NOS4A2’s family drama is a downer

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We’re now into the second of the season’s ten episodes of NOS4A2 and we’ve gotten some interesting new plot developments, but it’s still not quite coming together for me. It feels like two distinctly separate shows but at least by the end it seems that those two parts are finally coming together into a single story. Unfortunately of the two stories, the one that’s the least interesting is the one that takes up most of the episode’s time, and that would be the McQueen family drama.

It was established in the first episode that Vic wants to go to college, her mom wants her to go into business with her cleaning other people’s toilets, her dad is somewhat encouraging of her dreams, and her mom and dad are in a toxic relationship so dad finally leaves but he makes the cardinal error of not saying goodbye to his daughter, who then tracks him down to his girlfriend’s house and pitches a fit about him leaving her. Back at home Vic seems fine with the situation with her mom, and then suddenly she packs up her stuff and goes to live with her dad and his girlfriend … quite uninvited.

I’m completely confused about that entire scenario. Is she going because she truly despises her mother, or is she going to protect her dad? Apparently he has a major drinking problem, and Vic’s mom Linda warns her that if there is any hard liquor in the house, she needs to come back home right away. All we know about Chris’ drinking to this point is that Linda says so and their lunch tab at the local diner is half of what it usually is because her husband’s pitchers of beer aren’t on it. Up to this point, though, we’ve never really seen Chris drunk. We do know he has a temper that results in violence, but is that because he’s been drinking?

The family situation does lead Vic back to the mysterious covered bridge, or ‘inscape’, that appears to her. It seems it’s a magical portal that other people can also see but … only Vic can traverse it with her motorbike as we witnessed when a random friend we’ve never seen before attempts to follow her across and ends up slamming into blackness. This ‘inscape’ has the ability to take Vic to places where she can find lost things, and so far she’s been taken to her father’s lost watch, her mother’s lost credit card, and her random friend’s childhood stuffed rabbit that she ‘lost’. And at a moment when Linda shows up at the girlfriend’s house to bring Vic home, the three adults argue while Vic speeds off back to the bridge.

A quick aside: who is the little girl Vic keeps taking art supplies to???

Her next trip across the bridge takes her to Here, Iowa where town psychic Maggie Leigh is awaiting her because her enchanted Scrabble tiles have told her The Brat is coming. Turns out Brat is what Vic’s dad calls her so the tiles were right. Vic explained to Maggie Leigh that so far the ‘inscape’ has helped her find things but she has no idea why it’s brought her from Massachusetts to Iowa. Maggie Leigh tells her she’s there to help find The Wraith and therefore also find her friend Daniel Moore. Watching Maggie Leigh dip her arm into that tile bag was a bit too much for Vic and she hightailed it out of there but Maggie Leigh was able to convince her that she’s there for a reason.

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The more interesting part of the episode focused on Charlie Manx. Here we’re introduced to Bing Partridge, a mentally slow custodian at a chemical plant who wants nothing more than to get a job as a custodian at Christmasland. He types out a letter (though it’s not clear if he actually mailed it) and has horrific dreams about Christmasland including one with a man in a gas mask dancing with his dead mother. A happier dream found the Moon giving Bing a friendly wink. Most frightening was the appearance of the befanged Daniel in Bing’s basement room offering him an invitation to Christmasland, but again it was only a dream … or was it?

At work, forced to scrub a spray painted penis off the wall of the side of the building (again), Charlie Mnax drives up in his Wraith, there to interview Bing for the job he so badly wants, handing Bing the letter he typed. How did Manx get the letter? Manx seems to like what he sees and tells Bing to get in the car, but it isn’t long before Bing’s unconscious (drugged) so he can’t see the route to Christmasland. Once there, and after spotting some curiously mobile snow folks, the pair embark into a snowy cemetary. The snow is covering a sheet of ice, and once uncovered, Bing sees children — apparently alive — buried under the ice. These are the children Manx is ‘hiring’ Bing to protect. Is this Christmasland? If it is, it’s not turning to be anything like Bing, or we, thought it was.

So, a few interesting tidbits were tossed to us this week, including Maggie Leigh talking Here’s sheriff into looking into scrap yards where someone may be able to find parts for The Wraith (and the woman running the place lost her son and grandson to The Wraith, which now seems to be how we’re describing the car and the man driving it). But, there are still some issues with the plotting — only eight episodes left, so let’s get this thing moving — and the acting which is all over the place. Ashleigh Cummings (Vic) is fine, Zachary Quinto is a bit too calculated (he’s only missing a mustache to twirl). My biggest problem is with Jahkara Smith as Maggie Leigh. I don’t want to be too hard on her since, according to IMDB, this is her first professional acting credit but … she is clearly acting, and I have a hard time understanding some of her dialog. I can’t pin all that on her though because a good director should be able to get a good, natural performance out of an inexperienced actor and that is not happening in these early episodes. Apologies to Ms. Smith but for such a substantial role, it may have been wise to go with someone a bit more experienced, perhaps by swapping Smith with Paulina Singer as Vic’s friend Willa, who is only going to be in four episodes total and has series credits like Dead of Summer, Gotham, Falling Water and Tell Me a Story on her resumé.

I will certainly give Ms. Smith a chance and hope to see her, and the show, improve but this is all reminding me of how excited I was for the TV adaptation of The Strain and bailed after a couple of episodes. I will not bail here, but it may be a long slog to get to the end (and that raises another question about the longevity of the series … is this a ‘limited series’ based on a single novel, or will AMC try to milk this for all it’s worth if ratings are decent and some of its established series are coming to their end?).

NOS4A2 airs Sundays at 10:00 PM on AMC.

What did you think of this week’s episode? Sound off in the comments below!

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