Melissa Sue Sorrells Galley works in higher education communications in upstate New York, where she lives with her husband Robert, a secondary school teacher, and her cavapoo George (as in King George). As a child, her dream job was “next great American novelist." Today, she believes that hobby blogger is the new novelist. She blogs about Walt Disney World at Mouse on the Mind and tweets @msorrellsgalley.
We open with a sweet look back to 1988, where Lincoln sings Lena to sleep aboard the Magus. Life is but a dream.
Except on the present-day Magus, life’s sort of confusing. Looking for answers, the crew confronts Cole, who’s not talking about The Source. He mostly seems focused on rekindling relations with his wife and son.
And then, out of nowhere, Lincoln is dead. Shot. Conveniently, the power was out while Emilio fixed the generator, so on a boat that’s completely covered with cameras, there’s no footage of the murder.
For a second, it looks like an episode of Clue at sea. Was it Kurt in the galley with the long-range rifle? He says no and turns over his weapons. But I’m enchanted by the prospect—was it Jonas at the helm with a handgun? Lena from the port bow with a tactical assault rifle?
At this late stage in the show, they’ve finally started filling out some of the characters. Here’s what we learned:
Kurt had a hot fiancé named Hana. She worked at the research facility. Also she has a magical sat phone: though it goes to voicemail after a couple of rings the first time he calls, the second time he calls, it rings for a while. Not that I’m pointing out plot holes.
Tess completely shut down when Dr. Cole went missing. Curled up on the couch with crazy hair. It’s not what I would have expected from her after what we’ve seen in the jungle—the never-give-up attitude.
Lincoln wasn’t always so morose—in fact, he had a girlfriend. The show opens with cell phone camera video of Lincoln finding out his dad is missing. I wish they’d have used more of this kind of thing—it seems more real than the glossy television-ready camera quality we’ve seen all season.
Lena was working at a sporting goods store before the expedition. That’s where she was when she fainted and had some kind of vision that Cole and his team were still alive.
Back to the Outpost. It’s been vacant for months, according to Cpt. Kurt. Inside the abandoned and ransacked buildings of the Outpost, there’s music playing. It’s sort of Klezmer-esque, and it’s played up to really disturbing effect. Actually, it might be the scariest thing on The River since those creepy dolls.
Once inside, the team decides to follow some bloody footprints, which lead them to Dr. Cole’s hat and a roomful of corpses … and flies. Ugh. Lincoln volunteers to go in there and make sure none of the bodies belong to Cole. (They don’t.)
As they continue their search of the Outpost, they find the body of a tribesman who is tattooed with the symbol from Lincoln’s necklace and Lena’s neck, and he’s floating in some kind of pickling liquid with some weird bone structures growing out of his back.
Just as they discover the body, Kurt shows up with Rabbit, the flirty cameraman who left Cole alone in the jungle. Today, Rabbit will be playing the part of XXX. She immediately tells they team that “they” are coming. And they’re hungry.
In this episode of our favorite found-footage program, the characters stand around and watch some found footage of their own! It’s flashbacks within flashbacks within a concept that’s coming apart at the seams.
Before the recap, let’s cut to the chase. There were two major revelations in this episode: first, Dr. Cole and Tess lost their first child, Alice. In the face of that loss, they began making Undiscovered Country, mostly just to keep their minds off their loss. To me, this speaks volumes about their characters.
The second major revelation also changes the way we look at one of the main characters: Lena set off the beacon that led the team into the jungle. She wanted Tess and Lincoln to take up the search again, to provide the resources necessary to find her own father. I’m beginning to wonder if she and Jonas deserve each other.
This week’s episode begins on day 22 of the search for Dr. Emmett Cole. It’s something of an anomaly because it begins with some foggy footage aboard the Magus instead of with the flashback we’ve become accustomed to.
As the team sails on toward The Source (or Jonas’ best guess of where it is), Tess has everyone on “visibility” duty to fight the fog. Jonas, who recently spent months hanging from a tree by his neck, thinks that returning to his breezy perch might be preferential to holding a flash light and keeping watch for obstacles on the water. It’s an odd tone for the character to take, and it feels completely unrealistic. Where’s the PTSD, the crippling fear, the inability to sleep?
During the night, with Tess at the helm and the rest of the crew watching the water, they see another ship approaching them. The team honks the boat’s horn, lights flares, waves their arms … and are eventually forced to run the Magus aground to avoid a collision. Except, of course, when the creaking stops and everyone is back on their feet, the other ship has disappeared. Ghost ship!!
This week starts with a flashback that’s much more recent: Dr. Cole is trying to cut the Magus free from the jungle vines, only to watch the vines grow back seconds after he removed them. On today’s Magus, there’s dissention among the crew. Without a… Read More »The River: Season 1, Episode 4 – A Better Man
