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*Sigh*
This week’s episode of NOS4A2 started out interestingly enough and then spent most of the rest of the episode following Vic’s attempts to get into art school. Yawn. And then the episode is titled ‘The Gas Mask Man’ and that was the tiniest moment of the episode as a whole. It’s getting increasingly difficult to come up with something to write about this show because nothing is happening.
Let’s start off with the opening which found Charlie Manx entering an elder care facility, his presence causing a major electrical disturbance that pretty much shuts down the power — except for the doors that automatically open (or is he doing that?) — so there are no monitors to witness his arrival. But he signs his name on the visitors ledger. He pays a visit to Jolene July, an incapacitated old woman who very clearly is terrified of Manx. And he’s brought her a gift — roller skates, which he puts on her feet, dances around with her like a rag doll, and then tosses her to the floor.
The reason for his visit is because he’s been alerted to someone, a ‘strong creative’, who has the ability to use that mysterious covered bridge to travel through space (and perhaps time). But the bridge is just the route. The traveler needs a device to help them travel. For Jolene is was the skates, and that’s why Manx came to see her, to make sure it wasn’t this woman whom he’s obviously affected (and perhaps Jolene isn’t actually as old as she appears, as Manx says he hopes it’s not another 50 years before they meet again). So now Manx and his new henchman Bing, the custodian at Vic’s high school, have to determine the identity of the ‘strong creative’ who he feels is going to be trouble for him. (We know the psychic Maggie Leigh knows Vic is connect to the Wraith, but I’m still not sure how Manx knows this.)
Manx and Bing also went to the location of the bridge and encountered young Haley (whom we still have no idea how she’s connected to Vic) who was looking for her cat Mittens. But with the young girl in the middle of nowhere all alone, Manx seemed to take this as her having no adult supervision and this is where the Gas Mask Man comes into play. The GMM is actually Bing, who with his access to various chemicals, puts on a gas mask and takes a canister of some sort of gas to Haley’s house, knocks out her mother, then doses Haley just enough to get her out of the house and to Manx’s car for the trip to Christmasland (and Manx needlessly killed Mittens in the process). We assume Bing also went back to the house to finish off mom, but it’s unlcear. All we know is that Haley is now missing and Vic finds the dead cat.
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All that was really just a small part of the episode. The majority of it was all about Vic fretting on getting into RISD. In order to get a student loan, she needs one of her parents’ tax returns. Neither of her parents have paid taxes in years, working under the table, so that’s a big no. Vic, Willa, Drew and another guy visit the school and an advisor tells Vic she has other options to apply for financial aid, and just like Willa’s mother has already assumed, perhaps she can claim parental abuse (that bleeding red eye of hers seems to trigger everyone into believing one of her parents is beating her). Willa is pretty fed up that everyone think’s she being abused and she abruptly leaves the campus, suddenly struck with visions of Charlie Manx as she darts into traffic, being saved by Drew.
Maggie keeps telling Vic that only she can stop Manx and save her friend Daniel — and now she’s got her own connection to Manx with Haley being taken — but Vic still refuses to get involved. She tells Maggie that she’s not going to be crossing that covered bridge again (and her bike is like Jolene’s skates, the method of delivery) but now that Haley is gone and Mittens is dead — and Maggie somehow arranged her Scrabble tiles wrong, asking Vic if Smitten meant anything to her — Vic may have to get involved. The one thing she is finally doing for herself is allowing Willa to forge her father’s tax returns so she can get into college.
Perhaps now with Haley missing Vic will have no other recourse but to join Maggie in hunting down Manx. But it better happen soon.
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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