Each week Joe and Terry discuss an episode of Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay, alternating between our respective sites. This week, Patricia’s (Kate O’Flynn) past with The Boogeyman takes center stage.
Miss an episode? 1-2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6-7
Spoilers follow for Episode 8, “Your Baggage”: Don’t worry about misplaced luggage. Old baggage always resurfaces in Widow’s Bay.
TERRY
Halfway through this episode, Joe, I realized something that I should have realized during “Seasickness.” It’s so simple and maybe a little subtle, but clues are there. We learn in “Our History” that Richard made the covenant because the town was under severe hardship. And that he was basically forced into making the covenant because he didn’t want to see his town succumb to death and evil.
I think whatever entity that exists on the island made all of the horrors to torture the villagers enough into making a pact with it. And only by making that pact, did it keep the demon (or whatever it is) at bay, as long as a sacrifice was provided. Well, Richard has been alive since the very beginning, so the pact was probably technically still valid. But now that Richard is bones and dust, the pact no longer exists. Now, the demonic being can unleash horrors on the town, pushing it to the point where Tom (Matthew Rhys) is forced into making the same decision that Richard did.
Cue: Season 2.
Anyway, that’s my theory in what was otherwise a very brisk and intense slasher finale. “Your Baggage” begins with a rather tongue-in-cheek heroes goodbye. Patricia, Wyck (Stephen Root) and Tom vanquished evil and share a breakfast together until, one by one, they smile at each other and depart. A tip o’ the hat. Good job, kids. Time to go our separate ways. It’s very wink-and-nod type humor – the kind I really enjoy.
But then the low vibration and the slightly building tension of David Fleming’s score signaling that not everything is peachy on the island yet. The rest of “Your Baggage” systematically erases all of their safety and happy ending tropes.
First, Tom buys Red Sox tickets and makes plans to take Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick) to Boston before being accosted by Evan and his treasure trove of notes and pictures of his mother. It’s the first, and ultimately last, defeat of the episode that culminates with the discovery that Chelle (Sipiwe Moyo), Bechir (Kevin Carroll)’s wife, is pregnant in her 40s. All of this suggests that Tom won’t be taking Evan away anytime soon.
Then, Patricia’s first unhappy ending is the discovery that her food, perfectly laid out with fancy silverware, plates and napkins, isn’t what she ordered.
Finally, Wyck tries to mend things and profess his feelings with Gerrie (Nancy Lenehan), the way the long-suffering hero does after the evil has been vanquished. Sure, it’s later in life but we can still be hap…py…oh, Gerrie’s married. A deflated Wyck leaves, only to spy that The Boogeyman’s mask has been stolen…which leads directly into Patricia’s fight with The Boogeyman (Airon Armstrong).
In some ways, Patricia is vindicated when she interrupts Kris (Lauren Bittner) and her book club (who’s currently reading Lovely Bones) and tases Kris, before continuing on with her dramatic fight or flight from The Boogeyman. In doing so, she lets slip that, no she didn’t get phone calls from The Boogeyman…but he definitely did come for her that night. So somewhat of a vindication.
Overall, this was an exciting episode, Joe. The way it built tension all the way to the very effective jump scare reveal of The Boogeyman to the way Patricia’s house was so warmly yet darkly lit was just fantastic. So I’m curious to hear if you agree, Joe? Did you enjoy “Your Baggage”? I haven’t really been a fan of Ethan’s storyline, but did this conversation work for you? Did Bechir’s increasingly confused “oh my god”s work for you as it hit the finale? And what does this mean for the final two episodes?
JOE
This did work for me, Terry, if only because I can’t complain about arguably one of the best slasher chase scenes in recent history. People have been trying to top that Sarah Michelle Gellar’s I Know What You Did Last Summer for decades and the reality is that most of them are nowhere near as effective (I’m looking at you, Heart Eyes).
And yes, Patricia’s flight through the darkened streets are very clearly indebted to Halloween in both villain aesthetic (generic mask; gas station attendant overalls) and the way that director Andrew DeYoung shoots Patricia banging on dark doorways as the Boogeyman literally closes in on her. And you’re right: the initial Boogeyman reveal in the doorway is legitimately scary!
Plus: it’s immensely satisfying to see Kris get tased as the municipal employee tells the book clubbers “She’s the worst. She’s the fucking worst” I only wish we could have seen Kris get sliced and diced instead of Red Shirt paramedics and gas station employees (RIP to that guy, who has had a real bad few nights between this and Tom’s incident with the milk back in Episode 5).
Is this revolutionary by any means? No.
But it is pretty fun to see a genre show dedicate roughly 15 minutes straight to an extended chase scene. And Patricia proves herself worthy of the Final Girl mantle for performing the actions we wish every character in a slasher would do: she takes out the baddie with a head shot, then stands over the body from ambulance to morgue to incinerator. It’s funny AND gratifying, Terry!
As for your theory about a new pact, that would totally track, especially since the dark storm brewing over the episode’s final moments do suggest that things are nowhere near resolved and unlikely to be so in the next two episodes.
Does that undercut some of the effectiveness of the “happy breakfast montage” and talk of checking out Colleges in Boston? I assume that writer Emma Ketchum wants the audience to be in on these irony-laced developments (hell, even if the show does prove to be a limited series, as we’ve both indicated, there’s TWO more episodes yet to come, so it’s not exactly a surprise when Wyck shows up to pointedly tell Tom that “It’s not over” in the closing moments).
A bit of a “no shit” statement there, Widow’s Bay.
As for the Evan stuff…man, this is still the storyline that absolutely sucks the wind out of the show. Part of it is that the character is extremely one note (which: boring); the other is that the show is content to do nothing of interest with him (which: boring). Each time we cut away from Patricia’s struggle with The Boogeyman to read sad, weird letters that Lauren wrote to her son when she was in “The Home”, it’s sad. And weird.
But it’s not interesting because we’ve already seen and heard stories about who Lauren was and we know that’s not her. That’s a) the mental illness, or b) the island, or c) both (A brought on by B). It’s new to Evan, but Southwick fails to make the character’s reaction involving or interesting. You might as well have told him fish swim or birds fly for what he’s giving. Whether it’s the actor, the story, or both, this storyline is an anchor that drags down the show whenever we return to it.
Cut Evan loose in these next two episodes, Widow’s Bay. Free yourself!
(It’s not going to happen, but maybe if we all make a pact with some kind of water god?)
Anyways, we’ll see when we return next week over at GaylyDreadful
Widow’s Bay airs Wednesdays on Apple TV
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