Fire Island

Harper's Island - Season 1, Episode 2

Previously on Harper's Island: DEATH!

Abby wakes up, and having been through the trauma of coming home to the island where half a dozen people were slaughtered, getting into a bar fight, and being taunted with her mother's death by an unknown prankster, she decides the best thing to do is go jogging alone through the woods where she found her mother's corpse. Seriously, Abby. Sleep in. Order up an omelette. She spots a deer, and is so enchanted, she stops to gawk at it. I guess that comes from her living in Los Angeles for a while, because seeing a deer isn't exactly that unheard of, especially on an island covered by forests. She's startled by Jimmy and his asshole brother (Shane), who are hunting the deer. She objects to this, and when Jimmy and Shane explain that they're culling the weak ones that will starve come winter anyway, Abby stalks off, muttering that she'd rather not actually be present for said culling, thank you.

MEANWHILE, Hunter again tries to cajole Trish out of marrying Henry. She doesn't want to hear it. Man, if the only tricks Hunter has up his sleeve are "charm" and nagging, this is a very ill thought-out plan. I think Trish has been wearing that pearl necklace for the entirety of her screen-time. Jeez, lady. I know you're well-heeled and everything, but give it a rest.

MEANWHILE, someone has broken into the local maritime museum and stolen some sort of sharpened spade. The only reason this is shown is because that sharpened spade will naturally be showing up momentarily in a rather nasty way. Apparently, we the audience are so stupid, we would have seen the murder and thought "Hey, where did that sharpened spade come from? How could a serial killer possibly have lain his or her hands on such an array of weapons?"

Jimmy and Shane come back to Shane's truck to discover the deer, dead and splayed across the hood, with "PSYCHO" scrawled across the windshield in blood. They're consternated, I imagine because this could have been done by anyone who's ever met Shane. MEANWHILE, Henry continues his habit of talking to JD through closed doors. He asks JD to maybe try to be less of a depressive Froot Loop this week after last night's bar fight with Shane, and JD's like "It's not my fault Shane's a douche." Point. Oh, and he's frantically washing copious amounts of blood off of his hands.

Trish dashes from her meeting with Hunter to join Henry and the wedding party on the patio, where Henry has been explaining the extended scavenger hunt he and Trish are sending the rest of them on. Wait, wait, wait. Henry has clearly been hanging out with everyone for quite some time, and this is after his heart-to-door with JD. How long has Hunter been whining to Trish? Didn't that conversation only last a few minutes? Where has Trish been? Very curious. P.S. - Spending a week doing things like wedding-themed scavenger hunts would have me throwing myself out of the hotel window long before any murderer got to me. Some tooly, blond groomsman talks Cal into switching teams. Not like that, perv. He just switches scavenger hunt teams so that he can hit on Cal's girlfriend. Class-ay. Chloe's disappointed that she and Cal aren't on the same team. I guess she's not mad anymore about that whole dunking thing.

We see the same perky lady we saw for all of three seconds last week for all of three seconds this week as she drops some scavenger hunt supplies off at the church. The priest thanks her. MEANWHILE, Trish and Henry essentially have sex on their wedding cake. So much for those separate rooms, huh? The priest we just met goes wandering through the woods, where he steps into one of those hunting snares that loops around the ankle and suspends him upside down. The murderer steps up and lops off his head with that sharpened spade. Thank goodness they showed its theft from the maritime museum! I'd be completely lost, otherwise! Still, I think it was casually mentioned that Trish used to work at that museum. Just sayin'.

MEANWHILE, Abby and the rest of her scavenger hunt team hang out at the local bar. It's, like, ten in the morning, alkies. Abby runs into a creepy girl named Kelly, whose mother was also murdered by Wakefield. Haunted as Abby is, she doesn't have half the case of cuckoos Kelly has. Abby reveals that her father sent her away after the murders. Oh, I was under the impression she had abandoned her father. Oopsie! Anyhoo, Shane enters and is douchey some more. We get it. They wander outside where Jimmy waits, and Shane suggests that Abby might be responsible for the message on his windshield. Sure. She doesn't want to watch you kill a deer, but she killed one with her bare hands, then smeared a bloody message on your ride. Good thinking, douche. Abby and Jimmy chat, at one point saying that the island isn't very big. You'd think someone would have stumbled across Uncle Marty's body by this point, especially since everyone's tromping all over this place this episode.

Speaking of which, Chloe is at a graveyard with the rest of her scavenger hunt team. Fun! She finds Wakefield's grave, which makes her feel all thrilled and spooked, so the blond tool decides there couldn't be a better time to hit on her. The dudes on this island have no game. MEANWHILE, Trish and Lucy (she of the purse dog) have the exact same conversation Trish and Shea had last week about Hunter. The cake sex wasn't marriage-affirming enough? MEANWHILE, Kelly catches up with Abby to ask if she can come to Los Angeles and live with her. The deer-in-the-headlights look Abby gives her is enough to strike enough sanity into Kelly that she takes it back. JD wanders around in the background. MEANWHILE, Henry talks to Jimmy, and suggests that maybe he could convince Shane not to be such a douchebag. The odds aren't good. Henry is nice enough to invite both of them to the bonfire on the beach that night.

So, I guess the scavenger hunt is off? Cal wanders through the woods and steps into another one of those snare traps. He's hoisted into the air and hangs upside-down. MEANWHILE, Henry finds a puddle of blood in his room that leads to the bathroom, where he finds a severed deer head in his bathtub. Man, the deer on this island aren't having a good week. MEANWHILE, Trish walks in on her sinister father talking with Hunter, only catching the end of the conversation. Her sinister father is able to lie his way out by pretending that he was sending Hunter away on Trish's behalf. The blond tool stumbles across Cal hanging in the woods. He snags Cal's map, lying on the ground, and abandons him, promising to send help back. Well, what do you want? He's a tool.

Abby must have scented blood, and didn't want to miss an opportunity to be in the middle of the action, because she comes into Henry and Trish's room for no reason other than to discover Henry cleaning up after the Bambi incident. Abby tells him that Jimmy and Shane were hunting deer earlier, and he freaks out. She manages to keep him from dashing off to kick Shane's ass, promising to talk to Jimmy. Henry probably didn't take this to mean she'd run off and flirt with her old flame some more, which is what happens. She then teleports over to Kelly's place to let her know that it's just peachy if Kelly moves in with her. Abby loves her some drama. JD wanders in the background some more, this time in considerably less clothing. After Abby leaves to teleport somewhere else, Kelly sexes JD up, saying that this is the best day of her life. Uh, oh.

That night, the bonfire kicks into high gear. Then, a whole bunch of shit goes down, which will give my poor MEANWHILE quite a workout. Someone sends a text to Henry purporting to be Uncle Marty, who has, ahem, stepped away from the festivities to woo a young lady. Henry buys it, so I guess nobody will be looking for Uncle Marty for a while. What about the duo of heads rolling around the island? MEANWHILE, Jimmy and Shane arrive, and Henry immediately punches Shane in the face. A fight miraculously doesn't break out, and Shane just stalks off. Lucy drops her purse dog, who darts into the woods past Hunter who has obviously not departed. Planning to whine to Trish some more, are we? MEANWHILE, Chloe wonders where Cal is, which prompts Blond Tool to remember that he was supposed to send someone to cut Cal down. A mini-search party goes off to find him. MEANWHILE, the police...hey! They actually find a body! Finally! Someone has hanged poor Kelly, who really shouldn't have said anything about this being the best day ever. Hey, murderer? Perhaps you could lay off the incidental characters like Priest and Kelly and maybe whittle down the main cast a bit? There's still a lot of them!

MEANWHILE, Lucy wanders through the woods. There's a lot of that going around. She looks for her purse dog, but finds a Burmese tiger trap instead. You know, those pits dug in the ground and covered with leaves and dirt. She plunges to the bottom. MEANWHILE, the search party finds Cal. He's fine. Lucy sits dazed in the pit, calling for help. Her purse dog stands shivering at the top, but isn't able to lend much help when the murderer steps up and douses Lucy with gasoline. Like Uncle Marty last week, she's considerably less panicked than she should be, seeming miffed at most. That changes when the murderer lights a match and drops it on her. Hey, where did he or she find a box of matches and some gasoline? We didn't see them stolen from anywhere! Lucy flails around in the pit, roasting to death. See, if she had had a dog of respectable size, this wouldn't have happened.

Next week on Harper's Island: DEATH!

Overall Grade: B