I was kind of disappointed that the episode didn't do more with the Alex/Eve/Adrian/Jay locked in a room together scenario. It seemed like they could have built up tension as the truth slowly came out, but alas, the episode dodges it. Adrian's logic behind beating Jay down with a can of paint (by the way...ow) is sound, but it still felt like a missed opportunity to me.
You really can't help but feel bad for Jay during this episode. He really does get put through the ringer. His "farewell" scene with his newly arrived dad was actually one of the episode's genuine highlights. It was heart wrenching. It seemed like he knew what his dad was planning, but it could have been genuine confusion, I don't know. You really felt for both parties, it was well done. What happens in the episode's closing act just makes it that much more so.
Another highlight was watching Kevin beat the crap out of Adrian. Not going to lie, that was satisfying and incredibly entertaining. A part of me was expecting Adrian to turn the tables, but Kevin never gave him the chance. All Adrian could do was create a distraction that allowed him to escape.
I also rather enjoyed the moment when Natalie arrives at the mall and starts talking. The look on everybody else's face as she starts talking about being nature's messenger and how she learned it from a spider really shows how far off her mental state has wandered. It was a small moment, but I got a kick out of it.
Sadly, a lot of the episode's remainder falls flat. The Jonah/newly revealed subordinate subplot was probably the most vexing. Here was a chance for the writers to lay out some big reveals, but they instead decided to keep mum and try to hold the mystery. In some instances that works, but this wasn't one of them. The answers could easily be given now, but the narrative won't allow people to talk, so we won't get them. It's lazy.
We do see the mist make one of its biggest moves yet. It kills a bunch of people while Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" plays. You might roll your eyes at the song's inclusion, as it seems like the song is often set to scenes like this, but it is a damn good song, so I'll commend them for including it.
The massacre just shows, though, how inconsistent the mist is. Even after all this time it's still in "it does whatever the plot needs it to do" mode. We've seen characters running through it multiple times with no problem. Here, though, it turns into some ruthless murder machine that kills people en masse in rapid succession. It would be chilling, but the monster is so ill defined that it's hard to get behind.
It turns out that not even Alex and Natalie are safe from it. Where the mist actively avoided killing them before, it has no problems doing so here. I said before that the writers have no clue what they want to do with the mist and this episode just proves it. They're just throwing random stuff out there, hoping that it will make sense later. Shows like "Lost" and "The X-Files" have been accused of a similar thing, but those were sooo much more tolerable than this is.
The episode's ending honestly could have fit a series finale. It ends much like the story, with a group of characters escaping the crazy and driving off to see if the mist is finite. I would have been happy with that. I was kind of hoping that when the characters stopped and looked out the windshield in awe that we would see that six legged leviathan like in the movie; but alas, no dice.
Of course, the show wants a second season so it ends on a cliffhanger that reveals that the military is "feeding" the mist...prisoners, I think they were? I can buy the military accidentally opening a hole in reality through some sort of experiment or them trying to create some chemical or biological weapon that goes horribly awry, but this seems like it's straining credibility by a wide margin.
Do I want a second season? No, not particularly. I don't think the show did enough to warrant one. I don't even care if the cliffhanger goes unresolved. There are some shows where that unresolved cliffhanger becomes incredibly frustrating (see "Sonic SatAM" or, until recently, "Young Justice".) This, however, is not one of them. I'm more than happy to see this get left behind, but we'll see what Spike decides to do.
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