So, a quick primer on the people before we get to the episode: Lou is Seattle detective John Kanin, and Ruby is his missing fiancée. Willard and Vivian are her parents; Luke is her brother. Donner is the sheriff of Wolf Lake, and Sherman is the science teacher/town sage. Sophia -- who I called Specs in the last recap because they didn't name her until the end -- is the sheriff's daughter. Sultry is a lounge singer. Luck be a lady. Finally, Ty is extremely hot, and he's some variety of bad-ass whose minions sometimes sell drugs. He's a wolf. Most of them are, except Lou, who's just hungry like one.
Over the noise of a police radio, we fade up on the sight of Lou at the Wolf Lake diner, staring at his laptop while eavesdropping on the officers. Right now, though, it's the Spice Channel -- Molly's boyfriend somehow tapped into the frequency and is begging her to come home, because he's all dressed up in a kilt for some role-playing and I suspect he wants a spanking. Lou jots down the address, jumps up, and screams, "Score!" But before he can hightail it out there to play Pin the Badge on the Buttocks, Sophia descends. She wonders if he's listening to the Mariners, but he shakes his head and says her father wouldn't approve of what he's listening to. "Even better," she grins. Lou shakes his head and expresses relief that he doesn't have a teenage daughter. "We're not so bad," Sophia says impishly, then leans forward and finishes, "As long as you give us everything we want," in a husky voice that suggests she wants a pound of Seattle sausage. It's a bit weird that there's sexual tension between this teenager and ol' Lou. God, with that last sentence, I suddenly feel like I'm recapping Making the Band all over again.
Suddenly, as Sophia leaves, Lou hears an officer report someone on the move through town. He's interested. Sultry walks over just then and plops down to him. "Did it ever occur to you that nothing interesting ever happens in well-lighted places?" she says mysteriously. Bah. She watches too much television. He didn't hear her, so when he yanks off the headphones, she just asks for a bite of his pie. He slides it over -- pumpkin pie, with whipped cream. She dips her finger in the cream and sucks on it for a second, hoping Lou will get the innuendo and ask for a piece of her pie. He does not. I am grateful. The officer on the radio screams that the suspect is a five-foot-four Caucasian female, with brown hair and gray eyes, skin so white it makes cotton look dirty, and a honkin' rack. I applaud the officer who, running behind the suspect at the middle of the night, could ably identify her gray eyes. Sultry looks bored after seeing Ruby's photo on Lou's laptop. "Once you find her, it's all downhill," she sighs. The officer screams, "It's a runner; repeat, we've got a runner! A runner!" Brought to you by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Lou grabs his stuff and bolts, dropping five bucks on the table for the coffee, the pie, Sultry's company, and the handjob she was going to give him later. "Not a talker," she snips. "Oooookay."
Sheriff Donner speeds through town trying to catch The Runner™. Lou, on his wimpy excuse for a motorcycle, follows. We see a close-up of him looking stern in his helmet. His is the face of renegade justice. He screeches to a halt when he hears that The Runner™ has holed up in a barn. Fast-motion WolfCam through the woods. Lou listens to the coordinates given out by Donner and the search party, then whips out a Wolf Lake map to find a shorter route. The map is the worst prop I've ever seen. There's hardly any map-like marks on it, and the type is enormous. It's Fisher Price's Wolf Lake. Lou recognizes his location as being somewhere in the orange bit, and that he needs to go to that other orange bit, so he sets his jaw and revs up the toy engine on his Yamaha Tricycle and speeds off into the night.
Lou pretends that he's an officer, having reached the farm first and begged the farmer to direct him to the barn. Farmer Bob says it sounded like a zoo in there, and that he was too afraid to go inside. Lou is afraid of nothing, except perhaps celibacy, so he forges ahead with a certainty that Ruby is hiding inside. Shining a light inside, Lou creeps around and discovers a silver pendant on the ground -- its charm is the "R" rune, a duplicate of the earring Ruby dropped in Lou's bed. He pockets it, then hears labored breathing emanating from behind a pile of hay bales. You'd think he'd recognize Ruby's panting after all that animal sex, but for some reason he's still not sure, so he tentatively shouts her name. Just then, Lou's kicked in the knees and wrestled outside by a trio of local law enforcement professionals. Donner, angry, is waiting there. "You know she's in there!" screams Lou. Donner calmly insists that Lou is mistaken, and has Lou arrested. As he kicks and screams, Lou's vision switches to slo-mo, and he notices animal wranglers heading inside the barn with very sinister-looking props, the likes of which Lou last saw on that really insane night in Atlantic City when he spent three days on a bender at a necrophiliac brothel.
Daylight. Donner is in Cates's study. The Runner™ is in "Station Twelve," and they're just hoping for the best. Donner adds that "our pal Seattle" showed up on the scene, and although they spirited him away before he saw anything, it still felt like a dangerously close call. They imply that Donner might've killed Lou if he'd seen The Runner™. Suddenly, Ty rounds the corner and breezily knocks. "What the hell is this?" Donner growls. Ty, too, is aggravated to see the sheriff. Cates orders them to sit down and listen, and we're treated to yet another of the most brilliant lines ever scripted. "On the day my father died, I came down to the kitchen in this very house and I saw him rubbing butter into his opera pumps," Cates says. Ty and Donner react as though they Get The Message and Deeply Appreciate the Wisdom, but that's impossible, because whaaaaaat? Cates adds, "That man led us for twenty-five years, and all he cared about was that his shoes were shiny." Has he tried shoe polish? Cates gets all the shit lines, but I have to give the actor credit -- he can keep a straight face. Scott Bairstow, however, is caught on-camera biting his lip, which redeems him for slumming on this show. Cates alludes to Donner turning his back on his heritage, so we're pretty sure he's a shapeshifter at heart. Basically, Donner enforces human law now, and Cates is the leader of the wolfpack, which tends to run with its own special code. Donner wants to bust Ty because he thinks he's a drug dealer, and is therefore breaking human law; Cates reminds Donner that all conflicts still must come through him. Of course, the language isn't this plain; they still don't outright admit the wolf thing. The language is replete with "us" and "them" references. Ty smirks and denies selling drugs; Donner claims he uses an intermediary, who we saw get chased and killed last time. But Cates never asks whether this is true; instead, he asks Ty whether he's aware of this intermediary's whereabouts. Therefore Ty can honestly reply, "No." Cates orders Donner to drop it.
Sophia and Luke sit in a deserted science lab at the high school. "How old were you?" she asks, curiously. Luke says he was thirteen. They agree that's earlier than normal, but she presses and wants to know about his first time. "Freaky. I don't care what anybody says," he laughs. Sophia wonders if It hurt. Luke says that pain is just a mental state, but he does confess that It felt like someone was ripping the bones from his back. Obviously, It isn't anything that Sophia could read about in Cosmo Girl. And speaking of bones, Pammy walks in and sluts over to Luke, rubbing his shoulders and glaring at Sophia. "You're not making him tense, are you?" she asks. Sophia shrugs and begins to exit. "Oh that's right, I forgot, you're not in this class, are you?" sneers Pammy. Sophia looks sad.
Lou stews in prison. Donner lists his offenses, including resisting arrest and impersonating a local cop. Pissed, Lou demands to know where Ruby is. "What happened last night had nothing to do with Ruby Cates," Donner booms. Lou insists that it does, and flashes the silver pendant he found in the barn. "Let's see, two girls from the same town wearing identical jewelry?" Donner muses sarcastically. "That wouldn't happen in a million years." This doesn't deter Lou, no sir. He repeats that Ruby Cates was in the barn, having escaped from her captors, and that the police are tracking her down and hiding her whereabouts. Donner correctly notes how stupid that is, and then agrees to release Lou because listening to him go on about Ruby is making his ears bleed. Lou tries to find out who The Runner™ is, if it's not Ruby, and Donner basically tells him exactly where he can shove his questions. "Tell me something, Sheriff," Lou snarls. "What's a runner?" There's a huge music swell as we fade out on Donner's shocked face. He thought he outlawed stupid questions four years ago.
In a dark, dank basement-like area, nurses wheel around bedpans past some large French doors with windows blocked by gauzy curtains. It's Death Bed Deluxe, and writhing on it is a young girl emitting bloodcurdling screams. I think it's this show's financial backer.
Across town, Pammy and her skanks are chowing down on enormous chicken drumsticks, sucking the bones dry. So that's why they're popular with the boys. Lou, two booths back, is on the phone with a friend who he thinks can identify the "R" symbol. The man's in a priest's collar, and apparently he's on sabbatical because "the young co-ed in question is pressing charges." Reverend Raunchy and Lou giggle that no one has a sense of humor anymore, then Raunchy agrees to examine the pendant.
"She's too freaked to show her face," Pammy slobbers through a mouthful of chicken. "The whole world knows. Sixteen and she hasn't done It yet? So totally late." SkankBrunette whispers that Randy said "she" was ready to give It up, but at the last second she got scared and bolted and sprinted naked through the woods. "Sarah was going to flip with Randy?" SkankBlonde asks. That is, like, totally outrageous. Sophia arrives and blurts, "That's a lie. She can't stand Randy." Pammy sneers at her. Sophia suggests that Sarah might have flipped alone. "Ew, alone? Grotesque," Pammy scowls. "What a waste. Guess that's what happens when you wait too long." She tells Sophia to remember that. "Screw you," Sophia spits. "Just talking about it squeezes your juice, doesn't it?" Pammy drools, her mouth thick with chicken and her eyes surveying Sophia with a weird lusty hunger. Maybe wolves are bisexual. Sophia dumps a plate of food on Pammy's lap and stalks away.
Lou strolls over to Sophia and gently asks whether she's okay. Sophia basically tells him to piss off and plug his ears. Lou gets her to exposit that Sarah is The Runner™, which saves me watching that show. God complex intact, Lou gives Sophia his card, tells her to call if he can help Sarah with anything, and gives off another sex vibe. If he's trying to act fatherly, then he's from one of them close families.
In Cates's study, Sherman is examining a giant, festering growth on Willard's back. I think it's one of the writers. "Golf ball, or grapefruit?" Willard asks cheerfully. Sherman shrugs and says it's definitely in the citrus family, but he's not sure how to tell if it's metastasized. Cates grins that at least his old pants fit again. He wonders about homeopathic treatment, but Sherman looks so dubious that the topic is closed almost as quickly. "How do I prepare, old friend?" Cates asks. "They say J.S. Bach wore black gloves to compose his requiem mass," Sherman posits. Pissed, Cates shoots him. Well, he shoots him a look, not a bullet, but didn't it sound better my way? Sherman jokes that his pithy incomprehensible wisdom isn't as interesting after midnight. The two men discuss whether the town will descend into chaos when Cates dies; apparently, they haven't abandoned the idea of warring wolves duking it out for lupine supremacy. I would vote for Jason Bateman. "I think the expression is, 'Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,'" Cates intones. Sherman laughs that plenty of those will be fighting for Cates's throne. Willard thinks Ty is a candidate, if he's got a strong partner to back him; "He's got the mandatory lack of conscience," Cates notes. He also suggests that Cates's wife Vivian will emerge from the chaos a strong force. I'm betting right now that Vivian is the "strong partner" who will support Ty's ascent to power. But I'm also betting Les Moonves will wield his power before we get that far into the series. Sherman lets out a low whistle at the mention of Vivian's name and sighs, "Okay, well, let the wheels come off. I hate a dull apocalypse."
Lou's dinkmobile stops in front of the hospital. Inside, Sultry is begging a nurse for more Vicodin to help with her "problem," but she's getting completely denied and flounces off into a corner to pout. Lou breezes inside and nonchalantly asks to see Sarah. Not fooled, the nurse requests Sarah's surname, and Lou is forced to admit he doesn't know her. Surreptitiously looking around, Lou whips out his badge, then flashes a tiny handwritten sign that reads, "Bochco? Call me. Please." The nurse doesn't have any teenager named Sarah on her admission records. "The real story doesn't start here," Sultry calls over to him. Lou grimaces that there isn't a real story anywhere in this town. "Looking for a missing kid or teenager? Visit the graveyard," Sultry whispers. "Not the pretty one by the highway. The one on the other side of the lake." Lou cocks his head, interested and hoping there's a Starbucks in the vicinity. "The bones will tell you everything you need to know," she rasps, and I note that her collarbone is making a very timely appearance. Lou flees.
A very worried mother and father try to smile through the pain at their daughter's bedside. Vivian watches, concerned, as we hear the girl moaning and wailing. Vivian finds Willard and begs him to end the suffering. "I'll never get used to this," he grieves. Vivian pats his shoulder, but looks deeply cheesed when he backs down and decides to give the girl more time.
Sophia strips off her terrycloth robe and stares at herself in the mirror, rubbing her body. There's gratuitous nudity and skin flashes, because that's what the young people want to see these days, and CBS is nothing if not waaaay wicked neat, yo. She has the good sense to clothe herself when her father knocks; he awkwardly tries to bond by offering to cook dinner. Grumpy, she says she already ate because she doubted he'd be home. She thinks something's suspicious with Sarah, and then they argue about Luke -- Donner thinks he's dangerous, but Sophia is fascinated by what he has to say about being a wolf. Donner prays that Sophia inherited her mother's DNA -- this is the clearest clarification of the point that Sophia is a hybrid and isn't sure whether she'll turn wolf or not, or whether she even wants to change. They're at odds; she should stay away from Luke; snore.
In a misty graveyard, a brunette puts a red rose atop a tombstone, kisses it, and weeps. "Happy Birthday, Amanda," she whispers. A hired goon drags her away, saying, "Time to go, Ruby." She slaps the man's hand away and sullenly hops into the GMC truck that carts her around town in both safety and high style. Lou drives right past her car.
Lou weaves in and out of the maze of graves, stepping over the dry-ice machines. All the tombstones mark the burial sites of dead fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds, shunted into this dismal graveyard because if you're not in 18-49 demographic, you just don't bloody count. Each headstone has the "R" symbol on it, so Lou whips out paper and a pencil to trace the pattern. Lou stumbles upon Amanda Cates's tombstone and freaks out just as a thunderstorm hits, raining anvils upon us all. He sniffs the fresh rose. Interesting note: it says Amanda is the daughter of Willard and Regina Cates, but Willard's wife on the show is named Vivian. I am so scandalized by this.
If one clause in the world is my nemesis, it's the Lou Diamond Phillips Nudity Clause, which apparently mandates that he be shown topless as often as possible. Here, we get him hopping out of the shower sopping wet. The makeup people really outdid themselves -- there must be an entire jumbo tub of Vaseline greasing his torso. I could fry chicken on him. Glistening with goo, Lou grabs the ringing phone and listens to Rev. Raunchy report news about the "R" symbol. It's from the Norse alphabet, circa the fifth century, and it means "aridho" or "journey," specifically referring to a spiritual or religious transformation. The wearer hopes it will protect him or her from danger. The Rev offers to email more information, because CBS is really high-tech and telephones are for old people, and if this network loves anyone, it's young people, yes sir. Raunchy adds that the pendant is incredibly valuable.
Cates practices his batting. Vivian emerges from the house and makes some stupid "I'm a chick, so I don't know sports" comment that makes me want to pull out her insipid hair. He begs her for good news about Sarah. "Her body is starting to reject itself," Vivian says sadly. Her husband remarks that he can certainly relate. "You look like you're in pain. Are you?" she asks, without the level of concern one might expect a wife to have for her dying husband. And here we go again: "Even pain gets bored occasionally. Even pain gets pissed off," blasts Cates. Man, I am going to miss him if he dies. Every time he opens his mouth, I know something spectacular will ooze out of it. I'm quitting this scene.
The red Mustang stops, and we see Sophia and Luke inside it. She's begging him for more juicy information, but he's gently resisting because he wants to know some of Sophia's secrets first. She confesses to Xeroxing her ass and putting it on a flyer that protested the school's attempt to enforce a strict dress code. Luke is completely aroused by that and decides to return the favor. He tells her that It is like "a full-on body rush, but more. Your spirit goes totally pyro." To prove it, he compares a still car to most humans, and then floors the gas pedal with the windows down as a way of demonstrating the wolfish rush. There's a lame rock tune playing as Sophia's hair swirls and she widens her eyes and tries to look like driving 60 mph through the center of town is the best damn thing she's ever goddamn done, goddammit. Luke's eyes glow orange, which is either a sign of wolf transformation or erection, or indigestion. They're pretty fast and loose with the supernatural stuff. Donner notices the red rocket -- the car, not...anything else -- and pulls it over. When he sees Sophia, he flips out and drags her into his own car, swearing he'll give her the truth and that she needs to stop thinking the "kids from the hill" are privy to some special secret.
In his classroom, Sherman looks around for something under the lab tables. Probably his résumé. Lou is harassing him about the secret of Ruby's twin sister, but admits he's partially just miffed that she didn't tell him the truth herself. Lou spots a rat on the floor and darts over in a split-second, swooping it up off the floor. Sherman is impressed with the technique, and regards Lou as though he's imagining the cop naked and then covered in fur. Lou pets the rat while revealing to Sherman that he found the grave and thinks it's mighty suspicious that all those teenagers died. Sherman thoughtfully attributes it to inbreeding, which is extremely classy of him. The weird thing is, incest and shallow gene pools don't seem to faze Lou in the slightest; in fact, he looks interested, like he's about to go home and call his sister. Sherman also explains that a local religious sect, The Church of Unified Science Triumphant, forbids the use of medicine or anything unnatural because they believe it will damn their souls. He cites the Cates family as believers, then continues looking for his escaped animal. Lou holds out the rat. "I've got him right here," he says. Sherman shrugs. "Oh, that's not my rat," he says casually. Lou looks aghast. And here's where it gets creepy -- I actually laughed. How wrong is that?
Donner leads Sophia into the hospital and shows her Sarah's grotesque form. Sarah is wailing. "Is this what you've been waiting for? Is it?" growls Donner. Sophia holds her friend's gooey hand. She's stuck in some kind of larval stage. Vivian, meanwhile, calls Cates and insists it's time to whack the bitch. She then kicks Donner and his daughter out of Sarah's room so her parents can say goodbye; as they leave, the father is arriving and gives Sophia one of those stony, creepy "why her and not you" looks. It would be menacing, except we've never seen him before and he looks totally stoned. Sophia wails that they're going to kill her friend, and she can't understand why her father doesn't stop the madness. He admits it's beyond his jurisdiction and says he made a mistake showing her the quivering lump of crap that her friend became. Sophia looks pouty. She had not reckoned on becoming human Jell-O.
Bored of the Ruby Cates Web site, Lou stares at his computer screen but nibbles on his finger. The phone rings, and he grabs it in case it's a booty call. But Sophia just wants him to come help her out; he speeds away on his toy bike. At the hospital, Sarah's mother kisses her jelly daughter goodbye and apologizes for trying to embalm her with Cool Whip. The mom then convulses a bit before collecting her paycheck and getting the hell off this cursed set. "There's no shame," Cates says, looking deeply, deeply shamed. "It's who we are."
Lou sneaks past the evil nurse, who calls Vivian to alert her of the intruder. To avoid having actually to invent a proper ceremony or even be specific about what the procedure should be, the creators get artsy and turn it into a hectic music video for that wicked tight MTV generation. Guitar riffs begin, as does the hip shit. Cates prepares various oils and starts chanting in Latin; Vivian sprints through the hallway, her eyes flashing orange; Lou scampers down the stairs. They do this strange tempo change where sometimes he's in fast motion and sometimes it's regular; I feel like the editors got bored with the scene and just pushed fast-forward a lot because it's more palatable that way. Disco throbbing. Cates's eyes float across the screen as Lou pops into a cavernous basement and scours the halls for Sarah's room. Cates dons a crimson mantle and puts his hands on Sarah's throat. Her eyes widen and she quivers.
A snarling wolf emerges from the shadows to thwart Lou's progress just as Cates starts to throttle Sarah. Lou manages to lose the creature, which leads me to believe Viv wasn't trying terribly hard, probably for fear of ruining her manicure. Sarah is fighting death, and we see a really disgusting animal kick into midair. Her moaning turns into proper howling, and suddenly we see Cates petting a nice, cute, fluffy wolfie-poo. Suddenly, I want a puppy. Lou, panting, mysteriously manages to locate Sarah's area just in time to see Cates carry a fully human, recovered Sarah into the arms of her shocked parents. Lou looks stunned. "What happened here?" he asks. "A miracle," grins a sappy-looking Cates. Suddenly Vivian appears, equally out of breath and nonchalantly asking Lou whether he's lost. Her clothes are intact, but her brow is beaded with sweat. You'd think she would absolutely reek of wet dog.
Sultry warbles off-key nonsense at the bar. She is the most pointless character ever, and believe me, that's a very large statement with reference to this show. Sherman and Cates discuss Sarah's amazing transformation. "There it was, flashing across this teenage face -- the otherness," Cates says. "We get so used to it, you forget how indomitable we are." He says his hand slipped off, she let go, and the room "exploded in life and nature." And, ostensibly, larval goo. Sherman cracks a dumb joke that I refuse to write down. A pretty blonde approaches with a bottle of Cabernet, compliments of Ty Creed, who is trying to buy his way into Cates's favor. "Good to be king," Sherman says. Cates intones, "It is tonight. Life's just getting interesting. It's a shame to miss the party." Sherman notes that he was treated better than most leaders, then follows with a ridiculous joke about how Cates might die before the fifth season of The Sopranos, and I'm amazed Graham Greene let the writers turn him into such a hollow caricature of himself. Cates looks around the room, and Sherman wonders whether he's evaluating who the leader should be. "Is he in here?" Cates asks. Sherman says something cryptic about maybe yes, maybe no.
Lou kneels in the graveyard and tries to write Ruby a letter. He begins by pouring out his heart, saying he knows she's alive, he can feel her spirit in the air, and he loves her desperately. He's lost without her. But that somehow doesn't convey the depth of their relationship, so he crumples it up and instead whips himself up into a frenzy of profundity, the philosophy of the heart practically gushing from every pore through onto the paper. He writes, "Dear Ruby, I still have all your CDs. Love, John." Wow. He might as well wipe the paper on his balls and just leave the residue for her to find. Trapping it under a rock and the red rose, Lou leaves the note on Amanda's grave and leaves sadly. Somewhere, standing at a glowing-orange window, Ruby stares out into the night and wonders whether she can steal back her Jimmy Buffett collection without Lou's noticing. Moon Shot IV.
Wolf Class. Everyone stars applauding when Sarah walks in, and she blushes but looks deeply pleased. Sophia passes by the classroom window and peers inside, envious. She and Luke exchange a warm look before she flees dejectedly. On the way out, she runs into her father, so she whirls and exits another way; he stands still and watches her go.