Harper’s Island – Thrack, Splat, Sizzle

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So Harper’s Island has entered a time warp of convex space proportions.  Every hour is expanding so that it takes longer than the one before.  I don’t mean in the sense that the show is dragging but rather that each episode covers a shorter and shorter real-time span.

This week was kind of a quiet week.  Everybody is packing and running around being scared or depressed.  Trish questions whether she can ever marry Henry.  Abby goes with her to say goodbye to Papa Wellington’s sheet-covered body.

The sheriff searches the rooms at the Candlewick.  J.D.’s bag (um why was his stuff still there if Henry kicked his ass off the island supposedly?) has Uncle Marty’s cell phone in it, so between that and the firecrackers like the kind found by the gutted raccoon on the altar, there is proof positive that J.D.’s Dark Mark wasn’t just an affectation:  he did it!  Clearly.  So the sheriff busts out some bloodhounds he conveniently has on call on this remote tiny island, and they track down J.D. and eventually catch him in the woods near burned-man’s cabin.

Burned-man runs into Abby when she stops by her father’s to pick up those things she had forgotten to take with her twice now.  He’s an old deputy, who was burned in an explosion Wakefield set off at the beginning of his rampage, and he tells her the sheriff is wrong to arrest J.D.  That he’s barking up the wrong tree.  He also, cryptically (of course) tells her to ask her father about the first time Wakefield came to Harper’s Island.

Abby does, and her father admits that Wakefield had known her mother back in Seattle…that, in fact, they had dated.  Wakefield had become abusive and the mother had fled to Harper’s to get away from him, and the first time he came to the island he attacked her and the sheriff stepped in to save her and had his deputies beat up Wakefield so he wouldn’t come back.  Because, you know, brute shows of aggression always dissuade psychopaths.  So in a way it was the sheriff’s fault he came back at all.

There were a lot of flashbacks to seven years before…Abby and Jimmy the surprisingly clean fisherman about to get it on for the first time but getting interrupted by the explosion announcing Wakefield’s return (and how’s that for a sign that God is Not Pleased with your decision to sin?!); Abby finding Wakefield’s master’s art project entitled Tree of Death and almost getting killed by him, except that Jimmy pulls up in his truck and distracts Wakefield; the sheriff sending her away immediately and the argument they have about what happened is heated and ugly and then Jimmy comes running up to the dock to say goodbye just ten seconds too late.

After J.D. is arrested, Trish privately decides she can’t marry Henry ever, but before she gets around to telling anyone but Abby, Abby gives her a picture of the two of them as children and recommends she give it some time before making any irrevocable decisions.

The token plump groomsman–the one who has all the blood money and who watched Booth shoot himself in the leg and then buried him and didn’t tell anyone–gets caught with all the money by the other groomsmen.  They’re going to tell the sheriff everything as soon as he comes back, they decide, and even swear on it.  Then, against this worthy plan and kind of against all reason, Chubbie goes down to the kitchen and starts tossing the money into the open maw of the giant wood-burning stove.  Care to guess what happens next?

I guessed wrong–I figured he’d just get shoved in Hansel-and-Gretel-on-the-witch style, but first he gets hacked up.  My bad.

The episode ends with the creepy little Madison getting a note and following its directions…into a room where the door quickly shuts behind her stifled scream….

Tune in next week to see if CBS has the cajones to kill a child!