Coffin Jacob

In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.

Jacob's coffin gets opened, and it turns out to contain Jacob's body. He's even wearing the red Mansfield Panthers shirt, although it's not in as good condition as the shirt that the living Jacob was wearing. And people start coming up with theories about what's going on. Maggie thinks that maybe the river might be magical, while Ray is certain that Caleb is really an alien replicant. He's apparently a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but it's not like there's going to be an explanation that doesn't sound crazy, right?

Henry is starting to consider the possibility that Jacob is actually his son, but every time he starts to soften, his arm hurts and he gets cranky again. So he goes through about four changes of heart in a row, and Lucille is getting kind of fed up with it. Henry's willing to make a boat with Jacob, but that just makes him sad when he remembers Jacob drowning. But Henry seems to be about the only person who's still skeptical about Jacob. Fred seems to believe Jacob completely, and he takes a detour to a local bar, where he threatens to murder the man who had an affair with his wife. Tom also believes in Jacob, but the other people at his church think that the boy might be spawned by Satan or something. I guess that's a third theory on what's going on, and it's no crazier than anything else. The church board tries to ban Lucille and Jacob from attending services, but Tom doesn't want to let that happen.

However, pretty much everyone is suspicious of Caleb. Ray's the only one who thinks he's an alien, but Marty and Maggie find a lot of holes that Caleb dug at his hunting shack, as well as a rubber mask that had been buried there. Marty's conclusion is that Caleb probably robbed an armored car right before he died. Elaine is still enraptured by Caleb, because who doesn't want their dead father to come back and promise to cover their mortgage payments?

At the end of the episode, there are two simultaneous revelations. First, Marty finds the man that Caleb beat to death with a hammer. And Tom finds a woman named Rachel, who's our third person to return from the dead. It's surprising how quickly you can become bored by the idea of meeting a character who's been resurrected, isn't it?

Want more? The full recap starts right below!

A coffin opens slowly. Jacob is inside, wearing that Mansfield Panthers shirt that I've been complaining about. He seems really well preserved but this turns out to be Henry's memory of him being first put in there. Although Past Henry doesn't look a great deal like Kurtwood Smith. This is the problem with using actors who have long careers, because I already know what he looked like thirty years ago. He was in an episode of The A-Team called "The Battle of Bel Air" in 1984! Robocop was 27 years ago, and he'd already lost all the hair on the front half of his scalp. Anyway, now we know that Jacob was, in fact, wearing that shirt when he was buried. In the present, Henry is watching Lucille play catch with Jacob in the back yard. He starts to smile, but a twinge in his wrist makes him drop his knife. He slinks back into the house, scowling. But to be fair, he's not quite stomping.

Cemetery. This is the continuation of the last episode, with Marty and Maggie looking into Jacob's coffin. Henry had been watching from farther away, but I guess he had to go back home for that other scene. We don't get to see what they're looking at, which is because it's the body of an eight-year-old boy that's been decomposing for thirty years. That's not something this show wants to make us look at. So instead, the two people looking into the coffin have to talk about the Mansfield Panthers shirt. Maggie takes a moment to look wistfully at her mother's coffin. Then Marty reaches into the coffin and snips off the tag from the shirt. They do not appear to take a DNA sample, which was the whole reason they opened the coffin in the first place.

Now Marty compares the tag from the coffin, which is very faded, to the one on the shirt that Living Jacob was wearing. Even the handwritten "JACOB" looks the same, allowing for the fading. He's in the Langston home, and Jacob appears in the doorway behind him. Jacob asks if he was in the coffin. Marty asks, "How could you be in there when you're here right now?" That's very clever, but I feel like there are going to be paradoxes no matter how this shakes out, so maybe you could just be honest with the kid? He's probably pretty freaked out about coming back from the dead, and he asked you a direct question. Marty wants to talk about playing catch, but Jacob wants to know if he's like Caleb. He tells Marty about his dream from last episode where they both fell to dust. Instead of exploring the profound psychological issues the boy appears to be going through, Marty tells Jacob to tell someone if Caleb comes near him. Then he fist-bumps him. Jacob knows how to fist bump? Those weren't super-popular among 8-year-olds in 1982.

Caleb rinses off his bloody hammer in the garage. And Marty is suddenly there in the door with some questions. So they go back into the idyllic, sunlit kitchen, and Marty says he's with immigration and customs, but he used to be a cop. It is still not clear what Marty's actual job is, nor why he has decided this entire town is his responsibility. He looked Caleb up (somehow, on something) and discovered that he used to be a drifter who was arrested three times, including once for stealing a bunch of copper pipe. That was a long time ago, not even counting the time he spent dead. But Marty says, "In my experience, people like you don't change." This guy is our hero? He seems like a judgmental jerk, even if he's right in this one case. Caleb says everyone's made mistakes. Marty is determined to find out why he's lying about what happened thirteen years ago, because that's obviously more important than the reality-shattering idea of dead people coming back to life. He hasn't even done a DNA test on this guy! Caleb says he doesn't want to talk about dying, and then he makes up a bunch of nonsense about having a sense of peace and hearing music. And now that he's finished razzing Marty, he says that he told Jacob to lie about who he is because Marty's going to keep poking at him. Caleb claims he came back to protect his family, but, he adds, "We both know it's not going to end well for that kid." Marty tells him to stay away from Jacob, or it won't end well for him. Caleb's the only person in the world (as far as we know) with any idea what Jacob's going through. I'm just saying.

Henry gets his wrist looked at by Maggie, who continues to be the only doctor in town. He claims it was just a muscle cramp, but she wants an X-ray and blood work. There's a pause, and Henry asks what they found in the coffin. She says, "We found Jacob's remains. Everything was normal." That's not normal. I'm actually more bothered by his clothes being duplicated than by a new version of Jacob being spawned. Is that weird? He decides to leave, rather than wait around to find out what's wrong with his arm. But on his way out, Marty is on the way in. Henry snarls, "I hope it was worth it." Marty is more philosophical as he answers, "So do I." Marty tells Maggie that Caleb's hiding something, so it's time to pry into his death. Maggie says that when the news of Caleb's death hit, she was at Elaine's. Caleb was brought into the hospital from his hunting shack, and he was DOA with a massive coronary. They leave to go look at the shack.

At the Richards home (that's Caleb, Elaine, and Ray), Ray tells Elaine that Caleb's been out working on the porch since 7:35 am. And he ate all the food that Elaine just bought. Elaine accuses Ray of feeding Ninja out of the refrigerator. She offers to write a shopping list so he can replace the food. Caleb comes back inside and says they need to hire someone to do this work. But Elaine doesn't have that kind of money, because she's two months behind on the mortgage. Caleb's shocked, because it was almost paid off thirteen years ago, but she explains that the roof caved in. She slaps her last $25 on the table for groceries and asks Ray and Caleb to go shopping. Ray tells Caleb that he doesn't belong here, and Elaine leaves.

Jacob's drawing a dog in some sort of church-sponsored activity for children, where they try to cheer up people in the hospital. It's only a dog because he was told not to do a werewolf fighting a unicorn, but Tom says to do that .

After Tom leaves Jacob, a woman named Ellen comes to talk to him about how maybe Lucille needs help with her idea that her son has returned from the dead. I'd like this show to have a full-on skeptic who doesn't believe any of this supernatural nonsense, although that seems like it's already a tough position to support. Tom thinks Lucille is fine, because he trusts that God will show them the way. Ellen asks, "Are you sure that He's the one behind this?" I guess it's not out of the question that a plague of dead people could be Satanic, but I'm not sure how this scheme is supposed to work in the dark lord's favor. Jacob seems like a nice enough kid, and he's not luring people into sin. So far, anyway.

Maggie and Marty walk through the woods, and she ribs him about not being dressed for hiking. He says he only brought the one set of clothes, and I wonder where he's been sleeping. Also, these two have no chemistry at all, and the show is clearly trying to set them up together. Marty says he doesn't hike much, because nature is full of Lyme disease and West Nile. They come to the spot where Barbara and Jacob died. It still has the trunk stretched out over the water that Barbara was holding onto in the flashbacks. I'm surprised it's still there after thirty years. Maggie has been here a few times, but it never brought her the peace she was hoping for.

Sheriff Fred comes up to the Langston place. Lucille is sweeping the porch, because that's the kind of wholesome middle-America thing she does. They kind of lay on the wholesome, All-America thing pretty thick sometimes. Jacob asks if Fred wants to play Cops and Robbers, and he syncs up with Fred when he says he wants to play the robber. Fred says, sure, he'll play cops and robbers like old times.

Now they're in the police car. Fred is in the back (as the "robber") and Jacob's happily pretending to use the radio to report the criminal. And he's running the lights, which is probably fun, but it makes me wonder if the radio is turned on. Fred asks if the mysterious man that Jacob described at the scene of his drowning pushed his aunt Barbara. Jacob says he was trying to save her: "He was holding on to her, trying not to let her go." Fred asks, "What are you?" Good question! Jacob doesn't want to address that, which I think is reasonable. And it's time for sandwiches! So I guess Fred believes that Jacob is what he seems to be.

Elaine finds Caleb in her office. He's impressed by the speed of the internet, which is the first time a resurrected person has noticed that the world is not exactly the same as it was when they died. Good man. Although there's a lot more differences on the Internet than just speed, when you compare 2000 to now. He brought her the same lunch she used to eat as a kid, and she breaks down crying, saying, "It's just been so long since someone's taken care of me." He thinks she could have gotten married by now, but she says, "Between Mark and Ray and the house," there hasn't been a lot of time. Whoever Mark is, he has not made much of an impression on the show so far. She starts to tell him about whatever it is that Ray needs, but he cuts her off and they hug.

Marty and Maggie continue to stroll along the river. She describes a couple of the points of interest on the river. About a mile up that way was a Civil War battle where the two rivers merged, and the river turned red with blood. And not far downstream, a flood destroyed an Osage village. Marty asks if anything good ever happened at this river, and she lightly answers, "Well, as it turns out, when you die, it's not an irreversible condition." They laugh. That's a weird thing to do. And by the way, shouldn't this river have a name?

Maggie suddenly remembers that half of Caleb's ashes were spread around this area, so she grabs some river water on the theory that maybe the river did something. Marty sarcastically says, "And the river somehow magically brought them back to life." She answers, "What, as opposed to something un-magically bringing them back to life?" Seriously. It's not like they're going to find a perfectly logical explanation to any of this, so they might as well try everything they can think of. But I'm still really interested in Jacob returning in the clothes he was buried in. And Caleb had the note that Elaine slipped into his jacket, so it looks like there's a snapshot taken of their physical state right when the coffin closes, rather than when they die.

And then! There's a shot! Three guys in camo and carrying rifles come out of the woods. Maggie knows them, and she calls the lead guy "Gary." Marty introduces himself as "Federal Agent Martin Bellamy," and I think he's overplaying his position to such a degree that he might be committing a felony here. The men walk off and Maggie calls them the "Arcadia welcome committee." They're pretty bad at their job, then. It's the third episode! Where were they in the premiere?

Fred walks into a bar called "The Newton" and orders a whiskey, straight. He delivers a monologue to the bartender lady, who doesn't seem to know what's going on. A few guys along the bar are also listening. Fred says he just found out his wife was unfaithful to him before she died, and he'd hoped the guy killed her. Because then he could track him down, and "there isn't a town in this State that I couldn't track him down. That wouldn't be hard at all." Couldn't he move to a different state? Incidentally, he might actually be in Newton, Missouri, because he wasn't entirely clear at the beginning of the scene. If that's true, it's four hours away from Arcadia. Anyway, he remembered his daughter and decided he couldn't kill this man. He ends his speech by saying, "Then again, if that bastard ever shows his face to me..." And then he drinks his whiskey and leaves. The bartender turns and raises her eyebrows at the man at the far end of the bar, who we didn't see until just now. It's the bald man! His name's Sam Catlin. Someone brings him two bags. Apparently Fred tracked him down at a bar and decided to go in and threaten to kill him in front of several witnesses. Good plan, Fred! I don't see any way this could go wrong. It's also totally going to give you closure.

Marty and Maggie come up on Caleb's shack. There's a hole that I think looks like an open grave, which they agree is weird. In fact, there are a lot of holes dug in the area, although most of them are round, rather than being rectangular. Marty asks how many there are. Enough to fill the Albert Hall?

Langston house. Lucille asks Henry what Maggie said about his hand. He claims that it was "That I'm old and falling apart." She says she doesn't care if the new Jacob were a complete stranger, "The man I married would never treat a child that way." He tells her their son is in the tomb: "There are two. Now what am I supposed to do with that?" Well, I feel like you have two basic choices. Either you think your son has been miraculously reincarnated, in which case you should be nice to him, or you think that this is some kind of impostor or replicant or something, in which case you want him out of your house. This middle-of-the-road strategy where you let Jacob stay in your house but are just kind of rude and cranky about it? That's just weird. Henry stomps off. Drink!

Tom carries a box of gift bags through the hallways of the church, and I like the continuity here. Those are the gifts that Jacob and the other kids were working on earlier in the episode! He passes a sign announcing a board meeting in progress, and he goes inside, ignoring the "Do Not Enter" sign. The board comes to a decision, which is that until they understand Jacob, he and Lucille are barred from the church. Tom asks, "He's a little boy. What are you afraid of?" Well, Tom, they're presumably afraid that he's some kind of demon. They tell him that Caleb Richards is back, and he says, "How--?" Well, the same way, I'd imagine. Tom refuses to ban anyone. He says it's his church, but the Board says it's "our" church. I don't know the internal power structure of this church, but I think when the dead are walking the streets, they should probably be preparing for a big influx of attendees. I personally am not a believer, but that's the sort of thing that can make a man question himself.

Henry sits in his workshop, which is full of wood and tools. Jacob opens the door and looks at him. Just does a lot of staring at people, but I'm going to chalk that up to psychological trauma. Henry ignores him until Jacob gets right up to his face, then he tells Jacob to sand something. Jacob suggests they build a boat. "Like before." There's an old boat up on the shelf. Henry looks conflicted. Jacob sands a piece of wood, slowly and badly.

Marty wonders if Caleb dug all these holes, which of course he did. In the grave, Marty finds the face that was peeping through the dirt. It's a rubber mask. Maggie thinks it's creepy, but it's one of the least creepy things you could find in there. Marty tells her not to move because they're being watched. He un-holsters his gun, which is the first time I've realized he has a gun. Did he always have a gun? Whoever it is runs away and Marty chases after him. It's Ray. What the hell, Ray? Ray denies digging the holes, saying "He did." He doesn't want to call him "Caleb" or "Dad." Ray declares, "I've been watching him. I know who he is."

The three of them return to Ray's bedroom, where he has a small crazy-person collage set up on his bulletin board. Ray says Caleb hardly sleeps and constantly eats. And he's been sneaking around, although that's a natural reaction to discovering that someone is following you around and making a crazy-person collage. Ray's been doing some sneaking of his own, in fact. He has some news clippings that say that when Caleb died, the dam flooded, and it was the same day that a small aircraft crashed in a field three counties over. There were officially no survivors. Ray's conclusion: "It wasn't a plane. It was a spaceship. And that man, he's an alien." They are dismissive of this theory, although I feel we're still too early to rule anything out. Marty notes that there's a clipping with the headline "No suspects in Arcadia Bank & Trust armored car robbery." Ray is happy to hand over the whole file of information.

Henry attaches a mast to the boat he's building in his workshop. Jacob would like to add a cannon to make it more like a pirate ship, and he wants to paint it before it goes in the river. Henry smiles. In a flashback, he remembers the SS Jacob floating in the river. Flashback over. Then his arm twinges again, he brushes against a saw blade, and he knocks the boat off the counter. Now he's angry again, so he shouts at Jacob, "You don't belong here!" Then he backs off a little and says, "It's too dangerous. Now go on." Jacob trudges off. Henry massages his forearm. So it hurts when he's happy. Got it.

Maggie admits that Ray's at least got a theory about what's going on. Marty says Elaine works at the bank (she's an assistant manager at the bank, but she can't afford food?), and he thinks Caleb was looking for something at the shack. Maggie asks, "You think Caleb robbed the bank?" He does. Thirteen years ago, Caleb's body was found by someone named Dale Gethard, so Marty wants to talk to him. He asks if Maggie is hungry, and they agree to meet at the Grill. But she gets a text about Henry cutting his arm, so she has to go to the clinic. See? She really is the only doctor in town. They get a rain check on their date, and someone thinks the audience is on pins and needles, hoping these two characters get together. That's not happening. You normally have to put the characters together and see if the audience cares, otherwise you get a plot like that cameraman in the last season of The Office, where no one believed for a second that Pam was interested in him. That's why I'm impressed that How I Met Your Mother has actually made people care about The Mother, because with all that build-up, they had to make absolutely sure that whoever they cast would work. I guess I've gone off-topic a little, huh?

Clinic. Maggie stitches up the cut in Henry's arm and asks about his hand. He says it's fine, although the twinge is what made him slip. She checked his files, and he had these same symptoms when Jacob died. He says, "After Jacob died, I blamed myself. Because I taught him to love the river." She says that whatever he's hanging on to is affecting his health.

Henry comes home. Lucille greets him on the porch and asks how many stitches he got. They sit. He says that he keeps remembering the Jacob she carried in her belly and that they buried. She asks, "Why do they have to be separate? Why does there have to be two?" He says, "Because to me, he never really went away. I still see him in my dreams. But during the day, when I hear the sound of children..." and so forth. His point, I think, is that he misses Jacob so much that the sight of a happy, living Jacob, causes him pain. He asks how she could accept the new Jacob, implying that she's turning her back on the old one. That gets a "How dare you?" She walks away.

Caleb and Ray work together on a motorcycle. Caleb reminisces about working on a satellite dish together. Ray happily explains a washer that sits on the transmission, and then he gets paranoid again. Elaine watches, happily.

Jacob lies in bed, asleep. Henry comes in and pulls the covers up. He looks at the boats on the night stand and seems conflicted. That might just be Kurtwood's default expression. He walks out. In the hall, Lucille shakes her head at him and walks away. He sighs and shuts Jacob's door before walking the other way.

Marty goes up to Gethard's house. He rings the doorbell, and then notices the door is ajar. He goes inside and sees the blood on the floor.

Meanwhile, Tom finds a broken glass pane on the door of the church. There's a little blood on his floor, so he follows that trail.

Marty finds Gethard's body. As was implied, his head has been smashed in, probably by a hammer. The implied series of events is that Caleb stole the money from the armored car, possibly with Dale, and then buried it at the shack before having a heart attack and dying. I don't think he gets to be angry that Dale took the money. When you die, your claim on the loot goes away. Although given that people have started coming back to life, it's possible that killing Dale isn't much of an overreaction.

Tom goes into the church part of the church. You know, the part with all the pews and the pulpit, not the part with the pews. A woman says she didn't have anywhere to go, but she saw his name on the sign outside. There's blood on her leg. Tom says, "Rachel." She asks, "Did I really die, Tom?" That's three people who have returned.

Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.