The populace of Horseshoe Bay are having weird dreams/nightmares that feature a creature called The Demon of Piper Beach. Barring the ability to destroy the demon the Indigenous population of the area created dreamcatchers to protect themselves.
Later, apparently, when the populace of Horseshoe Bay found themselves being attacked by the demon, they borrowed the solution from the Indigenous People and had every household collect sand from Piper Beach to protect themselves. This was done every year, until the season premiere when a dead body led to the cancellation of the carnival.
It’s a nice change of pace that the mysterious things that happen in Horseshoe Bay have always happened. When the show first started, I wondered if they were going have Nancy be responsible for the ghosts and demons plaguing the town.
I kind of like the idea that these enemies are not new and that Nancy, George, Nick, Bess and Ace are the new generation protecting the town.
The demon has been attacking and growing stronger since there are no dreamcatchers around town to keep it out of people’s dreams.
One touch that I wish they’d added would have been to include mention of people being seriously hurt by the demon in the media postings Nancy was reading.
I kept waiting for the dreams themselves to creep me out, but they never did.
In terms of how dreams work, they were successful. Nancy was trying to figure out what Trott’s last words meant. Nick was stressing about the success of his youth center and Ace is worried about how responsible he is for what Bertram Bobbsey was doing while he was playing chauffeur.
What did creep me out were those suicide moments. The creepiest of which was George and Nick standing in that tub holding electrical devices.
What I am wondering though, is how Ace was able to dream about what happened in that warehouse. He never went in there. He didn’t know what happened in there. Was his subconscious jumping to conclusions based on the injuries on Bertram’s hand when he got into the car?
Regardless, Ace’s worry dream was a nice way to move that story forward while focusing on the MOW.
The only problem I had with the main monster of the week story was that it was unable to maintain its tension throughout the episode.
Some of the Bess scenes were too light for me to remain as invested in the episode as I was when George pulled that plug out of the wall.
For example, the final fight sequence when Bess gets to be the hero. She never seemed to take that fight seriously. Bess was so certain she was going to win that the scene felt unimportant.
This epic fight to destroy a creature that’s been plaguing Horseshoe Bay for centuries was simply too easy and consequently, not very interesting.
But it’s difficult to fault them for not taking her that seriously. The writers have cast her as the buffoon so frequently that I tend to dismiss her as well.
It is good that Bess is permanently replacing Hannah. It gives her a more crucial place on the team than social media guru. I don’t have a problem with that.
This episode actually moved along quite a few of their stories. Ace is finally about to learn the hard way that Bess was right about Bertram. Carson is dating and Ryan has a job!
I loved watching Ryan with the kids. I think it will do him some good. As much as I have enjoyed watching him play My Two Dads with Carson it was a lot of fun watching him with the kids at the youth center.
Did anyone else wonder why it took so long for Nancy, and the authorities, to realize there was more than one killer? I thought that was the whole point of having the coroner point out the difference in the wounds. My thought is that one of the victims (the one in the corn maze) was killed supernaturally. That wound seemed too clean.
George was contacted by “The Sperm Donor”. I like Osric Chau. He generally brings a unique quality to his work. Unfortunately, he just doesn’t read as old enough to be George’s father. The visible age similarity was so close that it pulled me out of the scene. I thought she was visiting a step-brother and wondered if this was the first step of George’s search for her father. It’s not a big deal in the scheme of things but it distracted me.
The episode was a great deal of fun, but I do believe that if Bess had gone into that final dream battle worried about surviving (or at least aware that she might not survive), it could have been better.
What did you think about the episode?
