Intruders - S1E4 - Ave Verum Corpus
Previously on Intruders, “Time Has Come Today”
I’ve only been in the PNW for a year and a half, so someone tell me what’s up with people picking up little girls and giving them lifts. Madison has found yet another adult willing to drive her around, and while she sleeps in the backseat, she dreams of the first time her family saw their new home. Madison, despite never having any lessons, begins to flawlessly play the piano in the house. When she awakens, she has the driver drop her off on a random street. She doesn’t know the address of the building she’s looking for since there’s only a drawing of it in the 9 journal she was given and it’s not numbered. Her plan is to walk around the neighborhood until she finds it.
Meanwhile, Gary is explaining to Jack how he came to be in Seattle and what he knows about Bill Anderson. Gary’s client, Joseph Cranfield, is a rich man who asked Gary to begin dissolving all of his assets so that when he dies, nothing will be left behind. His family will be taken care of and the rest of his fortune ($6 billion) will be left to a centuries-old religious charity one hour after his death. Everything is in place except for two things. The first is Bill Anderson who keeps returning a $10 million check Cranfield sends him, and the second is Amy. The only building left in Cranfield’s trust is the building Amy is entering in the pictures Gary showed Jack.
At home, Amy watches a jazz documentary about a musician who died during the prohibition era and fondly places her hand on the screen over his face. She says, “Soon.” Some disturbing images jolt her out of it, and she takes a fire poker to the TV screen. Old lover, perhaps?
Madison takes a break from house hunting to hang out in the children’s section of a bookstore. A picture of a crane seems to jog her memory of something or someone (Todd Crane) as does the name Alison (her mother) on a book cover.
As Jack and Gary poke around the inside of the building, Gary continues to explain the connections: Todd Crane’s (Amy’s boss) family has been on the board of the religious charity for almost two hundred years, and the charity leases the building they’re in. Todd is one of three trustees of the building, Joseph Cranfield is another, and the third is Marcus Fox, who’s been missing for nine years. When Cranfield dies, his holding on the building goes to his protégée, Amy. Jack believes there’s a logical explanation. Yeah, your creepy wife is a liar, Jack! He wants all the info Gary has, and then he wants Gary to leave him the hell alone. When Jack leaves, a pay phone in the building rings, and Gary just stares at it. You couldn’t pay me enough to answer that damn phone.
Speaking of phone calls, Amy gets one that just emits this weird noise, and it causes her to revert to whoever the Intruder is inside of her. Then Jack gets a call just as he’s about to go poking around in Bill Anderson’s house. The voice on the other end tells him it’s probably best if he minds his own business unless he wants his family to end up like Anderson’s. Of course, Jack goes inside the house anyway. All he gets is a picture of the serial number on a burnt piece of equipment before some cops show up.
Right after ordering the blue plate special at a diner (Hey, Madison, your Marcus is showing), Madison has a breakthrough and remembers her phone number. She calls her mom but can’t tell her where she is; just that the man inside won’t let her come home, and he needs to meet someone named Crane. A weird noise occurs and Madison passes out before she can tell her mother, who is appropriately freaked out, any more. Now, I was only raised by law enforcement and they were cops long before Amber’s Law, but if the mom calls the police and tells them that her daughter called and said there’s a man who won’t let her come home, that should be enough for an Amber Alert at this point, right? I mean, I get that it works better for the story that this missing child isn’t plastered all over the news, but I can’t believe that a 9-year-old girl goes missing and the only people doing anything about it are her parents, who are just sitting by the phone.
Meanwhile, via Jack’s interrogation, we learn that he may have left the LAPD under less than favorable circumstances as the cop doing the questioning taunts him. He wonders if Jack is one of the Anderson conspiracy theorists chattering on the radio. Once he learns that Gary has bailed him out, Jack is free to go but not before the detective gets in one last dig about Jack’s past and his search for Amy. Jack convinces Gary to call Cranfield for answers, but when he does, all he hears is a weird noise. Jack listens, too, and looks confused. Okay, so Anderson is an acoustics engineering professor, and we know that these strange sound waves and sounds have been used to trigger the Intruders. Were Gary or Jack affected when they listened? Probably not, but it’s clear Cranfield was expecting someone to call who would be, right?
Madison visits Todd Crane in his office after she pretends to be a friend of his daughter. She prowls around the room in full Marcus mode making inappropriate comments about his daughter and then threatens to scream “rape” if he doesn’t put her in touch with Mr. Cranfield. Todd plays dumb for a bit, then finally calls her “Marcus” and admits that he can’t put her in touch with Cranfield because Cranfield is very sick. Madison wants to know if someone named Rose has been triggered. Crane doesn’t answer but seems to react to the question. When Crane calls for security, Madison does as she promised and starts screaming that Crane tried to touch her and that he “put his tongue in my mouth.” False accusations of child molestation shouldn’t be this damn funny, but the actress playing Madison/Marcus is KILLING IT. One of the best scenes of the series so far. Madison offers up, “What goes around, comes around,” before being escorted out. As soon as she’s gone, Crane places a call to Rose. Rose also called Shepherd earlier, telling him to get his shit together.
Gary and Jack show up at Cranfield’s but get turned away at the gate. Jack decides that hopping a wall and peeking through the bushes would be a good idea, so they do it. Cranfield is wrapped up like a mummy, lying on a bed, while others, including Amy and Shepherd, perform some kind of ritual over him. I like the use of Jack’s smartphone in this scene as he uses it to help them get a better look. After Jack snaps a few shots, they are chased off by two guards. In the car, Jack screams at Gary, demanding answers, but he doesn’t know any more beyond what he already told Jack. Jack decides they need to speak to Anderson, and they use the conspiracy radio network to leave a coded message for him.
It works, and Anderson meets Jack and Gary at a restaurant. He says he turned down Cranfield’s money because it came with a condition: take the money and stop your research. Gary claims there were no conditions attached to the $10 million. When Jack asks what Anderson’s research consists of, he explains that he works with sound in frequencies so low humans can’t hear it, but it can be felt. He used it to make a Ghost Machine. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get to say much more than that because Shepherd arrives. He’d also heard the code on the radio and figured it out. Jack recognizes Shepherd from Cranfield’s house but reacts too slowly, and Shepherd shoots Cranfield in the chest three times before walking off like that’s just something you do in a nice restaurant. Before he dies, Cranfield mutters, “Qui Reverti.”
Random Thoughts & Questions:
- Thanks to Mira Sorvino on Twitter, I got more info on Gary’s connection to Donna, the girl who killed herself in the series premiere’s cold open. She went to school with both Gary and Jack and was in love with Gary, hence her looking at the yearbook photo before falling asleep. Did he ever get the letter she left for him? I think it’s a big coincidence that Gary and Jack are both involved in this: Jack married to someone with an Intruder inside of her and Gary tapped by Cranfield to work for him, and they were both in the yearbook Donna had back in 1990.
- Was it me or did Madison’s mom look not that shocked when Madison started playing the piano? The dad had a “how the hell is this possible” look on his face, but it felt like the mom was more like, “Ah. So it’s starting. Shit.”
- Who the hell is Rose?
- I was mistaken in thinking Gary was an ex-cop. I still don’t trust him, though.
