After watching three whole episodes of Matthew Rhys’ hapless Mayor stagger from one supernatural encounter to another, the powers that be have decided that it’s high time someone else had a go. It admittedly makes sense, because how many more close encounters with fog zombies, sea hags and murderous ghost can the well-meaning Mayor have and still be skeptical?
So now that Tom is a (belated) true believer After his brush with a face-sitting sea hag, it’s time for us to shift focus to see how another resident – namely the homely and lonely Patricia – fares when presented with another of Widow’s Bay’s numerous legends. But does switching main characters just as it seems that things are about to lock into high gear manage to give us a greater appreciation of the scale of the mounting horror – or does it result in the show’s first miscalculation by hitting us with a strangely-timed reset of sorts? Trust in Widow’s Bay, my friends – the island knows what it’s doing.
Last episode ended with Tom and resident doom sayer Wyck finally seeing eye to eye on the numerous legends of the island after the latter saved the former from a wet, face straddling witch with a harpoon gun. However, as the gather themselves, we heard over the radio that Sheriff Bechir was having a spot of bother at the Sunset Cocktail night Patrica was holding at the Salty Whale and as we skip back four days, we discover that Tom isn’t the only one who’s been experiencing creepy phenomena.
We already know that the dowdy member of the Mayor’s office is something of a social pariah due to her persistent telling of the tale that as a teen, she had allegedly escaped the serial killer known as the Boogeyman who had previoisly murdered four girls on the island in various, gruesome ways. Fed up of being an outcast and constantly suffering catty remarks from the women who she grew up with, it seems that the moping assistant is about to experience a change in fortune when she stumbles across a self-help book entitled “Your Turn: Out With the Old and In With the You” and soon becomes obsessed with its suggestions, advice and teachings. Determined to stand up to the sneering and jibes of her peers, Patricia becomes adamant that she must host a Sunset Cocktail night and invite everyone in town in a frenzied, all-in attempt to finally be popular, even though her grizzled work friend Rosemary seens a little concerned.
When the night arrives it seems to be a bust and people seem to have an issue with the little tiara Patricia’s chosen to wear, but as the night goes on, more and more people finally arrive and it seems that Sunset Cocktails is a success. However, when Bechir arrives with a noise complaint, it seems that what Patricia has been seeing and what’s actually been happening are two very different things. And that self-help book? It seems that reality distorting grimoires can make you see anything as it makes you inadvertently enchant and curse your enemies…
If I’m being honest, when I discovered that the show was making a surprise switch from Tom to Patricia, I was initially a little disappointed as it seemed like the show was pulling something of a frustrating bait and switch. While I was legitimately wanting Kate O’Flynn’s miserable, prickly Patricia to get more screen time, to suddenly hit is with a time jump that takes us four days back just went things seem to be kicking off in a major way just seemed a bit frustrating. However, as it turns out, the shift ends up being something of a masterstroke as not only does it detail exactly what’s been going on to lead right up to that panicked radio message, but it gives us more insight on yet another one of Widow’s Bay’s tragi-comic characters and allows her to stretch her misunderstood wings.
Better yet, while Widow’s Bay has been gradually perfecting the art of blending humiliation humour with impressively subtle scares, “Beach Read” arguably manages to pull off the best laugh/scare to date with an expertly delivered twist that’s made all the more effective by the fact that the episode holds back for so long. The majority of the installment mostly has us spending time in Patricia’s heartbreaking sad company as she’s continually rebuffed by other women her age thanks to her stories about the Boogeyman. We discover that she somehow avoided him by hiding under her bed, but after we discover that the other girls were found in far more ingenious hiding places and there were no record of the creepy calls made to her house prior to that, Patricia has been labeled as nothing more than an attention seeker would wanted to make a local tragedy about herself. Whether any of this is true will remain to be seen, but at her lowest ebb, Patricia finds solace in her found self-help book that soon gives her pointers toward becoming popular.
Not only does this episode give Kate O’Flynn a chance to show she can do awkward humour meets horror just as well as Matthew Rhys, but the story shows the bigger picture as Widow’s Bay starts to really make it’s evil aura felt. But it’s also an opportunity for the episode to delve into some meticulous detail (notice how Your Turn has only two lines to write down your virtues but lots to compile your faults) and some magnificent payoffs to jokes that see their set up placed throughout the entire runtime. This results in possibly Widow’s Bay’s finest punchline yet, when it’s revealed that Patricia’s self-help book isn’t a book at all, but a gnarled, lumpy, Necronomicon-style grimoire that’s been manipulating her into casting a spell on anyone who turns up for her cocktail night. The punch she makes isn’t punch at all, but some fucked-up concoction of chopped up ravens and other such shit and that cute little tiara she’s wearing that everyone inexplicably has an issue with is actually some sort of witchy headless adorned with antlers. Even funnier is the fact that Rosemary has been trying to warn her, but was shouted down for not being supportive enough and the results of her spell means everyone present has now fallen into a trance that’s got them all marching towards the sea with their mouths all hanging unnaturally open. It’s here that Sheriff Bechir shows up and both Patrica and he manage to save everyone by holding the defiant grimoire over a huge, pagan bonfire in order to break the spell and from here we go on to sync up with Tom’s story from last week. If I had to choose thanks to the thrall of a grimoire, I’d have to admit that the sea hag is still my favorite Widow’s Bay happening so far, but Patrica’s witchy misadventure runs a close second so some of the finest balancing of subtle horror and humour around at the moment.
With the mystery of the church bells still to be uncovered and Reverend Bryce having committed suicide, there’s still plenty of ground to uncover, but Widow’s Bay deviation from the norm proves to be a welcome expansion of the concept as other members of the town start to be violently pestered by an awaking evil that’s decidedly cranky. And just like that, the show completes it’s transformation into horror curiosity to must-watch and I’m now actively jonesing for yet another trip that has nothing to do with a mind muddling grimoire, and more to do with superlative writing and performances.
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