Contributor: Henry T.
Written by Matt Miller
Directed by Alex Zakrzewski
Stories involving the Devil typically delve into the notion that he will make your dreams come true, but at a price. Often, those dreams are nightmares, as we saw last episode with Danielle and her drama over killing all of her suitors. She’s doomed from the start to repeating the same pattern. This episode introduces a twist to that familiar trope. Annie the writer’s dreams do come true and she gains fame from her over-the-top, entirely fictional obituaries, but the cost is that the fiction goes too far and she ends up dead at the hands of her own creation.
What isn’t entirely clear is how everything in this show’s world works. Was it always Gavin’s intention to get Annie killed in the manner that she did? Will this end up being the fate of Henry as he sinks deeper into Gavin’s influence? We just don’t know because the show hasn’t spent enough time setting up what the rules of the world are. The residents of the Drake may yet perish one by one, or nothing will come of it and they will be doomed to live out the life Danielle was experiencing in the previous episode. That lack of clarity needs to be included, otherwise the storylines in each episode amount to nothing. The show then becomes this supernatural anthology of vaguely connected little vignettes, lacking any central driving narrative.
When Annie speaks to Gavin at the beginning of the episode, something is apparently going to come to pass. He encourages her to expand her mind creatively, which she interprets as making up complete fiction as an obituary for “Oscar Diebold” (a really on-the-nose ironic name, if ever there was one) and submitting it to a local paper. Tossing aside the fact that no one at the paper even bothers to fact check anything Annie writes, it’s accepted as lore, then amazingly comes true. No one aside from Annie thinks the sudden change in events is all that strange. That really irked me. The first thing I would have expected Annie to do is to go to Gavin and demand to know what was going on. Instead, everyone moves on as if it were a normal part of life.
Perhaps that’s part of the deal Gavin makes with each of the residents. I’m spitballing here, only because the show is woefully lacking in any sort of coherent explanation for its events. Annie takes things too far, and her indulgences get her killed at the hands of Kandinsky, a Russian assassin who tortures all of his victims to death. Was that part of Gavin’s deal? At this point, the Drake will slowly lose many of its tenants after some time, yet no one seems all that broken up about it. That feeling of dispassionate ignorance about the various goings-on in the Drake spreads to the other storylines as well. It doesn’t fully work, mainly because every character has this look of boredom about them. Brian still tries to resist the urge to cheat on his wife with her hot assistant. The storyline continues to go nowhere, although Henry gets a short peek here at what Brian’s been staring at across the street, and that knowledge could complicate things down the line.
Going back to everything surrounding Gavin and his dealings inside the Drake. What is the point to all of this? We know there is some kind of long-term plan involving Henry and his insertion into high levels of city government. In this episode, Gavin encourages Henry to grow a spine and approach a prominent city politician about a job. Only, Gavin undermines all this when he talks to the city councilman about supporting a pet project in the works at City Hall. When the councilman rejects the project, Gavin pushes him down an elevator shaft without batting an eye. Then he tells Henry to run for a political position instead of staying in a staff position. Was this the intent all along?
Henry doesn’t seem to think it’s strange that Gavin would so readily and suddenly change his pitch. If I were in his place, I’d be wary of anything Gavin is offering or saying. The Dorans might not be the stable, glamorous people both Henry and Jane see in public. The storyline given to Vanessa Williams in this episode (and she hasn’t been given much to do in the series so far) involves mourning for their long-dead daughter. She apparently committed suicide (?) after possibly learning that Gavin is evil (as we do see in the letter Olivia burns) and it hurt Olivia deeply.
Jane tries to help Olivia get through this, but there’s no weight to the storyline because it comes up so suddenly. Also, Jane has other issues in this episode that should be dealt with in a more urgent manner. She keeps going into the room in the basement, even as she sees a creepy little girl and hears this constant tinkling. Jane’s behavior is like that of the attractive blonde who’s always the first victim to die in a horror film. She goes into places no normal person would ever venture into. She takes an old suitcase from the basement room because of the constant tinkling she hears. The girl gives her a warning to not let “him” out. Yet she takes the suitcase back to her place anyway. Perhaps she has been afflicted with the same spell that has come over all of the residents: They just don’t care that all of these ominous, potentially dangerous things are happening to them. If the show had any sense of risk or had stakes to what’s happening onscreen, it would fare much better. For now, everything seems to be at a standstill.
Score: 6/10
