The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘True Detective: Night Country’ Episode 5 Deep Dive

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Jo and Rob return to break down the fifth episode of ‘True Detective: Night Country.’ They discuss the whereabouts of Raymond Clark, potential connections to ‘The Odyssey,’ and whether or not Rose is a ghost. Next, they talk about the gut-wrenching turn of events between Pete and Hank and the ripple effect of the intense showdown. Later, they walk through how the vast conspiracy at the heart of the story unravels in the penultimate episode. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producer: Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Who cares about your team winning the Super Bowl when your team could win the offseason? My name is Danny Hyfitz and I host the Ringer NFL Draft Show with Danny Kelly, Ben Solack and Craig Horlebeck. We cover trades, free agency, the draft, obviously. We cover quarterbacks and there are a lot of good quarterbacks this year. And the teams at the top of the draft, Washington, New England, Chicago, big teams with big histories. Listen to the Ringer NFL draft show on Spotify. This episode is brought to by Boris Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli?

Well, Boar's Head just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means pointing your whole day around it. Presenting the Friars Turkey Breast only from Boar's Head. The backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite. Boershead committed to craft since 1905.

This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu, chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs store-wide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market.

I knew about Salal, but I didn't know the men there. What did he want with you? You was asking how I survived my injuries. And how did you? It really looked you like I did. Welcome back to the Pressu-T-B podcast. I'm Jonah Robinson. Joining me today.

Great Rob Mahoney, and I would like to start this episode, Rob. with a would you rather. Oh, okay. Would you Rob Mahoney rather listen to a slow-down version of Save Tonight by Eagle and Sherry or spend one night in the shack outside of Liz Danvers' house that looks like it has no insulation, no heating source, and a category four storm is coming. Which would you rather? I feel like one would literally kill you and one might emotionally kill you.

Which one would literally kill you? me because I feel like I was almost literally killed by the needle drop in this episode. I thought of you immediately. Oh my gosh. Yeah, from the people who brought us moody, twist, and shout, can we present Moody Save Tonight? Same Tonight, which is already like kind of moody anyway. At least melodramatic. If there's a song begging not to be slowed down, it was Save Tonight by Eagle Lake Jerry.

All right, hello. We're here to talk about episode five of a trajectory, night country. This is the penultimate episode. We only have one more week to spend in Ennis, Alaska, and I am sad, even if, you know, I'll just get this out of the way. This is not my favorite episode of the season. This is an episode that had four credited writers. And if you don't study television for living, I just want to hear, like, the more writers you see on an episode, the more you might want to go, oh, no, what happened? And it sounds like there may have been more uncredited writers, too, based on some of the other.

of the interviews with John Hawks in particular who talked about the way that the final kind of climactic showdown in this episode was sanded down on some rougher edges, was reshaped a little bit, was logistically altered to kind of make it a little more

believable, a little more plausible, a little more cohesive. And so this definitely feels like an episode that had to be taped together a little bit. And it's still, they're just still feels to be like some significant jumps in character. Like, I'm glad to hear that that conversation was sanded down a bit, but it still felt like a pretty extreme, like, jump in relationships.

We will talk about all of that. There's a lot to love as well in this episode, plenty. There's, like, some, I mean, this is such a good Pete episode, and I think Finn Beddon is so good as Pete, so I want to talk about all of that. But let's, like, do some bullet points before we get to the episode. Number one, Somali A Corner. What have we done now? Oh, it's just me. It's always just me. It's never a year off.

Is this about the rosé? Yeah, it is about the rosé. Apparently, that was extremely good and expensive rosé. I looked at the pricing and it was like between 80 and 100 bucks a bottle. And that's domestic shipping, much less trying to get it, you know, to the, what is it, non-contiguous United States? Yes, it is that. So as an apology to the Somalias, many of which have,

emailed and tweeted at me. I'm going to try to pronounce the the champagne brand as Frenchly as possible. T'etangé? Champagne? Yeah. I buy it. I'm just, just we try desolets to the Somaliers

about getting that wrong. I was like going to buy us a bottle to, for the final episode. If we were recording in person, I would buy us a bottle. But even though we all live in the barrier, we're not reporting in person. So I didn't want to buy three bottles of very expensive champagne.

So just know that. I thought about it. It's the thought that counts in this case. And for Hank, too. He really tried to do his best for imaginary Alina. The rose petals plus, yeah, he splashed out for the champagne. So apologies. Okay, let's start with Teal Watch 2024.

I would say this was a relatively teal light episode, and yet it's still all over the place. I think right out of the gate, we get the worker at the crematorium, teal all over the design on their clothes, teal hairnet, teal face shield. You get, you know, the maps of Ennis as they're laying out through this episode to chart their path. The ice caves have a lot of teal. At the lighthouse, it's the walls, the sheets on the bed, some of the attendants there are wearing teal clothes.

Even in the aforementioned shack in Denver's backyard, like one of the only things in that shack that isn't cardboard or wood is what looks to be teal rope. I'm not sure what use one would have for teal rope. But needless to say, it's everywhere. desktop backgrounds, bathtubs, hockey jerseys, lots and lots of teal ever still. That was my full list. I was like,

he hasn't mentioned the bathtub yet. Oh, he hasn't mentioned the bathtub. Got it all in there. Okay. Okay, True Detective, season one, connected tissue watch. We get the return of

Tuttle, ink, not dot org, whatever it is. The tuttles are back in the habit here in this episode. Does this matter to you? How do you feel

about this Tuttle connection? It's feeling all the more tenuous. And in this case, I think, was just more of like a convenient callback in a way that I appreciated. You know, we talked last week about with the pacing of this season, how kind of conspicuous it is when a piece of evidence gets introduced in one episode and then also pays off in the same episode and same with a character. So this felt nice that this was at least something that was from earlier in the season, right? like we're tying a thread together from something previously discussed that had been kind of, you know, put away or fallen into the background of all of these pieces of evidence and all of these clues.

That felt nice, but I can't say there was any kind of thematic value or payoff in having them at this stage. I mean, great detective work from Pete, as always. Sure. He's like far and away the best detective in all of and his Alaska. To a point that almost makes me a little nervous or a little suspicious. Oh. I know there's a lot of Pete related theories out there. there. And I think some of it's just kind of the nature of that performance. And also, I get a little

suspicious whenever all of the breaks in a case are kind of coming from one person. And he's been responsible for so much of the driving of information. Such a good point. All of that said, I can't piece together how he would be involved from a motive perspective or a convenience perspective. We just don't have anything to link Pete the character to any of these crimes other than the fact that he seems to be cracking a lot of the developments in the case. Yeah, I think that's fair when one person is the source of information, and then they get to control the flow of information. Similar to say, just like, it was a slab avalanche.

That's the word on the street. How did the tongue get into Solal Station? Don't worry about it. The avalanche must have pushed it there. Yeah, just pushed it there. Unearthed it somehow. We're obviously going to come back to Pete. Fingue Watched 2024.

We're in the laundromat. Kavik has showed up with a pal to talk to Evangeline about the spiral on the stone that she left behind at his house and who should waltz in the door but Blair herself she of the three fingers on one hand

making a very ostentatious appearance in the laundromat at a key moment what did you do in reaction to that, Rob? How were you feeling? Were you pointing at the screen? Jumped up, pointed at the screen, yelled. We're now like, has she been in three or four of these episodes already. She just keeps popping up

and popping up and popping up, including in laundromats that have no plausible reason for extras to be wandering through. You didn't need anybody else in that scene. There was no reason for her to be there. She didn't have a single line.

It was just like, you know... We were in the laundromat. We didn't even get laundromat grandma in the laundromat. Why are we getting Blair also in the laundromat? Okay, Clark Watch, 2024. In episode four, Otis says he's gone, he went back down to hide.

And then in this episode he says he's in the night country and we find out the night country are the caves, is what they call the caves out there in the yonder. Do you think Clark is hanging out in an ice cave? Or do you, as many people suspect, think that ice cave is below Salal Station? I do think the ice cave must connect in some way to Solal Station. And it would certainly explain why Clark has been so evasive.

to this point with all this searching above land, searching the dredges, searching everywhere they know that he could possibly be, that human being could be hanging out. He doesn't seem to be there. So either he's just running in circles as they're moving from place to place, or he has a way of navigating this area

that they do not. But increasingly, I'm feeling like Clark's role in this story. And we can get into this more as we kind of tie up the two main threads of this case, right? Like, what happened to Annie and what happened to the Salaal scientist? I'm increasingly falling into the idea that

Raymond Clark's relationship with Annie and what he knew about or may have known about what the mind might have been up to may in fact have saved his life in a way that it did not save the other scientists. I'm just trying to tie the thematic threads of this season together to understand why would Raymond Clark be alive when all these other scientists are not?

The most pertinent piece of information we have is his relationship with Annie. And it does seem to be a, pretty healthy and supportive relationship from all the photos we've seen for everything we've heard about them, that these were two people who honestly cared about each other. And clearly he took Annie's death really hard. And it was weird and

possibly disturbed by it. And he is aware that somebody is awake. And I'm wondering what it is that he knew that the other scientists didn't and why he would know it. And to me, there's a lot of arrows pointing in the direction of whatever it was that Annie found, Clark may have also been privy to that information. And that would have saved him.

Maybe. is your theory. Yeah. I like that theory. I think the idea that Clark is somewhere that there's like a series of tubes and or tunnels and or something below Celal Station. Maybe a monorail system, perhaps? Yeah, perhaps.

And he's down there. Just taking the tube. And then just like popping up for funions or to watch only one scene from Ferris Bueller over and over again, you know, enjoy some of the heat in Solal and then pop below ground again. Seems... plausible, very plausible. I think the reason this theory is so prominent, and it makes a lot of sense to me, is that the way that the, you know, and Danvers pointed this out, the way that the lights sort of glitch out in Annie's video is very similar as the way the lights glitch out in the sandwich TikTok video. And so, you know, yes, it could be two different places that are both on a generator and that's what happened. Or we could, you know, sometimes a zebra is just a zebra. and it's like, it's the same place, the same light situation. Starship Woon Watch 2024.

We had a lot of people write in about the very ostentatious placement of the Silver SkyMind Star Shape logo in the conference room. Again, I don't know what would be the right size and also have, we have mentioned the mine logo before. I don't know what instrument would be the right size and have the Silver SkyMine logo on. it in order to kill a person. Yeah. But, you know, I think it's there to draw our attention.

What do you think, Rob? Yeah, maybe a large commemorative pen. Yeah, but so like the end of the pen is like the star shape. It's coming. Yeah, thinking about what would logistically and realistically be a star for a functional reason. And, you know, our listeners have written in with all kinds of suggestions as to what pieces of hardware could do that.

I lean more toward that as opposed to something, you know, emblazoned with the logo of Silver Sky Mines. I just don't see how point A would meet point B, point being the flesh of a human being in a piercing way. I think what we could conclude, and we're going to talk about the vast conspiracy that is at least partially unveiled in this episode, is the mine is responsible in some way. So even if it wasn't literally the logo, the mine, the mine, you know, is responsible and iconographically, like, connected, maybe. All right, on needle drop watch, front, we already mentioned eagle-eyed cherry, but of course the other piece of music we have to talk about. Gotta do it. My guy, John Hawks, on the guitar, was over the moon.

I thought this is wonderful. However, I would like to read you some lyrics from this song that appears to be a Hank Pryor original. There is no love, none lost, none found. There is no God, no hollowed ground. You are forever bound to lose, so what's the use? There is no king, going to stay when you're gone. He won't be crowned. There is no star.

She's falling down. You are forever bound. So what's the use? There is no place to get unwound. You will not sing. You lost your soul. You are forever bound to lose. So what's the use?

A beautiful little ditty from John Hawks. We get some classic True Detective, we got stars and we got kings are in the lyrics. But more importantly, our guy Hank is in a very bad place. You lost your soul. You are forever bound.

I mean, this is sort of, this is the, one of many things we learn about Hank in this episode, right, is that he moved Annie's body. Yes. So when Kate approaches him from the mind to be like, I need another favor from you, she has, and calls him Henry.

She has this leverage over him. He sold his soul for Chief of Police, a job he didn't even get. Nope. And he's just like, is there any coming back from that horrible thing I did? Is there any way to come back? Not a new girlfriend, not a connection with your son. None of that's going to help you. What do you want to say about this, Rob?

I mean, I thought it was great for one, not only the song, the way it's deployed in the episode. I like the crossover, too, with the protest, leading into that scene. And then also the way that neither Hank nor Peter want to acknowledge it,

right? Peter hears him from outside the house playing his guitar. Yeah. decides to call in instead. And Hank also doesn't want to tell him he's been sitting there, you know,

plucking away at his guitar. You know, just doing manly stuff. Just being a man. Just really, really getting after it. Not having feelings. Come on. Certainly not feelings of dread. of isolation.

Of losing my soul. No. Nothing of the sort. No, no, no. But to our True Detective Season 1 tie-ins, the whole like, there is no king,

there is no star, stanza of this, to me feels like it could be a little call-out to, you know, maybe some of the connections with season one are more thematic,

are more of an idea, that there is no, with all due respect to SpongeBob, no yellow king here. There is no mastermind, that there is human evil and there's also something supernatural here but that this isn't season one homage from top to bottom.

There's a possibility that we've already experienced the most supernatural thing we're going to experience. Whether it's like Loon sitting up at bed or like, you know, the various ghosts. I mean, Evangeline sees several ghosts inside this episode. But I don't know. There's something about the way that Issa Lopez seems to like have a different interpretation

than I do about the role of the supernatural and your detective. Oh, yes. That makes me feel like supernatural is still going to be involved. To clarify, I do think the supernatural is going to be heavily involved. I think of our two core mysteries, my guess is one of them is going to be plausible human evil. One of them is going to be deeply supernatural. I just don't know that the supernatural elements are going to be of a piece with the true detective lore so much as maybe more of the Sedna variety.

Local mythology. Fingies. Okay. Speaking mythology, mythology watched 2024. This is actually ancient Greek mythology. but we're going to bring it into this because our listener Sean convinced me of something. He convinced me that if you say,

if you really slur it, if you say the name, Otis Heist, you can get to Odysseus. And I believe that to be true. God. I hope this is wrong. I hope, I hope.

I see where we're going. I just really hope this one's wrong. A couple things on the, that Sean wrote it on this front. One is don't shake your head at me, Rob Mahoney. Okay. The siren song. In the Odyssey, Odysseus lashes himself to the mast because he needs to be able to shout out directions.

And all of his, you know, men plug their ears up with wax so they can't hear the siren song. This would be like sort of a reverse of that. If Otis survives and all the other men die and his incident and Clark survives and all the other men die. and his incident. This is what Otis says of the caven. There was a caveman. Men died trapped in the ice. We ran out for help,

but there was a blizzard. I heard something, screaming, howling. The other men started following the sound. I tried to go after them and then nothing. I woke up in the hospital. My eyes were burned. My ears all gone to shit.

So this idea of the siren song of something and one person for some reason or another being immune to it, to your point about Clark. Especially that scene with Navarro on the ice being called into the ocean. It's hard to watch that and not think of the sirens. Sean also floated this idea then that Navarro and Danvers are headed into the metaphorical cave of the Cyclops. The Cyclops idea has been floating around since the pilot with the first appearance of the one-eyed polar bear. The crooked spiral itself also kind of looks like an eye, et cetera, et cetera.

I don't know if I'm in on the cyclops. love's theory, but I'm in on the siren song theory in a way, screaming, singing, et cetera. I went back and watched the opening, the cold open to all the episodes, and this might be pure coincidence or just the fact that we're watching a horror slash murder show, but there's screaming in the cold open of every single episode. In episode one, it's the caribou. And episode two, it's good old lunt, waking up all corpuscled. In episode three, it's the woman in labor, you know, when we get the Annie Kay flashback. In episode four, is Annie Kay herself screaming on Danvers' phone.

And then we don't have one in this episode, but I don't know, there's something about, like, the sound of Julia being burned. Yes. That could be of a piece for me. So this idea of, like, the primal scream or the primal call, the primal song, you know, running throughout the season. Yeah. Where are you on that, Rob?

I love that connective tissue. I mean, I love any kind of through line as far as audio cues, as far as sound design. And this season has had that from top to bottom, right? In the transitions between scenes in that kind of latent screaming you hear in so many like gusts on the wind as people are just kind of walking around outside. Like, eerie screaming, the close captioning is like. But wonderfully done and wonderfully executed it and just like such a great mood setting device. And so I love if that's kind of. kind of part of the intentional staging of every episode.

Plus, it's just honestly a good way to start a cold open, some dramatic tension. A nice, a nice full-throated scream. That's going to get the blood going. All right. On HR violation watch this week, it's a dozy for Damaris this week on the HR front. And I am. Where is murdering your coworkers on, you know, the HR rules, HR list, HR guidelines? That's a question for Pete, not for Damaris.

She didn't pull the trigger. But I guess I guess the question is, telling one of your officers to clean up a crime scene in your house is one. He did volunteer, to be fair. He did. He insisted. The other comes via our listener, Larry, who asked, how long does heroin keep anyways?

And how old is that helpfully labeled meth in the evidence locker? By the way, I googled how long does heroin keep? And I think it put me on a list. Because the response I got was all like, if you need help, like, please call. And I just immediately Xed out of the window Because I was like, I don't want to be on a watch list of any kind Because I was Googling How long does heroin keep?

The rest of us out here are just Googling Are the expiration dates on eggs real? And you're like, how long is heroin going to hold up for me? Yeah, so Danvers in the evidence locker Rifling through for some drugs. I'm disappointed she didn't go She didn't go to the actual big box marked meth, did she? that we spotted earlier this season?

I don't think so. She might have. But if it was marked meth, then like... Yeah. I understand that, you know... We're looking for heroin damas. We're looking for the wrong drug in the wrong place, but Chekhov's big box of meth would suggest if you're going to show it to us.

I was thinking about it when you just a few minutes ago were like pay off of a thing in a single episode. I was like, well, they had some restraint on the big box of meth. They really did. A couple episodes for that to pay off. Supernatural Horror Watch. big theory of the last two episodes is we got a gazillion emails about it. Reddit is all salivating about it, blah, blah, blah.

Is Rose? Real. Is Rose? No one has talked to Rose except for Evangelism. Is Rose a ghost? Is she a figment of Evangeli's imagination? I mean, I guess we'll find out one way or another. I suppose when Pete shows up with a couple of bodies,

you know, if there is indeed someone there. What do you think? What's your instinct on whether or not Rose is a real human being alive. Yeah. And if she's not, why is, would that be interesting in some way or another? I want to say we flirted with this idea in a previous episode, or at least kind of briefly entertained it.

But ultimately, I think part of the reason I'm dissuaded is, if I'm remembering correctly from the initial crime scene discovery, she did talk to Peter. Or at least Peter was aware that Rose was the one who called in what she had found. Yeah. So someone had a communication with her who was not Navarro, because Navarro showed. up on the crime scene with Danvers and was not part of whatever that communicate was. I believe, and I will be

100% honestly that I did not rewatch, but I believe no one talks to her. At the scene, that's definitely true. Yeah. Yeah, but as far as how the cops got there in the first place, somebody notified them, and I believe it's Peter

who calls out specifically that it was Rose, which would indicate not only, even if he didn't talk to her directly, that he is aware of her existence as a person. What do you want to say about, what do you think, you know, Rose is like a fixer, a body barrier on the edge of the world is an interesting twist I didn't necessarily see coming for that character.

But Rose is like, you know, somewhere you go, if you want to like take a moment and let the ashes of your sister join the ocean, that seems more in line with the rose we've met than like she'll disappear a body for you. Definitely. What are you making of this twist in the narrative about Rose's abilities, special set of skills? Maybe lack of small town alternatives? Who else are you going to in this town? And honestly, that's a bigger question as far as we narrow down the list of possible suspects.

There's just not that many people in this show. And there's not that many people that our core characters trust enough, certainly with something like this. So I think Rose may just be process of elimination. Who do I know who? wouldn't like immediately turn this into a gigantic problem. And I guess for whatever reason Navarro has settled on Rose. We also got a lot of emails about and like, I'm still processing this. And I haven't heard Issa Lopez talk about this one way or another.

So I'm reserving judgment. But like you and I sort of bumped on this question last week of confusing mental health issues with the supernatural. And we got some feedback from people saying that they felt like that was incorrect interpretation of what the show was trying to say about Julia. and their interpretation was more that Julia isn't mentally ill, that she's just connected to the spirit world, and she's been sort of misdiagnosed either by Western medicine

or something like that, this idea of like someone who is native and connected to the spiritual world, the supernatural, being sort of incorrectly treated for a mental illness, incorrectly diagnosed. I don't think the show has done enough to drive that home for me, And so I'm curious to see how everything plays out with Evangeline. But I'm open to that being an interpretation. I just don't know that the show has done enough to lay that path for me.

What do you think? I would be curious to revisit that initial conversation between Navarro and Rose on that subject because as I remember it, it was Navarro asking Rose broadly about these encounters with the spirit world, these people in the community who are seeing ghosts, who are seeing visions, who are encountering the dead. And Rose kind of sniffing out what she's actually after and saying in relation specifically to Julia,

do not confuse these things. That there are people with mental health issues and mental concerns, and then there are also these people who are seeing visions of the dead, including Rose herself. I remember Rose being kind of wary of conflating those two things specifically.

But maybe there's some piece of evidence that they were overlooking from the season. I will just keep my eye on it. Again, the Evangeline thing is interesting. This is where I kind of want to transition into more specifically the episode itself, but I do want to read one last email, which is from my listener, Justin, who says, episode four ended with a fully decorated Christmas tree and a potentially haunted shipwreck with Navarro's ear bleeding, and they don't even mention it in this episode.

Are they hoping we'll be so engulfed in the story? We'll forget some story elements they never circle back to. It has been significantly a week. It's New Year's Eve. It was Christmas when last we left them. And it's New Year's Eve now. We get Olen-Ling-Zine on the soundtrack. This is, that end of episode five was, you know, we were meant to be worried for Evangeline

and the draw of the supernatural. We get it again sort of at the top of this episode where she gets sort of drawn out on the ice and Rose is like I was calling to you. I didn't hear me. But do you feel any sort of like short-changed or confused by jumping away? from the end of episode four and not really grappling with it straight on.

It does seem like a convenient way to yada yada past or omit some of those details that we're going to be after as viewers. And so I can understand the withholding, the impulse to withhold so that you can pay off in other ways in the finale

and you can pay off some other things potentially. It starts what that all means. But it is jarring and strange to just jump straight ahead. And you'll get Danvers occasionally checking in with Navarro

and being like, are you okay? Yeah. But that's about the extent of people actually following up on what happened. And that seemed almost more about Julia than I did,

you know, anything else. Absolutely. And that kind of contributes to what you were mentioning earlier, like the way this episode feels cobbled together, maybe even from scenes of other episodes

or shortened from what would have been a longer season or whatever the construction was. It feels like there's something missing here in terms of the architecture. It does feel like we're slip sliding towards finale in a way that has the hallmarks of, we got this a bit in, I hate to compare it, honestly,

it really has not that much in common, but like the Echo series, which was originally eight episodes and then shortened to six, it is starting to feel like this might have, I'd have no evidence one way or another, that this might have been an eight episode shortened to six. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zepound contains terseptide and should not be used

with other terseptide-containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop, Zepbound, and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills.

Taking Zepbound with a sulfonel urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit Zepbounds.lily.com. Let's talk about what I really liked in this episode, which was a good old Pete Pryor, the destruction, I would say, of Pete. Not that I am like reveling in that. It's devastating. I was worried all season that he was going to like be killed on the job.

I'm actually no longer worried about that. I was worried in the in the showdown this week. Like is Hank going to kill Pete or something like that? That he survived that, Stanoff. To me, signals that he's going to survive the season, but with his soul destroyed from having, how do you come back from killing your father? That's what we opened with that clip of Otis Heiss saying.

does it really look like I survived? What happened to me? How do you feel about where we land with Pete in this episode? I mean, it's a great episode for family stuff, as Hank puts it. Fucking family stuff. Some of which is kind of confusing and some of which I think plays out really effectively. And on the confusing end, I keep coming back to that family stuff conversation between Hank and Peter. at the police station,

Peter's just like running copies, doing some work around the office. Hank comes in. All of the detective work in town. Literally all the detective work that's being done on this case. Yeah. Hank comes in and tells him this story

about when Peter was nine and fell through the ice. And I'm trying to piece together, like, why is this conversation happening? And I think there's some character beats in it that are telling, right? The way Hank pulls up a chair and starts getting personal,

and you can almost see Peter kind of like, side-eyeing him in a way that's suspicious, especially given the way that usually when Hank gets personal with Peter, it's because he's kind of manipulating the situation. He's working him in some way. And so there's some character beats there.

And I'm also wondering if just the actual story he's telling about how to extricate someone who has fallen under the ice, given that someone is almost inevitably about to fall under the ice in the finale, that could be... It could be a payoff, especially, you know, he talks specifically about the current taking

someone away under the ice and you have to go down, further down the current, break through the ice in time, pull them out. I can see the ticking clock action sequence in my head of what might unfold. Does that seem impossible? How do you know where the, well, I guess it's like a river you know how the current is flowing, but I was just like, I'm sorry if I was responsible, if Rob, if you felt at the ice and I was responsible for figuring out where to hack a hole in the ice to grab you downstream, I don't think you're going to make it. I'm sorry. Well, the opposite is also true. The only thing I really know about how to get people out from the ice or save people from the ice is basically what

Rose does for Evangeline in this episode, the lay down, crawl towards me. And to be totally honest, I only know that because of little women. So that's my level of expertise. Here's my interpretation of the falling down, somewhat inelegantly done, but we get two falls, if you will, because we get this story where Hank talks about the ice cracking, little Peter falling in, etc, et cetera, et cetera. Then we get the story that Leah tells us and tells Peter about how Kayla fell in love with Peter when she saw him throw a game, you know, for his classmate Huey, whose father was ill.

And she's like, where is that guy, right? Where is that guy who, and I'm like, that was a little weird to me because I'm like, I don't know. Pete is just like nothing but a good guy, like all the time. Like Pete still strikes me as, yes, he's like not coming home from work when he should. But he's doing it to solve a woman's murder. But I feel like he still would throw a hockey game for a Huey. Like I don't think he moved away from that guy, except maybe post-shooting his father.

Like, we don't know what that's going to do to him. But it's just like it's, and then she says, Leah says, don't let Liz ruin that guy. and that seems to be very important for what happens in the showdown, right? Like, here is Pete, this good guy, and what does proximity to Liz or to detecting truly, you know, inevitably due to a good guy? Can you stay a good guy? Yes. Through all that. Peter, he's definitely caught between lots of different things in these episodes, from his home life and his professional life, between Hank and between Danvers,

including very literally at the end of this episode, having to basically choose between them in that moment. Yes. So he's getting caught. He's getting pinched in a way that has to be revealing about that character and has to introduce new things to us. And that's where this does feel like such a big Peter episode. He's the crux of the whole thing.

I just want to say, and we got a couple emails about this, and I just blanket agree, I think the Peter Leah stuff is like some of the best stuff of the season. That scene where she's in the jail cell and he brings her the Pepsi and the Cheetos. Notable little spirally Cheetos. Oh. Little twisty Cheetos.

Flaming and hat or something? I don't know. I don't know anything about Cheetos, honestly. You're in that cold. Get this girl some flaming hot, please. That's just being polite. Warmer fingies with some flaming hot Cheeto dust. Them like sharing Cheetos.

And the way he just sort of like leans on the door as he's talking to her. Like he looks so tired and he looks so sad. just like they have this long history that again, we don't know all the details of, but like it's so clear. Like both of those actors are, yeah, it's good stuff.

It's good stuff in the show. And it makes the ending so much sadder. So let's talk about that. I know it's jumping ahead, but I just want to get all this out of the way. Like an anatomy of a scene. When we get the showdown, Hank shows up.

Quick point for Hank. I do admire his cover for why he's there. He's like, oh, he's here. I just thought you'd be able to. I was like, That was actually pretty fast. Not bad. That's pretty good for Hank.

Plus, our guy knows how to play dumb. That's honestly his specialty. In a way that is very effective. Otis is on the ground with two shots in him. Hank is there. Liz is there. Pete is very conveniently in the shack behind the house. The chipper way in which he pops in with a,

what's going on after two gunshots just went off in the kitchen? He's got the gun drawn, but he's like, what is this innocent? Anyway, here's my question. And perhaps Jody Foster has broken this down somewhere that you saw, but I haven't seen it. What do you think Liz means when she says think?

I think this is one of those ways in which we're meant to feel that pinch. Because not only she's saying think, she's begging him, wait, think. And in part, probably because of her own experience with the Wheeler case. I'm sure it's some allusion to the way they reacted in that. moment to a heinous crime was to execute that man. At least that's everything we're led to believe so far. Right. She's saying stop and think.

And everything that Hank is saying to him is no, act. You need to help me load this body into the truck. We are moving. We are getting out of here. Blood is blood. We're making moves. Do you feel like she was saying think like don't just help your father think about what this means? Or don't shoot your father, put your gun down?

I interpret it as don't shoot your father. Think of the consequences if you pull that trigger. Me too. And I think a lot of that is the whole season we're kind of set up to understand that even though blood is blood, Peter has kind of already chosen his side here. And that's really the tragedy of Hank's circumstances.

And throughout this season with Hank, we see these scenes with him. And I think we're left wondering, like, how is this going to play out? This whole thing with Alina and texting on the phone and, you know, his mail-order bride, like, what is this going to mean about this character? And I think a lot of the stuff with Hank

was leading to exactly this moment. We're setting up the idea for the audience to think that he's kind of dumb, even though he's not. He's actually pretty clever. He can play dumb, but he's not. He's cunning. Quite cunning.

And we're also setting up, especially with the Alina thing, this dynamic with Kate in this episode, where not only does she have stuff on him, but it's pretty clear that for as cunning as Hank can be, he can be manipulated by a woman who knows how to push his buttons who calls him Henry,

who treats him kindly, who can... Counting on you. Exactly. I'm counting on you felt so pointed and so direct. But the other thing I think is setting up this exact moment of time

where when he realizes that he's lost Peter, he knows that he's lost everything. And so his decision to basically commit suicide by his own son's hand, that feels like a culmination of all of that building.

And he realizes that he lost Pete earlier in the episode when he gets so angry at him about the, you know, breaking into his laptop apparently. And I've seen some reads about this final scene,

especially the Blood is Blood part suggesting on the part of some viewers that maybe Hank and Peter were involved some way in some of these crimes. And that what he's doing is reminding Peter, oh, like,

we have this cover up together, we have this blood. Of a piece with a Peter suspicion theories. Exactly. This blood oath in which we are bonding. but personally I don't find that read to be very consistent with the blowup

we get between them earlier in the episode. I agree. On the Hank front, I do want to mention there's one scene where he comes into the precinct because he does that several times so I couldn't pinpoint exactly which one. But I definitely wrote in my notes, hair so high.

His hair was really high. Just like huge and brimming with secrets. It was just like... The shadier he gets, the more it extends vertically. But let's revisit what Navarro says in episode one about finding Annie Kay's body. Now knowing that Hank's the one who moved the body, right? She says, you didn't see the hate.

You could see the disgust in the way they cut her. Forensics showed that someone kicked her after they dumped her dead body, Liz. Poor girl's just lying there and they still kick her. Broken teeth, broken ribs. And then they cut out her tongue to shut her the fuck up. Wouldn't have happened if she was white, though. So Hank's like, by the way, I didn't kill Anna Kaye. I just moved her body.

but like did he move her body and then kick her body? And, you know, like, how evil are we? There's a portrait of Hank where it's like, these are the wages of toxic masculinity, of like all kinds of stuff that I think probably Issa Lopez is very interested in. But I guess I'm having trouble. And again, it might just be my like natural soft spot for John Hawks. But I'm having a hard time pinning like where Hank

is on the evil spectrum. Do you know? He dispatches with Otis pretty quickly. Without hesitation. Yeah. Like, not even really thinking about it. Is he so evil that he would kick, you know, a corpse after, you know, depositing her somewhere? Yeah.

Who is this guy? I guess I feel like I still don't really know. I don't think we do. And I think some of that is by design. Based on a couple of more tidbits from the John Hawks interview circuit that he's been doing after this episode. One being, it seems like one of the material changes to that character was that in the original conception of the script, Hank was a bit more of a mustache twirling villain, a little

more clear cut, this guy is evil from jump. And a lot of what casting John Hawks does allows you to play the gray a little bit and play some of those sympathies and have him stand outside the airplane with the little plushy waiting for his, you know, fake bride to be. Yeah. And you get to play off those moments because you have John Hawks. And ultimately, you get to a place that's a little more complex where he has this relationship. He clearly wants a relationship with his son.

He clearly wants Peter's respect. He wants the chief of police job. I think there is that element of toxic masculinity that you're talking about. And there's clearly a greed in Hank, right? A greed for more, a want for more. I don't know. He makes it very clear that he doesn't see himself as a murderer, even though he straight up murder someone in cold blood. episode. And so I think it is a person that does contain those contradictions. But as it relates to

whether he would be the kind of person who would kick Annie or deface her body, this wasn't in the episode. And so if you're the kind of person who doesn't like kind of extra textual potential spoilers, maybe jump ahead 15 or 30 seconds. But one thing, I want to read this John Hawks quote to you from GQ when he's talking about the relationship with Kate and kind of what he was asked to do. the quote is, what motivates him to carry out the task of cutting out Annie's tongue, it wasn't something he took pride in, but needed to be done to send the message. I think the quid pro quo was, you'll become chief of police if you do this for me, end quote. I don't think we had any indication that he was the source of the tongue until this quote.

Until that interview. Well, I wonder if that's going to stay the case in the finale or, you know, like, fascinating, disturbing. again, is he someone who would, I guess, at Kate's behest? He also talks about in this interview about his process for creating a backstory for Hank. And so it's possible this is just he is interpreted that Hank is the person who did that. And maybe we never find out the actual source of how Annie's tongue was removed from her body. But he seems to think it was Hank. On the blood is blood, loyalties front, as you point out, like, Pete is,

caught in the middle between Liz and Hank. I guess I got a lot out of that sequence, again, because I care so much about the cleanliness of Pete's soul, and I'm so scared that this is just like... I thought you're going to say the cleanliness of Liz's foyer.

No, the foyer can get bloody. I don't really care. But like his soul... Navarro hands him, I would say conservatively, a third of a bottle of commercial cleaning... Of like vinegar. Yeah. I think it was just like white vinegar, honestly. This is not going to get this done. No.

going to need a lot more. I think I would have loved because for us there's kind of no question. Like all season Pete has been on Team Liz. So I don't even feel the pull of like you know there's there's the moment the guitar moment is like

him doing his dad a favor. Like I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you do this. I know you don't want to don't want me to have experienced this. So like I'm going to pretend that. There are like some moments like that but I think I would have loved to have seen Pete in an even more wrenching situation where he didn't know his father was horrible,

but he kind of does. Even something as simple as if you take the scene earlier in the season where he hits Peter after Peter's been rifling around his house and taking the Annie K files, you take the hit out and it's just Hank showing up with the skates, also trying to get information,

but it's like a more tender exchange. I think then you get back to what we have in this episode, which is these two men like not wanting to confront certain things about each other and about their relationship, but there being a certain kind of warmth there that ultimately would be undone with this kind of killing. This pull from multiple sides, whose side are you on is like above a me on Pete, like the question of the episode, right?

We have this as a Vandalene early on in the protest scene where it's like she's literally on the trooper side, but her sympathies are with the people who are protesting and the protesters. and she obviously steps in to protect Leah. But overall, and they talked about this on the official podcast, like this has to do with like Evan Navarro's, you know, biracial experience. What does it mean to be part of a community? What does it mean to be part of a – who is – I want to talk about in a little bit. Who is Evangeline without Julia?

That's like an important question to ask. Danvers similarly, like Danvers is on the side of defending them. mind a certain extent until Leah tells her about all the stillbirths and she goes to see all of the caskets and then she's like

oh I'm a mother I'm like who am I what side of my mom I'm on the side of all these women who have had to lose their baby because I am someone who has lost I mean I don't think you need to have lost a child to feel that empathy but like perhaps Liz does or as a member of that community

right that it's not just going to the one wake it's acknowledging the eight other stillborn children that have been, that passed away in recent months. It's learning, I thought that scene was really effective of her walking into that shed with all the coffins. This other way that the dead are still among us. That the ground is too cold to even dig their graves.

And so there's just these coffins upon coffins of dead children. How could you shy away from an idea and the visual of that? It's also like this idea of like individualism versus community where Liz says multiple times about Leah and her protesting, She's just doing this to mess with me. Yeah. This absolutely narcissistic approach to this. And Leah, Leah's like, it's not, everything is not about you, Liz.

Right? But what the, the bid she's making to Liz is, like, be a part of this community. I haven't given up on you. I love that line. Yeah, me too. And, like, be a part of this. Like, see yourself in these women. See yourself in this community.

You are a white woman, like, in a largely, like, native community. but you are still part of this community. And your job in this role of, like, law enforcement protector is to protect your community, not the interests of this corporation. And so, again, these are the pulls on our main characters. And, you know, for Navarro and Davers, at least, they're choosing community.

They're choosing connection. And challenging each other, too, right? The sequence where Navarro is challenging. challenging Danvers, you know, like, this is your job now. It's your job to carry Annie with you, to carry this community with you. Yeah. And to what you were saying earlier, Joe, about kind of some of the jumps and characterization that we have over the course of this and last episode, I think the ThruLine for Danvers

makes sense. You can see how she's kind of getting along this track. Yeah. From Leah, from Navarro, from Pete, like how she's being challenged and push and how she would get at the end of this to saying, fuck the orders. I'm going to really investigate this and figure out what happened to Annie. and get to the bottom of this crime. Yeah.

Some of the other characters just don't have as clean of a through line, emotionally speaking, as she does. Or theoretically, aren't as experienced or nuanced actors as Jody Foster. Totally fair.

She makes a lot look really easy. We did get this email from Nicole that I really liked, where she's talking about. She said the unconventional roots people take in order to fulfill those roles for those in need in their life, like Leah and Julia,

having Danvers and Navarro to care for him. how Nicole's point is how absent biological mothers are from the story right? Pete's is gone

you know Julius is gone Leah's is gone like all these mothers are missing and all of these people have to step in to fulfill

you know we've been looking as scant that Liz and Pete were like is this sexual is this maternal again maybe

kind of some sort of blend of both but at the end of this episode definitely maternal right like when she

crashes it on the ground and hugs him like that is a maternal reaction to what is happening here. And when she's pleading with him to not be the one who has to clean up the scene of his dead father, right? That's something different. And the way these families are kind of interwoven because you're right, there is a

maternal connection there. And there's also kind of a sisterly connection between Leah and Kayla, right? Of that being the place where she goes when she's in trouble and she wants to get away from Liz. And we still don't even know, again, we still don't even know, like, are they just friends? Yeah. Are they related? it almost doesn't matter.

No. Because like these are the communal connections. Nicole went on to say in my experience in small, poor, native communities, biological and legal ties aren't necessarily what defines relationships. It's how people refer to and care for each other. So blood isn't blood, it turns out. Blood is not blood sometimes. To that end, I just want to, a real issue,

similar to the Julia issue, I can't feel Sherry's betrayal of Leah. if I don't know anything about Sherry at all. Has she spoken three words? I don't think she has. I think we've just seen her in silent montage, and we know that Leah has a relationship with her. I can understand the story that's being told here is like a white girl

cosuling, a native concern, and then just like turning tail the second things get a little dicey. Like, I get that, and that is an interesting enough story to tell. but even more interesting if we know even a little bit about Sherry and even a little bit about what she means to Leah rather than... And again, like Julia, just felt like

with a little bit more space, there's room for that to make that turn hurt more. Do you know what I mean? Another case where it's like a little more time. A little more runaway this season, a quarter or a half of a breakout episode about them. And we get to see a different side of Leah

and we get to examine the Danvers family through her and through her relationship with Sherry and maybe we learn more about how Leah grew up or her dad or something. You can get all kinds of constructive either plot or characterization from those sorts of episodes. This is just a very sparse season in that way.

Everything has to be concentrated so tightly that that's what we lose. You know, we didn't lose. So time, once again, with my guy Cavick, who I want to check in with you on Cavick, Suspicion Watch. All right? Who is Evangeline without Julia?

Like, what is she? And there's, like, a couple things in this episode that she does that maybe she hasn't let herself do before. One is, like, really turn on her role as a trooper. You could argue that she did an episode four by picking a fight while in her uniform. But, like, picking a fight with a fellow trooper, that feels like a, I'm...

Fuck this job. Oh, yeah. In the middle of a protest. Yeah, fuck this job. And then snuggling up to COVID, that that like bid for intimacy that he has been asking for her she gives it quite willingly

in this episode one of our listeners Sarah pointed out that Kavik is the little spoon in this scenario where but I want to honor Rob's suspicion

so I will say he knows that she's going to the mine and does him showing up with the with his friend with information about the spiral or whatever is that pointing her in a direction that he wants her to go in or not. I'm still Kavik Innocent personally,

but how are you feeling about this from? I'm feeling more Kavik Innocent inclined just because the evidence is waning. At this point, it would take a big jump based on where we're left off in this episode. But the way he does show up with the Rock with all the convenient information is notable. Also, just the general evidence handling in this case.

This is a piece of evidence from a crime scene, and he's just got it in his pocket. He's not using gloves. He's just producing it. He's showing it around town to every drunk who might know what a... What was the conversation between him and Kenny that led Kenny to say, my grandpa warned me about that? Yeah.

What was it? Good question. How could that have happened? Did you just have it out on the bar? On the bar, yeah. It's just like putting it out there near where like they keep the lime wedges and the, you know, the merino cherries. Little cherries, little olive bin.

and then just like a spiral rock. So either Kavik is evil or he's just very negligent. Well, he's not a cop. Like, it's not his job. But still, if you actually care about Evangeline, I would think you would have some respect for this piece of evidence in a case she's trying to solve that it may even have fingerprints on it. Who knows?

At least three fingerprints, if not all fun. Okay. Speaking of bad cops, I want to talk about Liz Danvers in this scene with Kate. and cop daddy Connolly. Why does she just hand the folder with all the evidence over to Kate? Why does she tell them about Otis? Why does she tell them so many things that if she's suspicious of their

involvement, like, this is peak bad copping. Oh, yes. From Liz in the scene. I was like stunned. Also, she doesn't notice hank tailing her the entire episode when there's like, I don't five cars total in town. This is your co-worker's car who you, I'm sure you've seen hundreds

if not thousands of times. A massive shiny black SUV. The toxic masculinity mobile. Yeah, exactly. What did you think of this conference room scene? I think the most charitably we can describe it for Liz. There are some moments where she kind of looks to Connolly

like, are you going to step in here and say that I don't need to disclose this information? and he clearly has no interest in doing that. So we'll give her that slight benefit of the doubt. But she just lays it all out there. And I know she's trying to explain why she was on private property without a warrant, without notifying anybody, just kind of wandering through mine property.

But I think you could probably do it without giving away the whole case. Talking about Otis. Like, you don't need to, why? Why would you? And the smoking gun about the funding of Solal Station as it relates to the mine. Yeah. That's information you, you handle very, very carefully.

And you present at the absolute right time. It's not, I just got this today. I haven't even finished reading it. But hey, let me present it to one of the principal people involved. I love how Kate was like, duh. Yeah, we fund a lot of things. Have you been to America? Yeah, it's just a bad look.

I don't like it when our main characters look stupid. And that made Liz look really stupid. And like, this happens a lot in, you know, murder mystery, high-stake stories where our hero accidentally tells the murderer or the villain, like, all of their suspicions or something like that. Yeah. But they usually do that with no idea that the person they're talking to is somehow involved. Liz knows that the mind is connected to everything, and she says it anyway. and she knows that Connolly could not be more suspiciously in the pocket of the mind. You know, it's just like, very frustrating to me.

Just by the by so that we don't get any emails about it. They do the explanation, the bullshit explanation that they give for what happened to the Slal guys, the slab avalanche. That is the accepted reason. Accepted in hair quotes. For what happened at the Death Love Pass, which was the incident. that sort of helped inspire Issa Lopez to do this. So that was like, that's the natural causes, uh,

explanation for what happened, um, in that instance. Anything else do you want to say about this conspiracy? How, like, how is it panning out for you? And what are the, I mean, the questions we still need to answer is if Hank moved the body,

who killed Annie in the first place. Yes. Why? I mean, she found something. What? Why? And then what happened to the men on the ice?

We still don't. No. That's the thing. I think increasingly, I'm starting to try to figure out what it is that happened to the scientist because we have so much about Annie. And everything is moving in the direction of going to the site of Annie's murder and figure it out from there. And so then you have to ask, is the person who's going to be involved or the force or the supernatural element involved in Annie's murder also going to be the same thing that happened to the scientist, given the flicker on the video, given the connected tissue in these cases, given the way that Tony's tongue, again, mysteriously showed up at Salal Station. I kind of think no. And this is where I come to this idea of the supernatural being involved in one and the literal being involved in the other. I keep coming back to the opening of this series.

And we get the caribou jumping to their death. And we get Navarro responding to the domestic violence at the crab factory. There is no crab at the crab factory, but there is domestic assault. Yeah. Those are kind of the two of the biggest themes of this season. nature's broken balance and to put it in Denver's terms women getting hurt.

And that's where I kind of come back to this idea of Sedna and that mythology and her also being a goddess of the underworld just as we're ready to dissent into the dark country. All of this feels like the Solal scientist's death is going to be explained through supernatural means

as a sort of counterbalancing, if not revenge of a natural or supernatural world for whatever it is that the mine is trying to hide of the damage or pollution that it's causing. That's where I'm feeling this is heading. It also feels like some sort of vengeance play,

like an avenging sea goddess. I can see that happening. But my question is, do you feel like they were involved in Annie's death? No, no. But I do think there are, at least some, if not all of them, are involved in this pollution cover-up, perhaps.

And so they are participating in the desecration of the next thing, world. That information or some indication of it is probably what got Annie killed in the first place. I'm thinking that she had access to something that would be a smoking gun for the mine. They're like culpable but not, yeah, complicit, but not actively doing it. And this would explain why Raymond isn't, that he would know enough either to escape from whatever it is that befalls the other scientists or through his relationship with Annie, maybe he wasn't on board. Maybe when he became aware of what was happening, he was turned or radicalized.

or led to the reality of that situation. And again, that speaks to this, like, how involved are you in the community? Because, like, there was all this talk about how the scientists at Solal were not mixing and mingling with the community, were isolated out there by themselves, doing their own thing, and the exception is Clark and his, like, romance with Annie. And if that connection to the community is part of what saved him,

that willingness to buy into the community. Where do you feel like Blair fits in, if we're still going with the Blair is somehow involved, how does Blair fit into any of this? That's what I don't know. Yeah. You know, when we go down the, okay, let's start eliminating who didn't kill Annie?

Yeah. Danvers and Navarro, I think we can rule out. Correct. I'm going to say cop daddy Connolly is too much of a political animal to actually kill her himself. He's not going to get his hands dirty. and Cam McHittrick, same thing.

She is, I'm sure, responsible for the death in some way, but I doubt very much she was the person with the star-shaped implement killing Annie Kay. She pulled one of my favorite moves, which is, I never said murder. I never said that. I never said that word. Love that.

Okay. All right, who else? So other than that, then Hank is obviously off the board at this point, and he told us, at least told us that he did not kill Annie. Whether you believe him or not, I guess, is up to you. So we're left with Raymond Clark could have killed Annie. Any of the Solal scientists, I suppose, could have killed Annie. The only other characters who have been around are Blair,

Annie Kay's brother who would have no reason to kill her. And we haven't seen him since like... Haven't seen him in forever. The other minor he worked with with the K-pop poster on his wall, that would be a huge stretch. But how many other actual named characters or recognizable characters do we have on this show? Well, you haven't mentioned one or my grandma, obviously. She would never do something like that.

Um, Kayla. Sure. Uh, Kama. Uh, fucking Sherry. I don't think Sherry's got, got the guts after this episode. Yeah, I don't think she has it in her either. But this is part of the reason why Kavik is on the list is I, there's just not that many plausible alternatives. Yeah.

I am very curious what happens in the finale. We know it's a, it's like a longer runtime on the finale. So, the question of like, are they going to tie up every loose end? They could. They very well could, honestly. Am I okay with something still being mysterious? Yeah, it depends on the thing.

But yeah. Of course. But yeah, I mean, what do, I guess the last thing I'll ask is like, what do you want from the finale? At this point, given what we have, I want good narrative closure on our core characters. And I'm not going to hope for complete arcs for all the supporting characters. There's just not enough time. And so if we can get a thematically rich conclusion to the core mysteries in a place where Danvers and Navarro in particular, but also to some extent, Peter, given how much of an important

part he is in this, or he plays in this, if we can get to a nice settling place at those elements, I can deal with the other balls in the air. I can deal with not knowing exactly what happened to Danvers' family or to Navarro before she came to Ennis, like all of these other elements that we've been curious about and asked about I'm teased about. I don't think we need those so much, but we do need actual resolution on some things, enough so that we can look at the mysterious things and appreciate the mystery

and not be bogged down in it. I guess I'm trying to solve for like what do these characters still need to come to terms with? And it's like, Danvers needs to be able to connect with Leah. I feel like that's more than anything like this episode makes that the most apparent, right? they need to like, that home needs to be healed. Yes. That's kind of a stand-in, too, for her larger interpersonal situation, right?

Like, she won't even talk to Leah about whatever accident happened. And that's a lot of trauma with that specific incident, but it's also just like the communication between these two people is broken. And so they need a way to come together. Pete and Kayla? Yeah. Like, does Pete get to go home? Does Leah get to go home and Pete gets to go home?

Pete getting to go home would be a nice little story, but I don't know that it would be a true detective story. That the cost, what's the cost of all of this on a Pete? Yeah. I think there's going to be a huge cost to the resolution of these cases. And we're already seeing it with Pete. We've certainly seen it with Navarro and Julia, too. Yeah.

That's a hugely traumatic situation. Danvers is the one person who, in terms of, like, a price to be paid, hasn't really paid much for the solving of this case yet. I think on the Pete front, I think what's true, is that we know, we've talked already about the way

in which Navarro and Danvers are both haunted even though Navarro is the one seeing like the most ghosts Danvers haunted by her son, right?

Pete strikes me as someone who was not haunted when this season started and is someone who if we're seeing dead people on the edge of the world is going to see Hank for the rest of his life.

Yeah. And that's just like, I don't know, that's a, meaty, juicy kind of story. I mean, that there is an aspect of that. For all the messiness at the end of the season,

I really like that as an idea, that there's a fate worse than death, and it is the tarnishing of your soul or the cost of being one of these guardians, et cetera. And for Evangeline, for Navarro, I don't know, I don't know if it's coming, like for Pete and Leon and Denver,

it feels like going home, go home, or not. Evangeline doesn't, I mean, like, is her home Kavik? Is her home going even further out on the ice and connecting with, like, her culture in a way that she hasn't before? Certainly figuring out her name, that's been dropped so many times

that, like, certainly some sort of naming situation for her before it's all over. But laying it out in these terms, I'm kind of worried for Navarro now. Like, it feels like she hasn't arched out to a place of resolution, but she's arched into a place where I don't know how she gets, out of it in one episode. And I will say, two things will set off

alarm bells. One is having the drug-addled informant show you exactly where on the map he's going to take you before he goes into the bathroom. I was like, RIP Otis, I wasn't sure how, but I was like he gave the information, so

now we don't need him plot-wise. Went in there with his straw and his whole roll of aluminum foil. And then Kavik saying come back to Evangeline. Not good. Alaska girls always come back

except when they very clearly don't. So we're going to fall down some sort of cracker crevice next week and who knows if we're going to come back. Do you think we will get a one-eyed polar bear in the finale? Oh, God, we have to, right?

Or we don't. Where and how and what? Will we get ghosts Holden? Danvers's son. Yeah. some ghosts, some apparition, some vision. Yes.

Will we get an explanation of the spirally whale bones in the cave wall? Yes. You think so? Yes. I hope we get all these things, Joe. I hope great things for us. Will we see the SpongeBob toothbrush again? Who is to say?

Look, we already got one, two. We already got Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. We need that third SpongeBob drop. Comedy Rule of 3, right? Yellow King SpongeBob at Gmail.com. We got an email this week where someone's like, I just had to send an email to see if this was real. It's real. It's real. It's a real email. And it's spectacular. Thank you, Rob. I almost said that myself.

Last, one last email before we go, and this is in honor of all of our fellow, like, brethren in the media. We're all going through it right now. Adam points out, don't you think it's weird that there doesn't appear to be a single reporter in Ennis? This would be international news. A group of foreign nationals mysteriously found dead and not a single journalist is trying to cover it. Nobody from the State Department seems to care, not to mention, the miraculous survival of one of the scientists, there should be a huge media scrum in the town. Hashtag put journalism in your murder ships. I agree. Hashtag support local media?

Yeah. I love this take. I don't think there is an Ennis Gazette. Yeah. But like they could come in from Fairbanks, right? There's like probably a Fairbanks Yodler. The Corpsicle? Are you kidding me?

Yeah, Corpsicle is pretty juicy. But maybe this is an area where Connolly's suppression of the story, the mind suppression of the story, they've been able to keep it away. If you can get to Hank and you can get to Connolly, what's greasing the palms of the metro editor at the Fairfield? What do you say? Yodeler?

Gazette. Picayune. Tribune. All right. Well, hashtag free the corpusicle. Thank you, as always, to Kai Grady, who's the best and makes it sound so professional and polished on these episodes. Thank you to Rob Mahoney for going on this journey with me.

We'll be back next week with the finale. We'll be back on Monday next week with the finale coverage, and I hope we all get everything we want. This Christmas, this new year, please, please. Come home. All right. Bye.