Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 19 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Spider House Rules
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 01.28.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.While enjoying a replacement gravestone for the Mayor, Mrs. Matheson is once again taken into police custody. While Olivia spends the day trying to find somebody to post bail, Remy works on Zack Springer from the other end, interrupting his classic movie-watching (another Lugosi/Karloff this week, The Body Snatcher, about an unwilling graverobber apprentice, not unlike Zack himself) to offer a retraction supporting his father in exchange for information about the knife and, hopefully, exoneration for Mrs. M. Instead, she just gets fired from the newspaper since she can't tell her Dad what's going on or why she did it, because he will think she is crazy, and that is something he already thinks.
Caleb's first day of school is kind of tough, but a weirdly antagonistic Ben Price (honestly, he only seems to like Luke out of everyone in the entire world) sends him and his invisible ghost-pal Miranda off to explore a mysterious locked chapel on the Collins grounds. Caleb nearly dies tracking down the key, while Miranda eavesdrops on a sweet conversation between Collins and Mrs. Matheson that changes her mind about him... Or at least enough that she comes asking him to help them with the bail situation.
Not the first, nor even the worst, of Olivia's many awkward moments. She really goes through it this week. First, Dillon finally appears -- looking even better than when he left; '90s hair game fully on point -- and explains that he was jerked out of town by his super-religious parents for "purification" in the woods after they found condoms in his room. So that explains that! But given Springer's vague revelations, it's a tricky thing to parse out what Dillon's lying about and what he is truthin' about.
The answer, Dillon finally admits to Luke in a charged locker room brawl -- right before demonic forces lunge in to protect him; unfortunately right after Luke takes a turn for the squicky and paternalistic about his sister's virginity -- is that he is lyin' about everything. He is in league with Max and the mysterious He because he is, himself, Marked: It's just that he traded his life for that of Olivia, which means he loves her enough that she's a price to pay, but doesn't love her enough to, you know, not get her killed.
This jibes with Caleb's discovery -- haunted, all episode, by a mysterious woman who has spiders coming out of her fucking face -- of a list in the Chapel of the six Township elders who signed the original Pact: Rivers, Scudder, Sanders, Dalton, Watterman and Baker. We know Thomas Rivers signed it, and Esther Collins bounced, but why is nobody else's name on it?
Dillon's a Sanders, so that's one. But my question is, why would anybody out of those six families ever be Marked? That's a pretty dumb deal to make. I heard you don't want your kids to die so sign this Pact so your kids will die so your kids won't die. There is clearly more to it. In any case, Dillon sold out Olivia well before Caleb came to down, and everything since then -- including, presumably, the Miranda Trap and all that entailed -- has been in service to that deal he made. But with whom?
Luke jumps to the conclusion that it was Collins, which I thought was dumb until Remy, fresh off her dad fight, stumbles onto Collins screaming at Dillon in his car before they spot her and drive away. So that's interesting. Olivia and Miranda are closer to him being okay, while Luke and Remy are further than ever. And somewhere in another dimension entirely, the truth about Raymond Collins.
Excellent performances all round, with a special MVP this week for Mrs. Rochelle Matheson, who does "drunk n' labile" better than almost anybody, and Ray Collins, who transitions into a normal person way easier than you'd think. While it's kind of odd that both male leads got caught in scary ghost fogs this week, and some of the line readings were really off across the board, it's worth it to see how much the principals -- all of them, really, and including Dillon and the grownups -- brought to the table this week. I started listing them and then I realized all six of them did a particularly killer job:
Luke's exquisite irony is his best quality, and always welcome; Dillon's appealing even when he's going batshit; Olivia and Remy can say more without talking than most people on TV; and Luke and Miranda have their screwball chemistry down. (Even when the actual scene is a stretch, they never lose sight of what they are doing -- which seems impossible, considering the sheer ton of weird crap happening at all times.) Anyway, a particularly fun watch, and it really drove home how cohesive this little ensemble has become. I would not have believed you, that eight weeks hence I'd be watching jars of fluids smash around and spiders crawling out of people's faces and be left thinking, "You know, these are some pretty good actors they got on this show."
SEASON FINALE
Hanna finds out about Spiderface the hard way when she comes back to Ravenswood for a Miranda showdown she is never going to get. The truth about the Mayor's death is finally revealed. Dillon apparently tries to double down in some way by kidnapping Remy? And Olivia decides, hopefully, to trade his cute ass right back into the Pact. Unlike the PLL teaser, this one contained no dubstep, which I take to mean nobody starts abusing speed for the purposes of decoding things, but you never know. Mostly I just want Dillon to come back from this, and also for Collins to not be bad. And also a shit-ton of The Grunwald, but that goes without saying.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
The knife that was used to seal the Pact and also kill the Mayor was found in the Matheson's yard, resulting in a cycle of arrests that is ongoing as the cops try to decide whether or not Mrs. Matheson killed her husband. Olivia's interest in this issue, flagging since she became the constant victim of attempted magical murders, has been piqued anew by Zack Springer's mysterious warnings about her boyfriend Dillon right before Tess drove a car straight into his honey-roasted. Dillon sealed the deal with Olivia and immediately disappeared, along with his demonic henchgirl Max. Nothing is really going on with anybody else, now that Remy and Miranda closed the book on her nightmare preacher for the moment.
BLACK WIDOW
Mrs. Matheson, free momentarily from getting constantly arrested is jovial -- not to say "drunkenly labile" -- as she introduces the Twins to their dad's new gravestone.
Rochelle: "It's a special kind of tombstone that resists graffiti. Collins gave it to us, because he's seriously all about our family."
Olivia: "Where's the one that cracked in half?"
Rochelle: "I don't know. But I am drunk as hell this morning, so let's say Collins made it into a sled. We could ride it down this coming winter's snow-capped hills, just like this one time your dad and I fucked."
Olivia: "I feel very close to you right now. One might almost say, too much so."
Luke: "You guys are making me have allergies."
While a watchful red-haired mourner drops off some flowers and then blatantly stares at them as Rochelle's cops descend for her arrest of the day. The Twins shit bricks about it, like they do every morning, and just when you think the red-haired lady might have a stake in what's going on, might speak up for the widow or offer her children some weak comfort, a spider crawls out of her fucking face. And because it's Raven5wood we're watching, my honest-to-God first thought was, "It would be kind of interesting to see that lady again sometime, but that is not the show you're watching. Sometimes a spider crawls out of a lady's face, don't trip on that fact. Keep it moving. Act normal, bitch."
EXT COURTHOUSE
Olivia: "Well, I told those cops to question Springer. Surely the actual evidence of him getting coerced into planting evidence would be of use to them, in a purely rational and non-magical way."