In only four episodes, Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen has given us four episodes each with a decidedly different tone, however episode four proved to be something of a gargantuan rug pull that finally revealed to us not only what the big, lurking horror actually is, but gave us the conundrum that’s going to drive the show from here on in. But with the revelation that all of Rachel’s pre-wedding unease comes from a death curse that plagues her bloodline, SVBIGTH now has the unenviable task of trying to maintain the tension now that it’s flamboyant revealed it’s hand.
Taking more of a darkly comic drama cue from Episode 3, “I Think You Just Saved My Life” dials down the horror once more to serve up more toe curling second hand embarrassment as Rachel attempts to move on with her wedding, fully confident that she’s safe from the curse. However, we can trust future brother-in-law Jules to utterly fuck the situation out of all proportion.
After mulling over the details of her family curse as Jules drives her from both the harrowing reunion with her father and the troubling info dump from the immortal Witness, Rachel figures that she’s basically going to be OK. After all, the terrible death that claimed her mother apparently happened because the man she married wasn’t her soulmate, as per the conditions of the curse: but as Rachel is utterly convinced that Nick is precisely that, she’s confident that she’s fine. Jules however isn’t quite so convinced.
You see, due to the fact that a young Jules actually witnessed the bloody demise of Rachel’s mother nearly thirty years ago and heard her final plea. As he’s the sort who thinks the world revolves around him, the eldest Cunningham child now thinks it’s his purpose to try and save Rachel from a crimson fate and immediately starts trying to punch holes in her relationship with his brother, but all the bride to be wants to do is just get through her rehearsal meal which will see various offshoots of the Cunningham clan come to visit to see the happy couple.
The main reason Rachel is so confident (about 92% according to her), is that the way she and Nicky first met was so wrapped in whimsical fate, that they must undoubtedly be soulmates and as the evening progresses, she asked to relate the story dozens of times to various couples who coo and gasp and give their tips to a happy, long lasting marriage. This, of course, still isn’t enough to appease Jules, who is convinced that there’s something about Rachel and Nick’s airport story that simply doesn’t add up. However, while being so gung-ho to save Rachel’s life, he hasn’t accounted for the other rules of the curse and if Rachel opts to not marry Nicky, her curse will leap to the Cunninghams with likely devastating results. After finding a weak point in the airport story and applying the correct pressure, Jules succeeds in shaking Rachel’s confidence in her brother, but with everyone’s life now on the line, who can this now actually benefit?
With its latest tonal pivot, SVBIGTH finds director Lisa Brühlmann settling into the director’s chair as Axelle Carolyn tags out after her superlative fourth episode, and much like her predecessor, Brühlmann gets her feet wet with a more dramatic episode rather than a full blown horror freak out. However, I Think You Just Saved My Life proves to be devilishly funny as it puts it’s typically tense sensibilities toward putting a twisted spin on last minute jitters and the grind of working a reception filled with soon-to-be relations. Most of the cast take a back seat here, with the characters of Nick, Portia, Nell, Boris and Victoria mostly swallowed up by the influx of Cunninghams that all want to hear that airport story. The real spotlight here is taken up by Rachel weathering all the inane wedding advise from couples who most definitely are not soulmates, and Jules who is doubling down on picking apart her tale in some misguided attempt to play the hero. To deal with Jules first, his quest to finally lay his ongoing standing demons to rest proves to be most amusing as, true to form, he goes about “saving the day” as an asshole would. Intsagram stalking Nick’s ex-girlfriends and audibly calling bullshit on minor story details that refuse to line up, he finally reveals an aspect to that oft-told, sweet story that blows Rachel’s confidence to smithereens.
It seems that on that magical day, Nick had just been dumped and as he can’t handle being alone for two seconds, was moping around the airport when should’ve been going to Jules and Nell’s wedding.
The entirety of Rachel’s belief system lay in the fact that this total stranger didn’t board her flight because he fully trusted the panic attack she was having about the journey, but now that it’s revealed that he wasn’t ever going to get on the plane because it wasn’t even his flight rattles the bride-to-be’s confidence to a shocking degree. Now realising that the entire crux of her relationship with Nicky is a lie means that everything is now up in the air, and it’s just like the horror genre to twin something like pre-wedding cold feet with the risk of a horrifying blood-death.
However if – like Jules – I’d want to poke some holes in I Think You Just Saved My Life, I’d argue that the episode maybe runs a little too long when it comes to making it’d point. I understand that SVBIGTH prides itself in making you feel the things that Rachel us going though, such as fear, confusion, embarrassment, or the type of social anxiety that makes you want to leap out of a window, but much of the episode is taken up going round in circles as Brühlmann hammers home the mind-numbing repetition of repeating a story ad-infinitum until it crucially loses all of its meaning. However, once Jules finally works that flaw in Nicky’s time line, the show gets back to the other thing it does as well at spinning surrealist terrors – spill the fucking tea.
Yep, you might wanna slip any footwear off to help prepare your toes for all the embarrassed curling they’re about to do, as that 92% percent certainty spectacularly unravels and the dinner soon goes to Hell. Nicky and Jules start fighting, Nicky and Rachel argue about his lies (what he did is actually a little creepy once you realise he wasn’t a passenger), power cuts occur and a lot of wine (red, of course) gets spilt on Rachel’s dress to make thing collapse with barely two days left until she has to say “I do”.
In many ways, I Think You Just Saved My Life is SVBIGTH is taking a slight breath after the all the reveals of the previous episode, but the way the show keeps shifting lanes as it raises the stakes, still means that it can still grip like a vice even as it focuses on more dramatic threads. But with Rachel’s confidence shattered and the lives of everyone in attendance now potentially forfeit, the real job of episode 5 is to weaponize what we now know about Rachel’s past – its now up to episode 6 to wield it.
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