“We figure if we can fix this, we can fix anything. Anyone.”
After the heartening success of “The Word,” “Dirty” begins with unnerving promise. Accompanied on-screen by the dirge-like notes of Leonard Cohen’s “Avalanche,” the unnamed masses of Castle Rock and Salem’s Lot begin a new parade. Unlike last week’s, there’s no homey cheer in this parade, no clowning stiltwalkers, no harmless spitting image of Christine heading the procession.
Instead, it’s the entire unpossessed population of the two towns, everyone who can ambulate, everyone not “defiled” by psychoactive medications, all drawn irresistibly toward the sound. (Every week, we edge closer to discussing the first season’s revelations; time to consider a marathon if you haven’t seen it yet.) Despite the track playing over it, this solemn march feels less like an avalanche and more like a river, sweeping up everyone in its course as it flows through town.
It’s eerily effective, and if it falls a little short of the impact of early The Walking Dead episodes, it’s evocative of them. Recalling other apocalyptic scenarios, the shots of Nadia making her way through the ominously silent hospital corridors are reminiscent of 28 Days Later (and its predecessor and probable influence, John Wyndham’s Day Of The Triffids). At last, the speed with which townsfolk are compromised feels threatening instead of glib, as we see how complete the takeover has become. This isn’t a coterie of revenant settlers against an unsuspecting town. This is an invasion settling in over a town with unsettling ease, as it did in The Tommyknockers. (I cannot recommend The Tommyknockers.)
The disturbing detachment created by the anonymous, ever-swelling crowds is potent, but it doesn’t excuse Castle Rock’s casual discarding of characters, often characters who are introduced only to be dispatched. Like Aaron Staton and Alison Wright before him, Chris Mulkey has already been subsumed into the mass of unnaturally calm bodysnatchers. “He’s with us now,” Pere Augustin tells Annie, and that’s as much as we need to know, or get to know, about the man who took Annie Wilkes into custody.
This indifference to lesser characters is a longstanding problem, one that nearly derailed the first season’s excellent second half. This season, the players reduced to playing pieces don’t even have the dignity of being treated like chess pieces, each played for their particular traits. Instead, they’re checkers, jumping interchangeably any which way. There’s no reason Chris Mulkey’s part in the conspiracy couldn’t have been fulfilled by Patrice, who was sent out last week to fetch Annie with all the ceremony of a guy sent on a beer run. There’s no reason to keep Aaron Staton in stasis for most of two seasons now. There’s no reason to have Alison Wright giving her all as the former Ace Merrill’s almost agentless second banana.
And there’s no excuse for it, not when these writers (“Dirty” is credited to Michael Olson and K. Corrine Van Vliet) can drop in apocalyptic allusions so neatly, so naturally. Not when they can write the return of Annie’s dead, mad mother, making her ghastly specter one more voice tempting Annie to take sanctuary in death. Not when they know to use her sparingly, with Robin Wiegart’s voice (soft and cruel by turns) doing most of the dirty work. Not when they can cleverly set another tense scene in the pharma room, taking advantage of the way the premiere made clear not just its importance and impenetrable nature, but its layout, so Chris’ plan makes immediate intuitive sense to the audience. Not when they can conjure up a river out of nowhere, a steady stream of blank-eyed searchers pouring forth in an ironic echo of Annie’s favorite anthem.
If there’s one thing Annie Wilkes knows, it’s the power of a river, its impassive force crashing over your puny efforts. The near-irresistible mass of it washing over you. The lure of it. The dim, desperate urge to join in the flow, to relinquish the pain of resisting. To let the river run, to let it run away with her in its pull.
Annie comes close. In one scene, her hands close on her daughter’s throat; in another, her mother’s voice urges her to find Joy, to kill her, to “get her out of this dirty world.” But Annie resists. As always, it’s the thought of Joy that wrests Annie from her worst temptations, that saves her from the river coursing through her mind.
That’s how “Dirty” lands its suffocating sting as the episode ends, dropping us into the current for another week. It’s not Annie who’s swept up in the river of strangers, but Joy. Joy in danger. Joy in thrall. Joy as the intended vessel for Amity Lambert. Joy joining the stream of vacant faces proceeding inexorably across the Pangborn Bridge.
Stray observations
- “Dirty” drives home parallels between Annie and Nadia, each of whom pressed their hands wrist-deep in their parent’s blood,trying to stop the life from flowing out of them, and both of whom have recently relived that moment—Annie with Rita, Nadia with Chris.
- “Has she always been an artist?” Pere Augustin asks of Joy. Annie replies, “Steady hand, that girl,” pouring out water fromthe steaming kettle in her own hand, and were we all waiting for Annie to wallop him with the scorching hot bottom of that full kettle?
- Chris attacking Nadia has none of the grotesque comic flair of Annie’s attack on Ace. It’s hard to watch, and may unintentionally be the scariest thing in this season so far: feeling the one person you trust, the one person you dare to turn your back to, slip in behind you, hands tightening skillfully at your throat.
- Annie’s initial scene with Pere Augustin is less a dialogue than a digest of a their conversation, its salient points reduced for easy absorption. Given a little more distance from the previously on, this scene would be admirably efficient. So close to the recap, though, a second scene composed of quick flashbacks and scattered sentences feels like just another summary.
28 Comments
So, what do we think the deal with the bodies in the basement was? Potential vessels? Seems like they burn the people they sacrifice or otherwise purge.
My guess is the noncompliant, or people who are on meds that wouldn’t make for good hosts?
I figured the noncompliant got burned like we saw Asan doing to some cops last week, but maybe? The meds thing is also a good guess.
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There are a set number of colonist-revenants, so presumably they’re being strategic about who they select and just murdered the rest of those who got in the way, before they acquired their hypno-statue… however that turned up. It’s definitely messy.
I rewatched last week’s episode this weekend. The hypno-statue was in the cave with them when/where Amity killed everyone; I haven’t rewatched the season premiere, but presumably it was down there when Annie fell, too. Although I also thought the statue was what Amity was referring to last week when she said (in the past) that Augustin would have to “find the angel” so I dunno.
Emily really nails the particular thing of how shambolic this show is, which is how the ensemble feels both vast and shallow. It feels more like a Bachman book than one of King’s better works – though even in massive crowd pleasers like IT have characters who in the end feel like they’re given short shrift. I reread The Regulators recently and it has a huge cast of characters who seem half-molded, a lot like this show’s. I can’t help but trace in the arc of this project the whole development of like, a tabletop horror role playing DM. First season, they start off envisioning the game as a coherent thing that will go according to plan, but few if any of the elements adhere to it in practice, so the DM tries to maintain the tone they were going for while poorly improvising to get things on track. It ends up a weirdly confusing and slow march through various detours and side stories, to an ending that probably made more sense before they started herding cats.This second season, the DM is still green, still has the pretense of a coherent story to be told through play, still isn’t that great at improvising into whole new plot shapes, but is less married to tone. When the players get bored and the characters descend into violent slapstick, they’re willing to go along with it and move on to the next thing.All of which is to say that the show moves quicker than it did last season but is still really messy, and I can only really enjoy it as a theme park ride and not a narrative television program. Like a lumpy tabletop game, there are various ambitions of the creators’ that poke through, but it’s mostly a scramble of ADD-addled slouching through plot points that come together, not because they’re well crafted but because time and attention demands they do so.We have two hours left, a little less, in this season. Remember the Stand By Me group of ragtag kids we saw for like two scenes? Remember Abdi? You’d assume Annie would be the one to save Joy but I’m betting it’s going to be the soft butch love interest with whom she’s gotten a few minutes of shared screen time. If we just had Nadia, Pop, and Annie’s plots to wrap up in two hours it would still feel precariously stuffed, but I’m betting we’ll be getting a fair bit of lore added to everything else. I find Castle Rock entertaining but not satisfying… a 7/10 assessment if there ever was one.
“There’s no reason Chris Mulkey’s part in the conspiracy couldn’t have
been fulfilled by Patrice, who was sent out last week to fetch Annie
with all the ceremony of a guy sent on a beer run.”How so? After Patrice criticized Augustine’s selection of Annie as the Prophet’s vessel, Augustine had Patrice sacrificed.
This is an invasion settling in over a town with unsettling ease, as it did in The Tommyknockers. (I cannot recommend The Tommyknockers.)I actually like The Tommyknockers
I liked the tommyknockers too and also got that vibe when all the townspeople were in a trance.I also noticed the room that Annie slept in in the Marsten house is very similar to the room Annie had Paul Sheldon tied up in in Misery.
I bet all those people were just looking for D batteries.
For their . . . back massagers.
I also think King’s bugfuck prog epics (both sober and less-than) are underrated, but they do tend to plod in retrospect, and he makes the mistakes common to most if not all of his work.
Yeah, in my brain I kinda link up The Tommyknockers and Dreamcatcher because they’re both similarly fucked up and similarly influenced by substances and I enjoy them both for similar reasons.
I like Traci Lords?
:)I guess I should clarify that I liked the book better than the movie. But the movie still entertained me.
I liked the book. The made for tv. movie was bad. So bad.
Escort stealth missions are the worst, huh Annie? But, seriously, that was an amazing episode. The critiques here are valid but, overall, it was probably the best standalone episode of Castle Rock yet.
I was a little surprised not to see Pop in this episode, as I was kind of thinking he might be integral to saving the town. I really have no guess as to how the next two weeks might go, which I think is actually a sign of a good show.
I was wondering about Pop, too, especially since last week he realised something bad was coming. I assume/hope he’s figuring out a way to help; I’ll be pissed off if he runs away or gets killed super easy because neither of those are fates he deserves.
Randall Flagg. Look to what happened in Tull.
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So The Kid is actually Randal Flagg, right?
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Nice tasteful simile there in the headline.