S01.E11: Freedom from Fear

[formerlyfreedom]

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After Hawthorne family members catch each other lying about the past, they are forced to revisit a fateful night in 2002.

 

 

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Freedom from Fear (painted by Norman Rockwell) is the last of the well-known Four Freedoms oil paintings produced by the American artist Norman Rockwell. The series was based on the four goals known as the Four Freedoms, which were enunciated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his State of the Union Address on January 6, 1941. This work was published in the March 13, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post alongside an essay by a prominent thinker of the day, Stephen Vincent Benét. The painting is generally described as depicting American children being tucked into bed by their parents while the Blitz rages across the Atlantic in Great Britain.

[Cardie]

I thought they'd get to Rockwell eventually. Perhaps the show will copy this by having the Prices tuck in the twins. But I doubt such tender scenes ever played out when the Hawthorne siblings were wee ones.

[Guest]

The episode description says the Hawthornes are forced to relive a fateful night in 2002.  I can envision it being something like Garrett or Mitch and Maddie tucking in Tessa after her traumatic event.  

I think 2002 was David Morales' murder.  I don't know why the big focus on Morales and no other victim.  He could be SBK.  Then the psycho DNA question falls to Garrett's spawn.  

[sugarbaker design]

Or the night someone was dragging the body down the staircase.

[Guest]

I'm thinking they are one and the same.  

Here's my latest theory.  In 2002, SBK Morales and his accomplice plan to kill Mitch because as a crime buff he's on to them.  Something goes wrong and Morales tries to kill Garrett instead.  Maddie and/or Mitch kills Morales upstairs with Cam's belt.  Tessa kills the accomplice, maybe a woman, and did it in a way she couldn't be posed as an SBK victim (e.g. with a gun), and/or she didn't fit the victim pattern.  So Garrett buries that body in the woods.  The parents drag Morales home and pose him as an SBK victim.  Garrett disagrees about the whole plan so he leaves for 14 years, and plans to take the fall for Tessa should it come to that.  He has said he always figured he'd be arrested eventually.  And it explains somewhat his interest in Christina.  Maddie kills the blind woman and the reporter as further coverup to protect them all.  

Edited August 30, 2016 by Guest

[CelticBlackCat]

I think Madeline had an affair (or something happened) with David Morales while being married to Mitch and Tessa was conceived.  Both actors/characters have blue eyes, and Tessa (Megan Ketch) has brown eyes.  Christina Morales, David's daughter, has brown eyes and is of Hispanic descent at least from her father.  That is why Tessa's hair in the brush tested as Hispanic from the DNA test Brady had done.  Tessa must know this; that's why she pretended she had planted someone else's hair in her hairbrush when Brady confronted her instead of admitting it was her hair.  This must be one of the family secrets, although how they explain brown-eyed Tessa I don't know.

Maybe David Morales raped Madeline, which is why they killed him (Madeline and Mitch).  But if he was the first SBK victim, then why would they keep killing people to make it look like a serial killer on the loose?  (Assuming Mitch and Madeline are SBK.)  I don't think Tessa killed anyone; she was too young.  There would have had to have been a time lapse between Madeline and David Morales/baby Tessa being born and the 2002 killing though.

Virginia Madsen is the only reason I've kept watching!

[Cardie]

7 minutes ago, CelticBlackCat said:

But if he was the first SBK victim

He was the last victim, thus our several theories that he was SBK.

Because Morales is the only victim we know anything about, and because Garrett made contact with Christina, he has to play some part in the resolution of the mystery I would think.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Cardie

[Guest]

Looking back I see that Cardie theorized that the Hawthornes killed SBK Morales as early as ep. 5, but I thought then and 'confirmed' with some recaps that Morales was the first victim.  Which isn't right, the show itself has said 2 or 3 times he was the last victim.  It's odd how many of us thought at one time or other that we had heard he was first, though.  I wonder if someone misspoke in the show at one point or something.  

[CelticBlackCat]

In this synopsis, it is stated David Morales is the first victim of SBK:

Spoilers Daily - American Gothic S1E4 "Christina's World"

[Cardie]

Actual dialogue in the show says that he is the last--in two different episodes. Recappers can make mistakes and then others online repeat them. It's possible that he was originally going to be the first but the writers changed their minds for plot purposes.

[Guest]

Yeah, there were some other recaps (maybe buddytv?) that said he was the first.   But if you look at the murder board in ep. 2 and listen to Brady's spiel, he was the last.  And it's mentioned again later in the show, like Cardie said.  

I don't know if you can see it on this but over Brady's head is Brian Long labelled as #1 in 1999 and on the far right of the board is David Morales labelled as #6 in 2002.  Brady says that police "managed to pull a fingerprint from the belt that was matched to David Morales, SBK's final victim".  Though before that he describes the belt as "the first SBK murder weapon ever recovered".  Maybe that helped confuse us.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Guest

[CelticBlackCat]

Just as in real life, on this show we barely know anything about the victims, except David Morales, because he is Garrett's love interest Christina's father.  If I'm right about the bio paternity of Tessa, what a mess!  Now that Christina's pregnant...

I can't make out the whole murder board.  Does anyone have the names, etc. of all SBK vics?

[Guest]

None of the names and dates have been mentioned in the show, besides Morales and 2002.  Here are the other four-- Camillia Morgan (2000), Michael Reid (2000), Anita Sandoval (2001), Samuel Altbrook (2002).

There is no reason for Garrett to be stalking Christina besides Morales, so his significance can't be just that he's Christina's father, because her whole significance is that she's Morales' daughter.  He's not stalking any other victim's kids.  And no other victims have been mentioned repeatedly in the show, both in and not in context to Christina.  

I really think Christina's pregnancy is to have some twist of "Garrett's baby dodged the Hawthorne crazy bullet because Garrett's dad is Caleb, BUT has it from his mother's side, whose father WAS ALSO a serial killer".

Which would mean my theory above is wrong that the body in the grave is SBK's accomplice since that twist would need Mitch and Morales both to be SBKs.  Unless there was a trio of killers.  Ok, I'm going with trio now!  Heh.  

[Free]

On 8/26/2016 at 7:27 PM, Cardie said:

I thought they'd get to Rockwell eventually. Perhaps the show will copy this by having the Prices tuck in the twins. But I doubt such tender scenes ever played out when the Hawthorne siblings were wee ones.

I think they referenced that all the way in the pilot.

As for the painting, I think the corresponding scene refers to the flashback.

[Chaos Theory]

Ok I only kinda wanted to punch Brady in the face this episode....so improvement?

Garrett was involved but not quite in the way Brady thought.   So SBK is a zombie?  Makes as much sense as anything else.  I did however like that Tessa pushed the dude down the stairs.  See....Tessa can be useful.

Heh Madeline.  Mom was always the smart one. The strong one. The dangerous one.  I really like the idea that Madeline was the one who killed the guy because her husband just didn't have it in him to do it.  Is murder considered a date activity?  Just asking.

Fun episode.  

[TigerLynx]

Maddie:  "You need to know the whole story."

Me:  "Duh, you couldn't come to this realization weeks, months, years ago?"

At first, I thought Maddie and Mitchell were really stupid for creating a crime where originally there was none (Tessa pushing the killer down the stairs).  However, Maddie's final flashback where it showed what really happened (not the false it was all your father's idea, I didn't know until later) with her being the schemer who decided to use SBK to their advantage to cover up Mitchell's theft was chilling.

Edited September 1, 2016 by TigerLynx

[partofme]

This show is really ridiculous.   But I always knew the mother was evil, I hope she doesn't get away with it.  

[augmentedfourth]

Maybe my standards have gotten lower over time, but I thought that was actually fairly decent. Unless there's a huge plot hole I'm missing (and I'm sure someone here will point it out if there is :D ) everything came together in a plausible way. Plausible in TV-world, of course. While not totally surprising in its plot twists, at least I wasn't rolling my eyes too much at anything. The only part I found a little contrived was Mitch being a true crime buff, which allegedly made it easier for them to be effective SBK copycats.

 

The actors they got for young Alison and young Cam were much better than young Garrett. Madeline continues to be an ice cold bitch, and I kind of love it. (Mr. Fourth was shouting at the TV about how her hair and stuff should have been all over David Morales, and he may have a point, but whatever, it was fun.)

 

The dolls were creepy, and I'm usually not one to be creeped out by dolls.

 

I haven't really been swayed either way until this point, but now I agree with anyone who's said Tom has to be involved. The accomplice has to be someone they know, or else it won't be satisfying to us, and he's been around or at least mentioned juuuuuust enough. I did consider Conley for a moment, but I think he'll be limited to the red herring with Cutter.

[Cardie]

Well, I was right that the Hawthornes killed SBK and that they killed Morales and staged his death to look like SBK's work--I was just wrong in thinking that Morales was SBK. Instead he was an honest man who riled up lots of folks (like Conley) and it got him killed when Maddie faced ruin. Here we couldn't quite figure out why she would kill Mitch--but it was to protect herself, the Lady Macbeth of New England. The chain of events was certainly convoluted and hard to swallow--no one made sure SBK was dead before having Garrett haul him to Maine--but at least it explains what has been obvious for some time, that SBK stopped because he died. And Mitch and Maddie's crime was for self-protection not the result of psychopathic compulsion.

So was SBK just some anonymous schlub? He may have been but obviously the accomplice will have to be someone we know. The Hawthorne siblings seem to be off the hook, so we're left with their spouses, either Sophie or Tom.

[curiously]

1 hour ago, Cardie said:

So was SBK just some anonymous schlub? He may have been but obviously the accomplice will have to be someone we know. The Hawthorne siblings seem to be off the hook, so we're left with their spouses, either Sophie or Tom.

I stick by my theory that Sophie's the accomplice, but it certainly could be Tom...

[curiously]

Also, considering that the accomplice seems to know what is going on inside the Hawthorne mansion, she/he should know that Jack is also in the house (in fact, Mitch specifically mentioned Jack being upstairs in one of his lines in the episode). If it's Sophie, there would be reason why Jack is not included in the dollhouse.

[Cardie]

Sophie has the artistic skills to make the dead Hawthornes dolls.

[Ms Lark]

So Momma Hawthorne is Lady MacBeth. Had a hunch.

[Guest]

Hm, not sure I like Tom or Sophie being an SBK accomplice.  Tom's been so absent.  And Sophie would've been a teenager.  But who's the alternative... Mrs. Caramel?  Or Brady.  If Sophie was old enough, Brady was, right?  I guess that means it's Tom.  Not a fan, unless they show me what clues we all missed besides "this guy has been on too many other shows to be a recurring guest only". 

I was right that Tessa did kill someone and not in a serial killer kind of way, at least.  And that the parents did pose Morales as an SBK victim.  

3 minutes ago, Cardie said:

Sophie has the artistic skills to make the dead Hawthornes dolls.

I thought that, too, but those clay figures were pretty darn rough looking, too.  I couldn't tell which of the 3 blondes was which.  I could see a looney tunes Tom making them.  Mrs. Caramel has scrapbooking skills and lives close.  Maybe she's our accomplice.  

[Cardie]

1 minute ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

I was right that Tessa did kill someone

She didn't actually kill him, however, since he came back to life up in the Maine woods.

[curiously]

7 minutes ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

Hm, not sure I like Tom or Sophie being an SBK accomplice.  Tom's been so absent.  And Sophie would've been a teenager.  But who's the alternative... Mrs. Caramel?  Or Brady.  If Sophie was old enough, Brady was, right?  I guess that means it's Tom.  Not a fan, unless they show me what clues we all missed besides "this guy has been on too many other shows to be a recurring guest only". 

I was right that Tessa did kill someone and not in a serial killer kind of way, at least.  And that the parents did pose Morales as an SBK victim.  

I thought that, too, but those clay figures were pretty darn rough looking, too.  I couldn't tell which of the 3 blondes was which.  I could see a looney tunes Tom making them.  Mrs. Caramel has scrapbooking skills and lives close.  Maybe she's our accomplice.  

 

13 minutes ago, Cardie said:

Sophie has the artistic skills to make the dead Hawthornes dolls.

I loved the dollhouse! It had a consistent and distinctive style, and personally I thought it was incredibly easy to recognize which characters the dolls were supposed to represent given how small they were. Certainly, a layperson would be unlikely to create a such a fine house/dolls. An artist, however...

[CelticBlackCat]

Finally, we got some answers!  I still don't get why blue-eyed parents Mitch & Madeline have a brown-eyed daughter, Tessa.  I can't wait for next week's double whammy epis!

[Guest]

6 hours ago, CelticBlackCat said:

Finally, we got some answers!  I still don't get why blue-eyed parents Mitch & Madeline have a brown-eyed daughter, Tessa.  I can't wait for next week's double whammy epis!

http://genetics.thetech.org/how-blue-eyed-parents-can-have-brown-eyed-children

7 hours ago, Cardie said:

She didn't actually kill him, however, since he came back to life up in the Maine woods.

True.  Though I guess when the ball got rolling on the cover-up plan they thought she did.  Or at least Garrett's understanding of what the cover-up was for. 

One thing I don't understand is after Garrett killed SBK, he looked at his knife and we see that the ivory piece is missing.  Didn't Brady say they found that piece at a SBK crime scene?  (Ah, never mind.  I see now Garrett took the knife from SBK and killed him with his own knife.)

I guess Tom being the accomplice would explain how SBK had the Hawthorne's alarm code.  Though why you'd go to kill someone in your girlfriend's family the night you were there working on campaign posters....?   Hopefully they explain that.  

The camera lingered on the 4-bladed propeller looking tattoo on SBK's chest.  I guess that's going to mean something. 

Edited September 1, 2016 by Guest

[sjohnson]

If I remember correctly...not sure that I do....the accomplice helped to kill Morales. There is no reason at all to think SBK proper ever had an accomplice, nor is there any reason to think an unknown SBK accomplice would know such current inside information about the Addams family. There's still no reason to take Madeline's story at face value. Madeline surely has to have a good idea who might have helped Mitchell kill Morales, someone close. But someone close has no motive to kill the reporter in such a way calculated to bring the spotlight onto the family he accomplice/new killer is close to. At this point, I'm not sure Conley and Cutter are still off the hook for killing Morales. I get that Mitchell had the distinctive bells from the murder kit, but then I would have thought the kit would also have had SBK's belt, not Cam's. Why raid the Good Will box for a distinctively marked unusual belt to fake an SBK murder of Morales? Of people close enough for Mitchell to trust, surely it should be easy enough to figure out who had a connection to the blind woman, i.e., access to a car used in the murder.

This is all so baffling I'm starting to think I've badly confused some essential detail.

[ghoulina]

Well, I figured they'd find a way to make Tessa the killer. It only made sense to me that Garret would somehow get involved to protect her - not his parents. But that whole "there's a stranger in my house, let me push him down the stairs" thing felt really awkward and unbelievable. 

I did like the twist that the Hawthornes weren't technically SBK, but used him as a front to clean up their own mess. But it did seem a little convenient that SBK decided to descend on their house right when they were having money issues. I know SBK was targeting rich people, but I really don't know why you'd pick a family that had so many children, especially older children, living at home. And send one guy in? Sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen. Sloppy work for a serial killer. 

Of course, we all know Dylan Bruce is the getaway driver, right? No shock there. That's how dude had the code to the Hawthorne alarm system. And he'd have access to the house to plant the bells and stage the dollhouse scene, etc. 

Oh, and I also liked that Madeline was the one to "finish the job", that sounds about right. She's a nasty woman, but Madsen is playing her so well. I love it! 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, sjohnson said:

If I remember correctly...not sure that I do....the accomplice helped to kill Morales. There is no reason at all to think SBK proper ever had an accomplice, nor is there any reason to think an unknown SBK accomplice would know such current inside information about the Addams family. There's still no reason to take Madeline's story at face value. Madeline surely has to have a good idea who might have helped Mitchell kill Morales, someone close. But someone close has no motive to kill the reporter in such a way calculated to bring the spotlight onto the family he accomplice/new killer is close to. At this point, I'm not sure Conley and Cutter are still off the hook for killing Morales. I get that Mitchell had the distinctive bells from the murder kit, but then I would have thought the kit would also have had SBK's belt, not Cam's. Why raid the Good Will box for a distinctively marked unusual belt to fake an SBK murder of Morales? Of people close enough for Mitchell to trust, surely it should be easy enough to figure out who had a connection to the blind woman, i.e., access to a car used in the murder.

This is all so baffling I'm starting to think I've badly confused some essential detail.

Maddie killed Morales.  And we were shown the SBK accomplice.  SBK turned to someone in the car outside the Hawthorne's and said, "Wait here until I give the signal", or something, then SBK went inside.  Then later we saw that accomplice take the car and drive away as Cam pulled up with his friend.  

 

3 minutes ago, ghoulina said:

But it did seem a little convenient that SBK decided to descend on their house right when they were having money issues. I know SBK was targeting rich people, but I really don't know why you'd pick a family that had so many children, especially older children, living at home. And send one guy in? Sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen. Sloppy work for a serial killer. 

I agree.  It was also awfully convenient for the Hawthorne parents that their accountant happened to also be among the elite wealthy, as unlikely as that combo is.  Maybe he's supposed to be like a partner in a KPMG-size firm but he wouldn't be diving into a box of payroll files himself.  

[ghoulina]

9 hours ago, augmentedfourth said:

The actors they got for young Alison and young Cam were much better than young Garrett.

Agreed! I had to double take a few times to make sure that WASN'T Rylance. And the guy playing young Cam really had his mannerisms down. 

 

8 hours ago, curiously said:

Also, considering that the accomplice seems to know what is going on inside the Hawthorne mansion, she/he should know that Jack is also in the house (in fact, Mitch specifically mentioned Jack being upstairs in one of his lines in the episode). If it's Sophie, there would be reason why Jack is not included in the dollhouse.

Cam was in high school during the flashbacks, the time of the killings. He was just beginning to get started with drugs back then. I think we can presume Sophie would have been just as young, if not younger. There has never been any indication that those two knew each other back then. It was Cam that mentioned Jack being upstairs, not Mitch. Mitch was only seen in the flashbacks during the time of the killings, and Jack wasn't even alive back then. Whether it's Sophie (which I do not think) or Tom (which I do), both would know Jack is there, because of Cam. But it's quite possible that they have no interest in killing a child who was not alive during the original murders and has no notion of what's going on. 

 

44 minutes ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

One thing I don't understand is after Garrett killed SBK, he looked at his knife and we see that the ivory piece is missing.  Didn't Brady say they found that piece at a SBK crime scene?  

Yes. Garrett killed SBK with SBK'S own knife. That was another bit that I found really preposterous, that Garrett kept the knife. He's all, "I kept it remind me of how I didn't die" or some crap like that. Um yea, no. I'm not keeping ANY evidence that I killed a man, especially a man who'd killed others! Bury that shit too. 

[augmentedfourth]

Let's see how well I do before my coffee.

 

Re: the knife - my takeaway was that the ivory knife was SBK's and Garrett somehow got hold of it in the struggle, used it to kill him, and then kept it afterwards. Granted, that scene was so damn dark, anything could have happened. But I think after the flashback he said something to Brady like "...and I kept the knife", indicating it wasn't his in the first place.

 

Re: the accomplice - I admit I'm a little fuzzy here and I might be confusing two different things. The detectives deduced there was an accomplice from the GnomeCam footage, but was that the Morales murder or one of the others? I'm trying to remember which murder it was where Brady was trying to figure out the timing by driving like a maniac due to Tessa's story about her father taking her out for her birthday early in the morning, and I thought it was the same one as the video footage, but I'm not positive. But in the footage, wasn't the accomplice in the driver's seat of the car the whole time and SBK got in the passenger side? If so, that doesn't make sense with the Morales killing where both Mitch and Maddie were there.

[Guest]

A recap said that was SBK's first murder that Brady was trying to reenact that day.  So not Morales.  (I edited out my further questions because I understand your comment now about the Morales murder.  It was only applicable IF that was footage of the Morales murder, which it wasn't.)

Edited September 1, 2016 by Guest

[sugarbaker design]

15 minutes ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

But what do the Morales killing and Mitch and Maddie have to do with actual SBK killings?

Nothing at all, just a copycat murder like you said.  The accomplice is still out there and wants revenge.  The only possibilities I can think of are Tom, Sophia and Detective Boston Accent.

[bkathi]

How about the mayor as an accomplice? IIRC he was only alibied for the Morales murder.

[ghoulina]

I just think the accomplice has to be someone who knew the Hawthorne's - because of the code to the alarm. We don't know how SBK got into the other homes, but he was quickly able to disable their alarm. So that's why I think Tom. Or possibly Maddie's mother. 

[sugarbaker design]

Much of the recent gaslighting was directly aimed at Maddie.  Could little Christina Morales have witnessed her dad's murder, only to grow up and want revenge on the woman who killed him.  Maybe the killer isn't SBK's accomplice?

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, ghoulina said:

I just think the accomplice has to be someone who knew the Hawthorne's - because of the code to the alarm. We don't know how SBK got into the other homes, but he was quickly able to disable their alarm. So that's why I think Tom. Or possibly Maddie's mother. 

I can't imagine Maddie's estranged mother knew the alarm code.  I got the impression she didn't even know Maddie's kids.  She was a grifter, though, so maybe.  

Tom makes more sense than Sophie, given the ages, the alarm code and the size of that dollhouse.  Him buying the cement company was odd, too.  Did SBK look old enough to be his father?  I wonder why if it was Tom he stopped killing, unless he was maybe pressured into being an accomplice in the first place.  

[sjohnson]

It really doesn't help to understand the plot when you miss the last five minutes of the episode. The rather helpful remarks in a number of posts made me realize this, thanks. 

There being an accomplice for SBK and for the Hawthorne's murder of Morales is a huge coincidence. Using Cam's belt and Garrett keeping the knife is also peculiar, but you do have to remember Hawthornes are just weird people. Idiot plotting yes, but it's well established these are idiots.

But, more importantly, it's clear why SBK doesn't murder any more. Why didn't SBK accomplice seek revenge for fourteen years? Accomplice seems to have an in with both the Hawthornes and the cops. 

In one sense, the show is playing very fair. We see Madeline kill Mitchell in the opening episode, and we see her giving Gunther the order to kill himself (albeit disguised.) So, it's perfectly sensible she's the one who killed Morales. 

[scarynikki12]

1 hour ago, sjohnson said:

If I remember correctly...not sure that I do....the accomplice helped to kill Morales. There is no reason at all to think SBK proper ever had an accomplice, nor is there any reason to think an unknown SBK accomplice would know such current inside information about the Addams family. There's still no reason to take Madeline's story at face value. Madeline surely has to have a good idea who might have helped Mitchell kill Morales, someone close. But someone close has no motive to kill the reporter in such a way calculated to bring the spotlight onto the family he accomplice/new killer is close to. At this point, I'm not sure Conley and Cutter are still off the hook for killing Morales. I get that Mitchell had the distinctive bells from the murder kit, but then I would have thought the kit would also have had SBK's belt, not Cam's. Why raid the Good Will box for a distinctively marked unusual belt to fake an SBK murder of Morales? Of people close enough for Mitchell to trust, surely it should be easy enough to figure out who had a connection to the blind woman, i.e., access to a car used in the murder.

This is all so baffling I'm starting to think I've badly confused some essential detail.

When we saw Maddie in the flashback to Morales' murder, that was for audience benefit.  I forget the exact words but the dialogue made it clear that she was leaving out the Lady Macbeth parts (killing him was her idea, she went with Mitchell to the meeting, she choked him herself, they both cleaned and staged the scene).  Revealing Maddie was for us and us alone.  Unless the  SBK accomplice turns out to be Maddie, then he wouldn't have been anywhere near Morales that night. 

34 minutes ago, sugarbaker design said:

Much of the recent gaslighting was directly aimed at Maddie.  Could little Christina Morales have witnessed her dad's murder, only to grow up and want revenge on the woman who killed him.  Maybe the killer isn't SBK's accomplice?

I don't think Christina witnessed the murder because she would have mentioned it to the police.  I also don't think the accomplice knows that Maddie was there that night.  I do think that the accomplice has been trying to figure out who pinned Morales' murder on SBK and realized the Hawthorne connection when the concrete broke and Mitchell was accused.  If it's Tom like many of us believe, then he would know that Maddie would at least have the answers even if he doesn't think she was directly involved. 

If Tom is the accomplice, I'm going with one of those Alpha killer type partnerships.  SBK was the Alpha, Tom followed his lead and, when he vanished, Tom was left floundering so he turned to Alison (another natural Alpha) permanently (instead of her being part of his mask to the world).  We saw how angry he got when he realized that Naomi was more than a fling, we know he's willing to cross lines like deleting texts, and that he had access to the reporter.  Combine him feeling threatened that his new Alpha might be taken with his realization that Mitchell was the copycat (and probably had to do with SBK's disappearance) then I imagine that his hidden rage is getting ready to burst.  And just in time for the finale!  We don't yet have a connection to the blind woman but I just assume that she's related to SBK and that Tom would maybe check in with her from time to time in case SBK returned.

[sjohnson]

^^^The natural candidate then is her husband. She said the car was his, after all. She could always plausibly deny she saw what he was up to, so it wasn't necessary to murder her, unless the point was to pin all SBK murders on Mitchell Hawthorne. 

Edited September 1, 2016 by sjohnson

[Lostinthehouse]

Everyone keeps saying "Tom", which confused me, so I had to look it up.  Tom is the actor playing Dylan Price, Alison's husband.  Right?

Also, what to make of all the bells in Maddie's purse . . . .

[sugarbaker design]

Someone is trying to shake up Maddie.

7 minutes ago, Lostinthehouse said:

Tom is the actor playing Dylan Price, Alison's husband.  Right?

Dylan Bruce is the actor playing Tom Price, Alison's husband.

[ghoulina]

1 hour ago, sjohnson said:

But, more importantly, it's clear why SBK doesn't murder any more. Why didn't SBK accomplice seek revenge for fourteen years? Accomplice seems to have an in with both the Hawthornes and the cops. 

It's possible the accomplice didn't know what happened to SBK that night. He/she drove off when Cam arrived. Maybe it wasn't until all this came to light about Hawthorne being SBK (because of Morales and the belt) that the accomplice began to realize?

[iMonrey]

Uh, maybe this is one cat they shouldn't have let out of the bag. 

Upon revelation, the whole backstory is so flimsy it's laughable. Let's break it down, shall we? Apparently, Mitchell was mastermind enough to steal 401k money from his employees without them ever knowing it. Yet, at the same time, he was enough of a blithering idiot to leave some "box of payroll receipts" lying around somewhere which would expose his whole scheme. Further, he was blithering idiot enough to task his teenaged daughter with sending an (apparently) identical box to the accountant. which happened to be (apparently) within the vicinity of the box of business-destroying evidence. Which was just laying around. OK then.

Even more implausible is the idea that they couldn't call the police after SBK broke into their house and got pushed down the stairs. Because . . . bad publicity? It what universe would stopping and catching a serial killer be bad publicity? And how would this have so traumatized poor baby Tessa? What kid that age wouldn't have basked in the glory of having killed a serial killer? Even if Madeline plotted the whole thing to her advantage what kind of idiots were Mitchell and Garrett to go along with it?

In the "only on TV" category: someone falls down the stairs and is knocked out, their body is dragged down said stairs, out the door, put into the trunk of a car, driven God knows how many miles to another state, pulled out of the trunk, spread out on the wet ground during a rainstorm, and then and only then, comes to. And all this time nobody thought to check his pulse. Meanwhile, tiny little Madeline can strangle a guy from behind for approximately 12 seconds and kill him dead. OK then.

Given the fact that the show didn't deem SBK important enough to even identify him, I doubt there is any "accomplice" aside from Madeline herself, who is probably schizophrenic and is gaslighting herself.

[sugarbaker design]

7 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

the show didn't deem SBK important enough to even identify him,

Well, not yet anyway.  There's still two episodes left in which SBK will probably be ID'ed as Tom or Sophia's father.

[ghoulina]

You make some good points, iMonrey. I definitely think it was ridiculous that Mitchell would have asked Alison to handle his business like that, especially since she ostensibly wasn't aware of his dirty dealings. If you're committing fraud, you handle that shit yourself and double and triple check everything. 

And you are right that normally if a serial killer breaks into the house and is pushed down the stairs, presumably in self defense, you should be able to call the cops and explain yourself. I do think that Maddie immediately had her wheels turning and saw this as a way to deal with the Morales situation. And I can see her convincing Garrett, because he was still fairly young and his extreme devotion to his sister might be easy to manipulate. Mitchell would probably have been harder to convince, though. So yea....

The hardest things for me to swallow are still that THAT was how Tessa reacted; and that the Hawthornes, with their large brood, were chosen in the first place. 

[blackwing]

So we learned from this episode that Tom and Allison were in college and dating at the time of the Morales murder.  Tom was running for some college office, lost, and then there was a suggestion that Allison run, and she said something like "there's always junior year".  So does that mean she was 21?  Making her only 35 now?  The fact that the show finally established how long Tom has been around in the family indicates to me that Dylan Bruce has to be the then-accomplice/present-day-killer.  He hasn't been in the last few episodes.

I agree that Young Cam and Young Allison were great casting.  Young Cam had the mannerisms of Present Day Cam down pat, and even had the stupid hair.

My only question about the Morales murder was, did nobody know that he was meeting with the Hawthornes?  I think he was in his home.  I forget, did they ever say what happened to his wife or where Christina was?  Wouldn't someone have known he was going to meet with them?  He wouldn't have mentioned it to anybody at all?  No nosy neighbours who can identify the car that was parked on his driveway.  Wouldn't Morales have told somebody about what he learned about Mitchell?  Or written a memo somewhere?

So it also got revealed that Madeline was the driving force behind everything.  Covering up the accidental killing of the SBK killer.  It was an accident and it was justified, he was in their house.  But most of all, the killing of David Morales to prevent him from telling everyone that Mitchell was defrauding his customers.

 

9 hours ago, CelticBlackCat said:

Finally, we got some answers!  I still don't get why blue-eyed parents Mitch & Madeline have a brown-eyed daughter, Tessa.  I can't wait for next week's double whammy epis!

My explanation would be that "it's TV".  TV kids commonly don't look like their TV parents at all, and rare genetic explanation aside, the two blue eyed parents producing a brown eyed child happens more often than you think on TV.  Heck, there have been TV shows where the younger version of a character has bwon eyes and then the grown up adult version has blue eyes.  Soap operas do this all the time.  Young and the Restless recast the character of Adam Newman and claimed he had plastic surgery to explain the new face.  But they didn't even attempt to explain how Adam's eyes went from blue to brown, how he grew about 4 inches, and how his dark brown hair is now some vague colour of dirty blonde.

[TigerLynx]

They actually tied this together better than I expected them to.  Several things had already been figured out by the posters here, but I would rather have the SL make sense than for the writers to ruin everything with a twist that is just not believable.

I agree if SBK had an accomplice it could be Tom or Sophie.  However, the reason the cops thought SBK had an accomplice was because of the video of Mitchell getting in the passenger seat of the car while someone else (who we now know was Maddie) was driving.  The killer who is now after the Hawthorne's could be Morales' daughter, she wants revenge, and her stabbing Garrett was not an accident.