*Spoilers for episode 3.*
There’s a lot going on in this episode. Several of the plots overlap with one another, though, which helps it flow and keeps it from feeling overly stuffed.
Maeve is back in Moordale—she had to leave her program in the States when she got word that her mom was in the hospital. She goes to see her mom, accompanied by her deadbeat brother with Otis and Aimee waiting in the wings for moral support. This leaves Ruby at school to handle the latest election drama on her own, including the discovery that O has set up a debate between her and Otis later in the week. Eric seems to be receiving signs, Jackson anxiously awaits some important medical news, and after a rocky start, Jean attempts to salvage her radio show.
Again, there’s even more happening in the episode, but at some point, the plot summaries start to get unwieldy. And yet, for all the stories it’s juggling, the show isn’t really coming across like Game of Thrones did at times, like we’re just checking in with numerous characters/plots, with no more than a scene or two for each in an episode. Because a lot still centers around the school, those scenes can easily flow from one story into the next, and most of the plots that are happening away from the school have a little overlap with at least one other storyline. This helps everything hold together and not feel disjointed.
Strong scenes for Maeve in this episode; Emma Mackey shines in a subtle way as Maeve tries to manage her brother while dealing with her own feelings about the enormity of everything that’s going on. And while they wait for her, we get some interesting scenes between Otis and Aimee.
Ruby is determined, not just to help Otis with the election, but to unseat O as student counselor, so she throws herself into “debate prep,” a.k.a. opposition research. She has bad blood with O from an experience they had together as kids, and she’s nothing if not thorough in her attempts to destroy her enemies. O proves a difficult enemy, as everyone seems to have exclusively good things to say about her, but we glimpse a hint of a wobble that has me intrigued.
Of the other storylines going on here, I especially like Jackson’s. He’s been dealing with a health scare for a few episodes now, and while he’s understandably nervous about it (but predictably trying to act like he’s not,) it’s also bringing up personal questions for him. In a previous episode, a doctor was asking him about his family history, and because his moms used a sperm donor when he was conceived, he realizes how many unknowns he has in that history. The plot also features some topnotch Jackson-Viv interaction, which I always appreciate.
I’ve been interested in Eric’s main storylines this season—namely, his adventures in popularity and his relationship with his church—and this episode goes to some good places, but it gets there in a rather odd way. Like I said, he’s kind of seeing signs, ranging from an unexpected Bible in the middle of the road to ill-timed bird poop. I tend to find this sort of plot device a little hokey, and this one is no exception. It ultimately leads to an intriguing development, but getting there is a little eyerolling.
A
few excellent moments from Ncuti Gatwa here. Eric day starts out on an off note
when he shows up at Otis’s house to ride to school together as usual and
discovers Otis isn’t there—he’s gone to meet Maeve, who Eric hadn’t known was
back. He processes this news while trying to act like it doesn’t bother him, and
his voice jumps a full octave as he says, “…Huh. Okay.” We also get a great
scene between Eric and Ruby as both of them deal with Otis being
uncommunicative. And there’s a moment towards the end of the episode where Eric
is incredibly flustered but feels stuck, and it turns out the only way he can
express that is through this aggravated vocalizing that’s entirely without
words but captures his distress impeccably.
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