When last we met, Annie Wilkes had gone to a very dark place and was falling fast. I mean that literally, as she was falling into a hole. Considering the height of the fall, she's actually in pretty good shape. Even a second fall after a failed attempt to climb out doesn't seem to do too much. She has a slight limp, but is still able to jog with little trouble. Then again, Wilkes was incredibly resilient in the original novel, so that could be a bit of subtly consistent writing.
It turns out that Ace isn't the only corpse down there. This convinces Annie to change her mind about staying, though Joy is reluctant to leave this time around. On the one hand, yes she's made friends, but she did see Ace making molotov cocktails, you'd think that she'd be able to figure out why Annie suddenly wants to book it.
Speaking of Ace, the family doesn't take his disappearance too kindly. Despite the fact that he hasn't been gone that long, Pop uses every resource he has (which is surprisingly considerable) to try to figure out what happened.
This prompts flashbacks that show us how Pop came to adopt the two into his own family. It does allow Pop to show a softer side, but we also see that the family tension predates the mall shenanigans. We also see that the adoption may not have been as altruistic as many would be lead to believe.
This aspect of the plot remains a bit cumbersome, but this does flesh out the characters to give them a bit more depth.
Even with this, though, Annie remains the main draw. Caplan continues to shine and her devotion to her daughter remains a highlight. Even with the rising tension between the two, especially as Joy starts to put pieces together, the bond is a very strong one.
Abdi gets a decent showing too, especially when Pop abducts him after Annie leads him to believe that it was Abdi, and not her, who killed him. It was pretty convenient that Annie had a second prime suspect to disperse suspicion. At first, I thought that she was going to come clean and argue self defense when Pop confronted her, but she used what she had to present a credible alternate take on events.
I did find it odd that Abdi decided to goad his adopted father during the interrogation. He didn't do it. You'd think a straight forward acknowledgement of that would have been more effective than trying to provoke Pop to violence. He doesn't even try, it was very bizarre. It would be one thing if Pop just ignored it, but there's no attempt to be upfront about how things played out.
The episode ends on one doozy of a cliffhanger, as Annie turns around to find none other than Ace Merrill standing outside her car.
This episode fleshed out the season on both a character and setting front. It also opened up new plot lines so that things can move forward. The first episode was pretty self-contained, which was nice, but I think this gives the viewer more reason to keep watching. It'll be interesting to see how things play out.
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