NOS4A2 Episode 8
To start things off: We now have confirmation that we WILL be getting a season 2 of this amazing show!! I can’t wait to see what amazing things the writers bring next season!!
But first…
We have three more episodes this season.
We’ve learned a lot of crazy things about Charlie: like he’s in love with his car, he really doesn’t like to teach kids manners and he has a daughter. This week we find out something even more shocking… Charlie has a friend. Vic on the other hand isn’t having as good of a time.
Let’s start out with good ole…
Charlie Manx
Parnassus
Charlie needs a drink while delivering the young boy from the last episode to Christmasland. So he stops by Parnassus.
Fun fact: Parnassus is a sacred mountain in Greece and the Roman poets saw it has a home for the muses, no wonder someone like Charlie would want to go there being a strong creative himself.
As he enters, everyone leaves, including a clown that looks like the famous one with a red balloon, who also steals kids by luring them with promises.
He finally comes to a man hitting the juke box because his country music turned into what he called “holly jolly bullshit”.
Abe
Obviously Charlie has one friend, a man named Abe.
The two sit and talk about none other than Vic. Charlie mentions that Jolene July is dead and that someone was using the shorter way bridge.
Abe said he saw it open up on his map of inscapes and it wasn’t far from him.
Abe didn’t seem to like knowing that Charlie was pining after another, girl but Charlie didn’t seem to care. He is determined to take Vic to Christmasland no matter what and if she doesn’t go with him, he will just kill her.
While Charlie is having a drink with an old friend, another person has just lost a father. That person being…
Maggie
The first we see of Maggie is her digging through the trash for her pill bottle, which she finds empty.
Calling her mom
After calling Joe’s phone, Maggie calls her mother and tells her she wants to come home. She even tells her she got rid of her scrabble bag.
Her mom tells her she was always allowed to come home as long as she follows their rules. (Basically telling her she couldn’t be herself.)
Too many children go through what Maggie has. Behind kicked out by their parents for being different. Be it a magical power like Maggie, being gay like Maggie, getting pregnant young and so on.
This episode does a great job showing just how kids who have gone through that suffer, because they have no one to turn to.
The tiles are back
Going outside, Maggie finds her bag of scrabbles that she had thrown away on her way back home.
She decides to use them and she asks them where Joe is. We know the answer, but it was heartbreaking to see Maggie’s reaction when it spelled out “Dead”.
Needing a fix
After cleaning up the spilled garbage and grabbing her stuff, Maggie goes to a local lesbian bar named Miss Trixie’s to drink off the pain.
While there, she meets a girl using pain meds and while dancing, drinking and making out – Maggie steals the meds.
When Maggie goes to the bathroom though she sees herself in the mirror and doesn’t like what she sees.
Leaving through the back, Maggie asks her tiles where Vic’s bike is and they spell out The Brat.
The Brat
She then calls Vic and tells her that her bike is with her. She tells Vic that her and Joe were the only ones who understand her and for Vic to continue hunting Charlie, ending the call by quoting The Outsiders “stay gold, pony boy” and hanging up.
I think that Maggie using that quote from the outsiders was a good way to show how much she doesn’t want Vic to change because of all of this. Maggie cares, she’s just been hurt too many times.
Jahkara Smith steals the show in this episode. Her ability to bring out that raw emotion in Maggie is amazing. I can’t wait to see where Maggie goes next in her journey.
There’s one more person involved and that’s our heroine,
Vic McQueen
Moving forward
Vic receives a letter from RISD saying she got in and has a full scholarship.
She calls her mom who doesn’t seem all that thrilled, but Willa is and tells Vic that she’s having a party for her.
Willa’s party
Everyone’s having a great time except for Linda who would rather do the dishes then celebrate with Vic.
Chris shows up and when offered a drink he declines. He seems to be trying, but will he be able to continue this upward journey?
During a conversation with Chris, we find out Linda is afraid of Vic getting attacked in providence. Chris thinks Vic will be fine, but her mom isn’t so sure.
Fallout
When Vic gets home her mom confronts her about a box containing weed, booze and condoms that she found.
Now, we all know that Bing placed that there, but they don’t.
Vic yells at her mom for going through her stuff and her mom says it was just on her bed.
When Vic can’t find her computer and art things, her mom says she isn’t getting them back until she earns them back.
Now Vic, completely drunk, begins to laugh making her mother even more angry. She says she can forget RISD because she isn’t grown up enough. She even says that they gave her a free pass to what she calls “rape town”.
Vic gets angry and storms out of the house calling her mom an “ignorant small town loser” and claiming that’s why her dad left her.
Bing strikes again
Bing attacks Vic as she’s leaving her and knocks her out, taking her back to his place.
We finally see just how psychopathic Bing has always been. He tells Vic the happiest day of his life is when he killed his parents.
He also says she smells like his mom and tries to rape Vic. This is probably the first time we see true fear on Vic’s face.
While she was trying to scare Bing by telling him that Charlie would be angry, she had been working on the tape with the pin Craig gave her.
Breaking the tape, she hits Bing in the crotch and runs out and straight to Craig’s house.
Craig
Craig wants to go take care of Bing, but Vic makes him promise not to. He does reluctantly and I’m guessing that he is going to try.
The phone call
Vic receives that ominous call from Maggie and becomes really worried about her.
Going to her mom
Needing her bike to get to Maggie, Vic goes and talks to her mother. She tells her she’s afraid of being alone and that’s she’s not stupid, but a coward and that’s why she stayed with her dad all these years.
This was the one thing I didn’t like about this episode. It seemed like no matter what – the women were doomed to fail.
Her mom hasn’t gotten any slack this whole season, but her dad gets excuse after excuse and now he’s suddenly wanting to be sober while her mom still hates that she’s going to college.
The continuous blame of the abused and not the abuser is the one point in this show I don’t care for.
The bike and Maggie
Going to the basement, Vic finds her knife and crosses the bridge, which now says Miss Trixies and finds Maggie laying in garbage.
She is unresponsive, so thinking quickly, Vic sticks her finger down Maggie’s throat and makes her throw up.
Maggie finally responds by saying “I guess you found your bike” and the episode ends with Vic holding onto Maggie crying as her eye becomes bloody red again.
Ghost
Along with this weeks episode, a special short played called Ghost.
This gave us a look into the disappearance of Robbie and Robbie Jr from the auto shop we saw in the last episode.
After playing in the car and it almost killing his dad on its own, Robbie Jr. gets a call from Charlie who tells him something’s in the car for him.
Junior goes to the car and when his dad goes looking for him, and finds Junior in the car again he gets angry. Junior says he promised him a ride in the car and when his dad tries to get in through the trunk, he gets trapped inside and the car leaves on its own.
In my opinion, Junior already had a dark side and Charlie was able to play off of that.
We didn’t really learn anything new, but it was neat to get more backstory about Charlie.
Final thoughts
I loved getting to see Charlie in a relaxed setting. I think no one else could portray Charlie as well as Zachary Quinto does.
I am hoping that with the two hour season finale next week we see Linda find some peace in her life and hopefully Charlie, or at least Bing, gets what’s coming to them.
Be sure to catch the two hour season finale Sunday July 28 at a special time of 9/8c on AMC.
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