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S01.E08: Torn Apart


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The town of Arcadia is in a state of chaos when the return of the deceased reaches a critical mass. Bellamy has no other choice than to ask for outside aid which backfires when Sheriff Fred steps in with his own agenda, triggering a siege on the town that no one saw coming.

 

 

SEASON FINALE!

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(edited)

Wait, what? That was the finale? Does that mean this dumb show has been renewed?

 

 

Well, whatever..Sheriff Fred is no longer just sketchy, but eeevil or possibly driven mad by his rejection by his long dead cheating wife. The mad scientist sorta-boyfriend isn't a bad sort, now. Agent Bellamy is the son of Jenny's (Jacob's little friend) parents*, but presumably doesn't know it. A cicada(?) turns into a helicopter.

* how the heck old is Omar Epps, anyway? Those drowned parents were wearing 50's clothing, and the missing son was their oldest, which would make him now 60-something, right?

Edited by Song of Roland
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At the end when Bellamy and Jacob are trapped, those black SUVs driving up to them weren't Army -- they looked more like FBI from the Blacklist.

 

Fred really is cruel and vindictive -- his wife was spot on, and apparently Henry concurred. How someone like that ever became local sheriff is surprising ?  And then when he pulls the 'let's free the local murderer so that he can help corral all the returned' nonsense. Wouldn't anyone point out that that was wrong ?

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(edited)
* how the heck old is Omar Epps, anyway? Those drowned parents were wearing 50's clothing, and the missing son was their oldest, which would make him now 60-something, right?

 

 

I am guessing Agent Bellamy must be a returnee from another time? Something to do with the cicadas perhaps? Don't they come back every 17 years?

 

Agent Bellamy is the son of Jenny's (Jacob's little friend) parents*, but presumably doesn't know it.

 

Maybe he does know it, or knew it as soon as he saw the family in line. And that's why he was trying to get them out.

 

It bugs me that the whole situation turned on the sheriff's crazy jealousy. I mean I knew he wasn't accepting Barbara's decision, but this was, um, slight overkill. She didn't want to give him a second chance, so she must not be human. So none of them are. Right.

 

Agent Bellamy, you just got out of town by 100 yards and you think you're safe? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Edited by peggy06
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Barbara basically told Maggie that Fred was abusing her. It's typical for abusers to control their victims, damn the consequences. "If I can't have her, no one will!" She didn't juts say she didn't love him, she said he was evil to her. It's also typical for a certain type of abuser to think they love their victim. It's sick and twisted, but that's the psychology of it. The only thing about it that didn't make sense is that, if she was that scared of him, Barbara went to talk to him alone, in a place where there would be no witnesses if he went berserk on her. Never, ever meet a batter alone or in private. Always do it in a well-trafficked public place, with back up. Or, don't go in person; send a note!

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(edited)

Well. From the moment the Black family showed up, I knew that they would somehow be related to Bellamy. My husband chastised me and told me to stop assuming that all Blacks on tv are related to each other, but turns out that I was right. We are always, always related to each other, even if the characters don't know it. 

 

I have no idea what they're doing with the Sheriff. At the beginning of the season, he was a sneering prick who went out of his way to antagonize everyone, and left no room to wonder why exactly Barbara would turn to another man while still married to him. Then midway through the season, he becomes a kindler, gentler Sheriff, actually doing his job and working with Agent Bellamy to get to the bottom of the mystery of the Returned. Now? Back to being a hated, mustache twirling prick who throws everyone under the bus because his long dead wife decided she was decidedly cool on him and their relationship. 

"I don't want to do this anymore!" 

Laugh. I love that everything is still fresh in the mind of the Returnees, while everyone else has to adjust to decades of not having them around. To her, Sheriff was probably tormenting her and glaring at her over scrambled eggs the previous week. To him, he's spent the last 30 years whitewashing their relationship and doesn't even remember that he hurled a plate of scrambled eggs at her the morning she died. 

 

 

Barbara basically told Maggie that Fred was abusing her. It's typical for abusers to control their victims, damn the consequences. "If I can't have her, no one will!" She didn't juts say she didn't love him, she said he was evil to her. It's also typical for a certain type of abuser to think they love their victim. It's sick and twisted, but that's the psychology of it. The only thing about it that didn't make sense is that, if she was that scared of him, Barbara went to talk to him alone, in a place where there would be no witnesses if he went berserk on her. Never, ever meet a batter alone or in private. Always do it in a well-trafficked public place, with back up. Or, don't go in person; send a note!

 

Which makes me wonder. We've gotten confirmation from two separate sources that the Sheriff is in fact, a prick, while Maggie obviously loves and is devoted to him, so I do wonder about what kind of father he was to her. We got some insight into their relationship when her friend (weepy chick with the crazy father, can't remember her name at the moment) reminded her that he basically guilted Maggie into coming back to Arcadia to "take care of him" after she finished medical school. Maybe he is emotionally manipulating Maggie and we don't even know it. 

 

As for Bellamy, with the oh so clever appearance of the Cicadas and the fact that if he lived, he would technically be the same age as the Langstons, I have to agree with the sentiment that he is a Returned from a previous era, but since he was a baby, authorities probably just assumed he was abandoned and placed him up for adoption. 
I know this show is utterly ridiculous, but I can't help it, I'm invested now, and I felt terrible for the young mother who had to watch her children drown before dying herself, and doesn't even know the fate of her infant son. Geez, between that and Jacob being distraught about leaving his parents, just punch me in the gut some more, show. 

 

Edited because I remember something else that I wanted to bring up. So Rachel, despite wearing the same outfit she was originally found/buried in, shows up Resurrected for the second time, and remembers everything that happened before.

She said something like, "I'm fine, I feel great and the baby is okay."

 

The hell? Is this so we wouldn't have to waste time on Pastor Tom giving her a rundown of the situation? 

Edited by CocoaGoddess
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I had such high hopes for this show after the first episode. Hopes dashed by the first week of May. Now I know what it feels like to be a Cubs fan.

I'll probably still watch next season. I'm planning to watch Under the Dome FFS, but it's just another in the long line of shows with promising premises that aren't very good.

Reckon Bellamy discovers he is a returnee after getting shot by the evil government and re-returning?

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I had a rather morbid realization. Now that we know that the returnees are on the bottomless refill plan, you just shoot them once a week and then feed them their previous bodies.

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I'm guessing Bellamy came back as an infant, since he died as an infant. As someone pointed out above, if that happened the authorities would just think he was abandoned.

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I'm hoping that the helicopter that came down and the cars that pulled up behind Bellamy are not military, but some special, good guy forces there to help escort Bellamy and Jacob to safety. 

 

The most important question is where are all those bugs?  The live, returned ones have to be somewhere, right? 

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Omar Epps was born in 1973, making him 41 this year.  The clothing of the little girl is definitely from the 40's or 50's, which does not compute.  Wondering if this show will be renewed and where it will go from here.  It's apparently on the bubble for renewal.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Epps

It doesn't work if he floated away and lived, but if he was a previous returned for some reason, the time can just be explained by whatever the gap between death and return was. As a baby he wouldn't remember his previous life & he would probably have been adopted as a John Doe abandoned child. I agree with those who think the locusts/cicadas are probably a clue to some sort of every so many years returns thing.

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It's apparently on the bubble for renewal.

Where are you seeing that analysis? I ask because I thought the ratings were solid and it was a lock for coming back.

 

The cicada turned into a helicopter? Did I miss that?

I thought that was just a camera effect, i.e. the cicadas didn't morph, but the camera faded so it sort of looked like they did as the focus changed from one to the other. But maybe I'm wrong.

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(edited)

As for Bellamy, with the oh so clever appearance of the Cicadas and the fact that if he lived, he would technically be the same age as the Langstons, I have to agree with the sentiment that he is a Returned from a previous era, but since he was a baby, authorities probably just assumed he was abandoned and placed him up for adoption.

I recognized the first cicada husk in the opening scene in the dark, in spite of the fact that I watched a poor resolution recording on a small screen while getting lunch (I had to work Sunday night) with poor eyesight. We had cicadas here a few years ago, and, trust me, you will never forget that. I mean swarms--not like in some nearby neighborhoods where the soil had been disturbed for major changes in the last 17 years since the eggs were laid. So kudos for plot consistency that the town hadn't changed much since Jacob had left. I was complaining about that here, but this episode, between the cicadas and the line to the military guy about it being a town from another era, I forgive the ability of Jacob to direct Agent Belamy to his house--it fits together now.

I remember at the time that the cicadas swarmed here that it was such a spiritual experience that I thought it would make a great metaphor for a novel or a movie plot, if done right. But the problem with the cicada metaphor is that it is not universally experienced.

Anyway, in spite of all that, until I came here I totally missed the metaphor of the cicadas to this story.

--which I guess more than proves my point that it's a tricky metaphor to use. I mean, cicadas are not as common as, say, Santa Claus.

CocoaGoddess, I wasn't sure Bellamy was going to be related to the Black family until they said that their son had a crescent birthmark on the back of his neck. Did you notice after that how they kept showing shots of the back of Omar Epps' neck without any birthmark reveal (until the last shot)?

As far as whether Bellamy is a first or second generation returned: They didn't say what year the flood took the Black family, did they? I think the dresses could have been second hand from the 60s bought in the 70s. Not likely, but possibly.

The bigger issue is that Jacob has consistently identified those who are "like me," and we never heard him say that about Bellamy.

I don't think the cicadas turned into helicopters, but there was something weird about that whole scene. They stopped because there seemed to be something in the road. What was it? It looked like a light brown rectangle to me, but then Bellamy stopped to pick up the cicada husk, which was, coincidentally, the same color.

Edited by shapeshifter
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The bigger issue is that Jacob has consistently identified those who are "like me," and we never heard him say that about Bellamy.

 

Shapeshifter, fantastic observation! I wonder if ... overthinking perhaps even more than the writers did ... if Jacob is only "recognizing" the current batch of returnees as being "like him."

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Omar Epps was born in 1973, making him 41 this year.  The clothing of the little girl is definitely from the 40's or 50's, which does not compute. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Epps

The character and actor's age becomes irrelevant if as others speculate, the disappeared baby Bellamy reappears decades later (see the cicadas connection), is assumed to be abandoned and adopted. Bellamy could know he is adopted and possibly searched for his family only to come up empty, or the adoptive parents never told, something that is still not unusual.

The bigger issue is that Jacob has consistently identified those who are "like me," and we never heard him say that about Bellamy.

Simplest answer, Jacob only recognizes resurrected from his return timeline, or as newly resurrected they emit some sort of confusion aura that Jacob senses. So with Bellamy 1) back for so long and 2) most likely unaware of his resurrected status, he would emit no such aura.

As for the cop, I sensed something was off with his retelling of his relationship with his wife. The controlling and manipulative nature was there, he just did what many other abusers do, he hid it from the world. The truly sociopathic are even able to hide it from their children, brainwashing them against the abused parent.

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The bigger issue is that Jacob has consistently identified those who are "like me," and we never heard him say that about Bellamy.

Jacob's kept quiet about a lot of things. Unless he's specifically asked, I don't see why he would bring it up even if he does recognize Bellamy was one of them. His recognition might explain his inherent trust of Bellamy as well.

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between the cicadas and the line to the military guy about it being a town from another era

 

This has started me wondering about the role of the town itself in the phenomenon. The name itself refers to an ideal of pastoral simplicity and oneness with nature.

 

This had better not turn out to be heaven, hell or purgatory.

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I just watched all 8 episodes yesterday. One other thing that troubles me about Bellamy being returned is that we have seen no reference to his inability to sleep or voracious appetite, as has been the case with all the others. I suspect show was sloppy with clothes on the family and that is why he timeline seems off. I think he survived and is a regular person.

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Yes, good point about Bellamy not having the symptoms the others have. That is key. Either he's really special or he didn't die.

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Just caught up, since its being renewed. 

 

Do we know what state the show is in?  I'm just wondering that if its in a more rural state that maybe the black family's clothes were used/handmedowns because they were poor, even in the late 60s/early 70s.

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Arcadia, Missouri

 

As for Season 2, I'll give it a shot. I haven't read the book but have heard about it and read reviews of it. The producers are going to have to depart from the book's storyline significantly, I think. They already have in Season 1 by implying there's some big mystery about the returned that is waiting to be resolved. In the book, nuh uh. There is no resolution to any mystery there either. No aliens, no angels, no demons, no black holes or time warps, no nothing. In that respect I think the producers and writers have set the tone quite deliberately that there is something waiting to be figured out. I really hope that's the direction they continue, and that there is a payoff at some point. Otherwise, if they stick to the book, Season 2 could be called, "Life in a Camp for the Returned", because a big part of the book was about that.

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