This week Harper’s Island was more about setting things up for the big finale than any real action, despite the fact that the first mid-major character got killed. It also exposed that this whole story hinges upon none of these people acting logically.
The boat finally shows up for everyone to leave the island. The two remaining groomsmen realize Chubby is missing, and are upset that his disappearance means they can’t get Booth’s body back–since the money’s also missing they aren’t sure whether to think he got wasted or ran off with the cash.
It isn’t until the group is getting ready to go down to the dock that anyone realizes creepy little niece Madison is missing. Look, I’m all about not hovering over your kids and whatnot, but there is a time and a place for keeping a very close eye on them, and it seems to me that a remote island where her grandfather was just murdered is that time and that place.
Anyway, most of the primary characters help look for Madison instead of securing their seats on the boat. No sign of the girl, but one group finds the charred remains of an adult skull in the incinerator (Chubby, remember, but they have no way to know this), and another finds Richards’ body harpooned to a giant pole.
Meanwhile, over at the jailhouse, the sheriff learns where JD’s accomplice, his old deputy, is hiding out and sets off to confront him. Alone. Because, you know, that’s the most illogical thing he could do, and this show is operating on the absence of logic. After he leaves, someone cuts the power to the whole island (it goes out at the Candlewick Inn as well), and in the darkness comes in and shoots the deputy left with Shane and JD. The keys fall close enough for JD to snatch them and escape, and like any good prankster he leaves them out of Shane’s reach.
Back at the Candlewick, a ransom note of sorts is delivered via Madison calling Abby’s cell phone from an unknown number: If anyone leaves the island, Madison will be killed.
Abby is to set off–yes, alone–to go get her dad when it becomes clear that all the phone lines are cut and now no one can get cell phone reception (because apparently among Wakefield’s many skills is the ability to interfere with satellite signals and/or cell towers). Luckily Jimmy the Resourceful Fisherman comes to the Candlewick at that moment and intercepts her. The boat just left, he explains, and he didn’t see her on it and came to investigate…. They head off to the sheriff’s office where they find Shane and the deputy’s body.
At the Candlewick, one of the groomsmen brings up the amazingly apt point that if they all leave, right then–say on Jimmy the Fisherman’s fishing boat, or any number of other local vehicles–then the only other person who will die is Madison. Yes, she’s a kid, horrible thought, but as he says, “What makes her life more valuable than any of ours?” He had a point. I’m sorry, it’s a numbers game: if you stay to try and save the girl, you’re all going to get picked off one by one; if you all leave, no one else dies. Hm. One person vs. 10, one vs. 10….I know which way I’d be voting.
But Harper’s Island Wedding Crew isn’t a democracy, apparently, and they all manage to guilt trip themselves and each other into staying, although Pragmatic Groomsmen does get himself and three of the others to a boat first before they have a crisis of conscience and get back off it. I bet they live to regret that choice; what about you?
Back to the woods with the sheriff, he runs into one of his deputy’s traps and gets a huge spike in his leg. Because the “logical” response is to pull it right out and hope it didn’t hit his femoral artery, he does this. Then his ex-deputy finds him and takes him back to the shack in the woods. While the sheriff lies in agony with a tourniquet tied below his wound (good thing it wasn’t serious, huh?), the deputy shares with him Wakefield’s journal from prison, which the deputy had acquired after Wakefield’s release. Apparently Wakefield spent 17 years planning his revenge, and the ultimate goal is to take away the thing most precious to the sheriff: Abby.
When the deputy goes to get medical help for the sheriff, he makes a tactical error and fails to account for the fact that Wakefield apparently spent all his rec hours in prison learning archery, because he gets two arrows to the chest and goes down down down twitching and choking and dead. Also he knocks over a kerosene lantern so the cabin starts to go up in flames.
Luckily Abby and Jimmy come running up at just that moment (since Shane told them where the sheriff had gone) and manage to save both the sheriff and Wakefield’s journal, for whatever either might be worth. The sheriff tells Jimmy to get Abby off the island, that she is the only one Wakefield really wants and if she leaves then it will all stop. So they head to the dock, where they find JD with his guts spilling out. Abby watches him die and then turns to find Henry standing over them with blood all over his hands.
Did Henry kill JD, or was he chasing after the killer? Will Abby leave the island, as would be prudent and logical, or stay to fight Wakefield? Will Madison be saved? Will the Prudent Groomsman be the next victim in that brutal irony of horror movies? We won’t know until Saturday….
