After the ominous ending in the previous episode, we pick up with Tandy desperately fighting to overcome the sedatives being administered by her captors.  This is done through her trying to break free from a series of visions that they induce with each one showing a “what if” scenario.  The episode is incredibly self contained and focuses entirely on Tandy’s efforts to escape.

The episode opens to the same party we saw flashes of in last week’s episode and expands on the event.  We see that they’re celebrating Tyrone becoming a police officer in what appears to be the best version of their lives.  Tandy is a successful dancer and her parents are happy and together.  For Tyrone, his brother is alive and he achieved his dream of becoming a police officer.  Everything is perfect.  But then Tandy’s own perceptions and memories begin to manifest and she gets worried that her father is about to attack her mother.  This is the first major sign that things aren’t exactly as they appear.

Tandy goes outside and when Tyrone tries to find out what’s going on she acts very distant.  They decide to go for a walk to get some more ice for the party and find themselves in a convenience store.  Things quickly escalate when Tandy is approached by a racist guy and when the store clerk notices Tyrone is armed he holds them both at gunpoint.  This sequence is a bit jarring and both the racist characters appear to be overly extreme and cliched.  Of course the entire sequence isn’t real and is a figment of Tandy’s imagination so perhaps they were created that way by Tandy’s subconscious in order to prompt her to fight back and create a dagger.  Especially since this is what causes the visions to change into a different “what if” scenario.  However, it just came across as lazy storytelling and could have been executed much better.

In contrast to her previous vision of everything being perfect, Tandy then finds herself in what seems to be a middle of the road version of her life.  Things are okay, she has a job and her parents are alive, but she’s unhappy with how her life has turned out.  She’s (understandably) not very passionate about working for Roxxon.  For Tyrone, his brother is alive but he feels like his potential is being wasted by working on the oil rig.  We also see another clue that what’s happening isn’t real when Tandy sees an incredibly out of place ambulance door.  Similar to what happened in the previous vision, things start going down hill and the rig goes into a melt down.  Once everything starst going haywire, Tandy and Tyrone touch causing their powers to manifest.

We then see the third vision where Tandy is living what appears to be her worst life.  She’s on the street trying to trick people into signing her petition so that she can steal money to get drugs.  She encounters her ex-boyfriend Liam and steals his wallet after getting him to sign the petition.  A chase with the cops ensues and in order to escape she climbs into a car that Tyrone was in the process of stealing.  Tandy soon discovers that things aren’t normal when she realizes she knows Mikayla and Tyrone’s name even though they never introduced themselves.  Tandy starts freaking out a bit because she’s so confused about what’s going on and causes them to get into a car crash ending the vision.

Tandy then wakes up in the record store from episode 4 and discovers that Andre Deschaine is the one keeping her captive.  He explains that he was about to commit suicide the night the Roxxon rig exploded and whatever happened to him that night subdued his depression for a little while.  So it seems that the records in the store are a collection of “despair” from the abducted women which he implies is helping him mentally.  Andre tries to justify his actions saying, “90% of the time the people that come my way I help.  Give them counseling, choices, shelter.  But the other 10% can’t be helped.  So they help me.”  But Tandy doesn’t buy it.  She holds a dagger to his throat and smashes the record player launching her into the final, and perhaps most interesting vision.

Tandy appears to wake up in the ambulance and escapes from Andre and Lia.  She works with Tyrone and the two of them end up confronting Andre as he’s about to escape.  During the confrontation Andre shoots Tyrone and he bleeds out in Tandy’s arms.  This particular vision is fascinating because it’s the only one we as the audience buy into.  The previous three are all clearly fake and we know aren’t actually happening.  But this vision is framed in such a way that we think it might be real. By the end of the episode it’s made clear that Tandy is still their captive and we’re left with the ominous image of Tandy holding Tyrone’s body surrounded by darkness.  Andre and Lia also seem very confident that they’ve successfully subdued Tandy’s abilities, but I guess we’ll find out how well they did next week.

VERDICT

3 bags of ice out of 5.  

This episode was the closest to “filler” that we’ve gotten this season.  It focuses on the battle of wills between Tandy and Andre, but it wasn’t executed in the most compelling way.  We know that each vision isn’t really happening so it’s hard to get invested in what’s going on.  The last scenario however is much more compelling because it was potentially really happening.  It would have been nice if all the visions were more unpredictable and we didn’t know what was real and what was fake.  The episode leaned heavily on the “what if” scenarios to explore what Tandy and Tyrone’s lives could have been if things were changed the night of the accident.  While that might be interesting in theory, it didn’t really work in practice.  So by the end of the episode the only thing that’s actually happened is Tandy knows Andre is not who he appears to be.

ONE-SHOTS

  • Mina is such a sweet person, I didn’t like seeing her be such a mean boss. Although it seemed like she suspected Tandy of being a Roxxon spy so I understand why she was so protective of her work.
  • Andre seems to have some ability to create these visions so it’ll be interesting to find out if he has any other special abilities like Tandy and Tyrone.
  • I’m really interested to delve deeper into Andre’s character.  What’s truly motivating him and is there another reason why he’s abducting these women?
  • When we got flashes of Andre in the visions throughout the episode he reminded me a lot of DC’s character The Question with the white mask, hat, and coat.