Before "His Deeds Were Scattered", Quarry was a beautifully shot but inconsistent drama, caught between introspective character study and hard-boiled crime drama. The show felt like a collection of interesting storylines that didn't necessarily fit together, and only truly thrived when it completely removed two of its characters from the narrative, as seen in its stunning fourth episode. This led me to wonder whether or not Quarry could function as a TV show long-term. Are its characters strong enough? Is its world interesting enough?
For me, "His Deeds Were Scattered" answered those questions, completely assuaging my fears for the show. For the first time, I was simply immersed in an episode of the show, and wasn't thinking about the show from a critical standpoint (something that, as someone who writes about TV, is hard for me to do). Looking back on the episode, I realise that it brought together everything the show has been building thus far into one really solid hour, every aspect of the show working together in harmony.
It didn't hit me until now just how much world-building the show has done so far, but this episode showed off just how deep Quarry's bench has become in just six episodes. The episode's main plot, with Mac being assigned to kill Eugene Linwood i.e the guy who attacked the school bus and beat up the kid with a crowbar, was great, but most of this episode's best moments didn't involve Mac at all.
Of course, almost everything in the episode was linked to the school bus attack from last week, as the show continued to put the increased racial tensions in Memphis under the spotlight. Race relations permeate almost every moment in this episode, including the conversation between Buddy and his mother during bingo night (by the way, how great was it to see Buddy and his mother back after being MIA for two straight episodes?).
This episode also gave far more screentime to Moses, the musician The Broker hired to follow Ruth, than any episode before, and despite the character's seeming lack of development up to this point, he was still able to comfortably carry large portions of this episode, as a city-wide curfew enforced in the wake of Linwood's release forces him to stay at the Solomons' house for a few hours. It's a testament to the series' brilliant world-building that a heavy portion of an episode can easily hinge on characters we haven't spent a lot of time with up until now.
The racial tensions in this episode felt especially relevant to today, as cops were only willing to enforce the curfew in black neighbourhoods. When the cops got out of their car when they saw Marcus playing basketball after the curfew, it sent a shiver up my spine, as I immediately thought of Tamir Rice and similar shootings. Quarry doesn't seem at all reluctant to push some buttons, using this episode to show how some things haven't changed much in the last forty years.
The Mac material in the episode was solid, with his eventual confrontation with Linwood unsurprisingly resulting in a tense sequence, as Mac stops him from placing a bomb on a school bus. But, as I said, most of this episode's best material happened in the periphery, as Quarry got the chance to play around with its ever-growing ensemble. We got to see a little more of The Broker's operation, including another brief appearance of the heavily bearded man, who seems to be the one who prepares the bags. And the episode's end provided a rare glimpse into the human side of The Broker when we learn that nobody hired him to have Linwood killed, and that he took it upon himself to do what he felt was right. As of this episode, the universe of Quarry feels alive and lived in, and I can't wait to see more.
Grade: A-
