Tons of "previously on" clips to open up this episode, enough that I think every single episode of Miracles up until now has been represented, and in fact there's a clip that we haven't actually seen before, and that's of Evelyn introducing her son "Matty" to Skeet, and this "Matty" is a cute little kid playing in the SQ HQ, and the "previously on" clips turn out to have pretty much nothing to do with anything, since this episode is, to use an old X-Files term, a Monster of the Week episode. Anyone who reads my recaps regularly should know by now that I hate pointless and insulting "previously on" clips, and now I have to amend that to I hate pointless and insulting and FICTITIOUS "previously on" clips since we haven't heard anything about this so-called "Matty" before, and let me just ask where this supposed "Matty" was last episode when Evelyn was somehow able to drop everything and drive Skeet all the way to Saugerties?
Anyway, Skeet and Evelyn are sitting around the SQ HQ, like, this is some sweet job where they just kind of sit around all day waiting for stuff to happen. I mean, it's not like they're firemen and need to be on call. Shouldn't they be out investigating and researching stuff? And more to the point, if I had to sit around all day waiting for Keel to think of something for me to do, I'd at least demand a brass pole so I could slide down to the first-floor garage.
Keel comes running down the stairs and says they need to go to Virginia immediately, which is probably the first time in history anyone has said that (no offence intended, Virginians; after all, I used to live in Saskatchewan). "You've heard of hurricane weather? This is ghost-like weather," he says, although I think he should say "ghost weather," but now's not the time to worry about semantics. It's time to worry about how frickin' brutal it would be to have to spend ten hours in a car with Keel. Evelyn says she can't go, because it's "Matty"'s birthday party, and it sure is a good thing they put in the fake clip of Evelyn introducing her son, otherwise the apparently brain-dead audience would never have figured out that "Matty" is Evelyn's son. "Besides, when we get there and don't see anything, the trip is just going to drag on. I know how this works," she says, and I sure wish I could turn down assignments from my boss on similar "too boring" grounds. But if Sars accepted that excuse, Deborah wouldn't have to sit through The West Wing, would she? ["Well, as it turns out…" -- Sars] But Keel accepts this, and tells Skeet that it looks like it's just the two of them, and Skeet says, "Ten hours," and is obviously hoping his iPod is charged.
Aaaaand we're in Virginia way ahead of Skeet and Keel, since we're able to cut there and not drive, and we see two kids walking down the sidewalk on their way home from school, when they decide to take a shortcut through the woods. Several years of watching Law & Order have conditioned me to get a snack at this time, since they're just going to discover a body, and then Briscoe comes along and makes a wisecrack, so I had to force myself not to get up.
What happens is, the kids race through the woods, with the younger brother eventually resorting to a dirty trick (knocking his older sister's book out of her hand) to take the lead. "No fair, that's cheating!" she yells, which earns a cackle from her little brother. She squats to pick up a book, and sees a large red footprint in the dirt. It's...I don't know why it's red, it just is. She seems a little startled, then races to catch up with Gus.
She almost bumps into him, as he's standing, transfixed by the muddy, grimy, Civil War-era soldier in the bushes. The soldier is staring right back at them. I've never run into any Civil War soldiers in the bushes behind my house, but I suspect it would be a little freaky. Even scarier, furthermore, would be the fact that this guy is translucent -- and Gus and his sister run screaming all the way home to Mommy to tell her they saw a ghost.
Cut to the Civil War soldier, fully opaque, running through the woods as fast as his terrified legs and the weather (now dark and rainy) allows him, back to his unit. They ask "Henry" where he's been all night. "I just seen a ghost!" he says. You can tell it's the olden days because of his bad grammar. After all, nobody says "I seen" anymore, do they?
Commercials. They're pretty much the same ones from last week, with the notable exception (thank God) that there's not an ad for the Bose Wave radio. They must have blown the budget last week. There is, however, a new and highly annoying ad for Disney, even though I thought Christians had rules against worshipping false idols.
The onscreen title tells us that the SQ station wagon is parked in "West Glen, Virginia." While the thought of Alva and Skeet parked alone at night in a car on a deserted stretch of road might give some of TWoP's posters palpitations, Skeet doesn't look overly thrilled. Could be all that junk food he's eaten -- evidenced by the many empty containers in the car -- is repeating on him. He also wants to know how it can be a hundred degrees at three in the morning. "It's not the heat, it's the humidity," says Alva, which probably should earn him some sort of physical punishment. Skeet looks through the binoculars. I guess he wants to see how dark it is close up. He tells Keel he doesn't see anything, and Keel actually rolls his eyes and says, "Are you sure?" and he takes the binoculars himself so he can look at the dark close up, and he whines that it's been the same story for the past three nights, which is odd (for Keel) since this is one of the most "common unexplained phenomena there is." You see, for Keel, it's odd when you don't see ghosts. Kind of like if Jessica Fletcher is a weekend guest at someone's house and no one gets murdered.
Skeet and Keel -- oh, God, I just referenced Murder, She Wrote. I'm losing it. My well of hip references to sprinkle in my recaps has run dry. Uh, OutKast! Naomi Klein! Jon Stewart's fractured take on the news of the day! Despite its irrelevance to a mainstream music audience, Prince's musical output has never been more interesting or challenging! Whew.
Anyway, Keel rambles on about how his grandparents used to tell him stories about ghost lights out on the moors, so much so that a young Keel used to beg them to take him to the moors. One imagines Grandma and Grandpa Keel fretting about how they had the lamest grandson ever. Skeet wants to know what happened. "Nothing," explains Keel. Skeet looks like he's not sure how to take that.
Then Keel freaks out because he thinks he sees something, which turns out to be headlights. Because Keel and Skeet wouldn't recognize headlights. But they recognize a police siren when it comes on, as it does here, just that quick little "woo!" that cops do when they know you've already seen them and are letting you know they're coming over for a quick chat.
So the friendly state trooper asks them what they're doing out here; Skeet and Keel are already outside the car leaning on the hood, and I'm a little surprised they weren't killed in a hail of bullets when they exited the car. Keel says they're investigating the possibility that "a local legend of terrain-based ghost lights isn't just swamp gas." Skeet's ready to dissociate himself from this raving lunatic when the cop says his "daddy" always used to say the ghost lights were a headless railroad man. Keel's all, you've heard of ghost lights? And the state trooper says he's seen 'em. "They're famous around here. Folks in town'll tell you they're caused by the souls of Civil War soldiers." Are they? asks Skeet, and the trooper explains he "don't believe none of it" hisself. But if they're lookin' for weird stuff, they should check out the town over, which goes by the name of Shadow Valley, since it's been getting its share of weird stuff lately. Two kids claim they were shot at by a ghost. "Have fun, boys," says the sheriff as he swaggers back to his truck. This has to be the first time in television history that a couple of city boys came to a small Southern town to investigate strange goings-on and weren't told to "clear out if y'all know what's best for you." Maybe that's why Skeet and Keel exchange glances here.
Luckily, the kids' mother is more than willing to tell Skeet and Keel to clear off, albeit politely, and the yummy mummy has a sexy slight Southern drawl, too, as she tells the SQ boys that whatever the kids think they saw, they didn't. The cops figure it was a Civil War re-enactor. "Why would they say that?" asks Keel, and the kids are suddenly at the screen door and the girl, "Renata," says it was because he was dressed like a soldier. Oh, you kids! The mother opens the door to let them run around on the deck, since they were "too scared to go to school today" like, I can't believe she fell for that, and Renata starts making fun of Gus for thinking a ghost is going to get him, and the mother's all, "What did I tell you about ghosts?" and the kids say, in unison, "They don't exist!" in that slightly exasperated way that kids have.
The kids finally get around to doing the "who are you?" thing with Keel and Skeet, and Skeet introduces himself. He squats to tie Gus's shoe as he asks if either of them have a favourite blanket. "He does, and it smells," says Renata, helpfully waving all the stink lines away from her nose as she does so, thanks to a little bit of over-directing. Skeet explains that the smell is part of the trick, since it keeps the ghosts away. Skeet himself used to have a smelly favourite blanket, and he'd pull it up over his head and it was the safest place in the world. Hmmm. time I pull the ol' Dutch oven on the future Mrs. Daniel, I'll explain that I'm just keeping the ghosts away. Anyway, Skeet notices some red stuff on his fingertips after he ties Gus's shoelace. Nobody seems to notice him rubbing his fingers together thoughtfully, or the music swelling in the background. Mom shoos the kids inside, and smiles and says, "That was sweet," and invites them-all in for lemonade, since it looks like they're going to melt. Keel declines, and Skeet whines about the heat again, wondering if it's always this hot here, like, it's Virginia, Skeet. Mom allows that the heat is a little unusual for this time of year. They say their goodbyes, and Skeet hands over one of those hilarious SQ business cards that I love so much.
As they walk away, Skeet reveals that there was blood on the kid's shoe. "Ah, is that what you were looking at," says Keel, like maybe he was worried that Skeet was getting just a little too familiar with the children. Skeet's never heard of a ghost bleeding before, just crosses and statues -- he knows it's from the ghost how? And let's recap. Ghosts: normal. Bleeding crosses and statues: normal. Bleeding ghost: whoa! Keel thinks the kids were more frightened than they let on. Uh, they let on enough to get excused from school, Keel. He thinks they're telling the truth, since kids make excellent witnesses: "They don't filter out things that, quote unquote, 'don't fit.'" And he even makes annoying air quotes. You know, I could point out that kids lie all the time. Then again, if I were a kid and I were going to lie in order to get out of school, I doubt I'd try the ol' "I saw a ghost from the Civil War" routine, so I guess he has a point. Skeet warns him, though, that kids also have a way of telling you what they think you want to hear. "Which is why I wasn't talking to them," says Keel, and Skeet makes some joke about Keel winding up kicking a soccer ball and trading Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, whatever that means. Still, the story's worth checking out, so into the woods it is to look at the kids' shortcut.
Into the woods we go, where our Civil War ghost is in a tent that appears to be the nineteenth-century version of a M*A*S*H unit, and he's telling, oh, let's call him Hawkeye, that his wife Isabella is about to give birth in Livingston but he hasn't heard any word yet, and he's afraid because there's a typhoid epidemic. Hawkeye, while tending to the patient, wants to know if that's why "Henry" tried to desert last night. "My duty is to my country!" say Henry, who says he became lost on patrol, but Hawkeye points out that Henry knows the woods better than anyone. Henry insists that he stumbled through the thickets like a blind man. He couldn't find the path "until two spirits revealed it to [him]." Hawkeye smiles like he doesn't believe Henry. "Is it not said that under certain conditions spirits will communicate with persons in the flesh?" says Henry. "Said by whom?" asks Hawkeye. "Spiritualists! Mary Todd Lincoln!" says Henry. Heh. Hawkeye points out that Mary Todd Lincoln is batshit crazy, but he says it nicer than that and attributes it to her "tragedy." But other than that, how was the show, Mrs. Lincoln?
Hawkeye says he too used to take comfort in the afterlife, but while he was studying medicine, he and some other students tried to "reconcile spirit with matter." They put scales under each corner of a dying man's bed -- but nothing happened. "He weighed the same in death as he did in life," says Hawkeye. Hmmm. That's not what the Atkins people say! As Hawkeye rambles on about no spirit leaving the man's body, his words are drowned out (for Henry) by a rumbling noise for a few seconds. "I fear my mind is giving way," he says. Hawkeye pays that no mind. "You going over the ridge tomorrow with the rest of them?" he says. Henry nods. "You prepared to die?" Henry doesn't say anything. Hawkeye says he fears that soon enough Henry will be able to answer his own questions about the afterlife, like, THANKS FOR THE MORALE BOOST.
Skeet and Keel wander around the woods. "We're lost, Keel," says Skeet, but Keel doesn't think so. At least, he pretends he doesn't think so, and insists the path is just over there. "We've passed that tree twice already," complains Skeet. Keel says that the trees seem to be rearranging themselves, but his lame excuses are interrupting by a rumbling noise, and then lights bobbing up and down, and just like the police truck from before, the lights look absolutely nothing like actual headlights, but it turns out that that's what they are, only this time they're on ATVs being driven by some wacky teenagers, who circle around and stop by the SQ guys. "There are your ghost lights," says Skeet, all raining on Keel's parade. The ATV riders take off their helmets. The girl says, pleasantly, "You're not from around here, are you?" and the guy says, a little annoyed, that they almost ran them over, like I guess it's Skeet and Keel's fault that they were almost mowed down by quads being raced around the woods in the middle of the night. Keel does his "we hunt weird things but it's not like The X-Files, honest" routine and Skeet explains that the Jacobsen kids saw something out here the other day. "They saw a ghost," says the guy. The girl says her boyfriend has started to hear creepy things at the Circle Mart, where he works. So she's out quadding with someone other than her boyfriend? In Virginia, doesn't that amount to adultery? Keel asks where the Circle Mart is. "Across the highway," she says, and points. Behind a few trees is said highway, with cars and trucks zipping along merrily. "That wasn't there before," whispers Skeet to Keel, who says, "I know."
If your company's name is Circle Mart, you might have to face up to the possibility that if you put your logo on a 30-foot pole outside your store, it might just look like a giant glowing hemorrhoid pillow. But I don't know how to fix that problem. Skeet and Keel are listening to the clerk, as he unlocks the store, explain that he works the graveyard shift polishing floors by himself. "So at first I was scared of aisle three. But then I became used to it." "What's so special about aisle three?" asks Skeet. The clerk slides him a plastic bucket to sit on. "Just wait," he says.
So we do. An evening of quadding and almost running over city boys has plumb tuckered out Daisy Mae, and she's sleeping on the floor. Skeet and Keel are sitting and waiting, with Skeet complaining that this is even less exciting than ghost lights. On cue, naturally, the voices start. At first it's like a radio station that's not quite tuned all the way, but it becomes sharper and clearer. The two of them stand up, because I guess that makes their ears work better. Keel holds up his tape recorder (which even he can do in a slightly fey manner, since he's holding it only with his thumb and middle finger, and the rest are crooked). There are voices and things clinking and horses clip-clopping. The clerk, who wasn't kidding when he says he's gotten used to it, asks Keel and Skeet if they want to see something cool. He gets on the store's intercom and says "cleanup on aisle three" a couple of times. One of the disembodied voices starts saying, "Show yourself!" Skeet concedes that that was, in fact, cool.
Back in North & South: The Paranormal Years, Henry's yelling "show yourself!" much to the amusement of his fellow soldiers all sitting around the campfire laughing and making fun of his "mental imbecility." Not digging the whole "everybody laughing at me" thing, Henry stumbles off to go write a letter in the moonlight to his wife. "My dear sweet Isabella," he writes. "I can't wait for the internet to be invented and then I could send you a quick email. I fervently wish and pray for the health of you and our child," he says, and it goes on like this, and we learn that he thinks the voices he's hearing are signs pertaining to how they're doing. Then there's a bright white light shining from behind him, as well as the hum of a fluorescent light (not that he would recognize it). He turns around, and gasps when he sees the giant electric hemorrhoid pillow atop a pole in the middle of the woods. "My god," he says. Commercials.
Back at Hemorrhoid Pillow Mart, Skeet is shaking coffee cans and listening to them, like, how useless is Skeet, anyway. Keel's figured out why they were lost in the woods: it's...some German phrase that translates into "time slip." "Does everything with you involve a foreign language?" asks Skeet. Keel compares time to a book, years stacked on top of years like pages in the newspaper. When somebody spills coffee on the top page, the top page becomes transparent. "The past becomes visible," says Skeet. "Briefly," says Keel. For as the page dries, the past becomes invisible again. Of course! It all makes perfect sense, as long as you're not worried about the question of just who is spilling coffee all over the time-space continuum. "Dude! Is that even possible?" says the store clerk, even though he already believes in the ghost. Keel says the whole reason we live in sequential time is so that two events can't happen in the same place at the same time. That's the "reason" we live in sequential time? And not, you know, the definition of sequential time? He says it like people voted for sequential time so events didn't get all bunched up in the same place. Then some ghost horses go whinnying by, and everyone's hair blows in the breeze.
Back in the Civil War, the pony express or whatever is riding up, and is swarmed by soldiers demanding to know news of reinforcements and how the troops to the south are doing. He hasn't heard anything but rumours of ambush. Henry pushes his way to the front to ask if he's heard anything about Henry's wife and kid. You know, he wasn't able to find anything out about the WAR, so I'm not sure he would have had time to check in on your wife, there, Henry, but I understand you're concerned. So Henry gives the rider his journal to take to his wife and asks again for news by dawn, to which the rider replies that it's impossible to get to Livingston and back by dawn, and Henry gets all up in the guy's grill and demands that he try. I guess Henry is the Tony Robbins of Civil War soldiers, because the rider's all of a sudden inspired and says he'll ride like a demon through the night to get back by the morning.
Back at the Circle Mart, Keel is boring Skeet to death by talking about a time slip that happened in Germany in 1809, and I'd be really interested in knowing the documentation on that one. The Germans heard Roman centurions crossing a river, even though there were no Romans -- and no river. Despite this, one of the Germans drowned. Well, water safety was less advanced in those days. Dude probably fell asleep in his beer. Skeet wonders why the time slip is happening here and now. Keel says they should check the weather, because areas with certain (something)-electrical materials, like the quartz in the hills around the town, may only require a little bit of extra energy to cause a "temporal anomaly," and humidity has been to known to carry a latent negative electrical charge. Keel wonders if the weather conditions mirror those of Frankfurt all those years ago.
Evelyn's house. A shot of a phone on the nightstand, a picture of a baby in a frame, because, oh, that's right, she has a kid all of a sudden. It rings, and Evelyn answers it like she was waiting for it to ring. Skeet asks her to find out the weather and the geological makeup of Frankfurt at the right time in 1809, and doesn't even give her the courtesy of explaining what the information is for, because his call waiting beeps and he says goodbye to one yummy mummy to talk to another: it's Jane, who says she needs him to come over right away. He asks if everything's okay, and she says her kids won't go to sleep. So naturally she calls the man who tells the creepy monster stories and asks him to come over. That makes sense.
I guess the kids have been clamouring for Skeet since he's the "ghost expert" and they're scared of the man in the woods, and Renata apparently isn't helping things by telling Gus that ghosts can eat through blankets. Little brat. So Skeet sits down and tells them that the man isn't allowed to come out of the woods, otherwise he wouldn't be the man in the woods, and small wonder the kids weren't all, "No shit, he'd be the man in our bedroom STABBING US TO DEATH," and Gus asks, "Are those woods his heaven?" and Skeet seems a little surprised by that question (so am I), but he decides to go with it and winds up delivering this little theological lollipop about heaven being the best moment you can imagine in the best place you can imagine, and of course there are dogs in heaven, because it wouldn't be heaven without dogs, would it? Since I have recently become the owner of a Great Dane, I would like to amend that the dogs in my heaven are all constipated ones. And Renata asks if there's cotton candy in heaven, like, what kind of stupid question is that, and Skeet says there are whole houses made of cotton candy, and Jane gets this "as if" look on her face, like, NICE, and when Skeet says clowns live in the houses, Gus gets concerned, because he doesn't like clowns. "Well, they're more like performance artists," says Skeet, earning a full-on eye-roll from Jane. "Oh," says Gus. Heh. And yes, there are cats in heaven but the dogs and cats don't ever fight, apparently.
Afterwards, Jane says to Skeet, "I'd like to thank you..." but it's a total setup because once Skeet gets all "shucks, it warn't nuthin'" on her, she adds, "But I can't," because Skeet fed them a load of hogwash that he doesn't believe himself, and her kids are sensitive but not stupid, and telling them that ghosts like to eat cotton candy in heaven isn't really going to help her. Skeet wants to know what she suggests, and she says she wants to take them back to their shortcut and show them there's nothing to be afraid of. "I really don't think that's a good idea," says Skeet, but Jane ignores them and starts shouting for her kids to get dressed.
Out in the woods, Renata is galumphing along rather unlike a girl who's scared of ghosts. At least Gus is holding his mom's hand. Renata points ahead "way up there" to where they saw the ghost, and the little group motors along, but Skeet falls back a little as he swings his flashlight back and forth. He steps in a puddle, then stares in consternation at the blood on his shoe.
Back in the Civil War, it looks like Henry's company has been ambushed. You know, like the rider was warning them about before Henry started carrying on about his wife? Shots are fired, soldiers are killed, and everything's kind of dark and grey. Henry's surprised by an enemy soldier, who lifts his rifle and fires -- but Henry's not hit. Back in the present day, a crimson flower blooms on Skeet's shirt, and he falls over with a gunshot wound, Jane rushing to his side (no doubt worrying about how she's going to settle her kids down now).
On the battlefield, Skeet wakes up (still dying from his gunshot wound, though) as the skirmish carries on around him. Henry drops to his knees beside him and wonders if Skeet is an angel. I don't know what kind of religion Henry ascribes to, but it kind of sucks if your angels can get shot to death. I suppose the reason Henry thinks Skeet is an angel is Skeet's strange clothing, but the basic form of pants and shirts haven't changed since they were invented. Clearly not one to pass up an opportunity, Henry decides to ask the dying angel if he brings word of his wife and kid, but Skeet can't make it out because he hears it much slower than Henry says it. And it's lucky for Henry that Skeet can't really seem to move or talk, since if I were Skeet, I suppose I'd be a little pissed. Instead, Skeet fixates on a button on Henry's tunic as Henry repeats, "Are you an angel?" When Henry puts his hand on Skeet's chest, Skeet screams --
-- and we fade into Skeet bandaged up and sitting on a hospital bed while Keel tells him he was shot with a 140-year-old bullet. Skeet's all, dude, I know! I even saw the guy! Check out my clothes! Keel picks up Skeet's shirt, which now has a bloody handprint over the bullet hole. Skeet struggles to his feet to tell Keel that the man needs something, but he couldn't make it out. Ah, so it's a rather conventional "ghost needs something so his soul can rest" story, is it? Keel tells him that if Skeet's to figure it out, he better hurry up. Why's that? asks Skeet. "Haven't you noticed? The weather's cooling down," says Keel. So either way, the ghost goes away, no? Guess I don't see the urgency here.
As Skeet is signing himself out of the hospital, Jane rushes over to ask if Skeet's okay and to apologize for making him go out there. "Is there really a man in the woods?" she asks. Skeet's all, just one? It's a total party out there. He tells her it's a time slip. Jane seems more fascinated than scared. "And this is something that you guys know about?" she says. "A little," says Keel. "Only a little?" says Jane. Heh. Keep in mind, Skeet's only been doing this for a couple of months, Jane. "I need to know the truth. I need to explain this to my kids," she says. Skeet asks what she's told them so far, and she admits that she lied. Skeet just gives her this look like, "Oh, reaaaaaallllly."
So the day we take a little trip to the Shadow Valley Historical Society, where a bespectacled wisp of a man says the bullet -- which he's been told was found in a backyard -- is rather common. Jane looks at the photos of soldiers behind him and asks how one would go about identifying someone in them. "Name," says the guy. "They're fairly well-archived." Kind of an odd answer, since it sounds like she's asking how they find out the name of somebody in a photo, and Keel points out that the name is what they're after. Skeet finally gets around to asking if a button could help identify a soldier. That it could, says the guy, who takes them to a display case filled with them, saying that silver buttons indicate an officer, while common soldiers wore brass ones. Skeet says it was a brass button of a woman holding a sword, which the guy says would have meant the soldier was an infantryman from Virginia. He finds one and shows it to Skeet, while rambling on about the 2nd Battalion, which once attempted a flanking maneuver in the hills near here. He rummages through some files until he pulls out a folder with a photograph of the battalion, as well as one taken after the Battle of Shadow Ridge, which Skeet says he's never heard of. The historian says that's because it was a minor skirmish over a forgotten ridge that had no bearing on the outcome of the war. Skeet sees Henry in the photograph, and looks at another photo the historian hands to him, that of a dead Henry lying on the ground. "There were no survivors," says the historian. Skeet sees the name on the photograph: Henry Tucker.
Back in the Civil War, Henry's writing another whiny letter to his wife, only now he's hopeful for word soon, since he believes God is giving him signs, first in the "shining halo" that God set forth in the sky, which preceded the arrival of an angel in his "strange clothing." In a nice little melding, the voice-over of Henry narrating his letter dissolves into Skeet reading aloud from Henry's journal, archived on microfiche. Henry speaks of strange visions and signs that have convinced him there are things in this world he that "cannot be weighed on a scale, that the smartest of doctors cannot know with certitude." Jane, whose chop-chop attitude towards this whole business is kind of entertaining, wants to know what's on the .
And we're back at the Circle Mart, where Skeet is holding a printout of the journal's page -- it's a sketch of the glowing hemorrhoid pillow, and the SQ crew finally figures out that not only can they see into Henry's world, but he can see into theirs, which given Keel's convoluted explanation I would have thought should have been obvious. And speaking of obvious, Skeet goes on to read a passage in which Henry says he's willing to die for his country, but since he'll die now knowing the health of his wife and baby, his spirit will never rest. Keel grabs the page, and after about five hours finally says, "That's what he needs to know," and I guess that's why Keel's the boss. "No one should have to die like that," says Skeet, which kind of begs the question of whether it's okay for the soldier to die at all, whether he knows how his wife and kid are doing or not, but let's not get into that right now. And I guess some things aren't obvious enough for Keel; Skeet starts stomping away, and Keel asks where he's going. "I'm going to find out what's up with Henry Tucker's wife and kid! Duh!" says Skeet, only that's not exactly verbatim. "And then what?" asks Jane. "I'm going to tell him," says Skeet. Again, the "duh" is implied.
Then we're watching The Dukes of Hazzard, only the Duke boys are driving a station wagon down some dirt road, and Bo has died his hair black and Luke has gotten a little stockier, and -- oh. We're still watching Miracles, and Skeet's in the passenger seat on his cell phone, yelling at Evelyn to find the birth records for Henry and Isabella Tucker from 1865, and Jane's in the backseat screeching that they're going too fast, and Skeet says, "We may be too late," and Jane points out that since the dude's been dead for 137 years they're more than a little too late, and then they start babbling about the time slip again and how there's a short time frame to get a message through, and Skeet's on his cell phone again, asking, "How late are you open?" even though it's the middle of the frigging day, and then "we'll be there," and then Jane screeches "look out!" and Keel slams on the brakes. There, in front of them crossing the road, is a battalion of soldiers crossing the road. "Looks like Henry's got a hell of a battle coming," says Skeet. Commercials.
The great Crossing of Township Road 92 of 1865 continues apace, with Keel wondering how it is that the weather's cooling off but the time slip seems to be getting stronger instead of weaker. Skeet says he thinks it has nothing to do with the weather, and will continue until Henry finds out what happened. Oh, so they have lots of time, then.
At the Livingston Hall of Records -- which is I guess the place Skeet was phoning to find out how late they were open -- a brusque woman clicks on the light in a room filled from floor to ceiling with boxes not in any discernible order. She snaps something about how they'll understand if she doesn't help them, and leaves them to find the needle in a haystack (undoubtedly at the last moment).
Back in the Civil War, Henry's battalion is readying for battle when they hear the sound of a horse. It's one horse, with the rider slumped over. "Maybe it's reinforcements!" says one of the (presumably stupider) soldiers. No, it's just the messenger, and he's dead. Henry digs through the man's saddlebags, and finds his journal, undelivered. "He never made it. He never made it," he says. No. Also, Henry, he's dead. You know, Henry, you're not the only soldier with a wife and kid. No time to grieve, though, as the sounds of battle get closer, and Henry's battalion storms the hill. Once more into the breach, lads!
Back at the Hall of Records. "I found it!" yells Jane. Skeet and Keel scoot over to where she's sifting through papers in a box. She hands over a couple of documents. "I found it," she says again. Well, that was a close one!
Henry's battalion is marching on the enemy and getting mowed down, in about as good a battle scene as you're going to get on a network show. With its slow motion shots, it actually kind of has a low-budget opening-scene-of-Saving Private Ryan feel to it. Henry's a little distracted, though, as bits from the present shimmer into view; a movie poster at a bus shelter, a big red truck, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, disturbing visions of a soulless future are inconvenient at best; at worst, they're fatal if they distract you from someone about to put a bullet in your neck, as happens here. Henry slumps to the ground.
Back in the present day, it's night, and the big red truck is being driven by the clerk from the store. He pulls up to where Skeet and Keel are waiting. "Dude, I brought as many speakers as I could find," he says, and Skeet and Keel get to work.
In the station wagon, Jane attempts to explain to her kids what's going on. I know she wants her kids not to be frightened, but considering that Skeet's already taken some shrapnel, you think maybe she'd want to get her little brats the hell out of there?
Skeet, Keel, and the Dude are setting up the speakers. "I can't believe I'm really doing this," says Skeet. Considering he got shot by a Civil War musket, this isn't even the weirdest thing that's happened to him this episode, let alone since he started working at SQ, so I don't know what he's on about. I just hope they brought some Zeppelin to play after they get the message through to Henry. Maybe "The Immigrant Song." I love that. When Robert Plant does that "ah-ah-ahhhhhhhhh-ahhh!" thing? That's awesome.
Jane's still valiantly offering convoluted explanations that try to make the time slip plausible and palatable for her kids. She ain't succeeding. Finally Renata just says, "So there really is a ghost in the woods." Jane gives up. "Yes, there is, sweetie."
Yeah, and Skeet might want to hurry it up, as Henry's dying, and seeing a 747 overhead isn't do a whole lot for dying in a peaceful frame of mind. Skeet finally slams a tape into the truck's stereo. "Ah-ah-ahhhhhhhh-ahhh!" Whoops! Skeet ejects the Zeppelin and puts in his own special bootleg. It's a spoken-word piece, a little dry, but you can get into it. It's Skeet saying, "Henry Tucker: your wife, Isabella, and your baby, William, live on." Really? A hundred and thirty-seven years later? "William will grow up to be a newspaperman and raise three children of his own." It's a repeating loop.
On the battlefield, Henry hears it, but slow, like a record being played on the wrong speed. He turns and sees the speaker. In the present, Skeet and Keel look over the field where the battle once took place. Skeet says it'll never work. "It worked on aisle three," Keel reminds him. On the battlefield, the sound of the recording gradually speeds up until Henry understands it, and collapses. You know, since Henry had no way of double-checking, Skeet could have lied to him and Henry would have had no way of knowing. And let's say they had found out William and Isabella had died. Wouldn't that have made Henry go all poltergeist?
"Mommy, look!" says Gus. From the battleground, lights are glowing and floating up into the sky. "Ghost lights," says Skeet. "Spirits of the Civil War dead." We pull in for a shot of a reflective Skeet watching the light show.
And back into Boston, a similarly reflective Skeet looks at the photo of Henry's battalion, which I guess he STOLE FROM THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
So, did he make it with the yummy mummy or what?