They’re still laying the groundwork for the big arc story of the season. This means everyone gets to focus on their personal stories.
These stories are, understandably, lightweight since at some point most will fall to the wayside to focus on the season’s arc story.
Ned is finally ready to start dating.
George is working as a clerk for Judge Abbott.
Bess is trying to find the perfect menu to impress Abby’s parents.
And Ace is pushing to figure out why Nancy isn’t willing to fight for their relationship.
The case of the week focuses on the judge mentoring George. He drinks a glass of water, flips out trying to destroy a case file and has a heart attack.
The gang sets about figuring out why the judge was so desperate to hide that case file.
The only thing that made the first part of this story worth watching was Kennedy McMann’s toxic dude performance.
She was having a lot of fun and so was I.
Things didn’t really get interesting until the gang began to see that whatever had happened to Judge Abbot was somehow related to a bigger picture that involves the walking corpses last week.
But before we get to that, let’s do a quick tie up of the gang’s mini-stories.
Ned’s awkward date was a case of nerves, not a date with a crazy person. Not sure how long she’s going to be around, tho.
They’re still setting up a romance between Tristan and Nancy. (Was anyone surprised to find that his boat was impounded for helping Nancy?)
Ace finally gets Nancy to share the details of the hallucination that Temperance gave her and how much it hurt to watch him die.
She did (finally!) agree to try to break the curse.
And yet, the question still remains, why set up the romance with Tristan?
Another question about Tristan’s existence on the canvas. If Bess was designated to run the Historical Society to provide supernatural answers and gadgets to the gang, why bring in Tristan and the Glasses to dissipate her usefulness to the supernatural stories?
Yes, Bess made a tea that would allow the real Nancy to communicate with them for a bit, but it was Ryan (off screen) and Tristan who delivered the gadget that fixed her toxic masculinity problem.
Bess was primarily relegated to cooking dinner for Abby’s parents.
I’m confused.
(What the heck was Bess making that took a whole day?)
I did love that George wore her blazer the entire episode; until she walked away from Judge Abbott.
In the end, the gang realized that Judge Abbott’s willingness to let that kid off the hook directly led to a young woman being permanently injured when that kid (Logan Rhodes) attacked.
I was almost as upset as George regarding Judge Abbott’s flaws because I like the idea of her heading to law school, and I wanted it to be an easy path for her.
But, I suppose, it will mean more if she has to fight for it and even more if the reasons for going into law are crystallized by seeing the worst in the system.
What I did think was interesting was the way the cover-up was handled.
Magpie Lake, Logan Rhodes’ victim, wasn’t the only person whose memory was altered. Logan’s and Abbott’s were altered as well.
That’s not the typical way this type of conspiracy is handled.
Generally, it’s the payoffs and bribes that were Granddaddy Hudson’s modus operandi.
Why change everyone’s memory? Was this just about making sure this blemish on Abbott’s reputation never came out?
If so, why remove Abbott’s memory? Did someone need to stop him from trying to fix that judgement error when Logan told him what he’d done?
How does it fit into the big picture of the season’s story?
I also found it interesting that the gang wasn’t able to fix everything. No one got arrested. The judge’s career wasn’t damaged.
The best they could do was make the parties involved aware of the truth.
I was very curious about how the memories would affect Logan. The benefit of the removal of those memories (and the toxic masculinity that infected Nancy) was to allow him to grow into a presumably good husband and father.
How does the adult Logan deal with the knowledge of his past sins?
The episode started off feeling like one of the forgettable episodes of the season. I was beginning to worry about the implications for the season overall, but once we began to see the puzzle pieces appear they drew me in.
I’ve started guessing how they would fit into the bigger picture. None of my theories are worth mentioning yet.
What did you think of the episode? Do you have any theories about what’s happening in Horseshoe Bay now?
