2.5 - Z is for Zombies
Written by Patricia Ione Lloyd
Directed by Nelson McCormick
Reviewed by KarhM
Gambling priests, Internet ads, and zombies both real and imagined make an appearance in this Zombie episode.
When Lila and her neighbor/BFF Alex are watching a zombie movie online (so happy to see Lila interacting with other kids besides her sisters!) and cirtiquing all of the other Zombies they’ve seen, they hear a noise outside. Looking out of their windows they see a large, slow-moving creature lumbering along in their alley. Out they run, Flashlights and the odd garden tool in hand, to seek out the monster, but Kristen and the other girls come upon them and send them inside. They, in the way of many children of 7-12, decided to persevere.
Turns out the “Zombie '' in question was Alex’s father, who works in the warehouse at a place called CongoRun, which delivers everything and as quickly as possible. The warehouse employees are monitored closely by managers watching them and shouting corrections and warnings as necessary. You have to move fast, take very few breaks (which are scheduled and short), and don’t stop for even one moment to speak to a colleague even if it’s work-related. Alex’s dad comes home exhausted and in pain from having to work so fast with little or no relief. The girls research further before they decide to seek more advice about “freeing” the zombies from what looks like a voodoo shop.
One source Lila uses is Kristen. Lila and her cuddle on Kristen’s bed to have a little conversation about monsters. It wasn’t very deep, but pretty convincing for a kid obsessed with zombie movies and tells everyone at school that mom is a “vampire slayer”. I was surprised to see her ask about Orson LeRoux, because I didn’t know how much the girls knew about him and his situation. Not surprised that Kristen isn’t sure what to do about LeRoux. I mean, what can you say? “He was evil, he could not be helped, he threatened all of you so I killed him.”
Loved the voodoo shop scene. The store owner seems to have heard of CongoRun before, and didn’t talk down to the girls or dismiss them. As she mixes two potions for Lila and Alex she tells them about zombie’s origins in Haiti, when slaves were worked to death, when the owners “created a way that even in death they would keep in a state between life and deeath so they could keep working”. She gives the girls two vials: one for the zombie (Alex’s father) and one for the “slavedriver”, who they’ll recognize when they see them. The potions need to be ingested, so Alexs dumps her dad’s into his dinner and he wakes up the next morning relaxed and pain free. He ends up being late for work, and as a result is the only person on his team who wasn’t injueied in a warehouse accident.
Alex’s father gets a group of people from work to talk about unionizing, but are intrrupted by their boss, Mr. Hamlin. The girls recognize a slavedriver when they see one, and lace his with the potion the woman had given them.
The next morning two CongoRun exes come by Alex’s home to tell her father that Mr. Hamlin showed up drunk at work and was fired. Would he like the job? It pays ten times what he’s earning now. He and wife look at each other and ask for some time to think it over, but it’s an offer he knows he can’t refuse. So instead of continuing to work with his peers at the warehouse and help form a union that would help all of the workers, he now watches his old co-workers on a laptop camera he can use from home to watch his employees and follow the rules, correcting them via a microphone like an absent god. As the girls leave for school, Alex tells Lila that they may have made a mistake. By trying to save her father from the monsters, he has become one himself.
Over at the Rectory, Father Mulvehill is having some problems himself. While teaching a class David notices that the Padre has a large, bloody slash across his back. He has no idea how it happened or when he got it. David thinks they should profile Mulvehill for possible demon interference, which I think is really overreacting but that happens a lot at the Diocese. After talking to him Kristen thinks he’s manic, David thinks he’s having a crisis of faith, and Ben thinks they’re all thinking too hard. Ben wins! He looks through Mulvehill’s computer and finds that, in this case, marketing is the devil. I could have told him that. Mulvehill has a gambling problem, he told Kristen, but he hasn’t had a slip in decades. He can’t figure out what’s happening, but Ben knows: Because Mulvehill was gambling online. So, the computer sent him those delightful pop-up ads yearning to be clicked that lead you into yet another site. Like when you look at that weird outfit once and then the computer remembers it forever and sends you whatever it thinks might go with that dress forever.
Ben offers to get all of the cookies removed from the computer which should, in theory, solve the “temptation” issue Mulvehill is having. While Mulvehill is out of the room Ben notices that he has deleted all of his emails. Bcause he’s Ben, he’s able to grab the last one right up and find something that looks like an email from someone Mulvehill may owe money to. Ben sneaks around and finds out that the Exorcist owes $40,000 in gambling debts, and isn’t able to pay it back, which explains why he’s getting beaten up by enforcers in alleyways. Who is going to save him? One word: Leland.
David was, and often is, right about Leland. Somehow the Little Demon Who Could found out about Mulvehill’s vice and gave it wings again. And as long as he puts on a good “show” at his exorcism, Leland tells Mulvehill, he’ll pay off the priest’s debt. That explains a lot.
As usual, Leland’s One-Man/One-DemonOne-/Whatever Exorcism Show tries to steal the episode, but this time he’s easily overshadowed by Sister Andea and Lila and Alex’s monster parable. With David, Kristen, and Sister Andrea looking on, Father Mulvehill tries to bring $40,000 worth of Exorcism to the table while Leland rolls around and giggles like a schoolgirl. Whatever, Leland, you’re melting. I’ll wipe up the goo. It’s getting boring, Leland. Show me something new.
Mulvehill drops out of the fight, exhausted, and Sister Andrea steps forward and steals the show again. I am not remotely tired of her. As she legitimately tries to exorcize Leland, who tries to weaken her with verbal abuse and stories about her backgroud, she throws some “holy water” on him with burns. Yes, Leland has been burned! Yay! He runs into the bathroom to see whether running cold water will help. Yeah, no. I think something very bad is in store for Sister Andrea.
I like watching Sister Andrea with David. She says a lot without saying much, and David tries to understand her better. She seems to know so much and wants to share it, but instead of just telling him things straight out she tells him to think, to seek.
Sister Andrea pushes David so much because, as a woman in the Catholic Church, she is essentially helpless. She can’t become a priest or an exorcist, and I don’t think her extensive knowledge of history and languages has a daily useful outlet. When she tells David that she prays all day and cleans the kitchen because she’s a woman in the Catholic Church. That may be how the church as a whole sees her, but the rest of us know all about her fabulousness.
Note: Mulvehill totally seems like the type who would rough up his Exorcst kit to heighten the overall drama of his role.
2.6 - C is for Cop
Written by Robert King, Michelle King, Aurin Squire
Directed by Ron Underwood
reviewed by KathM
It seems that a “good” cop accidentally shot a black woman who he thought had a gun at a traffic stop. Oh, dear. Who you gonna call? Your lawyer? Your Unioh Rep? Well, if your union has enough money, I’d stick with them. Because who else has the kind of cash to spend on the Catholic Church? Because yes, if you do have enough cash to toss around then you, too, can “hire” Bishop Marx to have David, Ben, and Kristen evaluate Officer Turley for demonic interference. No, really.
This episode could have been so good, or at least more interesting, if they had stuck to one or more primary topics. That’s when the show is at its most interesting. Instead this week we get a half-assed story that promises the potential for secret societies and racial descrimination and Ben and David being obviously put in the “they” (POC) category while Kristen in the “one of us”vcategory. The girls go to school with Turney’s kids, and he looks so relieved when he realizes that they “know” each other. A racist-but-couches-it-with-humor televisision producer puts his arm around Kristren and says that “they” need to stick together while sizing up David and Ben. Throughout the episode Ben gives Kristen little digs when she says that she’s never gotten pulled over for a traffic stop, for example. She’s a great friend, but a white woman who has very few, if any, friends of color outside of color aside from Ben and David. At the end of the storyline the Grand Jury finds Turley not guilty and Marx sets the stage for the silent episode, which will air when the show returns from hiatus in about a month. Should 13-episode shows take a hiatus?
The rest of this week’s tale gives us tidbits of stories that might grow up to be storylines: Ben seems to be haunted with guilt over being part of a project to try and modify the DNA of children before they were born. Unfortunately, it made the participants deforned and sick (this could be the baby that Ben hinted about last season). I wonder where the test subjects are from?
Kristen tries to make sure that Lexis remembers that she came to tuck her in the night LeRoux was killed. Lexis said she would, despite not remembering it that way. But she’ll tell them what Kristen wants.;
While Lexis is talking to Sheryl about her conversation with Kristen, her grandmother tells Lexis that Kristen would want her to tell the police the truth. Oh, and Sheryl has a friend Lexis should meet that will make everything okay;
Eddie, y’all! Sheryl has aquired an Evil-appropriate doll called Eddie, who she sets between two lighted candles and asks for intecession with an offering. This time Sheryl hopes that a dollar will prompt Eddie to bring Lexis “clarity”, which I interpret as making Kristen’s lie a truth in Lexis’s mind. Like any rational (?) child, Lexis runs like hell.
We also seem to have put an end to the LeRoux storyline, which circles back to the race storyline at the beginning. Kristen sees something outside and when she looks out, she sees a man in the yard. She calls Mira because she’s terrified, then takes one of the climbing picks she uses for climbing, then and starts stalking around the yard and comes face to face with the very dead corpse of Orson LeRoux, who reviews his own murder and asks Kristen what her favorite part was. He likes listening to their last breath, for example. Furious, Kristen beats Imaginary!LeRoux with her murder weapon, screaming the whole time. When Mira and her partner turn up Kristen loses it and begins hysterically confessing to LeRoux’s murder. When Mira’s partner notices Kristsen’s climbing equiptment and starts trying to match it to the murder weapon, Mira sends her away. She tries to calm Kristen down and tells her that she got her boss to close the LeRoux case because there are possibly hundreds of people who could have killed him. Kristen is safe, and Mira didn’t hear a thing, confession-wise. "You're a good person.” Mira tells her. ”You're a nice white suburban mom with four sweet kids in Catholic school. And you have a cop for a friend.” she adds slyly.
So it seems that the LeRoux saga has ended, unless he wants to hang around to pester Kristen from time to time. No worries about the police call, Mira assures her. Just say you saw a black guy in your backyard and he scared you.
