Day seven of staring into space and finding myself at a loss of words because Robert and Michelle King’s Evil has yet again gone ahead and done way weirder things than they did a week ago. That’s always how it goes with Evil, right? It always finds ways to be a whole lot weirder than it has been so far. And how could it be anything but baffling when Ben’s the one taking a swift fall into insanity in “How to Bandage a Wound?”
Spoiler Alert
That’s some bloody quid pro quo Leland’s got going
Leland better watch out. He’s been playing around with the hornet’s nest that is the Bouchard family for way too long. He crossed a line when he got his wind-up toy Andy to almost kill his daughter. In the 6th episode, Sheryl got wind of Leland’s nefarious plans to kill Laura and replace her with Timothy. Now I know that Sheryl’s a total nutcase, but she’s also furiously protective of her granddaughters. Walking into the wreckage of his apartment, Leland’s a fool to think Sheryl’s left the transfusion jars untouched. She’s obviously destroyed Leland’s share and kept her parts safe. So it’s actually Leland who should be worrying about aging 20 years in 20 days. But judging by the way he pounces on Sheryl with a shard of glass and jams it into her chest, I’d say that Leland is more than just worried. And Sheryl settles the score by sticking a kitchen knife into a very dangerous region down south. Seeing her mother unconscious does soften Kristen up a bit. But what really does the trick in the possible reconciliation (someday) between Kristen and her mom is Leland’s smug voice on the other side of the phone. If his entire agenda is to weasel his way in so he can divide and conquer, he’s got another thing coming. It’s funny how he’s gone ahead and made his life miserable by “making” Timothy. And now with Sheryl deleting the therapy recordings he stole from Dr. Boggs’ office, what’s gonna stop little Timmy from yowling all day long?
Was the train track haunted?
I guess the haunting in the episode is one of the less shocking ones that David, Kristen, and Ben have come across lately. But that’s because their personal lives are a total mess. So maybe even the universe is conspiring against their awful luck at this point. They sure could use a break. But the case lacking the bizarre factor does in no way mean that Tyrus, the train engineer who’s come to seek help, isn’t going through something devastating. I don’t think one can imagine what a train engineer goes through helplessly crushing suicidal people on the tracks. And to have to go back and inspect the scene, that must be the stuff of nightmares. So it’s no surprise that Tyrus seems beyond depressed. But what’s bothering him even more is the girl in a white prom dress who killed herself on the tracks right in front of Tyrus. He’s been seeing her pop up on the tracks ever since. And while he was relatively alright with the idea of being haunted by a girl he watched die, things have since gotten far worse. He’s been seeing the girl’s spirit being dragged away by something “scary.” And while David and Ben don’t see the girl on the same patch of the track when they go to investigate (though Tyrus and the audience do), David does see a horned demon, who’s rather dismissive of David’s inquiry and jumps off the bridge. But that’s not even the freakiest part. Where the demon jumps happens to be Kristen’s backyard. (Remember the track train that stretches over her house? Yeah, it’s the same one.) However much Kristen and Ben might want to take David’s demon story with a grain of salt, there are two things that are off. First, we’ve got those giant claw marks on the beam holding up the bridge. And second, there’s got to be something suspicious about Kristen’s neighbor “hearing sounds” and moving out just two weeks ago. I’m not particularly inclined to go with Kristen’s theory that the neighbor might’ve been referring to the Bouchard girls or the trains by “the noise.” They did exorcise that neighbor’s place once before. So maybe it was another haunting that sent her packing. It suffices to say that the train track’s haunted for sure. And even though Tyrus is losing points for stopping the train without having any tangible reason to show for it, I don’t think it’s all in his head.
Does Kristen’s basem*nt house the gates of Hell?
The Bouchard kids aren’t your regular kids. They don’t scream or go running to mom when they hear “demon.” So what do they do? They open a demon tracker app and scan their house for evil entities. They’re right to be worried though. I mean, freaking bats flew out of that strange hole in their basem*nt. I think that gives a bunch of kids the right to wonder if there’s something demonic in the house. The app does detect an entity, one who may not be too talkative but sure isn’t at the Bouchard house for milk and cookies. So Kristen now has her kids begging for an exorcism of the house.
It comes at the perfect time really. One of the kids has just snitched on Lynn, and Kristen now knows that she was never really out spending time with Ren. She was sneaking off to entertain the possibility of nunhood with Sister Andrea’s blessings. Now Sister Andrea’s not really in the wrong here. She didn’t know that Lynn forged her mom’s signature on the permission letter. And like always, she totally holds her own when Kristen comes accusing her of counseling a minor without a parent present. But the whole thing with Leland hurting Sheryl has affected Kristen in more ways than one. So she’s making compromises and allowing Lynn to talk to Sister Andrea with her present.
Kristen’s practically feeling stalked by God at this point. The further she tries to stray from religion, the more she gets sucked into it. But the reason Kristen agrees to have her house exorcised isn’t because she believes there’s a demon in there. She believes in the placebo effect exorcisms can have on people. So if David and Sister Andrea coming in to shoo the bad juju away makes the kids feel better, it can’t hurt to try right? I think the plank in the bathtub sizzles when Sister Andrea douses it in holy water because it’s where the grief demon lives. But the real big bad, the one that David saw jump into her backyard, has actually been staying in that big hole in the basem*nt rent free.
Sister Andrea’s nothing but hard-core, walking into that hole alone. The demon’s formal enough to introduce himself. He’s Lou (I wonder if that’s a nickname for Lucifer). And Lou’s certainly got no chill. You see, the holy water loses its power in the hole. But that also means that Lou can hurt the nun who’s made quite the name for herself in Hell. I don’t know how Kristen’s going to rationalize the burn on Sister Andrea’s arm when she runs out of the hole screaming. It hasn’t fazed the old nun one bit though. She needs that hole bricked up. And as Ben drives to the church to get bricks at midnight, Sister Andrea takes a seat right in front of the hole to stop that slippery demon from getting away.
In the ending sequence of this week’s episode of Evil, after blowing raspberries to interrupt Sister Andrea and Kristen’s conversation, Lou gets locked up inside the hole thanks to Ben blocking it with bricks and mortar. That also effectively means that he’s not going to be around to torment the spirit of the girl on the train track. Tyrus’ problem is solved, and the group gets a much needed wholesome win after quite a while. But the problem at the Bouchard house is far from over. Lexis walks out into the backyard in the middle of the night with the demon tracker app, and to her absolute horror, a whole horde of evil entities are detected by the app. It makes sense that Lexis is the one to see this. She’s afterall the only other kid who’s connected to the RSM facility. But the number of demons in Kristen’s backyard does make me wonder if the “gates of Hell” at the Particle Accelerator is just a distraction. What if the gate is actually the hole in Kristen’s basem*nt? It’s closed now. But what if Hell is empty and all the demons are here?
What’s going on with Ben?
Ben seems to have a one-sided obsessive dynamic going on with the supernatural. The more he wants to refute the strange happenings around him with science, the more he gets sucked into some very personal haunting scenarios. Getting shot by a quantum gold beam at the particle accelerator has evidently had more effects on him than physiological tests can ever catch. This jinn thing, particularly, has gotten so badly out of hand that he’s now making phone calls that he doesn’t remember, and for some reason, he only seems to be calling Renee and taking big steps forward in their relationship when he blacks out. The commitment-phobic Ben is understandably taken aback to find his apartment cluttered with Renee’s stuff. She’s moved in. And even though Ben remembers nothing, she’s claiming that he’s the one who asked her to move in. You gotta admit that it does seem shady how Ben’s call log showed no calls made to Renee. But talking this out with his sister Karima opens up a can of worms about his past that he didn’t even know existed. The jinn’s visitations are followed by an onset of migraines for Ben. It’s only now that he finds out that the migraines his dad used to get served as his excuse for cheating on his wife. Ben’s always felt guilty over his distance from his family. And no matter how old he is or how detached, learning that his dad used to cheat on his mom is a formidable emotional blow. I suppose the circ*mstances and the revelations are merging together to crush Ben under a rock of second-hand guilt. And that certainly contributes to his reaction when Renee shows him a video of him singing and pleading for her to stay. The guy in the video definitely looks like Ben. And if it was a case he was assessing, I don’t see how Ben wouldn’t entertain the possibility of it being a deepfake. But Ben’s now probably terrified that his fear of commitment is something that he gets from his dad. So even though the whole thing is so bizarre and he doesn’t even remember making that video, Ben goes against who he is and asks Renee to stay.
In the ending sequence, Renee does what any self-respecting woman would do. She turns Ben down. But I’ll tell you why I think Renee is the one this whole jinn thing is happening around. Remember the first time we met Renee? It was back in the 7th episode of season 3 of Evil, and Renee was the woman Ben knew from the Secret Science League. But more importantly, Renee was the “vessel of Christ” in the cult of Yeshua. In one of the rituals, Renee grabbed Ben’s hand and said she wanted “entanglement.” So if you think about it, Renee being at the center of whatever’s happening with Ben makes perfect sense. She represents both science and religion, the tug of war Ben’s always been caught in between. So if you’re inclined to see this as a good thing, you can consider Renee to be Ben’s path to God. But how often do good things even happen in Evil?
