Contributor: Henry T.
Written by David Wilcox
Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill
One of my worries coming out of the pilot episode was that there would be no central narrative to drive the direction of future episodes. Sure, there is Gavin Doran at the center of everything, but he is one character and seems content to stay in the background. Jane is pushed to the forefront — and is probably staying there for some time — and for now, she seems like a pretty bland character.
The show’s second episode somehow focuses on the weaknesses of the pilot episode instead of building on its strengths. It’s clear that if the show continues in this direction, my optimism from the pilot will start to wane. “Murmurations” is a mess, and at worse, it’s a dull, non-frightening mess at that. The series is still a draw, partly because it’s too early with too small a sample size to cast total judgment, but it’s difficult to see where it will consistently go from each episode onward.
The dull feeling I had after watching the episode stems, I think, from the presumable lead storyline. Jane is still researching the history of the Drake, and in doing so, stumbles upon a murder that she sees in her dreams. She also explores John Barlow’s now-empty apartment and has a strange fascination with bringing down certain walls in the Drake. An exterminator finds a “murmuration of starlings” nesting in one of the walls, which gives the episode its title. The group of starlings start out as an ominous warning of bad things to come, then somehow feels less scary as the episode progresses. They are at the center of some psychic vision by Nona, the gypsy-like thief. So far, the rule with her is that she takes an object of someone who enters the Drake, then foresees their death.
It’s effective to a point, although seeing the vision before the exterminator meets his death robs the resulting death scene (yet another unsubtle nod to Hitchcock, this time aping “The Birds”) of any tension. This doesn’t have to be a hard, steadfast rule. Why not have Nona try to stop her visions from coming true? Also, what does that portend for her vision of Jane’s death from the pilot? And are her visions connected in some way to the Drake, or even Gavin Doran? We see here that Doran has made another deal with one of the residents of the Drake.
This time it’s a woman named Danielle, cursed to continually re-live the murder of every one of her male suitors. This doesn’t go anywhere, but I like that part of the deal with the Devil is that the victim is condemned to repeat the same incident (or variations of incidents in Danielle’s case) again and again with no memory of the previous one. I think the show needs to highlight more these deals with Gavin and build the episodes around them instead of making them one part of a mess of subplots.
That much is true with Gavin’s continued interest in Henry. It would seem that Gavin is a prominent real estate developer (who probably operates behind the scenes; the rules of the series still haven’t been clearly spelled out yet) and was testing Henry to see if he would give up insider information. To tell the truth, the subplot is a bit dry. Part of it is that Henry is a blank slate so far as a character, and also if this is the first indication that Gavin wants to take over New York City piece by piece, it’s not all that compelling for a supernatural drama. I must also question why the writers chose to bring the three-way “affair” between Brian, Louise, and the attractive blonde (who is obviously evil, or a very obvious stalker) into focus.
Louise recovers from the injuries she sustained from the elevator-crushing incident in the pilot (I liked that Tony describes it as the elevator “eating” Louise, which was an amusing little piece of throwaway dialogue), and wants to sue Gavin, only to see him pay her off with a lot of money. There just isn’t a sense of tension in their scenes because Louise seems oblivious to anything involving her husband. I’m unsure of where all of this is going, and that adds to the messy feel of this whole episode. This was the most obvious case of repeating the same beats from the subplot in the pilot, a common occurrence in episodes following a pilot.
Something has to happen on this show to grab the viewer’s attention. It has to go beyond a punchless love triangle and what could mysteriously be hidden behind a basement wall of the Drake. The whole building could use a good amount of hauntings, or anything that can quicken the pulse. This episode didn’t do that, and it proved a predictable letdown after a pretty good pilot.
Score: 6/10
