"Please don't give up on me."
Part IV
Most of the episode this week focused on Cora trying to regain her memories, so I'll get to that in a little bit, but first let me get some thing out of the way. In our weekly creepy flashbacks, we see a little more of Cora's relationship with Phoebe and, luckily, nothing about the mother, we see the sisters watching porn and the little weirdo telling her she wants to watch Cora with boys, scolding her for not taking advantage of the privilege of being able to go have a life, and so Cora complies, she starts getting intimate with the boy living across the street, and then telling her sister every little detail. There's also a moment when they see their father go to the neighbor's house late at night, Cora tries to stop him from cheating, but he completely ignores her, there's not a lot more to it yet but I'm guessing we'll see more about it later.
Caitlin, Mason's cop "friend", continues to show up here and there, which probably means she'll have a part to play in how everything unfolds. For now, we find out she has a thing for Mason and they slept together at some point, though it's unclear if they cheated or if it was before Cora. When Mason is interrogated about how he knew things about the case he shouldn't, she comes clean to Harry who's understanding but tells her to keep him in check, which she's unable to do. Mason goes to JD's girlfriend to buy drugs and records it with his phone, we get that he's trying to help but he seems dumb in general, when he tries to give it as proof to Caitlin she says it's useless and calls him out on using people, I don't think many liked Mason before, but it's looking more and more like he's worse than we thought. He also tries to make Cora distrust Ambrose, which would make sense in any other case, but not in this one, so: shut up Mason, you do nothing but mess things up.
Cora finally admits she was with on JD the fourth of July weekend, not Frankie, and she had sex with someone before everything went blank for two months, though she's not sure who it was. So Harry goes to the psychologist to help recover her memories, but the woman says sometimes what they recover is not true, and that she could get re-traumatized, but he's insistent and they give it a shot anyways. It's some sort of guided meditation, which makes for some beautiful imagery, even if some of the images are allegoric. Cora remembers being unable to move stuck in a swamp, abandoned by a bus as a child, she remembers Maddie, the blonde girl we've seen before, and it looks like they both have some sort of plan for her.
As expected, the cops take the opportunity to talk to JD but we don't find out much from him other than he apparently suffers from Lyme disease and has a good lawyer. There's a moment when we see him and Cora together, but it's not clear if it's a flashback or something else. The good thing is, they start an investigation on him and between some of Cora's memories, and other witnesses, we find out a little more about him. It turns out, he and his girlfriend, Maddie, were polyamorous but had some sort of manipulative relationship, and pretty much every clue seems to point at JD killing her on the same weekend Cora went missing.
The images Cora recalls could be too confusing but Ambrose starts to piece a lot of things together. He asks to sit in on her next session and she tells him, if she's going to be so vulnerable in front of him, he at least has to tell her why he cares so much. He says he relates to her, to that swamp and being stuck, but I'm pretty sure there's more to it than he wanted to admit in front of the psychologist. She finally agrees and lets the memories swallow her once again, but when things start to get dark, and she starts listening to the song while going to the basement of that house, she wants to stop. Harry urges her to push on ignoring the therapist's advice and Cora stays under a little longer, enough to see the guy with the mask, the wallpaper, and someone crushing Maddie's chest with his foot, just like we saw in that nightmare, except this time it wasn't her. After that, there's a nice small moment when Cora asks Harry not to give up on her, realizing he's the only one who's truly on her side and the only one who's helping her figure out what happened.
The little details, like Cora seeing a water tower and knowing how much gas JD had, help Ambrose narrow down the search, he finds nothing at first, but the next time he goes, he finds an abandoned school bus, and next to it, what turns out to be a grave (presumably Maddie's?), which is a pretty cool moment after trying to decipher what the bus meant to Cora. Things keep getting more and more interesting and we're only halfway through, so I look forward to finding out what other secrets this show has for us to discover. Are you?
So, what did you guys think of the episode? Do you think the man in the mask is someone we know? I look forward to reading your thoughts.
