The Returned (US) - S1E7- Rowan
Previously on The Returned, ‘Lucy’
Okay look, I’ve gotta be straight with you here. I didn’t like this episode, for a number of reasons. I really want to like this show, and I feel like it has a lot of potential, but I keep being thrown off of certain storylines and I’m not sure why. Is it the actors? Is it the fact that I still have no clue what’s going on and it makes it hard for me to care? Is it me? Maybe it’s all three.
Let’s start with Lena for a change, and get her out of the way. She’s waking up in Adam’s bed, alone, and decides to wander through his house. Supposedly to look for him, but let’s be honest, she’s snooping. And she comes across his murder-room, where he keeps what looks like still-bloody tools and the souveniers from the murders. Now, can any of you tell me that you remember seeing him take anything from the victims whose murders we witnessed? Because I don’t, and he has Lucy’s necklace, which I feel we should have seen, but all I remember is him stabbing her, letting her drop, and then running away. Plus he not only has necklaces, but rings as well. Those would take a minute to pull off someone’s finger, right? I mean, if this were actually a murder-room where he took their bodies and pulled them apart and took their stuff, this would make more sense. But from what I’ve heard, they found the bodies of all his victims. I’m just very confused about this whole thing.
Whatever the case, rather than keep the whole thing to herself like a sane, smart person would do, Lena decides to grab a necklace, run outside, and tell the perp’s BROTHER that she knows what’s going on. Then she tries to be like “Oh, but I won’t say anything, don’t worry!” Bitch, where is your head at? I can’t even with your assholery right now, it’s just so fucking stupid and thoughtless.
Tony, for his part, is horrified to see that she’s not his mother come back from the dead like Adam said, but in fact a potential victim for his brother that is now in possession of some serious evidence. He panics and ties her up, and when Adam gets home he’s inexplicably forgiving, despite the fact that one day earlier he was fucking with Tony’s head and telling him that his own mother had basically disowned him. Is Lena telling him she doesn’t think he’s a bad person and then sleeping him all it took for this sudden turnaround? He says he’s “different now”, and I see no evidence of that yet, except for that he didn’t try to eat her. But he fucking WANTED to! We saw him like, salivating over the wound in her back! Ugh, I hate this.
Then there is Camille. She freaked Ben out, and he enlists his friends to go dig up her grave, which is something people apparently agree to do in this town. And they open up her coffin and there’s nothing in it but water, which was sort of awesome (although I was grossed out that they actually sloshed their hands through the water, because I’ll tell you right now that I wouldn’t touch that stuff if you paid me). So they get arrested for trespassing and desecration or grave robbing or whatever the fuck, and Ben tells Tom that Camille is back. Well, fuck.
After Tom comes snooping around, Peter convinces Claire that this is the time to come out to the rest of the parents and tell them who Camille really is. One of the women, whom we ran into at that clothing store a few episodes ago, asks why the fuck some bitchy little brat was brought back instead of her own sweet, kind daughter (to which I wanted to reply, a la Wormtongue, “A just question.”). Camille books, but Peter goes up to her room and tells her to stop being such a little crybaby and try to think about how she can help other people for a change.
So what does she do? She lies to them! She does the very thing that some woman did to her father, and Jack is just standing there watching it! He makes one feeble protest, but very quick to let it go. Meanwhile, Camille is spinning some story about the afterlife and how beautiful it was, and how all of their children are there and they were her friends and they miss their parents and are waiting to be reunited, blah blah blah. Are they getting closure from this? Is she really helping them? I can’t decide how I feel about Peter and Camille’s intentions, all I can say is that the whole scene felt icky to me and I pretty much hated it.
I’m only going to touch on Julie briefly because there wasn’t a whole lot going on, but Nikki shows up at her door and apparently dosen’t have a girlfriend anymore or doesn’t give a shit. She gets eyeballed pretty hard by Henry (whom Julie insists on continuing to call Victor, so I guess I will too), and I feel like no good can come of this. He’s clearly jealous of the attention Nikki is getting from his fairy god-mother, and considering the look he gave Rowan’s daughter when she asked if he was an angel, I just don’t like where this is going.
Speakin of Rowan, what the shit! First of all, that about-face she did last episode is clearly in full force here, but has spun wildly out of control. She’s seeing Simon-visions again, but he’s a malevolent voice in her head, telling her that her family is better off without her and she will ruin their lives. Later we see her cleaning up the house, making all these casseroles for the week’s dinners, and generally being really fucking suspicious. At first I thought maybe she’d decided to run away with Simon after all, but I quickly realized she had decided on a more permanent vacation.
Thank God Tommy is as alert to her moods as he is, because he can tell something is wrong and you can see that he doesn’t WANT to be overly-suspicious-guy, so he tries to ignore the feeling in his gut. He finally caves and calls Rowan’s sister to check up on her story, and when he books home he finds two suicide notes on the counter before discovering Rowan, unconscious on the bed with a bottle of pills in her hand.
Rowan survives, and she’s pissed. She basically tells her therapist “thanks for nothing, asshole”, and claims that she’s not going to let Simon steal any more of her life. She means it too, because she has a cop posted outside when her daughter mentions running into Simon, to keep him from trespassing, which apparently means jack shit because Simon gets in their house with zero trouble after the cop leaves. Did she even lock her doors?
Here’s where Rowan loses me. She yells at Simon for abandoning her, after having just tried to fucking kill herself and abandon her own daughter. Eventually her daughter would learn what really happened to both her parents, and she would go her whole life feeling like her mother and father would rather be dead than be with her. Fuck you, Rowan. For real.
The only excuse-slash-explanation for this is that somehow, the visions that Rowan keeps seeing of Simon are vestigial from when he was still alive, and he’s saying to her the same things that he was thinking when he killed himself. That’s assuming that he really did kill himself, and I’m just not sure I believe that. He was super happy that morning, and I find it hard to fathom that he would have chosen to end his life the way he did within the same day he found out Rowan was pregnant. I feel like reality would have to set in for a few days before Simon made a choice like that. Plus he can’t remember doing it, and one would think that he would at least recall having those kinds of thoughts even if he didn’t remember his own death.
Simon won’t leave Rowan alone, even though Tommy has a gun trained on him, and finally Tommy is forced to shoot him in the chest. Which apparently answers the question of whether or not the undead can be killed. (I say apparently because we don’t see what happens to Simon’s body later, and for all I know he stands up and shakes it off.) I would have loved it if Simon didn’t bleed, or if he bled river water or that black goo that’s been coming out of the faucets and drains. But so far it looks like boring old blood.
I saved Helen for last because she’s the one acting the most bananas. She’s hanging out on the dam, and weasels her way into a construction tour or something, by shamelessly flattering the tour guide. He explains that the dam burst because some cheap-ass contractor used shitty home-made cement instead of hauling in the legit stuff, and some (probably bribed) official gave the dam the green light for safety. Later, Helen is with him at a bar, and I thought that she was going to ask him who the shitty assholes were who put so many lives in danger, but instead she tries to be all casual like, “Hey, if someone wanted to, say, murder a town full of people with a wall of water, how would one do that? Please provide complete instructions in writing.” Shit, Helen, you are one crazy bitch
There is no Lucy this episode, only her necklace, so we don’t get a better idea what’s happening with her, which is what I was really wanting to know about. I just found myself being super frustrated because there was so much that felt off and wrong about it, and not in the usual way. I just hope that next week we’re going to get a little more clarity or explanation on some things, but I’m not holding my breath.
Funniest Moment:
Lena’s friends, while digging up Camille’s grave: “She’s going to have swelled, and then split open like a rotten pumpkin!”
Saddest Moment:
Tommy’s face when he sees the notes.
Scariest Moment:
Despite not making sense, Adam’s murder-room was super creepy.
