The Path - The Father and the Son - Review

While the first two episodes of this season of The Path have delved more into the process of actually running the movement, this week's episode took a different, more ground-level approach, as well as focusing a bit more on characters that have so far this season have been a little under-served, including Eddie, Abe, and Mary.

This approach is perhaps most effective in Eddie's story line this week, which begins after Hawk tells him he can no longer see him, given that Eddie is a denier. Eddie lost most of what he knew when he renounced his faith, and now he sees himself losing his son. His fear is only exacerbated by Cal's desire to fill the role of a father figure for Hawk. In Eddie's mind, Cal is taking everything he has lost.

But Eddie of course is looking at all this from the outside, and doesn't have the full picture regarding the increasingly fraught and complex nature of Cal's position both in relation to Sarah and the movement. But while the season's first two episodes placed viewers in Cal's head-space, it's now time to put viewers in Eddie's. After confronting Cal, he leaves to see Chloe at a casino, but suspects that he's being followed (I love that everyone in the movement drives a Prius, thereby tipping Eddie off). His paranoia results in some erratic behavior in front of Chloe, but is proven in the end to be justified.

What made this aspect of the episode was the decision to not show Cal ordering someone to follow Eddie, though that's obviously what occurred. While The Path has endeavored recently to emphasize the positive impact made by Meyerism and the movement's noble efforts, by removing the viewers completely from Cal's perspective here, the show pronounced the movement's more insidious, cult-ish tendencies.

The episodes's material for Abe and Mary was a little less successful. Starting with Abe, this episode was the first time this season the show re-addressed his obsession with the Meyerist movement. But for me, the show has often come up short in conveying the reasons for Abe's obsession. It would make sense if he had become attracted to the movements teachings, but while he's clearly getting something useful out of it all, that doesn't seem to be entirely the case. Is it just a simple mid-life crisis? or is it something more? I'm not entirely sure, and I'm not sure whether or not the show wants me to feel that way.

But while Abe has sometimes been a difficult character to grab onto, Mary has always been that, though perhaps more intentionally on the show's part. The writing and performance for the character have always been somewhat distant, keeping viewers merely as observers instead of invested participants. But while there was something tragic and eerie about that in the first season, the show seems to be taking a more intimate approach to the writing of Mary this season, and I'm not sure if it's working. This is likely due to the fact that her and Sean, two characters that aren't particularly well defined, are isolated in their own subplot. Mary was used in season one mainly to establish mood and theme, but I'm not sure if the show laid enough groundwork there to make her a compelling character outside of that.

Returning to a more positive note, the episode's Sarah material was once again excellent. While I've been a bit unsure of Hawk as a character so far this season (right now he's reminding me a little too much of TV's typically terrible angst-riddled teenage subplots), but it led to some good Sarah material, as she and Hawk had to apologize to the woman who's window Hawk broke back in the premiere. This woman in turn blackmails Sarah into not having the water in Clarksville tested (by the way, the whole Clarksville business this season seems like too unsubtle a parallel with real-life events). But despite both this and the incredible cost of the tests, Sarah is determined to go through with it. Sarah has lost a great deal recently, and this gives her a cause she can latch onto, as everything else around her seems to be changing.

This episode was not without some other important plot-advancement, as Richard discovered that it was Cal who actually wrote the last three rungs of the ladder. Bringing Kodiak into it, they both suspect that it was Cal who killed Dr Meyer. And, in a bizarre, hauntingly shot ritual, they attempt to contact Meyer, asking him if he's truly one with the light, and Kodiak reports what he heard: "there is no light". The show is playing a long game with these two characters and with the inter-politics of the movement, and this episode featured some intriguing set-up.

And finally, to address the ending of last week's episode, in which Hawk seemed to float in mid-air. It's mentioned several times in this episode, as Hawk insists that it actually happened. But the show's depiction of the event leaves room to doubt that, given that Hawk had gone, as Eddie said, 36 hours without food. The show is clearly going somewhere on the supernatural side of things, but its destination is still very unclear.

Grade: B-