3.05 - The Angel of WarningWritten by Robert King, Michelle King, and Rockne S. O’Bannon
Directed by Matthew Kregor
Reviewed by KathM
One of the episodes' mysteries was about a building fire that David attends as spiritual support. Note to our favorite cleric: carry white sticky notes with you because you never know when you might need them. A colossal apartment fire has left over one hundred people dead, and while helping survivors, he finds three of them claiming that they were saved by an a "glowing" woman carrying a lamb who led them out of the building. Um, okay.
While the losses sadden the Monsignor, he is also super excited because he thinks the woman might be Sister Mary Grimonde, who reportedly healed someone in the 1950s. The church is looking to beatify her and wants David, Kristen, and Ben to talk to the three survivors and get more information about the woman with the lamb. All three people tell essentially the same story and draw what seems to be the same picture of who they saw. However, one survivor says she received a phone call from someone who whispered, “get out,” just before the fire.
That night, all is not well at Chez Bouchard. The girls are scared that a train running above the house will collapse on them (precipitated by the building fire), and Kristen hears a voice telling her to “watch out”. Kristen wants the girls to face their fears, so they all go outside and throw things at a train screaming at the tracks above them until they feel better and troop loudly upstairs to bed. Kristen takes a baseball bat along with her, too, because you just never know.
When she mentions the voice to Sheryl in the morning, she brushes it off by telling Kristen that she used to hear the voice quite a lot when she and her father were divorcing.
David, who had a vision of the lamb angel woman who screams at him to “run!” is surprised to find that one of the tenants, Jessica, describes the angel she saw as black. The Monsignor doesn’t care because Sister Mary G is white and isn’t interested in talking about a black angel. He seems mighty uncomfortable with the idea of a black angel, frankly. Racism? Perhaps. I used to ask why everyone in "church pictures" was white when I thought that lots of them were from places with brown people, like Egypt. That didn't go well, either, David. The next time the angel appears to him, she’s black.
To get more information from Jessica, Ben hypnotizes her. No surprise! It turns out that Jess used to work for Leland, and she has a message for David: “Don’t trust her. Don’t trust your sister.” She was a plant, never spent time in the apartment, and tells the trio that “their team” is losing, which is why there is so much darkness and anger in the world. I'm not sure she's wrong, sometimes.
WHERE ARE THE NUNS?? I thought Sister Angela would be tried by a jury of her peers, not old, grumpy, patronizing priests who are minutes from asking Leland to drive her upstate to her “retirement.” Because I don’t trust these guys as far as I can throw them. I enjoyed watching Andrea remain firm in her beliefs, talking about how she had her first vision when she was 12 that led her to the church and has had visions ever since. So yeah, she sees demons; she has seen things almost all of her life. And the priests don’t know what to do with that, which I find kind of amusing. They want the gang to focus on beatifying Sister Mary Grimonde when a woman who has visions is scrubbing the floors right in front of them. I think because she has seen a lot of darkness they want to just hide her away and hope she just fades away.
Luckily David was able to save the day and ends up getting one of the sister’s judges to admit that he had a vision as a child, too, which led him to the priesthood. As Leland scurries out of the room we get the feeling that regardless of their feelings, the priests will be keeping Sister Andrea around. I like the way Sister wouldn’t let David question Dr. Boggs about his own experience with demons. I‘m interested in where his somewhat quiet journey into religion might lead him. In last week's episode, after Sister Andrea told him she saw a vision as a child playing the piano, he was seen trying to play the same song to see what might happen.
Sheryl has met management. More specifically, The Manager. As she sweeps in, a box of expensive shortbread in a dainty pink box in her hand, who thought she’d find a disgruntled, five-eyed demon at the end of the hallway? While everyone else tells her they see a guy who looks like Liam Neeson, Sheryl and Leland see a nude, vulgar goat. No suprise that Leland has no problem with it.
I thought she knew that almost everything in her world is run by demons. Has she not met one before? I’m surprised. After bringing him more shortbread and watching him slurp it down, scratching his back with a back scratcher and enduring some slaps on her ass, Sheryl is promoted.
I’d tell her to go to Human Resources about the ass-slapping thing, but I shudder to think of who runs that department.
3.06 - The Demon of Algorithms
Written by Patricia Ione Lloyd
Directed by Peter Sollett
Reviewed by KathM
I liked this episode well enough, but two tiny secondary stories grabbed me. The primary story was about people influenced by sites/influencers/whatever, and how the algorithms that drive the sites work to learn as much about people as possible. They visit once and are lead to more sites and end up becoming a bit obsessed. David sees sad priests, for example. It begins with an investigation into a teenage girl’s potential possession (an act based on her addiction to the videos of a magician who has devised a series of tricks to let others think he’s possessed, encouraging others). It ends with the case of a sympathetic, believable mother who thinks a demon is haunting her house and harming her sons. Turns out; she’s hurting them herself, having become obsessed with another tick-tockesque video. I wish we had learned more about her after she lost her rationality.
If the Bouchard girls take over the world (and they certainly could), we should all quiver in fear. Because they have managed to do what the adults couldn't: finally, they got Leland out of St. James’s! Using the power of the internet, and the kids' site that Leland used to try and lure Lexis into his web was the instrument of his destruction. Just toss his name onto the site along with the church’s IP address and name, and the Monsignor can’t get Leland out of St. James fast enough. Yes!
