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 5: “A Good Day to Die”

Crazy Legarski starts off this episode creeping up the staircase with a hammer in his hand. He pauses in the bedroom over his sleeping wife, looking ominously down at her. We see his disturbing fantasy of bashing her head in, but then she awakens perfectly fine to ask, “What are you doing?”Legarski responds by commenting on how she has danced with another man and how it drives him crazy to think about. Then, he blames himself for the fact that she went out dancing.

I think the writers are trying to make Legarski a complex character. He’s not just some monster killing for sport. He actually seems contrite and upset about his wrongdoings, and yet he never turns himself in to the police.

We’re given a flashback to a time when trucker guy was getting blown by a woman, Sage, in his truck. Legarski pulls him over and lectures him on “falling victim to the evil” that Sage offers him. The lecture is sooo bad. It’s like a Fox News show rhetoric. Legarski tells trucker guy that they can set Sage off on a better path. I guess the scene is supposed to show us Legarski rationalizes human trafficking by telling himself he’s doing these women a favor by selling them.

Cassie and Jenny convince local police to ambush Legarski at the compound. But joke’s on them. Trucker guy has already removed the kidnapped girls before Cassie and Jenny arrive with the police. Legarski gets the last laugh for the time being.

Trucker guy takes the girls to the abandoned bar and holds them there. He cleans them up, and it’s implied that they’re about to be sold elsewhere. Legarski shows up and reveals that after this job he’ll officially quit the kidnapping/trafficking business. Legarski also tells trucker guy that his wife went dancing the previous night. This again makes me wonder what trucker guy is up to. What’s he gain from dancing with Legarski’s wife? Maybe he feels some satisfaction by knowing he could possibly seduce her if he wanted. Both men are despicable, but at least Legarski knows his actions are despicable and wants to stop. Trucker guy comes across as a true misogynist, and this show kinda explains his behavior by writing a dysfunctional relationship with his mother. In this episode, he even grabs Mama Dearest around the throat after she mentions that kidnapping those girls somehow fits in line with his “prurient urges,” and then accuses him of being a sexual predator. What prurient urges? Also, how does his mother know about said urges? Has she witnessed something? Later, trucker guy tells his mama that his “business partner” kidnapped the girls. This makes me wonder just how long Mama will wait before contacting the police.

Psycho trucker guy goes to see Legarski’s wife at her craft business again. She tells him she’s married, which he knows already, of course. He kisses her, and she responds as if she likes it. Not sure where that storyline is going. Will he use her to take revenge on her husband somehow?

Cassie goes to the abandoned bar after being told by Legarski’s wife that Legarski is a creature of habit. In the bar, she finds him with the girls, who are gagged and tied up. Cassie, standing atop the staircase, has a standoff with Legarski as he calls up to her from the bottom of the stairs. She puts a bullet in his head and he falls over right after uttering his catch phrase: “My, my, my.”

This was the winter finale episode of the series, which means we’ll have to wait a while to see what happens next. I wonder if the writers intended this to be a miniseries or a full show with multiple seasons. Killing off Legarski and finding the missing girls so soon makes me wonder where the show could possibly go from here. Maybe it’ll take Cassie a while to track down trucker Ronald and bring him to justice.

Big Sky returns on January 26, 2021.

January 16, 2021 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