This episode, following the masterpiece that was "The Queen", "Past Perfect" has a lot going on, really elaborating some connective tissue between Henry and The Kid. Introduced in "The Box" character actor, Mark Harelik (The Big Bang Theory), here as a former professor named Gordon, and actress Lauren Bowels (True Blood), as his cheating wife-her affair with a fellow professor the cause of his breakdown and concurring troubled soul-come to Castle Rock to open the deceased Warden Lacy's home as a morbid bed and breakfast in "Past Perfect" and by episode's end have an unfortunate encounter with Henry that leads to a butcher knife stab to the neck opening a nasty arterial spray and an ax to the head when Jackie must get involved! When Henry was searching the Lacy house for clues, his blind wife wanted him out, with a locked basement revealed but not opened. Well in "Past Perfect" that basement door is opened, the lock removed with Gordon's wife finds the key, with a plethora of eerie portraits of The Kid painted by Warden Lacy over the years since his captivity in the hidden room of the closed wing of Shawshank. The portraits Gordon would hang in a study just have a very unsettling vibe to them, painted in angles often with Skarsgård looking away from Lacy, either to his right or left.
But when Henry arrives to the house, entering the basement illegally when Gordon doesn't answer, locating the study where the portraits hang on the walls, he locates a certain one from 1991 with Skarsgård wearing a sweater exactly as he wore as a kid! And before he flees Ruth's home, cut in the side by her knife when she thought he was Matthew, Skarsgård tells Henry that he waited for 27 years after helping him escape...details about the missing eleven days are starting to surface as the series approaches the final episode of the season. How does Skarsgård's Kid and Henry correlate with Lacy's prison captivity and Matthew in the woods? It does appear the series is heading towards answering (perhaps) those questions. But after Skarsgård cleans up Ruth's house, showing Henry Alan's dead body, seemingly caring about concealing from Ruth her responsibility for Pangborn's demise, eventually the police will arrive to the tragic scene. The episode further implicates Henry as much as Skarsgård for the "curse" that seems to follow him, a path / trail / count of bodies left behind since returning to Castle Rock, a deputy literally calls him to his face "The Black Death" (!), emphasizing the apparent racism and barely veiled contempt towards the capital murder lawyer held under scrutiny for Matthew and now Alan's deaths.
In a later conversation with Molly when Skarsgård speaks the most he ever has during the show's entire run up until this point, he tells her that she will die and that Henry is not yet ready...ready for what, the obvious question. Molly does envision herself injured (perhaps dead) in the woods, and this is echoed by Skarsgård when he informs her that he saw her fate as well! Molly being able to locate Henry in the "sound chamber" of the RV, because of their psychic connection, there seemed to have been a perpetrator as Odin is shown with a screwdriver impaled in his eye! Who killed Odin? Although the images are very fast and brief, flashes without much clarity as of yet, Henry is starting to gain recollection/memory of his own lost time, certain to shed light on what exactly happened to him (and maybe even Matthew). Molly's story continues to remain as important to the overall story arc as Henry and Skarsgård's. When Ruth speaks to Henry, she didn't think she shot Alan (asking him to go get Alan, *sigh*) but Matthew, leaving her son pondering what actually happened. Because we were allowed access within her dementia-plagued mind, her plight is quite aware to us.
The murdered couple passing through, just in the wrong place at the wrong time when deciding to stay at Gordon's bed and breakfast, and Wendell deciding to get off the bus after being sent back home by Henry, give us fateful decisions that alter their lives. While Wendell's fate remains unknown, his receiving the same auditory pain (after a crow splats on the bus window) as his father, not willing to just leave daddy behind, the couple are just having sex upstairs when a seemingly possessed Gordon (eerily reminiscent of the caretakers at the Overlook) attacks them, leaving him and the wife no other alternative but to hack up the bodies, back up the parts, and get rid of them! Jackie happening upon them right as they are about to take off the bagged bodies, she unknowingly interrupts a grisly bit of cleanup, later returning when she finds a bloody broach...and lucky for Henry she does!
5 out of 9 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
