Evil: How to Dress a Wound

“You should ask your mother about all the ways she’s betrayed you.”

I’ve been reading Mikey’s reviews of the most recent season of Doctor Who. He’s so great at talking about episode structure, and that got me thinking not only about how this episode is structured, but also the way that the tragic train engineer’s story symbolizes this show’s start-and-stop progress (and seems to finally be moving forward).

The case of the week is an engineer, Tyrus, haunted by the suicides on his train route. They happen regularly, most recently on the “death stretch,” and now he’s being haunted by the woman who died. He has to stop the train each time he sees/hallucinates her on the tracks. Move, stop. Move, stop. Never quite pulling it off, never able to make forward progress as he’s stuck on the same route.

That train feels like this show. Every week, the same route, the same routine, just a new small problem to solve. Over time, the pattern of not quite moving forward with the good guys figuring out what the bad guys are doing. Losing a few points along the way.

But wait! The haunting is real. It’s a demon who lives under Kristin’s house, which is under that “death stretch” of train tracks. So then our case of the week moves from the repetitive train track to where it needs to be: in Kristin’s basement, in a portal to what appears to be a hell dimension. Moving away from the old patterns and starting to finally see the bigger, cosmic patterns at work. Finally!

(The actor who played Tyrus is named Jefferson White. He’s been in a few things I haven’t watched. His monologue was so amazing that I started crying when I watched it. To be honest, I had to pause the show for a bit to stop feeling so sad. I look forward to seeing him in more things in the future.)

Things are finally coming together here: the partial exorcism of Kristin’s house at the end of the third season. Those bats from the episode Kristin went to the Vatican basements. The way that demons keep congregating in Kristin’s home, especially the add-on that’s never going to get finished. Is Kristin, or one of the girls, a demon-magnet? Or did Kristin and Andy just have the misfortune to buy a house on top of a hellmouth? The demon-detecting app seems to think so.

Sister Andrea was so brave, wandering into a gigantic basement hole. She was even braver to stay after she learned that holy water doesn’t work down there. David is starting to have faith that demons are very real and very present. Kristin is, understandably, distracted by other things.

Ben might be reconsidering his Science Guy stance. After Renee moves in (and Ben doesn’t remember inviting her), he uses the language of psychology (“unconscious decisions”) to describe both what he sees (the jinn) and what he does (forgets things after doing them).

But Karima describes him as “an experiment in physics” who doesn’t even “realize the overlap” that he represents of “religion and science.”

Then she goes all-in: “You think religion is too bizarre to be real? So let’s talk many-worlds interpretation.” Karima and Renee have both brought this up, and it’s weird to me that Ben isn’t buying it, since it’s just as scientific as whatever psychological interpretation he’s putting on events.

That conversation isn’t just about Ben and his tragicomic relationship woes, though. It’s the show reminding us of this possibility of multiple dimensions just as it shows us a place under Kristin’s house where it’s hotter than heck and holy water doesn’t work. To pick up the train metaphor, the tracks are starting to converge.

Sheryl is another point of convergence. After Leland discovers the mess she made of his house, he asks her “What did you think we were doing here? From the very beginning? It’s a little late in the day to start whining about your granddaughters.” For an evil guy, Leland’s awfully insightful here. He’s putting into words exactly what I’ve been wondering for a few seasons now.

In a recent interview with the AVClub, Christine Lahti said she thought of Sheryl as a feminist pushing back against patriarchy as a reaction to whatever mistreatment she’d received in the past: “[W]hen Leland treats her less than humanly, I guess you’d say, it hits a chord. And she’s out to, I think, ultimately bring him down by whatever means she can.”

That’s probably exactly how Sheryl herself would describe it, but is it really kosher to try to defeat one random, bratty guy by aligning yourself with demonic forces? That’s my frustration with the character, though, not the writing. The Kings are great at writing complex women who make both excellent and terrible choices, just like us regular women.

I will admit that it was very cathartic to see Leland get stabbed. Now that Sheryl is finally playing her endgame, we might get more brutal resistance.

Sheryl’s injury led to Kristin picking up her phone and Leland accidentally revealing his involvement in Sheryl’s life. He tries to put a wedge between them (see the lead quote; it won't be hard), but Kristin points out that what he’s afraid of is “unity.”

Will Kristin still be “united” with Sheryl when she finds out what her mother has done? Not just with Timothy, but also Andy, and Lexi, and everything.

We might actually get answers to these questions soon.

Are You Questioning Your Sanity?:

• Lila used AI to write an essay on the book of Job, and Lynn plagiarized her mother’s signature on a permission slip. That’s bad, too. But not AI bad. It’s almost like the girls are acting out because their father is hospitalized and their mother isn’t talking to them about it. Kristin, be there for your girls!
• One problem with jumping in to just review the last season is that I haven’t paid perfect attention to previous seasons. I’d forgotten about the transfusions completely, and I have to admit I don’t even remember how Sheryl got hooked on them.
• The horned demon’s name is Lou. Short for Lucifer?
• I think I read a longish article about how hard it is to be a train engineer, including the complexity of the point system that Tyrus talks about. I guess the Kings and I read the same websites. I don’t think this is the article I read, but it talks about the same issues.
• David and Lynn staring into the hole in the wall was probably meant to evoke The Shawshank Redemption, but people staring into holes always makes me think of Lost.

I feel like I could have written another thousand words just about Ben, especially his excellent apology song, but that's probably enough for this week.

Four out of four marzipan cookies. I really like marzipan.

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)

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