Bridget Graham in a scene from Netflix’s “Hemlock Grove” Season 2. Credit: Brooke Palmer for Netflix.
The fourth episode of “Hemlock Grove” featured several questions that will hopefully be answered by the end of the season. Find out what they are in your recap!
We open on a dark, romantic night between a young couple. They make out in the back of a truck until natures calls for the girl and she has to take care of business. Of course, upon finding a spot in the woods, she finds a mangled body with maggots crawling around it.
Nothing kills the mood more than seeing a corpse. However, the mood was not killed for us as we await the answers to several questions.
Will Shelley ever come home?
Believed to be robbed from the grave, Christina’s corpse is found decapitated with the head torn in half and not far from the body are footprints. Norman (Dougray Scott), believing that Shelley (Madeleine Martin) is still alive, hires an investigator to find her. He even continues writing emails to Shelley in hopes that she will respond and promises to keep her safe if she does answer.
Shelley is still residing in the basement, befriending the young boy, Jason, who practices the famous moving cut off finger trick. He thinks he’s cool but what’s cooler is that Shelley can literally cut her own finger off. Young Jason is so impressed that he asks to keep Shelley’s finger. It apparently doesn’t take much to impress kids these days.
The new friends eventually talk about somber subjects when Shelley shakes her head and even sheds a tear when Jason asks about her family. Jason feels sorry for her but it doesn’t look like the kid has a good home life of his own when his father shouts and tells him to come in for dinner. When he finally comes to the house, Jason’s father pushes him inside with the comment, “Get in there, you little shit, and wipe that smirk off your face.”
Shelley, with everything she has gone through, obviously feels empathy for Jason as she watches him from the basement window.
Dougray Scott (L) and Famke Janssen (R) in a scene from Netflix’s “Hemlock Grove” Season 2. Credit: Brooke Palmer for Netflix.
Will Norman learn that Olivia killed Marie?
Norman believes Pryce (Joel de la Fuente)is responsible for Marie’s disappearance as a revenge plot for the lawsuit against Godfrey and threatens to tear him down in the middle of the office. Pryce says that if his “house” gets torn down, Norman would be surprised at what would come out of the rubble. For Pryce, there’s nothing better than using an ominous metaphor as a comeback.
Olivia (Famke Janssen) meets the newly appointed Sheriff Michael Chasseur for the first time and gets questioned about Marie. She tells the truth and says that Marie did visit her but lies and says she only came to Olivia’s door to say she was going to sue Godfrey.
Additionally, Michael (Demore Barnes) also questions Olivia about his missing sister, whom Olivia lies and says she never met. Let’s see what happens when Michael finds out that Olivia was actually the one who killed his sister.
Later, Michael tells Norman that Olivia received a visit from Marie, something Norman does not take kindly to. When he confronts Olivia about it, she tells him that she kept it from him so she wouldn’t hurt his feelings.
Another lie from Olivia: Marie thinks that Norman killed Letha because he said she should get treatment at the White Tower instead of from a regular obstetrician. The “Pretty Little Liars” obviously have nothing on Olivia. However, while Norman does buy it from his lover, he still has the same investigator he hired to find Shelley look into Marie’s disappearance.
How far does Roman’s thirst go?
Roman’s (Bill Skarsgård)behavior is starting to get more erratic as his hunger for blood gets more intense. After asking for blueprints of the lab from one of his assistants, Roman is absolutely infuriated that one page is missing. He responds by throwing his tablet on the floor, breaking it and calls pretty much everyone in the office incompetent. While this is unusual behavior for Roman, it makes viewers feel grateful that they don’t have a bloodthirsty boss of their own.
Roman eventually gets kicked out of the office after several employees have filed complaints against him for creating a hostile work environment. But Roman becomes more hostile outside of the office when he starts interacting with other civilians. Among them is a homeless man who asks him for money and tries to tell him a joke about a baboon, a chick with a dick and Jesus walking into a bar.
We sadly never hear the rest of the jokeas Roman walks away in a haze of bloodlust.
Things get even rougher when he starts to get thirsty for just about every person he passes on the street. Overwhelmed, Roman goes to his car and cries. Upirs lead a rough life.
Later, Roman stumbles upon the same homeless man in an alley and asks him if he has a family. He’s hesitant at first but the homeless man ends up telling Roman that he has a daughter who won’t talk to him named Melanie Haber in Philadelphia. Being the charitable guy that he is, Roman promises to make sure Melanie is taken care of…before sucking the homeless man’s blood.
Other homeless people rush to the man’s aid but Roman distracts them by throwing hundreds of dollars on the ground. This shows that you can easily buy off any homeless person as long as you have the cash. “Hemlock Grove” is always instilling the best values for children.
However, it doesn’t look like Roman will get away with the crime entirely since Michael was sitting in his car not too far away from the alley and notices him mysteriously walking away. Looks like this is just the beginning of what is sure to be an epic revenge plot for Michael.
Landon Liboiron in a scene from Netflix’s “Hemlock Grove” Season 2. Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer for Netflix.
Will Peter be able to save the people from his visions?
Over the phone, Peter (Landon Liboiron) poses as marketing specialists with names such as Darren Allen and Gomez Pugh to try to figure out where a plane towing advertising banners would fly over. What’s more mysterious is how Peter came up with such obscure names to use.
Peter tries to piece together other things from his dream such as the numbers, 047 and 048. But it’s not long before the drug dealers, Dom and Richie, attack and ask for the $20,000 back that they lost from Peter’s con. Peter tells them that he doesn’t have the money because he had to spend it on a lawyer for Lynda. They continuously beat him until the wolf inside Peter almost comes out. Peter punches Dom in the nose, breaking it and intimidating them in the process, and tells them not to ever come back again.
The almost transformation leaves Peter exhausted and his stomach scratched up. He fixes the wounds by pouring alcohol over them but this scene was clearly only foreshadowing of what will surely come from Peter transforming, accidentally or otherwise, during a non-full moon.
Peter eventually learns the address he should go to in order to find the little boy on the tricycle. While driving, he sees the temperature go from 47 degrees to 48 degrees, the same numbers from his dream.
We then catch a glimpse of the little boy and learn his name is Jack. We also realize that him and his mother are the same people who were warned by the white-masked man posing as a police officer in the previous episode.
All of a sudden, things move at a rapid pace. There’s Jack riding out in the middle of the road. There’s the plane with the banner. There’s Jack looking at the plane. There’s the guy in the white mask driving a jeep about to run Jack down.
And then Peter saves the day by driving in the middle of the intersection, preventing the white-masked man from hitting Jack. No one is hurt but Peter makes sure Jack and his mother are left emotionally damaged when he tells them that someone is trying to kill them and makes the mother promise to leave town.
The woman, clearly perceiving Peter’s warning as a threat on her life, agrees, but not without calling the cops first. Peter gets questioned by Michael about the threats made against the woman and her son. Even though he swears he did nothing wrong, Peter still gets taken into custody.
While in his cell, Peter has another dream with this one containing images of a liquor ad and a dog as well as water leaking under a door. Peter is left screaming to Michael that more people will die unless he gets out.
But wait! What happened to the drug dealers?
Richie and Dom go to their boss, Mr. Beaumont (David Richmond-Peck), to tell him that they unfortunately do not have his money. Disappointed, he decides to punish them…and this punishment is something that will make every male viewer cringe.
Beaumont has his lackeys strip down and then has them bound and gagged on the floor, naked. That’s just the beginning of the torture though because he eventually gets out a tool and he uses it to — get ready to cringe — remove their testicles, like one would do to a farm animal. However, he was a little understanding that people make mistakes and because of that, decides to only remove one from each of them.
Between Beaumont and Roman, this episode is really making viewers more thankful for their bosses.
Why is Miranda suddenly lactating?
Most of Miranda’s (Madeline Brewer) time in this episode is spent with her slowly learning about Roman’s secret baby. She starts to wonder why there is a stuffed pink monkey in the washer and why there is a mysterious door with a numeric keypad?
Things get really weird when someone from the Citizen Action Committee comes in and asks Miranda to sign a petition to institute mandatory background checks on anyone purchasing a handgun in Hemlock County. Miranda signs the petition rather ironically considering there’s a drawing of a handgun barrel painted on the wall.
But the irony does not stop there. The woman points out that Miranda’s breasts are leaking which is rather weird considering Miranda doesn’t have children. The only baby that’s actually within distance is the one Miranda currently doesn’t know about upstairs. Miranda later removes her top and it is revealed that she is, in fact, producing milk. This, understandably, freaks her out.
Later, Miranda figures out the code to unlock the door. After opening the door, she sees Roman’s daughter sitting up in her crib. The baby smiles and giggles.
After a long night of murder and bloodsucking, Roman comes home, sad and alone. When he goes upstairs, he sees Miranda breastfeeding his child because that’s apparently your natural instinct when you start randomly producing milk.
Will Miranda become a mother to Roman’s child?
Grade: B+
Check out the recap of the last episode here.
Follow Jeremy Rodriguez on Twitter: @RodriguezJeremy
