Stitchers - When Darkness Falls - Review: Happy Halloween

The Halloween special starts, appropriately, with a howling wolf, sudden darkness, a hungry zombie and Camille’s attempts to scare Kirsten. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and this episode turned out to be a really fun hour and a great Halloween gift to the fans.

Camille seems really disappointed that she’s unable to scare Kirsten. Kirsten seems mildly annoyed that Camille is forcing her to endure Halloween decorations and pranks. Personally, I don’t think either woman really means it. I think they’ve hit a point in their relationship where this is the fun of it all. Kirsten mentions that she’s never been invited to Camille’s yearly party before. Camille simply states she didn’t like her before.

I feel the need to take a moment and mention how much I love Zed, the crawling zombie robot. That thing is awesome. I want one but I’m scared to find out how much they cost.

Other elements used to warm us up to the Halloween theme included: Cameron and Linus’ trial costumes. (The less said about Linus’ cow costume the better. Did everyone catch the statement that the udders work? Yeep. Luckily we did not see that costume again. ), and Cameron’s rant about Candy Corn (my favorite Halloween Candy).

The sample for this episode’s Stitch is a college student named Devon who hanged himself. They believe that he may have kidnapped (and/or killed) a young woman named Kelli. They need to find out if Devon is guilty, if the young woman is still alive, and where she is.

The Stitch gets off to a pretty standard (except for Tim standing at the engineering station with a hamburger) start. Kirsten sees Devon, at a restaurant, attempting to speak to Kelli. It’s apparent that he has a crush on her. Unfortunately, he is painfully shy. He does get up the nerve to comment on a test they both took (they’re in the same class) but he literally can’t think of anything else to say. Kelli was really nice. She agreed with him about the tests and seemed willing to converse with Devon, but the poor guy panics. He pays for his meal and dashes off.

I was ready to declare Devon innocent and was waiting to mentally catalogue the clues that would prove it when Kirsten bounces to him standing next to a dead body with a bloody bone saw in his hand. Great image. Before Kirsten can find out if it is Kelli is under the cloth, she’s bounced to a room where Devon talks to himself in a mirror. Devon tells himself he needs to stop. Another bounce and Kirsten finds herself watching Kelli being kidnapped by Devon. Kirsten was prepared to find out where Devon took Kelli until Devon looks her in the eye and declares “Don’t you try and stop me.” She immediately bounces out of the Stitch.

Cameron believes Kirsten had a Phantasmic Memory Anomoly.

They start their investigation at Devon’s house. To the rest of us it’s Devon’s house. To Camille it is a potential Halloween Party location. Cameron chastises her for her completely dismissing their main goal; saving a missing woman. I was a nice touch to have someone mention Kelli. I thought was a nice maintain the balance between the humor of the episode and the very serious story thread.

Kirsten sees a curtain move and charges in to find out who is actually in the house. Cameron, of course, follows her. My theory is that Cameron likes to believe he can stop Kirsten from doing stupid/dangerous things. We’ve only seen this work once but who can blame him for thinking it might work again. This remains one of my favorite aspects of Cameron’s character. He may be completely freaked out but he’s going to have Kirsten’s back.

Kirsten doesn’t find anyone, but she can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched. I figured out the big mystery of the episode before the Stitch was over, so I wasn’t surprised to hear the watcher breathing. Creeped out yes, but not surprised.

Then the real Halloween fun began. (The eye-d'oeuvres looked yummy.) Camille and Linus head out for party decorations leaving Kirsten alone in the house in the middle of a storm. (It’s the kind of storm Los Angeles only gets in a really good Halloween show.) A mysterious noise outside causes her to look out the window where a flash of lightening revels Devon’s ghost! She grabs a fireplace poker and charges to the front porch to check it out. I kept expecting Devon to slip inside the open door and be waiting for her when she got back in bed thinking all was well. If he has snuck into her house she didn’t give him much of a chance to do anything because she, wisely, headed straight for Cameron’s apartment.

Kirsten wakes Cameron to tell him about Devon at her window and get some chocolate hazelnut spread to calm her nerves. She thinks the whole idea of a ghost is just as ridiculous as Cameron does so there’s no teasing or anything that predictable. I love that their friendship has grown to the point that she kicks him out of his bed without question, thought, or apology. Cameron doesn’t argue. He just grabs a blanket and settles in on the couch. Only really good friends or family get away with that.

We’re immediately dropped into a pretty gnarly nightmare. I don’t blame Kirsten at all for checking out her surroundings before being able to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, she sees a shadow under the hallway door. When she checks the peep hole she sees Devon again. The woman who is never scared is completely freaked out. Kirsten has always been a smart woman.

Kirsten shakes Cameron from his peaceful dreams. He opens his eyes to a large kitchen knife wielded by Kirsten in his face. It is not a pleasant way to wake up. He does calm her down and convinces her to go back to sleep. Kirsten asks Cameron to stay with her the rest of the night. Seems to have worked well because the next morning she’s sleeping soundly.

Fisher wakes them the next morning with news that Devon worked in the cadaver lab at his school. The Halloween creeps continue as Kirsten digs a cellphone out of the body on the table. Kirsten digs it out because both Fisher and Cameron are too squeamish to do it themselves. The cellphone has a picture of Devon and Kelli on it. Camille studies the image and determines that they only have 124 minutes to find Kelli before she dies from Carbon Dioxide poisoning.

Kirsten whips out that cool time calculation thing she does and determines that the potential geographical area Kelli could be in is too large to search in the time they have. They decide to Stitch. Maggie is worried that the Stitch may be too much for Kirsten given that she saw a dead man twice the previous night. Given the questions about Maggie’s motives that were raised at the end of the first season I was pleased to have an indication that she does really care about the team.

They find Kelli in the basement and send her to the hospital.

Which means it’s time to party! The party is a hit, until Kirsten discovers “an Evil Twin upstairs in a secret room.” Kirsten kicked him in the face! Since the show began I have wondered how well the woman who constantly runs toward danger would handle herself when she finally found it. She did really well. She won both confrontations with the evil twin. She one the first by kicking him in the face and the second by being smarter.

I figured out the Evil Twin angle in the first Stitch, but that did not diminish my enjoyment of the episode in the least. It was incredibly fun. The scares hit all the right notes with me. The little nods to horror movies (Cameron calling Kirsten ‘Jason’ when she was wielding the knife) were a nice touch. That nightmare Stitch was really freaky. They also managed to give me moments where I was not sure about what was happening. That’s a tough thing to do for me. When Kirsten saw her “ghost” in the peep hole I wasn’t sure whether Kirsten was awake or still dreaming. The episode was a great Halloween gift to the fans. Did you guys enjoy this holiday installment as much as I did?

About the Author - Prpleight

Prpleight is a screenwriter and senior software engineer with solid geek cred. When not writing code, screenplays, or watching TV (sometimes she does all three at the same time), she uses her broadsword Bessie to battle evil. She's been a frequent contributor to the SpoilerTV discussion boards for several years now.

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