From Dusk till Dawn: Place of Dead Roads

"To beat the devil, you got to play his game."

It was surprisingly difficult to find a good picture when almost the entire episode takes place inside of a strip club.

I admittedly did not like this episode the first time that I saw it. Anyone familiar with the movie knows of a very specific scene that heralds a very specific shift in the movie, and I was waiting on the edge of my seat for it to happen. It does not, so my impatience soured my first watch.

I liked it a lot more a second time around when I knew what was and what wasn’t going to happen. The Geckos have finally reached their goal, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be all smooth sailing from here.

Seth’s behavior during the confession scene with the Fullers initially struck me as strange. After all, he broke the barker’s nose when he harassed Kate only to turn around and kind of harass her himself. But the more that I think about it, the more I want to dig into it. Into everything happening during that scene, really.

Seth is visibly uncomfortable with the Titty Twister from the moment he steps inside. As he mentions to Richie later on, he feels like the place is watching him and that he doesn’t belong here. It’s not just that there’s symbology related to Richie’s knife or the fact that this is Carlos’ bar. There is something else that makes him feel like he’s in danger. He isn’t comfortable with the leverage that he supposedly holds.

So when Jacob begins to push back and demand that Seth let them leave as opposed to sharing shots with him, he’s already feeling powerless and on edge. (Notice he does two shots before Jacob is even done protesting.) The last thing that he wants to deal with is any form of rebellion.

Instead, he lashes out, and while his focus is apparently on Kate, he’s really aiming his cruelty towards Jacob by using his kids as weapons. Now, to be clear, this is not Seth at his best or most heroic. At all. This is him being incredibly petty.

But I find the idea of what Seth confesses to be fascinating. The way he phrases it, you’d think that he had shot those people back in Kansas, and that he had done so relatively easily in fairly cold blood. That isn’t what happened. We saw what happened in a flashback. We saw how Seth was initially frozen as Richie shot the officers. Seth only targeted one of the cars.

Does Seth really think that he killed those men? Does he actually feel guilty about it? I don’t know. It’s very possible that he just used that because he knew that it would portray him as dangerous and would freak the Fullers out. For someone who insists that he is a thief, though, it makes me wonder if there wasn’t something else there.

Richie doesn’t feel guilty, though, and unlike his brother, he was practically gleeful once he got inside the bar. And why wouldn't he be? He felt like he was home.

But let’s back up to the start of the episode first. A few people have mentioned that Richie was living as a crazed loner while Seth was in prison, but we actually got to see it firsthand. And... yeah, those people weren’t lying. What we didn’t learn was what drove Richie to that state in the first place. Was it a mental illness of some kind, or the knife’s influence?

It wasn’t visions of our Mistress of the Night (who finally got a name: Santanico Pandemonium!) The way he reacted to her implied that this was his first time seeing her. Naturally, it was after he consumed snake meat.

It also set him on the path that he’s on now. Clearly, Richie is incredibly important to not just Santanico but also to Carlos. They need him for something. It also seems like he needs to be a willing participant in whatever it is. After all, Carlos had to not only get Richie the knife, but also convince Seth to rob a bank in order to buy himself and Richie passage to the apparently nonexistent El Rey, and then go to Mexico. Why not just kidnap Richie and not bother with Seth at all?

It comes back to the idea of home. His conversation with Kate was fascinating. Richie clearly likes Kate and genuinely wants her to see the beauty and wonder that he currently sees. The only downside of the scene was, say it with me now: SHE IS STILL IN HIGHSCHOOL! Richie, why are you kissing a high schooler?! Why did they do this?

I don’t want to talk about that much further, although I will note that Richie only initiated a kiss after Kate happened to say the one phrase that he strongly associates with Santanico. As far as I’m concerned, he only kissed her because that association overrode all common and moral sense.

Sigh.

Let’s move on to Freddie. He’s always had a kind of charged air about him due to his position as an unceasing, relentless force nipping at the Gecko’s heels, but this episode seemed to take that a step further. I’m assuming that the talking severed head at the beginning is due to his possession of the knife, like how he saw that ghost before, but the moment with Carlos was something else.

Carlos did not expect Freddie to also see things from him when they did that blood vision thing. Is it just a “door opened can be entered from both ways” thing, or is Freddie not just a random Texas Ranger?

I’m leaning towards the second, and that could hold some really fun implications down the road. The shot eyes looked identical to the wounds left on the cult victims. Even if it was unintentional on Freddie’s part, there’s definitely some mirroring going on here, and not in a way that is optimistic about Freddie’s future.

After leaving his badge behind in the US, Freddie underwent further transformation here from a Ranger to a rinche. He quite literally stabbed the one thug in the back, a callback to his conversation with Earl.

I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to read into the fact that Freddie is/was a law enforcement officer with a white wife and white-passing daughter, who illegally entered Mexico in order to kill Mexicans, especially since said Mexicans are actually evil, vampiric drug lords who are really just collateral damage in his hunt for the Gecko Brothers. But there’s tension in that which my brain wants to tug on, especially when comparing him to Carlos.

What exactly is Carlos planning? Some kind of war against Narciso and the rest of the Nine Lords? He seemed both surprised and annoyed that Narciso not only arrived with company, but also talked to Seth. There’s something going on that we’re not seeing yet. The fact that he specifically milked snake venom into a goblet also feels significant.

The episode title got name dropped a few times: the Place of Dead Roads, the last stop before Hell where extreme violence is needed and normal morality is not. If the bakery that Carlos was in is the Place of Dead Roads, then that must make the Titty Twister Hell. And now, we finally get to meet its goddess.

Random Thoughts

Loved the Theseus/Medusa vibes when Freddie walked out holding the head.

Also the idea of “sweet temptations” being interpreted – correctly! – as a bakery.

I can’t even imagine the strength that it takes to walk on air while holding yourself up on a stripper’s pole. Seriously, those dancers were incredible.

I also really enjoyed the band. Scott nodding his head along with the music was cute.

Jacob never took a shot, even after his kids did.

We very briefly saw Dr. Tanner, the professor who gave Freddie the big exposition dump, except now he’s going by Sex Machine and has a pelvis gun... Oh, the sentences I sometimes write on this site. I’m not really sure where they’re going to go with him, but he gives me the creeps.

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.

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