Harper's Island - Season 1, Episode 9
One of the most realistic things that can happen when everyone hiding from a serial killer is holed up for safety is that they'll sit around fighting and talking out their issues. Realistic, but not much fun. In the interest of time and, well...interest, I'm going to gloss over the jabber-jabber.
Previously on Harper's Island: DEATH!
Danny, Shea, Katherine, and Trish are wandering around the inn blahing about Madison, when Blond Tool and Beth return from their half-hearted attempt to ditch the island. Cal, Chloe, and Abby tend to the sheriff's wounds at a medical clinic, as Jimmy and Henry drag JD's body in. As the sheriff tells Abby to keep Wakefield's diary safe, Jimmy discovers a few pages of it, which have fallen out of JD's pocket. He gives them to Henry.
MEANWHILE. Blah at the inn. Shea's mad at Blond Tool for attempting to leave. Blond Tool reports on JD's death. Trish wonders if that means JD didn't kill Sinister Dad. Dur. Blond Tool and Danny are lured out of the inn by bright headlights and loud music. They're soon held at gunpoint by Shane, who's looking for JD. Why the ruse and gunplay was needed to ask that question is beyond me. Blond Tool has to announce JD's death again. At the clinic, Henry and Abby blah about a bunch of stuff we've all heard before. Then, Henry teleports back to the inn to stop Shane from terrorizing everyone there.
MEANWHILE, Abby shows the diary to Jimmy. He tells her about the missing pages, and despite the fact that she's got all but a few pages (plenty of which escaped the fire), and the fact that she doesn't know what part of the book is relevant (if any), she decides that she must go get the missing pages from Henry right away. What'ere. Back at the inn, Maggie locks all the ways in or out except one set of doors, which won't do much good when characters can teleport at will. Shane continues being a douche. I'm not sure why the others don't kick him out of the inn and let him fend for himself. Abby and Jimmy teleport in to ask for the missing pages of Wakefield's diary, which leads Abby to discover that she may be Wakefield's daughter. Yeah, the audience jumped to that conclusion the second the sheriff mentioned the relationship between Wakefield and Valerie Harper. Nevertheless, the music is asking us to treat this as a huge reveal. All right, then. OH MY FUCKING GOD, ABBY MIGHT BE WAKEFIELD'S KID!
So of course everyone freaks out. Shane is naturally a huge douche about the whole thing, but his main point that Abby's presence is sparking all these murders isn't anything that friendlier voices haven't opined. The main problem is that even if Abby's presence is causing the murders, that doesn't mean she's committing them. Nobody bothers to think about why her being on the island is precipitating death, and it's annoying.
MEANWHILE, Katherine goes to find Shea, who is moping over Madison. Katherine tries to comfort her, and Shea yells at her, because a woman whose husband has been murdered and her daughter kidnapped isn't keen to accept solace from the Other Woman. Jimmy goes to talk to Abby (who's run outside), and she spills the details of her Ave Maria phone calls and the newspaper article taped to her mirror. Jimmy's like "Um, wouldn't this information have been useful before now?" and Abby sighs that she was hoping it was all a sick joke. You'd think the gobs of death since then might have convinced Miss Drama 2009 otherwise, but no. The whole point is that everything that's happening concerns Abby somehow and WE GET IT NOW.
MEANWHILE, seeing Cal help the sheriff has gotten Chloe all horny. They do it. Chloe and Cal, that is. Not Chloe and the sheriff (or Cal and the sheriff - heh). When Jimmy and Abby return to the inn's door, Shane won't let her back in. Henry beats him up, but they still don't kick him out, or tie him up, or lock him in a room somewhere or anything that would MAKE SENSE. Blond Tool, surprisingly, notices something other than himself or his sex doll, and asks where Beth is. She's such a non-entity that I wouldn't be surprised if she were all "I'm right here. I've been standing here the whole time," but no. She's missing. Danny and Blond Tool look around a bit before finding a trail of blood leading into a labyrinthine system of tunnels beneath the inn. Thus starts the search for Beth, which will take approximately seventeen hours. Even though the tunnels aren't hidden especially well, Maggie claims she had no idea they were there, guessing that they were used during Prohibition to funnel booze back and forth. Henry, Danny, Blond Tool, Abby, and Jimmy wind up being the search party. They've managed to lay their hands on powerful flashlights in the past four seconds.
MEANWHILE, back in the lounge, Shane offers consolation and liquor to Trish. She's not really in the mood for either. Especially when Katherine notes Shea's absence. Trish worriedly rushes to Shea's room, where she finds the Tower tarot card. "This is from my bachelorette party," she says. Well, no it isn't, since the creepy brat stole it, remember? In any event, Trish deduces that Shea must be on her way to visit the psychic. She wants to go get her, but Shane and Katherine try to convince her that wandering around outside at night when a killer is loose isn't the best plan. Trish pretends to agree until she has the chance to slip away and steal Shane's truck. There's that Wellington girl spirit! So headstrong! So stupid!
MEANWHILE, in the tunnels, there's some more snapping back and forth about Abby being Wakefield's kid. Blah. At a T-junction, the search party finds that the blood leads in two different directions, and decides to split up, because none of them have seen a mystery or horror movie ever. Danny and Blond Tool head one direction, while Jimmy, Henry, and Abby take the other. Back in the lounge, Shane and Katherine are having a drink and an awkward conversation about her status as a trophy wife (well, her status until the whole cleaver incident). I've got to say, with the very limited material she has to work with, the actress playing Katherine does a really good job. She cares about what's happening, but nobody wants her around, so she's saddened and helpless. Well done, Claudette Mink. She wanders off in disgust when Shane brings up her inheritance, so he starts carving his name in the bar. Maggie catches him, and he makes the probably-apt argument that nobody's ever going to stay at the inn again, anyway.
MEANWHILE, Trish catches up with Shea, who doesn't even turn around as the truck approaches. Lady, it's not going to do your kid much good if you're decapitated. We all applaud your maternal instincts; now stop being such a dumbass. Trish manages to talk Shea into at least joining her in the truck, if not going back to the inn.
Tunnels. Blah blah blah. Both search teams find small crawlspaces that Danny and Abby squeeze themselves into. Both make important discoveries. For Danny, it's Beth's mutilated corpse. Ah, Beth. Non-entity in life, and with a murder that not even the audience gets to witness, non-entity in death. Danny freaks out and crawls backwards back into the main tunnel. For Abby, it's a trap, of sorts. As she passes the midway point of the crawlspace, a gate closes behind her, blocking any backward movement. The guys aren't able to do anything about it, and ask her to stay put while they get some tools. Miss Drama ignores them, of course, and presses on. She finds her way to another big tunnel, and hears someone walking. She hurriedly squeezes herself into another crawlspace, and someone grabs her ankles and pulls. She manages to kick them off, wriggle through the crawlspace to another tunnel, grab her gun, and fire a round off back in the direction of her attacker. As she flees, she spots a door. It enters into a secret room with a bed. And on the bed...Madison. Alive and well.
MEANWHILE, the guys in the tunnels run into each other, and each explains what they've found. Abby leads Madison down the tunnels to a ladder. They begin to climb. Henry and the gang gets back to the lounge, where Shane is done carving his name. He tells them about Trish taking off. Shea and Trish tool down the road, Trish trying to convince Shea that once the sun is up the state police will arrive (I guess tipped off by the boat that already fled Harper's Island?) and they'll find Madison. Abby and Madison reach the top of the ladder, but cannot move the heavy grate on top. They hear the approaching truck, and Abby asks Madison to wave the flashlight as a signal. It's a good plan, but for the part where any plan that requires Madison to be competent is doomed to failure. She drops the flashlight down to the water below. Once the truck passes, Madison sticks her hand up through the grate. It's actually a very cool, creepy shot. By some miracle, Shea spots her in the mirror. Trish stops the truck, and they both rush back to help Madison and Abby.
MEANWHILE, Cal and Chloe have wrapped up their nookie, and Cal goes to check on the sheriff. The sheriff has vanished, along with his oxygen tank. Hmm. Back at the inn, Henry grabs some wire cutters or shears or whatever. Not sure how that's going to get through a thick iron gate, but A for effort. He's distracted by the truck returning. He drops the shears, gets a gun, and rushes out to talk to Trish (and inform her about Beth's death). As the sun rises, everyone gathers outside to hug and reunite. Well, everyone but Shane and Katherine, that is. Shane, because he's an outsider, and Katherine, because she's busy being dead. She's sitting on a wicker couch, and Shane sees pools of blood spreading beneath her lap. He rushes off, horrified, and the camera pans to the back of the couch, where someone has rammed a pair of shears through, into Katherine's back. Yes, shears. Outside, Madison asks Abby if she liked "the game". That would be the Kidnap Madison game, which Madison says was planned by...the sheriff. Dun dun duuuuuuuun!
Next week on Harper's Island: DEATH!
Overall Grade: C+
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