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Even though I made a few errors in last week’s post, one thing I did state completely holds up with this week’s episode of NOS4A2 — Vic McQueen is a drag. She’s a terrible character, so unrelentingly unpleasant that she just makes watching the show a real chore. I used to dislike Maggie on about the same level but they were able to make her slightly more likable as the first season ended, but Vic has just continued on a downward spiral of unpleasantness … not a good look when you’re supposed to be the hero of the story.
But this week was a breath of fresh air, arguably the series’ best episode ever. And Vic McQueen was nowhere to be seen. In fact, none of the core cast of characters appeared this week but Charlie, Bing and Millie. This episode finally delivered what I think a lot of people have been waiting for: Charlie Manx’s backstory. And with that we got a tour de force performance from Zachary Quinto and some truly disturbing special effects makeup.
The episode cut expertly between the past and present, giving us the nightmarish scene of Charlie rising from the slab in the morgue (and I don’t know why they cast comedian Jim Norton as a security guard but seeing him almost took me out of the scene), and after killing the security guard, set about to stapling his chest flaps back together. If you’re squeamish, that scene was enough to give you nightmares for a few days. Making his way to a phone, Charlie was able to get in touch with Bing, who was thrilled to hear from his master but he’s still panicked that he can’t get the motor to start in the Wraith. Charlie orders him to put a child in the back seat and it will start, and he is to meet Charlie at Sleigh House. Bing manages to rescue the son of the artist who bought the Wraith from a basement full of bullies who locked him in a dog cage and wrote ‘GAY’ on his forehead and promised he would take the boy to a place where no one would be mean to him ever again. And the car starts.
But not before Charlie, still aged and unsure he’ll make it back to Christmasland (but a call to Millie pushes him to make the effort when she tells him the lights went out and ‘the white’ was getting closer to them), kills a trucker at a rest area — after frightening a woman who witnessed the bloody old man exit the car full of bullet holes courtesy of a hospital security guard. But with the car starting, Charlie takes the clothes of the trucker, de-ages and exits the rest room with no one noticing, taking the truck to Sleigh House to rendezvous with Bing.
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During this ordeal, the episode cut back and forth to the past showing us Charlie and his new bride, the daughter of the man Charlie used to chauffer for, so Charlie is not seen as a desirable mate for the daughter. They’ve just returned from seeing the new movie Nosferatu and Charlie playfully takes on the role of the ‘ridiculous’ vampire. But Charlie learns his wife is pregnant so he believes that will change everything, now hoping that his father-in-law will front him some capital to start his own fleet of luxury limousines … in Nowheresville, Oregon. Needless to say the request did not go well, and to make matters worse, Charlie’s father-in-law told him the child would be well taken care of with a generous trust, only accessible when she reaches the age of 18. The child is born on Christmas day, which now explains Charlie’s love of Christmas, and is named Millicent after her late grandmother.
But life is not easy for the Manx family, cut off from his wife’s father and money in what is probably the Depression era. While Charlie and his wife argue over money and her getting a job — and he shockingly insinuates that the only job she would be good at is a whore — he completely dotes on his young Millie, and she adores him in turn, with his love of Christmas instilled in her. One day Charlie shows up with his Rolls Royce Wraith, purchased at a bargain ($3000) because someone died in it. Millie is curious and her mother is furious, telling Charlie she already had bus tickets to go to her sister’s house. She forces Millie to pack, but Millie does not want to leave her father. Finally admitting that he is a loser, Charlie offers to drive them to the sister-in-law’s house.
But the Wraith seems to have now possessed Charlie, forcing him to drive like a maniac, passing the exit to their destination. And Millie is not looking well in the back seat with her mother. Millie starts laughing about all of her teeth falling out and then she bares her fangs, tearing her mother to ribbons while Charlie’s eyes glaze over with that same ‘video noise’ that Millie referred to as ‘the white’. Next thing they know, Charlie and Millie are at the gates to Christmasland … although we still don’t know how this magical place was conjured up.
In the present, Charlie goes to the grove of pine trees that are hung with Christmas ornaments and there he encounters a little boy … Vic’s son Wayne. It takes Charlie a moment to realize who the boy is but when Wayne says his mother told him this was the place that belonged to the man who killed children, he immediately knew it was Bruce McQueen. Yes, the comic book loving parents named the boy Bruce Wayne McQueen. Before anything else can happen, Wayne (no one calls him Bruce) takes off and Bing finally arrives.
Bing helps Charlie to the Wraith and once inside he begins to heal, the wounds to his chest from the autopsy completely sealed up and now the boy in the back seat has been completely transformed into another vampire child. The three head to Christmasland but once again Bing is denied entrance because the agreement was he would bring Charlie ten children. Bing argues that during the eight years he waited for Mr. Manx (and in the flashbacks, Charlie’s father-in-law notes that he could find no traces of any family named Manx in the area, and that was just a breed of cat) he never did anything to get on the Naughty List. But Charlie asked if Bing ever doubted he would return and Bing admitted he did, so Charlie stopped the car and told Bing to walk down a path and wait for him. He’d know the spot when he saw it.
Charlie took the young boy to Christmasland, fed the kids the boys father, and had a tense reunion with Millie who is not happy at all that her father is leaving. Again. For as much as Charlie doted on her before their transformation, he now seems to treat her like an administrative assistant he leaves in charge of Christmasland while he’s off collecting more ‘friends’ for her. Charlie meets up with Bing in that cemetery we’ve seen before and they are discussing a child that needs to be saved more than any of the others. They look down and under the ice they see a boy whom Charlie remarks looks like his mother. On the tombstone is the name Bruce Wayne McQueen (even though in the book he has his father’s last name Carmody) with the epitaph: ‘The dad is dead, his mom’s unclean; Without a parent’s guiding hand, He’s better off in Christmasland!’
This episode delivered everything I’d hoped NOS4A2 would have been from the beginning. Let’s hope they can keep this caliber of storytelling up and not get bogged down by Vic McQueen’s family life yet again.
NOS4A2 airs Sundays at 10:00 PM on AMC.
What did you think of the season premiere? Sound off in the comments below!
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