Evil: How to Survive a Storm

“Greater love hath no man, than laying down his life for his friends.”

Whoa.

I feel bad that I’ve been ragging on Sheryl so much in these reviews, and that I’ve been so demanding about the show making forward progress. I didn’t want them to kill Sheryl! (Although, I admit sheepishly, it is nice to have real stakes as we head toward the end times.)

Sheryl’s plan almost worked. Her cat-and-mouse with Leland had moments of hilarity, like the bag of tasers and the demon accountant getting caught with his meatsuit around his legs. It also had moments of tension: I really didn’t expect both Sheryl and Dr. Boggs to survive that demon, and I really did expect Sheryl to kill Leland.

Her death hit me harder than I would have expected, probably because she died so close to her goal—defeating Leland, saving her granddaughters and grandson—but ultimately failed. I am so, so happy David gave her the last rites, because she seemed to need the forgiveness she pretended she didn’t believe in during her confession in “How to Save a Life.”

(Sidebar: my paternal grandfather was an extremely lazy Catholic. But, according to my dad, on his deathbed at the elder care facility, he was really struggling, and one of the nurses said “Wait, isn’t he Catholic?” So they called a priest to give last rites, and he died right after. Steven Knight picks up on this idea—that in times of great need, our childhood beliefs suddenly become meaningful again—in one of the last episodes of Peaky Blinders.)

(Second sidebar: it is a little weird that the doctors managed to give Sheryl a sling for her shoulder, but not save her life. I’m chalking it up to demonic interference and/or irreparable internal injuries. Or maybe they just couldn't get her bulletproof suit off at all.)

Where does this leave us, though? There are the obvious leaps forward in plot, like Kristin now being the guardian of Timothy. (Leland sure knows how to play a losing hand to his own advantage, doesn’t he?)

And there are questions: how are the girls, who have already been acting out and getting way too much screen time, going to react to the death of their grandmother in addition to their missing father?

I hope the next episode takes some time to deal with those emotional, character-based questions, but I suspect we’ll also get a huge amount of plot.

Because Leland can now possess David, and that is horrifying. Leland’s obviously, y’know, evil, what with trying to create an antichrist and bring about a demonic reign on earth. But he’s also so, so creepy. His willingness to mess with the girls is horribly freaky. He has such a weird bee in his bonnet about Kristin, too. I was reassured when she handed out stun guns and brought up a restraining order.

I was more reassured when he wound up in prison, but DF probably has some good lawyers on staff.

That's almost irrelevant, though, since Leland can possess David at any time, which means he can also access the girls and Kristin and anything else…

I’m worried about David, too. Father Ignatius pointed out that Catholic doctrine is, in general, against murdering people. If I were in the room, I would have pointed out that, like many guidelines in the most deeply bureaucratic of religions, there are loopholes: for example, during the crusades, bishops would bless all the soldiers. Their war killing was seen as righteous, not sinful. And although Ignatius, David, Kristin, and Ben may not realize they’re on the frontlines of an actual holy war, we the viewers know they are.

So it’s not David’s soul I’m worried about, but his willingness to use his powers to kill Leland. We saw in previous episodes how, when David inhabited an angry person, he got angry in “real” life. Does possessing Leland make David more sociopathic? (Does it also make him lust after Kristin more, since he wished he could have two lives, one for her?)

I should probably talk about the storm. After posting my review last week, my mind kept returning to the final scene, in which Kristin, David, and Ben watched the horrors of the modern world on TV while talking about how relaxed they were. It felt like a judgement of the viewer: we’re all so distracted by watching disasters that we forget how many of them we’re living through.

The hurricane+tornado combo is an interesting way to link global warming to a demonic threat, and feels like it’s making the same point as that scene. Why am I watching Evil when the world is going to hell?

Then again, what else am I going to do? Hoard toilet paper, I guess.

“I was just thinking life’s gotten pretty weird.”

• It was nice to see George the demon again.
• The lack of bleach, sharp objects, and other instruments of death in Leland’s house was hilarious.
• Without any bleach, how did Leland clean up all that sewage?
• I’m curious about how Dr. Boggs will use his newfound knowledge of the existence of demons in his treatment of Ben.
• In the bathroom, Sister Andrea suggested they all pray the Annunciation, and then jumped right into the Apostles' Creed.
• I wasn’t freaked out by the appearance of demons during Sister Andrea’s adventures in the tornado, but I was freaked out by the appearance of the gray man. It made me think of a Magritte version of Slenderman.

Four out of four homemade cakes in the face. With a few bonus slaps, too.

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

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