Big Sky, Episode 8: The End Is Near

This episode picks up right where the previous one left off. Guns drawn, Jenny and Cassie check the Legarskis’ house in search of Ronald. Cassie startles when she sees a life-size cutout of Rick Legarski in an upstairs bedroom. Though Jenny and Cassie appear to be hot on Ronald’s heels, they have no such luck of finding him. Ronald escapes through an upstairs window and the women find only the raised window and a white curtain blowing in the breeze.

I like the actors on this show, but at times the storyline doesn’t live up to the acting. For instance, why is Ronald able to hide in plain sight in this rural Montana town? I’m from a rural town in Georgia, and there’s no way my fellow townsfolk wouldn’t piece together who I am if given a photo of me. Yep, that’s right. Ronald’s picture is featured prominently in the local paper. You mean to tell me no one notices or recognizes him from a drawing that looks exactly like him? Oh, that’s right, a young boy named Erik, possibly age 10-12, recognizes Ronald when he delivers a newspaper to Ronald’s house. First of all, I wasn’t aware that kids had paper routes anymore, though that’s just probably my own ignorance. Secondly, no way would I let my son deliver papers all over town and even out on country backroads. Though I know that depraved men like Ronald exist much more rarely than crime shows would have us believe, I still wouldn’t risk it by letting my son ride around on a bike delivering papers to strangers.

Anyway, young Erik, the only person who recognizes Ronald’s face in the paper, takes Ronald’s picture and then he’s immediately grabbed when Ronald sneaks up on him from behind. Ronald puts Erik in a cage in the basement of the house Ronald shares with his recently murdered mother. In fact, mommy dearest’s corpse is also stored in one corner of this same basement.

Another dumb thing that happens is that Ronald answers his doorbell. Imagine seeing your picture in the paper, knowing the cops are searching for you, and then answering the friggin’ doorbell just like it’s any regular day. The man at the door is Ronald’s mother’s priest. How do we know? He just so happens to be wearing a white collar and carrying a bible. Ronald shouldn’t let this priest into the house. After all, he has a kidnapped boy in the basement who is able to make plenty of noise despite the masking tape on his mouth. And, of course, Ronald should be suspicious that our man of God may have seen him in the newspaper.

Regardless of how risky it all is, Ronald lets the priest into the living room. The man of the cloth tries to counsel Ronald about the “prurient” urges/desires that Ronald’s mother had confided to the priest about Ronald. But Ronald won’t listen to the minister. Instead, Ronald accuses the man of trying to drown him during his baptism years before. Jeez, Ronald. He’s sounding crazier and crazier. Earlier in this episode he even mocked his mother’s voice while cleaning the kitchen. “We keep a clean house,” he said, mimicking his mother’s nagging tone.

Anyway, the priest hears Erik screaming in the basement after Erik notices the mother’s corpse in the corner of the basement. Ronald makes some lame excuse about his dog and how he has to go down to the basement to check on it. Rather than showing the priest out of the house, Ronald leaves the priest in the living room and goes down to the basement. The priest follows him down there and sees the boy in the cage. He tries to sneak back upstairs, but then he’s immediately chased by Ronald. A fight ensues. I felt hopeful that the priest might even get the best of Ronald, but no such luck. All of Ronald’s experience committing violent acts is too much for our priest. Ronald drowns the man in the kitchen dishwater and flings his body down the stairs to the basement. I’m always amazed at the strength of bad guys in shows and movies. Is it really possible for an average-sized man to have the strength to throw a larger man down a flight of stairs, even if that man is already dead?

Before he got kidnapped by Ronald, Erik texted his mother that he recognized the man from the paper, though he doesn’t give more details. His mom goes to the PI office after Erik doesn’t come home on time. Denise calls police, and they piece together that the trucker must be someone on Erik’s paper route. Thus, again, they’re close to catching the culprit.

Cassie sneaks into Legarski’s hospital room to see if he recognizes her. She takes off her mask and hair covering. He looks blankly at her. Later, he asks if he shot her with an arrow. Cassie later tells Jenny that she doesn’t feel that Legarski is running a scam. She seriously believes he doesn’t remember her. I don’t know what to believe. Legarski could be totally faking.

No one wears face coverings on this show, which is set in Helena, and people don’t appear to be socially distancing either. In an earlier episode, the pandemic was mentioned, so I know the show takes place during the present day. Perhaps Montana doesn’t have many Covid cases. Only about half the folks you see here in Tennessee wear masks, but it would definitely be strange to not see anyone wearing them at all.

The episode ends with Erik getting his hands on a staple gun and a taser. He shoots a couple of staples into Ronald’s head and tasers Ronald. Still, the boy is no closer to escaping. Ronald, infuriated, begins to pour gasoline all over the basement. Yikes.

Stay tuned.

February 24, 2021 0

Big Sky, Episode 7: I Fall to Pieces

In these past few episodes there’ve been a lot of wasted scenes between Ronald and his mother. Most involve him yelling at her as she reminds him of things he already knows, such as, “Legarski may use you as leverage to make a plea deal,” etc. In this episode we have two such scenes–one in the kitchen as he yells at her over cereal, and a second one in which he’s listening to metal/rock in his truck cab and she comes tapping on the window and asks to chat. Finally, Mama tells Ronald that she’ll call the police and turn him in. He grabs her and snaps her neck. He then proceeds to lay her lifeless body into a living room chair.

That whole scene enraged me. His mother, who knows her son better than anyone, should not have confronted him with this. By that point he had already grabbed her around the throat one time before and left his hand mark on her neck. Plus, she knows he’s a kidnapper and frequently refers to him as a sexual pervert. He’s not the sort of guy you want to anger. She should’ve waited until after he left the house and then called the police to warn them that he was headed to Legarski’s house to look for incriminating evidence and to possibly kill Merilee. But nope, she confronts her psycho son and gets her neck snapped. Ugh.

Jerri is afraid that Ronald is coming to get her. She sleeps with a baseball bat facing the door to her house. Can you blame her? She goes to see Jenny and Cassie to show them the note he left her. They all agree that Jerri should go stay at a friend’s house, so she goes to stay with the waitress from the restaurant she frequents. The waitress’s husband is a burly guy with a gun, so Jerri feels safer. A good piece of dialogue comes from Cassie this week when she tells Jenny that they should put an American flag in the yard of the waitress with whom Jerri is staying. When Jenny asks why, Cassie basically tells her that the American flag is usually seen at houses where people observe their Second Amendment rights. Haha.

The most annoying dialogue comes from Legarski’s doctor, who gives a press conference during which he divulges stuff no real-life doctor should or would tell the press. He basically violates every privacy clause in the HIPPA handbook. Legarski’s lawyer calls the doctor out on his violation of doctor/patient confidentiality, and then she tells the doctor a story about how bullies threatened to stick a chick up her butt when she was a child. She says she bit off the chick’s head in response and spit it in the bullies’ faces. Strange story. Even stranger lawyer. She hangs around the hospital and talks to Rick and his wife. Seems she would have other things to do. Lawyers are usually pretty busy, at least that’s my impression of them. Legarski, whose dialogue this week includes phrases like, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat!” tells his lawyer that she’s stout and that it’s hard for stout women to find a husband. Not only is this woman no stouter than his own wife, but she’s not stout at all. Plus, all kinds of women find husbands. Around the globe, thousands of stout women are being loved long time right now by their men and their women. I get that the writers want to make it obvious that Rick’s mind is gone, and I get that the dialogue is supposed to be funny, but I’m not buying his act. I get the feeling he remembers a lot but pretends not to. For starters, when he first awakens, he asks his wife, “Who shot me?” but then later he claims he doesn’t remember being shot. If he can’t remember being shot, then how does he know someone shot him?

Ronald has attempted to disguise himself by coloring his hair a darker shade of brown. He looks the exact same, except for the hair. Worst. Disguise. Ever. He already has a nondescript face. If I were him, I’d just grow some facial hair and leave town.

This is completely irrelevant to anything that happens this week, but I love Ronald’s mother’s house. It’s painted one of my favorite shades of blue, and it has a wide front porch. So peaceful-looking.

His mother wears old-fashioned dresses, the kind with full skirts that would look tres chic with a petticoat beneath them. She probably bakes a killer apple pie with a homemade crust.

Grace helps out police by taking them to the place in the woods where Legarski killed the fisherman. They recover his body, and she identifies him. She also goes to the hospital and identifies Legarski, though he doesn’t seem to recognize her. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was faking it, though.

The episode ends with Ronald going to see Merilee. He’s there to search for the hidden compartment in the house where Legarski hides his evidence of their crimes. He finds a compartment in an upstairs wall by punching a hole into it. (wtf?!) Meanwhile, Merilee, unsuspecting, is making tea for two in the downstairs kitchen after sending Ronald upstairs alone to use the restroom. Why couldn’t they just have at least one downstairs bathroom like regular folks? Anyway, Jenny and Cassie show up and show Merilee a composite sketch the kidnapped trio helped police make. The sketch looks exactly like Ronald, and wide-eyed Merilee tells them that he’s upstairs.

End episode.

See you again soon!

February 18, 2021 0

Big Sky, Episode 6: The Wolves Are Always out for Blood

This was the first episode back after the winter hiatus. If you remember correctly from back in December, Cassie returned to the bar and found Legarski there with the kidnapped trio. She puts a bullet in Legarski’s head. He falls down, presumably dead, after muttering his catch phrase: “My, my, my.”

In this new episode, Legarski is somehow not dead. He’s hospitalized with a brain injury and unconscious, but clinging to life. His wife, Merilee, played by the wonderful Brooke Smith, is clueless about her husband’s criminal activities. Cops literally rip up the boards in her house looking for evidence of her husband’s crimes. Merilee’s also clueless as as to who her husband’s partner could be, and even though she’s danced with Ronald, she knows him by a different name.

Ronald speaks openly with his mother about his involvement in the kidnappings. He tells her that Legarski’s wife doesn’t know his identity. Still, Mama has her doubts. She’s afraid her son will go down. I think she should turn him in. I would. He deserves a looong prison sentence. Ronald, rather than fleeing the scene, paints the exterior of his long-haul truck cab blue and still hangs around his mother’s house. Not sure what he thinks he could accomplish by hanging around. One of his kidnap victims lives locally and could easily identify him, and if Legarski remembers anything he could–and probably would–implicate Ronald. Plus, Ronald’s mother keeps reminding him that the cops know Legarski’s accomplice is a trucker. Ronald responds by telling her he has to get into Legarski’s house and find whatever evidence would incriminate Ronald. Not sure why he thinks he could find evidence after the police have already searched the place, but I guess the writers wanted a reason to keep Ronald hanging around Helena, Montana.

The cops uncover Cody’s vehicle with his body inside. Jenny falls to the ground, grief-stricken. Cassie is upset, too, of course; however, she at first appears more upset about shooting Legarski than about Cody’s death.

Cody’s memorial service includes a sad speech from Jenny and lots of tears. Later, Jenny and Cassie vow to team up “just for this case.” I like their partnership, and if the show is extended past this first season, I’d like to see them together going after more bad guys associated with this trafficking ring. They don’t seem to have distinct personalities, though. Both women are tomboys who wear jeans and big belt buckles, and if we were to go through each woman’s closet, we’d find leather jackets and more than one cowboy hat.

Jerri returns home to find that someone has left a note outside her trailer that says, “You don’t learn,” which was something Ronald had said to her after tasering her during the hostage horror. Earlier in the episode he sat in his pickup outside a restaurant and took pictures of her. Creepy.

Legarski’s eye pops open at the end of the episode. Stay tuned…

February 18, 2021 0

Big Sky, Episode 4: “Unfinished Business”

This episode was a dud compared to episode three. I think it’s the weakest episode of the series thus far. Here’s the important stuff:

–Ronald has a weird moment in which he dumps his cereal on his mother’s head, just like a spoiled toddler. Rather than smack his face, Mama asks him if he has anything to do with the missing girls.

–Rick Legarski hears about the missing girls on the radio as he’s driving. This isn’t the first time he’s heard about them in the media. And. He. Is. Livid. He calls Ronald in a teeth-gritting furor and commands him to meet at the abandoned bar where they do their illegal business. Legarski looks more than a little triggered when Ronald says his mother is suspicious. Legarski goes so far as to reach down for his service weapon, as though he’s considering killing his idiot crime partner. He doesn’t, of course.

–Back in the bunker, the girls are worried about Grace, whose leg looks infected. She’s in pain and has a fever. Ronald stops by and douses the leg with peroxide. Later, Legarski stops by to inject her with some medicine. We’re led to believe that her injury improves and that she’s no longer in danger of dying from infection.

–Cassie goes to the sheriff to ask for help keeping an eye on Legarski. The sheriff calls Legarski in for a private chat. As they talk, Legarski at first tries to sweet talk the sheriff and change the topic to take the focus off himself, and when that doesn’t work he plays the race card. This is something people don’t talk much about. People of color are often accused of playing the card, but white people do it sometimes too. During his race card rant, Legarski says the sheriff is doing a back flip in his rush to investigate him just because Cassie is black and made the complaint. Legarski claims it’s “open season on the badge.” He says anyone who claims blue lives matter is painted as a bigot (which is kinda true in many cases), but rather than gain him any leeway or sympathy from the sheriff, Legarski’s speech just makes him look angry and belligerent.

–Cassie and Jenny go to the truck stop after viewing the parking lot footage from the night Jerrie was kidnapped. Cassie plays lookout while Jenny, dressed as a hooker in over-the-knee boots, goes up to a random trucker and tries to get a DNA sample from some items in his truck. The trucker, who’s already made her scrub herself down with sanitizer and even squirt her mouth with some liquid because he wants him a clean hooker, gets suspicious of Jenny. They end up brawling in the parking lot. She punches him down, and he reaches for his gun just as Cassie jumps out with her gun and shouts him down. It was like a scene from Charlie’s Angels or something.

–Ronald goes to see Merilee, Legarski’s wife, at the quilt shop she runs. He buys a quilt and convinces her to go to an old-fashioned dance hall to meet him. That night, we see Merilee step into the dance hall–which is full of old folks, one of whom is spiking the punch bowl–and lose her courage and bail on him. Ronald chases Merilee out to the parking lot and convinces her to dance. They have a good time, though why they do is still uncertain. He’s pretty boring. Perhaps Merilee is just lonely. She is, after all, married to a psychopath, but then again Ronald is also a psychopath. Does she just happen to attract psychos, or is Ronald deliberately targeting Legarski’s wife for some reason? Not sure where the writers are going with this storyline. I mean, Ronald has to know Merilee is Rick’s wife. How many women named Merilee could possibly live in this small rural town?

–Cassie and Jenny tail Legarski to the place in the woods where the girls are being kept. At one point, they’re standing super close to the bunker and the girls are shouting for help from underground, but Cassie and Jenny can’t hear them.

My fave quote from this episode comes from Merrilee to Ronald after he calls her beautiful while buying a quilt from her:

“Ah, it’s still the same price. We’ve discontinued the flattery discount.”

I’m hoping next week’s episode will be more thrilling.

December 17, 2020 0

Big Sky, Episode 3 (“The Big Rick”)

My boyfriend and I have started watching this show together on Tuesday nights. It’s a fun time for us. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to talk about your favorite shows with your friends. In college, I used to watch Felicity together with a friend on the phone while I lay across the single bed in my dorm and she laughed through the receiver into my ear. Fun times.

Anyway, in this episode Grace and the other two captives are able to bang a loose board long enough to allow Grace to squeeze out of the trailer. It was a pretty improbable scene, at least to my boyfriend and me. If Grace could crawl out, then why couldn’t the other two? Anyway, Grace crawls through the loose metal sheeting, and it somehow clamps back tightly together. She cant find the door that the deranged trucker uses to enter and exit the bunker, but she can find a pipe with flowing water in it. She frantically tears up the floor and finds a way into the ground just before Ronald the insane trucker bursts in and dives into the underground pipe in pursuit of her. The ground caves in between the two of them, and Ronald barely makes it out. He can’t tell if Grace has been buried alive or if she managed to crawl through to the other side.

Meanwhile, the other two girls are still trapped inside the metal trailer. Danielle screams frantically after hearing the cave-in.

Ronald confesses to Legarski that Grace is either buried alive underground or else she escaped and could be free on the other side. A peeved and worried Legarski takes off in some sort of fancy four wheeler that has a small storage thingy on the back of it just large enough to transport a body…

By this time, the drama is so intense I’m on the edge of my seat. Go, Grace, go!

Grace manages to climb completely through the underground drainage and out into the woods. She finds a fisherman in a stream and frantically tells him that she was being held captive and that others are still in captivity. Help her, please!

The fisherman looks like he wants to take her to safety, but lo and behold, Legarski spots them and pulls out a nifty crossbow and shoots the fisherman dead right in front of Grace. Wow, this is only episode three and he’s already stacked up two bodies. Grace is horrified, and Legarski, whom Grace doesn’t know and has never seen before until that point, attempts to manipulate her into thinking the fisherman was dangerous, and he even tells her he overheard her use the word “kidnap” or “captive,” and that he thought the fisherman might harm her. Grace doesn’t buy what Legarski is selling, so she shoves a fishhook into his cheek and tries to run away. Halfway up an incline littered with boulders, she’s slowed by the arrow Legarski shoots into her leg. Still, she tries to run, and he responds with an exasperated, “Are you kidding me?!” before piercing her leg with a second arrow. She appears to pass out, and he tosses her on the back of his four-wheeler.

Legarski wraps the fisherman in a plastic bag held together with duct tape. Why does he just happen to have these things on hand? How many folks will this man kill? Certainly, the fisherman’s family will scout that location in a future episode to search for their missing loved one. Legarski throws the fisherman’s body into some green, sulfur-y lake that looks like it belongs in my nightmares. Seriously, the water looks like it’s bubbling, and smoke rises above it like in those pictures you see of witches’ cauldrons.

Meanwhile, Danielle, after hearing the ground cave in and possibly kill Grace, has dried her tears. Rather than trying to squeeze out of the hole Grace climbed out of, Danielle and Jerrie share a heart-to-heart about bigotry. Jerrie admits her parents put her in therapy when she told them she was a girl. When the therapy failed to “cure” Jerrie, her parents put her out of the house when Jerrie was just fourteen years old. Jerrie reveals all of this to Danielle and they squeeze hands rather than try to escape. I appreciated that scene, but it felt like it came at the wrong time. The girls should be trying to jailbreak just then.

The best dialogue of the episode comes from Jerrie, who asks Legarski, “Aren’t you here to help us?” when he carries an injured and duct taped Grace back to the trailer dungeon while clad in his policeman’s uniform.

I’m much less invested in what Cassie and Jenny are doing. All they know so far is that they have a bad hunch about Legarski, especially after he fails to get them a search warrant for the church/cult compound that Cody was en route to on the day of his disappearance. Jenny does visit the compound, a place where young women are courted by much older men. The church security footage shows, of course, that Cody was never on the campus there at all. Jenny and Cassie are no closer to finding Cody than in the last episode. I don’t even care about Cody’s death nearly as much as I do about the kidnapped girls’ fates.

See you next week, Montana peeps.

December 8, 2020 0

Big Sky, Episode 2

In this episode, Ronald the-trucker-guy has our three kidnapped females in a big, metal storage trailer underground. He conspires with Legarski, the highway patrol guy, about what to do next. Legarski tells him that they can possibly sell the prostitute simply because he thinks no one will be looking for her, but he doesn’t think they can sell the other two because they look too wholesome and college-bound and that their families and friends will look for them. He turns out to be wrong later in the episode when a waitress at the local diner tells Jenny that she misses her friend Jerrie the prostitute.

Danielle catches on that Jerrie is trans. She flat out asks her if she has a penis. Jerrie confirms that she does. Later, Ronald takes Jerrie out of the metal trailer and forces her to undress and wash herself. He tells her he’ll be sending her elsewhere, which I take to mean he intends to sell her to Canada. However, once he sees her naked he decides not to send her away. I knew she was either trans or intersex in episode one, though I wondered if any of her clients ever caught on to this. Imagine if she were to solicit a man under the guise of being female. Wouldn’t that customer be disappointed to see that she has a penis? Also, I was cool with Ronald not realizing she was trans and only discovering it when he sees her in the shower, especially since she could definitely pass as a female, but I thought the moment where she pulls off her wig was a bit much. Reminds me of those movies and shows where the man in drag always takes his hair off to show that he’s really a guy. Feels unnecessary and silly to me. Hair is not what makes a person look male or female. Her strong jawline is what made me wonder if she was intersex or trans.

Grace and Cassie seem to be the two smart people on this show. Grace tries to conspire with the others to devise a plan to get them out of the trailer, though she loses her temper and head butts Ronald and only makes him angrier. At least she thinks and tries, though. The other thinker is Cassie, the detective that Legarski is sure to point out is “beautiful and black,” which, according to him, makes her a rarity in Montana. Cassie is smart in that she’s intuitive enough to realize something is not quite right about Legarski. He creeps her out and she knows from just a few minutes alone with him that he must be in on the disappearances. Still, smart as Cassie seems, she also makes some silly choices. First, she lets Legarski know that she suspects a long haul trucker might be involved in the disappearances, a detail that immediately puts Legarski on high alert. Cassie also makes the mistake of sitting out in her car to call the office secretary and tell her something isn’t right about Legarski, and she does this instead of just driving the hell outta there. Lucky her, though, Legarski realizes he can’t make her disappear in the way he did Cody, or else people will know for sure he’s in on the disappearances.

Ronald’s relationship with his mother looks crazier and crazier. In this episode, he climbs into bed with her at night because he can’t sleep. This is definitely appropriate behavior for an elementary school kid, but not for a 38-year-old man.

I’m waiting for his mother to realize that Ronald is into something illegal. Does Ronald actually carry any goods in his big truck, or is it only used to transport his kidnapping victims? Does he fail to bring home a regular check? If so, his mother would definitely notice these things.

I think the writers are getting the language wrong at times. Both Ronald and Legarski use “fixing to” at some point in episode two. I’ve never been to Montana, but I’m willing to bet my house that “fixing to” isn’t a common phrase around there. It’s a Southern dialectical phrase, at least I think it is. Perhaps the writers are Southern and trying to make these men sound folksy but are choosing the wrong phrasing at times. “Easy peasy” was a phrase that fit, but not “fixing to.”

There’s some lovely singing throughout the episode, especially at the end when the three captured women sing “Down in the River to Pray,” but the song doesn’t fit the setting. The song reminds me of Appalachia, and I would also associate it with the Southern church hymns I grew up with before I would associate it with Montana. But maybe I’m reading too much into it. Folk songs are folk songs. People around the country probably know that song, whether they’re Southern or not. Still, I love the song, and the cast “sounded” lovely as they lip-synched it.

December 1, 2020 0

Big Sky (Episode 1)

This site has mostly focused on reviewing books I’ve been reading. Tonight, I saw the premiere of Big Sky, a television series based on a book series by C.J. Box. I haven’t read the books, but the teaser for the pilot episode of the show intrigued me.

One thing I really like is that the show includes an androgynous character. The character, who appears to play/pass as a woman, is a prostitute who climbs into the cab of a trucker at a truck stop. The poor thing. Turns out the trucker is a psychopath who tases her and puts her in the trailer of his truck. I really hope the character survives and continues in this series. I think it’s so cool when shows include LGBTQ characters. It shows that television-land acknowledges the diversity of the world and of human experiences. Bravo!

There are two other plot threads. The first is the story of two teenage-ish sisters on a long road trip together. When they don’t show up at their destination, the boyfriend of one of the girls gets his father, Cody, a private investigator, involved. Cody, (played by Ryan Phillipe) gets in contact with a state trooper. Spoiler Alert: the trooper is in cahoots with the crazy trucker guy who has kidnapped the girls and the prostitute. The trooper shoots Cody the PI at the end of the first episode and then gets on the phone to call the trucker and ream him out about how sloppy he’s gotten.

The other plot thread involves Cody the PI and his two women. One woman is his estranged wife, Jenny (played by Katheryn Winnick). The other woman is Cassie, (played by Kylie Bunbury) their friend and partner at the private investigator business they run. The two women are both sleeping with Cody, and one thing I hated about the pilot was when the two women get into a brawl in a bar over Cody. So annoying. Please, writers, give these two women something to do in the next episode besides fight over a man.

Other things I disliked/hated:

–The psycho trucker has a nagging mother, which feels like something I’ve seen too often. The mommy issues remind me of Norman Bates.

–The young girls alone on a deserted road remind me of so many slasher movies. On film, nothing good ever comes out of car trouble at night in a wooded area. The minute the car breaks down, the audience immediately knows what to expect.

I’ll be back next week.

November 18, 2020 0