Elena’s World – Harper’s Island: Splash

I expected the penultimate episode of the show (as the last 2 episodes are airing together, either back to back or as one 2-hour special) to be about nothing more than getting everyone maneuvered into position for the final slaughter.

Wrong!  It maintained the level of deaths from last week (4) while upping the quality (both in terms of who got killed and how they went).  So how did it all go down, you ask?

Allow me:

This is where we left everyone last week.  Abby, Henry, and the other groomsman, who I have decided should be called Captain Obvious, because his lines lately have been restricted to stating the obvious, watch Wakefield kill off the sheriff and then run off into the woods.  Shane, Shae, Trish, Creepy Little Madison, the bartender, Chloe, and knocked-out Jimmy have barricaded themselves in at the Cannery.  Practical Groomsman and Cal are at the infirmary, where they stopped to deal with Cal’s gunshot wound on their way to get the sailboat from the other side of the island.

The show opens when Henry stops Abby from running after Wakefield with a gun. She keeps saying, “We have to end this.” Honestly, I’m kind of with her–they had guns. They had him in their sites. Why not go after him? But no.

At the Cannery, Wakefield comes to the door.  He stabs the bartender and then Shane fights him to let everyone else get away, and of course he gets killed, too.

The girls run to the sheriff’s house and hide up in his attic at Trish’s suggestion.  Chloe tries to make Madison feel better, until Shae yells at her to stop trying to explain the psychology of sociopaths.  Then Shae does nothing to mother her or comfort her, and we are left with no questions whatsoever about why Madison made friends with Wakefield–because he took an actual interest in her.  For the record, counting Beth in the tunnel as the trade for Madison, we are now up to 6 deaths because of Shae’s refusal to let everyone leave the island while they had the chance.

Cal and Practical Groomsman are first shown in the car, talking about how well PG did in digging out the bullet and patching Cal up, and how well Cal did not to pass out until all that was left was the stitching him up part.  They drive to the place Cal left the boat, and it’s gone.  No way out, now.

When Abby, Henry, and Captain Obvious get back to the Cannery, they find the bartender stabbed and Shane hung up from the rafters in a Jesus pose (no cross, though) and no sign of any of the others (including Jimmy who had still been passed out when Wakefield busted in).  I guess that Shane-as-Jesus was Wakefield’s way of being poetic, making a symbolic statement to tell anyone who might see it that Shane died to save the others. 

Just then the church bell rings.  They talk about how it could be a trap, or how it could be the girls, and decide they have to go find out.

The girls decide the same thing, but leave Madison and Shae in the sheriff’s attic just in case.

The two groups converge at the church and find no one there but themselves.  Then a car pulls up–Cal and Practical Groomsman.  Trish and Henry are happy to be reunited, and then Jimmy walks in and he and Abby are happy to be reunited, and Cal is looking for Chloe to be happily reunited when he realizes she’s gone.  But she was just right there!

Trish pulls out her map of the tunnels that she swiped from the sheriff’s attic, and they see there is an entrance in the church.  Wakefield must have been right there and grabbed Chloe while everyone else was distracted.  They decide to split up into 3 groups, one to go seal up the tunnel entrance at the Candlewick, one to seal the tunnel entrance where they found Madison, and one to go after Wakefield and Chloe.  Do or die time for the last group, since they will now be trapped in the tunnels with Wakefield. 

Wakefield drops Chloe into a cell underneath a grate and taunts her.  “Does your fiancé love you enough to die for you?,” he asks her when she tells him they’re going to come for her.  He doesn’t answer her when she asks why he’s doing this.  Wakefield is a smart villain–he knows the second you explain yourself and start boasting is the second you make a mistake.

Trish and Jimmy take the bartender’s car and one shotgun, to go park it over that tunnel exit.

Henry, Abby, and Cal go after Chloe.

Practical Groomsman and Captain Obvious go back to the Candlewick. They get the entrance all boarded up and then have an attack of conscience and realize they can’t live with themselves if they don’t go in to help their friends.  Unfortunately, this also means (for later reference, as this may come up again) that the tunnels are not, in fact, sealed off but for the storm drain.

Henry, Abby, Cal go through the tunnels and finally come out of the storm drain with no sign of Chloe or Wakefield en route. Cal hears her yelling somewhere, as Abby and Henry spot Wakefield on the hill above them.  They tell Cal to go find Chloe while they go after Wakefield.

Cal and Chloe yell to each other until he finds her cell and shoots the lock off (Mythbusters would have something to say about that, I’m sure, but I’ll let it go in the context, as it was all rather tense and exciting).  They are tearfully reunited, and he asks her to marry him, as he promised he would when next they saw each other as he was leaving to go look for the sailboat.  Yes, yes, yes!, she cries.  Ah, true love.  Ain’t it sweet.

Meanwhile, Abby and Henry chase Wakefield up the hill, and she says “We have to end this” some more.  They both shoot at Wakefield, who stands at the top of the ridge waiting for them. His body language says, “Are you gonna come at me, or whistle Dixie?”  They come at him…and waste all their ammo not hitting him.

As a side note, after this episode, it seems to me the entire problem of Wakefield could have been solved if any of the people on this island could shoot worth a damn (and that includes the sheriff who couldn’t fatally shoot him 7 years ago).  Seriously, why would you waste your shot when you’re beyond your personal accurate shooting range (which by this point all of them should know is woefully limited)?  He is only armed with a sword. You can wait until you see the whites of his eyes to fire.  When they fire, Wakefield knows he doesn’t even have to move out of the way, he just has to stand there tauntingly, because they’re not going to hit him.  Dodging would, in fact, be more dangerous to him, since there’s no way they’ll actually hit where they think they’re aiming (him) but if he moves it might be into the path of their bullet….

Anyway, he lets Abby and Henry disarm themselves with an expression somewhere between impassive boredom and a smirk of superiority.

Then he turns his attention to Cal and Chloe, who are trapped against the barbed-wire-topped gate/fence-thingy halfway across an old service bridge across the river, which foams and rushes whitely far below.  He pulls out his sword and starts across the bridge.  Cal tells Chloe to get across the barrier and manfully tries to fight Wakefield.  He lasts all of 5 seconds before Wakefield stabs him; with a sword, Cal, how weird is that.  Wakefield lets Cal gasp Chloe’s name with his gurgling-blood dying breath before tossing him over the side of the bridge, just to be thorough. Chloe is still halfway around the fence, clinging to the edge of the bridge and watching in frozen anguish as Cal is killed.  Wakefield stares at her, and it seemed to me he was thinking he might let her go, since someone had died in her place (his actions with not killing Jimmy after the sheriff bought his life support this theory that he has a soft spot for people someone else loved enough to die for).  But Chloe isn’t taking any chances.  Or maybe she just really doesn’t want to live without Cal.

She looks Wakefield in the eye.  “You can’t have me,” she tells him with fatalistic calm, and lets go her hold on the bridge.

Down, down, down she falls, until, splash!, she joins Cal in the river below. It was surprisingly tragic, for the two of them being slightly annoying and obviously expendable characters. But they were sweet together, and now they’re dead together. I almost cried.

Practical Groomsman and Captain Obvious come out of the storm drain in time to see the bodies in the river. The two of them and Henry and Abby, in their separate pairs, sort of stare around the woods in horror, wondering where Wakefield will go next.

Meanwhile, back at the sheriff’s attic, Madison is looking through his files. Shae tells her to stop looking at stuff on Wakefield, and she says “it’s not Wakefield.”  We look over Shae’s shoulder when she takes the file and sees a mug shot of Jimmy and a newspaper clipping wondering “is Wakefield working alone?”

Oh, my, my.

The show ends with Jimmy and Trish in the car. She’s asleep, and he pulls the shotgun from her hands.  Ominous, much? Not that I really believe Jimmy the Pretty Fisherman is Wakefield’s accomplice. Aside from my personal hopes for how the story will turn out (which are in line with the sheriff’s), as a matter of startling the audience, I would be more surprised if Jimmy does turn out to be Wakefield’s BFF than if he doesn’t, based on when the possibility that he was in league with him was made.  That’s the kind of reveal you only make in the last episode if it’s true. 

The finale will air not tomorrow but next Saturday–place your bets now on whether any of them will make it out alive!