laughing, and I thought it would be funny if they freeze-framed on the laugh and then played some wacky Riptide or Simon & Simon-esque music while the credits rolled. But we're done. And we didn't even really see a Skeet Face!