Episode Report Card Daniel: B- | 59 USERS: C- YOU GRADE IT Touch Me, I'm Sick
By Daniel | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 07.15.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's what, day three? The episode opens promisingly with the townspeople spray-painting the dome and raising a ruckus over what appears to be the army pulling out (Ollie has gone from "don't worry, the feds will save us" to "can't trust any gummint!" literally overnight) but then that just peters out and goes nowhere. It's like this place is a Sims-like game where the townspeople were given the task "riot" and it lasted a set amount of time and the experience points were earned and now they'll wander aimlessly until they're given something else to do (like come down with meningitis, I guess).
Yes: the Weekly Crisis this week is a meningitis outbreak, which has the good folks of Chester's Mill all coming down right at the same time. Well, they seem to come down in reasonably spaced intervals so they can be taken to the hospital in an orderly fashion. Alice (who we didn't see at all last week) volunteers her medical training (she's currently a psychiatrist), since she happens to be at the hospital to get Joe and Norrie, the seizure twins, checked out. The complication with the fire -- I mean the outbreak -- is that the hospital has no fire department -- I mean antibiotics. This leads to the forced sentimentality of Linda being given the hospital's last dose of meningitis medicine over her third-grade teacher, introduced to the show for the first time just so she can die because Barbie and Big Jim discover someone has stolen all the drugs from the pharmacy. The good reverend is going full religious freakjob now, and stole the drugs not to take them himself but to burn them because getting sick and dying is all part of God's plan, and he also gives Big Jim his share of the proceeds from their nefarious doings, since he's washing his hands of the whole thing.
Big Jim gives Junior the task of keeping everyone quarantined at the hospital. The best method the Rennies have is not "let's tell everyone how important it is that they keep the contagion within the hospital" but "give Junior the psychopath a loaded shotgun and have him stand guard at what is I guess the hospital's only entrance and exit."
But at least major plot points are advancing elsewhere. Angie's attempt to stab Junior and then presumably starve to death in the bomb shelter after killing the only person who knows where she is goes awry. But while Junior is out earning people's respect by not blowing them away with shotguns, she pulls loose a water pipe (she's pretty strong for an eighty-pound woman who's been shackled underground for three days) and almost dies of hypothermia. Fortunately, Big Jim hears her cries for help through his house's plumbing, and discovers her. I have no illusions that he's going to free her, but I'm looking forward to seeing this play out.
And in contrast to what I said in disparaging the show's subtlety last week, Barbie does already know Phil Bushey, who is the P.B. marked on his map. Julia follows the map to P.B.'s place, where she discovers that her husband sold his Beemer. Phil inconveniently comes down with meningitis before he can answer too many questions. Thankfully, so does Julia, and she manages to drag out a reference to the cabin, and then gets the location from Junior, who's all too happy to drive a wedge between Julia and Barbie. Julia manages to escape the quarantine and find the cabin, where she discovers that her husband has emptied their savings and the house will be foreclosed on. She collapses but is brought back to the hospital by Barbie, who confesses to being an enforcer collecting on Pete's gambling debts, but claims Pete must have taken off somewhere. Julia doesn't believe that Pete was a gambler. Fortunately, Barbie is a stupid enforcer and has incriminating evidence on his phone (a voicemail) that links him to the person he killed shortly after the voicemail was left.
Linda, impressed by the way Junior talked down a minor freakout by people quarantined at the hospital (and disregarding the way he first fired off the shotgun and then later left a loaded shotgun lying around a group of people who moments earlier were freaking out) and deputizes him. When the inquest happens, there's a lot of poor decision-making to ask questions about.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He's really impressed that Norrie is aware of such pop culture obscurities as Star Wars and X-Men. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Elsewhere, Big Jim and Barbie are driving around yelling, "Drugs? Anyone see some drugs?" out the window of Big Jim’s SUV. Barbie figures whoever took them couldn’t have gotten far. “Because of the dome?” asks Big Jim, which made me do a spit-take. Also, there’s no one way someone hauled off that much drugs on foot, so they’re looking for a truck or a van. "Or a hearse?" asks Big Jim, who seems a little quick to reveal Lester’s potential shadiness.
But sure enough, over at Lester’s place, the reverend is dumping drugs into a fire, freely admitting to stealing all the drugs when he heard about people getting sick. "Those people are supposed to die. It’s God’s plan," says Lester. He doesn’t put up any fight as Big Jim starts taking the drugs back, making it kinda funny when Barbie just shoves Lester to the ground for no immediate reason.
Back at the hospital, Linda wakes up thanks to the fast-actin’ antibiotics she took, and Ms. Moore tells her she should be on the mend soon. Ms. Moore herself, however, doesn’t feel so great, but admits to being surprised that the prospect of Junior Rennie wielding a shotgun fills her with some comfort. Linda’s brow furrows at this Shotgun Junior business, but Ms. Moore adds that likewise, she would have been surprised even a few years ago to see where Linda had ended up, and now here she is sheriff. Linda -- perhaps thinking that the reason she’s sheriff right now is that her mentor/dad’s heart exploded just a couple of days ago -- says she had a lot of help, and Ms. Moore tells her not to sell herself short. Then Ms. Moore starts to flatline and Alice runs in to perform chest compressions that everyone knows aren’t going to do any good.
And while Julia is discovering the cabin, Linda is recuperating in a hospital hallway when she hears the patients in the waiting room getting antsy with Junior and deciding he can’t shoot all of them. She struggles to her feet and rolls her IV rig into the room while the patients are rushing Junior, who fires the shotgun into the ceiling, causing everyone to scream and scatter. Linda stands there staring at him, looking shocked, and Junior then calms down and reminds Ollie ("Mr. Densmore") of when his wife made cornbread for him after his mother died. His point -- and he gets to it eventually -- is that he’s there with a shotgun because he believes in the town, and his dad and all of them, and he leans the shotgun against the doorframe and leaves the waiting room. Ollie walks to the door, thinks better of it, and goes back to sit down, as does everyone.