We’re at the penultimate episode of Widow’s Bay, and like almost every single show that’s ever come before it, the time has come to ensure that all the relevant pieces are in the correct positions in order for the final to offer up that big finish. However, leave it to the makers of the most fun show currently on our screens that the position in question is to be sat impatiently in front of a projector waiting for somebody to get to the damn point.
Connections will be made, realisations will be had and while a lethal storm brews over the titular island, difficult decisions will have to be made in order to spare as many lives as possible as it looks like tourist season is already at an end.
But while the lion’s share of the show has mostly been about Tom Loftis’ ability (or lack thereof) to make the right decision in the face of unbelievable evidence, there’s one more impossible choice that’s left for him to make…
A quick return to 1702 informs us that Sarah Warren’s attempt to get the children of the cursed Richard Warren off the island ended in disaster. While the boys all violently hemorrhage to death as Sarah floats toward an uncertain fate in the fog, Frances, the youngest child falls overboard only to gradually float back to shore, which offers a terrible explanation: if Warren’s youngest daughter didn’t die, then his bloodline still continues, which clarifies why reducing Warren to a pile of dust and bones didn’t end the curse.
Tom and Patricia discover this after the former’s ineffectual anger tantrum to the news of a still active curse reveals vital evidence that Frances may have bore children, but that would mean unravelling hundreds of years of ancestry in order to discover who, or how many descendents of Warren there are. It’s not like there’s time anyway, because a gargantuan storm is gearing up to lash the island in mere hours. This is a fact that Chief Bechir discovers as its now far too late to get his pregnant wife over to the mainland before she gives birth and so adter being talked down by Wyck, Tom finally (and begrudgingly) sounds the storm sirens, thus effectively ending the Widow’s Bay tourist trade before it’s truly had a chance to begin.
However, with everyone in the shelters and a snafu concerning collecting a necessary component for the generators completed, Tom gets first hand experience of just how bad this storm will get when he witnesses the drug blitzed Shaman Todd O’Connor get whisked away by a huge tornado. But as they take shelter, both Patricia and Wyck reveal that there’s someone who can actually unravel the history of the Warren lineage with relitive ease – Rosemary. Of course, working it out and having the uppity Rosemary explain it with any sense of urgency are two different matters entirely and as they try to sit patiently while she goes through hundreds of years worth of history, a rather thorny moral debate arises. Once they find out who this descendent is, can they do what’s needed to end the curse?
While I’m fairly impressed with myself that I managed to piece together exactly how and why the curse failed to be lifted after the dusting of Richard Warren, I have to admit, I was way off about the identity of the final link in the bloodline. While my money was on Gerrie, the Widow’s Bay museum curator, it seems my eye should have been falling upon Tom’s elderly (and laughably ineffectual) assistant, Ruth; but before we mull over what this all means for the long suffering residents of Widow’s Bay, we have to set up the peril that’s steadily mounting. While I have to be honest, after a parade of threats that’s contained zombie fog, sea hags and a robustly built serial killer, the fact that the big push of the island’s evil has taken the form of a raging storm seems a little, well, ordinary…
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty of opportunities for the show to take full advantage of the scenario for both comedic and dramatic value. As the clouds form and worrying news comes from meteorologists, Tom has to swallow his pride and torpedo his dreams of turning the island into a tourist spot to rival Martha’s Vineyard. We deftly hop from more serious threads like Bechir (who doesn’t get much more screentime like I previously hoped) desperately trying to prevent his child being born on the island (those born on Widow’s Bay can’t leave), to the hilarious results of Tom’s temper tantrum that sees him nearly crushed under the weight of a sizable painting. More farcical joys are derived by the fact that Tom has yet another half-heard conversation with Garrett, the slow-acting lighthouse keeper, that sees them both passing each other in the rain when a component is needed for the generator for the shelter. But we also get a timely reminder that even though a giant storm may not be as horror friendly as a masked murderer or a face-sitting witch, we still get a showcase for it’s destructive power when a brief cameo from Chris Flemming’s Shaman Todd suddenly ends when Tom witnesses him get yanked up into the sky by violent winds.
However, while the scene is nicely set, the standout of the episode is undoubtedly the moment where Dale Dickey’s notoriously prickly Rosemary takes centre stage to explain (in great detail) who exactly the last living descendent of Richard Warren is. Widow’s Bay’s greatest gift is how well it plays its character based comedy that ensures that it never falls into parody, and watching returning director Hiro Murai have the confidence to utterly bring the show to a screeching halt thanks to a belligerent old lady refusing to be rushed despite the fact that a literal storm is raging outside, is pretty impressive. The social awkwardness continues thanks to perfectly played side jokes such as Tom wanting the fan on while Rosemary chain smokes only to be told that she can’t hear over the drone, or Patricia’s objection to the way she announces which of the female ancestors were lesbians (“I can’t say that now?”) and her spirited misuse of the word retard. The confidence it takes for a show to completely halt its momentum during the penultimate episode purely to make an extended joke about how boring and cantankerous one of its supporting characters are is immense, but it’s to the show’s credit that it pulls it off magnificently.
From here, we now have a debate that teeters on the boundaries of drama and comedy as Tom, Patricia and Wyck debate whether or not they’re justified murdering a little old lady in order to end the curse of the island, but it’ll blatantly be explored more next week. Once again, “Emergency Centre” proves to be great stuff, but I’d be lying a little if I said I wasn’t slightly disappointed that Bechir’s role wasn’t bigger, there wasn’t more stuff between the newly reconciled Tom and Evan and the grand threat wasn’t something spookier than inclement weather.
With only one episode to go, we find the main characters of Widow’s Bay given something of a moral conundrum to wrestle with in their final instalment. But while early promises of more overt horrors seem to have blown away in the storm (the first episode riffed heavily on the movie The Fog), the toe curling awkwardness of the humour is still as sharp as ever.
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