NOS4A2 :: A long drive to Christmasland

AMC

NOS4A2 finally got interesting again this week … for the last five minutes of the episode. The rest was another slog through Vic’s personal issues with her parents, Maggie refusing to help anymore, and Charlie withering away.

Has anyone read the book upon which this series is based? Does Joe Hill really spend hundred and pages on Vic’s family drama? We got the point in the first episode — they’re awful … and it seems like all of the working class parents on this show are awful. The upper class mother of Willa may be a buttinski with her heart in the right place, but she’s not an alcoholic who mentally and physically abuses her kid. This show does not paint middle-to-lower class families in the best light.

After being forced to commit herself to the mental hospital by her father, Vic returns home to her mother only to be tormented by phantom phone calls that only she can hear (from the children at Christmasland wanting to know where Charlie is), and even worse, her mother sold her bike (aka her knife) while she was locked away. Without her vehicle of transportation, she has no way to use the Shorter Way. She tries running fast in the hopes she can conjure that bridge, but it doesn’t work (although it looked like she was actually close to making it happen if the visual effects employed during that scene are to be believed).

So she asks her dad to take her to Bike Week (what a coincidence it’s happening just as she needs a new bike), but she can’t find ‘the one’ that she needs. No, all she gets is her dad tossing back beer after beer, leading Vic to toss back a few just to show him what he’s become … or has always been actually. Luckily her friend Craig, the boy her mom banished from their lives, is also at Bike Week and after the encounter with her dad shows Vic some real kindness by asking how she is doing (and this comes after upper crust Drew threw it in her face that her dad is a mess). He doesn’t care about the Wraith or Haley or anything else, he wants to focus on her and judging from Vic’s reaction it’s the first time anyone has ever asked her that question. She ends up leaving with him to go back to his own dysfunctional mother (either passed out on the couch drunk or high or both), takes a hit of weed and finally tries to get some sleep, something she hasn’t really done since she was in the hospital. Before they left Bike Week, Vic also got another call from Christmasland that was very threatening.

Meanwhile, Maggie is recovering from her injuries back in Iowa and her friend Sheriff Bly offers to let her stay with him while she mends. I’m really confused about the relationship between these two. He seems old enough to be her father, but at the same time it feels like the story is trying to push this as him having romantic feelings for her. Bly also drops a little bit of information that suggests Maggie has a drug problem, but she insists that she’s already taken her prescription and the doctor would not give her a refill so she’s fine and can take care of herself. But a call from Vic seems to push her over the edge and the next thing you know Bly finds her spaced out on a bench, so he takes her to his home and pust her to bed. When she wakes up, he’s apparently been abducted as the water is running in the kitchen and the flashers on his cop car are on (and why the flashers are on while he’s doing dishes is a mystery).

AMC

Manx spends most of the episode withering away after the attack on his car by Jolene and Vic. He needs Bing to fly to Colorado to help him acquire a water pump for the Wraith and there’s only one place he can get it. I don’t know if you’re a frequent flyer but booking a same day flight usually isn’t cheap, but we’ll never know how Bing paid for that plane ticket. He is able to get Charlie and the Wraith to the scrapyard, and of course it is the same place we saw a few episodes back where the woman insisted that Charlie took both her son and her grandson. She knows exactly who’s in the tow truck when they arrive and when Bing asks for that specific water pump. While she send him to take the car off the truck, she goes and calls Sheriff Bly.

So in addition to Bing’s custodial work, he’s also a mechanic, able to remove and replace the busted water pump. Which isn’t easy when you have a husk of an old man barking orders at you to get it done now. The sirens in the background also add some pressure as Charlie and Bing are quite aware that they are headed in the direction of the scrap yard. But Bing gets the pump installed and Charlie regains his youth right before the old woman’s eyes, giving him a chance to remind her what a terrible parent she was, and that her own son wasn’t so great either, and that’s why her grandson is living his best life at Christmasland.

Then something happened — I don’t know if it was my TV service or AMC but there was a weird jump in the video because all of a sudden the old lady was on the ground, the police arrived and Charlie and Bing were just casually getting themselves into the Wraith. They sat there as the cops all attended to the woman, and Bing said the police don’t see them. Charlie corrected him and said they don’t notice them, and they drove away without incident.

Now Bing has been worried about his longevity after Vic revealed to him that Charlie’s previous associate Ives was found dead. Charlie assures him that as long as he stays on Charlie’s Nice List, everything will be fine and Bing can enter Christmasland as soon as they have saved ten children. We didn’t see where Charlie and Bing went after leaving the scrap yard, but we do see them arrive at the gates of Christmasland. Unfortunately, Bing must remain outside while Charlie — whom the kids and people around his town refer to as Father Christmas — makes a delivery. Opening the trunk, out pops Sheriff Bly but instead of being angry about being stuffed in a trunk, he’s a bit too content to be at Christmasland. Charlie takes him inside and a horde of children come out of the shadows and young Daniel greets the extremely happy Bly. Then they say it’s time to play Scissors for the Drifter and Daniel plunges his scissors into Bly’s chest. The rest of the children join in, feasting on Bly’s body.

The episode ends with a young girl holding Charlie’s hand saying, ‘I’ve missed you, father,’ and he replies. ‘I’ve missed you too, child.’ So … is that his actual daughter or just another of the children he’s abducted? It seems more familial since she’s not participating in the feast, but … who knows. With only three more episodes to go, maybe we’ll get some kind of resolution.

NOS4A2 airs Sundays at 10:00 PM on AMC.

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

AMC