Evil: Seven Swans a Singin'

"And remember, a good concealer can literally cover all your sins."

Evil does a Christmas episode. Because of course it does.

To start with, I want it clear that the actual lyric from "12 Days of Christmas" is Seven Swans a-Swimming. I get that they were adapting it for their own purposes for the sake of building an episode around it, but the pedant in me won't be satisfied until I point it out.

That said, there are really two different ideas at work in this one, and they don't gel particularly well - although they're both good kernels to grow an episode around in their own right.

The idea of an evil earworm that spreads like an infection until the inflicted get so desperate to make it stop that they stab out their own eardrums is honestly horrifying and a great hook for an episode. The scene in the school lunchroom where Ben is going on triumphantly about how we can blame the whole thing on vegetables, only for us to suddenly become very aware of all the girls mutilating their ears in the background is fantastically staged and paced.

Because, like all great horror concepts, it's about something we can all identify with. Is there anyone among us who hasn't had a song stuck in their head which would just relentlessly not stop?

Do not make me invoke "Baby Shark" at this juncture, because I will totally invoke "Baby Shark".

Taking that universal experience and running with it, building it out to its most disturbing possible logical conclusion. That's horror done well. (Is reductio ad horrificum a thing? Can I coin that term right now?)

But then, and here's the big problem with the episode, can anyone reading this review stop, take a moment, and try to remember how David, Kristen, and Ben stopped the song from spreading further and cured the infected girls? No. No, you can't. Because the episode never bothers to show it. It just drops them in favor of pivoting to the other idea that it's got on its mind, specifically social influencers being used as a medium for spreading Evil.

And sure, this is also a good solid rock upon which to build your church of horror, but it doesn't lend itself to any kind of resolution to the solid horror rock/kernel that they'd already built/grown and that's a problem when you've just spent the first half of your episode doing a really nice job of telling a totally unrelated story. And we've officially become an analogy salad, so I'm just going to start speaking directly at this point.

What I'm trying to say is that the first half of this episode made me very invested in finding out how they could possibly stop the contagious song which drives girls to hurt themselves, and then they pivoted to the Mirandaz Challenge makeup vlog and the subharmonic blah di blah, and never bothered to show the girls getting cured. At the end we're left to just assume that Ben was right and, as it's just an internet song meme (once you disregard the satanic subharmonics) that the girls just forgot about it and moved on to whatever the next big thing was. Skibidi Riz. Or something.

And that doesn't flow at all from the way we've been seeing the song slowly infect Kristen's family. First Kristen spreading it to Andy, and from there to the girls, until ultimately it drives Lila to drive a compass into her ear to make it stop. Everything about the episode is telling us that the song is the focus.  Until suddenly it's not.  And that's a structural flaw that's hard to overlook.

The handwave explanation is that the song is that it's the background soundtrack to Mirandaz makeup video. And sure, that works fine for how it would become a tune the girls were familiar with, but it doesn't really connect the subliminal 'kill yourself to join the Evil Army' hidden soundtrack with 'Oh, and also sing this song like it was "MMMBop" and this was 1997'.

And so, awkward segue accomplished, we get to the story of Mirandaz, whose makeup blog has been usurped by Leland as a vehicle for sending subliminal instructions to teenagers on how to - I believe the safe internet term at the moment is 'unalive' themselves. Interestingly, the script interchangeable describes it as doing that and 'joining the army'. Which raises a lot of interesting questions about what the end goal of that project might be.

Leland provided a soundtrack for the background of Mirandaz' Challenge video which simultaneously is playing too softly to really notice the music until you crank up the volume and then after that also has a track playing at a high enough Hz level beneath that that only teenagers can hear it which gives them the sinister 'how to' handbook. And now that I think about it, that's kind of this episode in a nutshell. They start with the song was too quiet to hear unless you were looking for it, and that's how it spread so insidiously, but then they disregard that and say, 'yeah, but the REAL evil thing is another level below.' They should have picked one idea or the other.

For the second half of the episode somebody really wanted to talk about the potentially toxic power of 'social media influencers'. And, you know, fair enough. That's not not a valid point. But I wish that they'd given both concepts an entire episode of their own to explore, instead of smashing them together. I don't know. Part of me wonders if they got to that part of the earworm plot where the girls all mutilate their own ears and thought to themselves, 'Shit. How DO we write ourselves out of this?'

Meanwhile, we have two other storylines playing out. What is there to say about the scenes between Sheryl and Lexis except that Christine Lahti is already regularly demonstrating why she's this show's secret weapon for making everything more fun and dynamic, and Maddy Crocco holds her own in every scene, which is impressive given her age and relative experience. On first viewing when Sheryl segues from 'Let me give you some grandmotherly advice' directly to 'Hit her in the face with a rock'... There aren't words

And in our final plot thread, David and Renee. Now, if you've read earlier reviews, you will know that I am 100% team Renee. It's not clear what is happening with/to these two yet, but there's plenty of creepy mysteries to unravel and I can't wait to watch them do it. Wiping the windshield breath heart drawing, only to reveal that it's on the inside of the windshield was a particularly inspired horror moment.

Bits and Pieces:

-- I'm pretty sure it was Lila that punctured her eardrum. It might have been Lexi. I honestly have no idea at this point, and four different plot synopses online have all completely ignored even mentioning it. Lexi was pretty busy in this one learning how to brain people with rocks and not to trust Grandma, so I expect it was Lila, just to give her something to do. Honestly, it stops mattering almost instantly after it happens, so who even cares. Sorry Lila. Or Lexi. Whichever one you are.

-- The "Pudsy's Christmas" song was written and performed by Jonathan Coulton, who also did a lot of fun songs for the King's earlier show The Good Fight. JoCo is an absolute legend and if you aren't familiar with his solo music, you should check it out. He once sued the show Glee for ripping off his rendition of "Baby's Got Back". Also, it was recently the fist of May as I write this. I mention that for no reason.

-- I am unrepentant for the way that I earlier made you think of both "Baby Shark" and "MMMBop" by Hanson.

-- I just did it again.

-- I love how in TV shows there's always a gigantic life size nativity scene just hanging out nearby. I've never seen one in real life.

-- No sign again this week of Ben's love interest Vanessa. Nor her surgically attached ghost sister.

-- I'm just going to say it. Early seasons' likeable Andy is hot. I totally get why Kristen is with him.

-- I wonder how many of the OCD anecdotes that Kristen relays to the group are real events. I didn't take the time to investigate."

-- Ben, asbestos isn't the answer to every mystery.

-- I love the thoughtfulness of Kristen's Christmas gifts to Ben and David. The cozy scarf and hoodie for David and the drawing of Ben the Magnificent that the girls drew for Ben. Bonus points for David wearing the scarf later.

-- Oh yeah, David got attacked with a machete at the giant nativity scene for the cliffhanger. I should probably mention that. Ah, we'll talk about it next time.

-- There's more than a hint of Candyman/Bloody Mary in the chant for Mirandaz Challenge. It was completely unnecessary for the story, but a cute reference all the same.

-- Apparently the story about the potatoes is true, although it wasn't the King of France who did it.

Quotes:

Bishop Marx: "Kristen, was it?"
Kristen: "It was."
There was something really delightful about the way Katja Herbers delivered that line.

Sheryl: "You either make ‘em your bitch, or they make you theirs."

Kristen: "How do I find it?"
Lynn: "There’s this thing called the internet, Mom."

Ben: "I’m sorry, it’s just half of the things you talk about sound made up."

Lexi: "You told me to hit Sami."
Sheryl: "Prove it."

Kristen: "This is no time for bravery. I’m going to let you."

Ben: "Yes. Science is weird."

Kristen: "The forbidden is always desirable."

Behold, the Evil that is Show Choir kids

A fun little Christmas episode that suffered just a bit from really being two entirely unrelated Christmas episodes smashed together.

Three out of five Swans which are properly Swimming. Doo dee doo de doo.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, retired firefighter, and roughly 78% water. You can find more of his work at the 42nd Vizsla. If you'd like to see his raw notes for this and other reviews, you can find them at What Was Mikey Thinking.

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