Emergency Shelter
Season 1
Episode 9
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
****
Photo: Apple TV
We have reached the penultimate episode of the first, exceptional season of Widow’s Bay. With just the finale left to go, this is the point where the momentum should be building to some sort of climactic finale that potentially answers crucial questions about how the island operates.
Which is why this week’s entry, “Emergency Shelter,” devotes seven minutes, more than 20 percent of its roughly 32-minute runtime, to a genealogical deep dive presented via overhead projector. Okay, yes, this episode actually does confirm some important things. We know now for sure that Frances Warren managed to survive after falling off the boat that her stepmother, Sarah Warren, attempted to paddle away from Widow’s Bay back in 1702. We also know that there is (allegedly) one blood descendant of island founder Richard Warren who’s still alive: Ruth Livingston (K Callan). In theory, if she dies, the curse on the island will finally break, which is why, at the end of this episode, Tom heads out of Town Hall, apparently on his way to murder Ruth. You know, for the greater good.
On top of all that, the weather is intensifying, so much so that Mitch tells Tom they’ve lost contact with the mainland, then starts screaming, “It’s going! It’s all going!” before his radio communication goes dead. So there’s plenty of suspense and action in this episode.
Which is why it’s so perfectly Widow’s Bay that in the midst of all this, Tom, Patricia, Wyck, and by extension, all of us, have to listen to Rosemary (Dale Dickey, hilariously deadpan here) explain what happened to every individual on every branch of the extensive Warren family tree, while carefully X-ing out the names of those who died using slides displayed on an overhead projector, which is the closest we were able to get to Power Point presentations during the mid-20th century. Bring back overhead projectors, that’s what I say! No one under the age of 45 knows how to use them. But you know who else doesn’t? AI!
I have many, many questions about Rosemary’s presentation, starting with this: How in the hell did Rosemary gather all this information and create these slides in the span of, like, five minutes? Of course, that’s the joke. It would be physically impossible to do all of that in such a short period, especially for a government employee as easily distracted and prone to digressions as Rosemary is. Here’s the thing: Rosemary is a storyteller. It is her gift, it is her calling, and it is the thing about her that drives Tom Loftis crazy enough to go full Boogeyman on someone. (Possibly Ruth later that night!) When Rosemary has the opportunity to spin a yarn, she rises to the occasion, and you just have to let her do her thing, even though there is absolutely no time for this.
“Picture this: You’re a little girl, and your finger gets broken off by a wagon wheel,” Rosemary says as she sets the stage to explain what happened to Frances Warren. “Next thing you know, your dad’s dead, and your stepmom is taking you on an adventure. Destination? Hell.” I mean, that’s as good as any Rod Serling intro to a Twilight Zone episode.
The overhead projector sequence is the perfect example of why Widow’s Bay is such a fantastic television show. Those seven minutes serve multiple narrative functions at the same time, but they’re so entertaining, you may not register how much is being accomplished. On a basic level, the scene provides a lot of detailed information about the lives of the Warren descendants that may turn out to be significant later. (I am begging all of you wonderful commenters to print out copies of that family tree and start analyzing them as soon as possible. The use of an evidence board and red string is not required, but is encouraged.)
The scene is also rife with funny gags and comments. After Rosemary puts a massive X on a whole section of Warren offspring, she notes, “You know what they say: The family that swims together drowns together.” “That’s not a saying,” Tom points out. Rosemary just pauses and says, “I guess I don’t know what I’m talking about, and I should stop.” Then she waits for Tom to tell her to continue, which, of course, he does because, even though he’s the mayor of a haunted island under a severe weather emergency that forced him to sound the alarm, he wants to hear the end of Rosemary’s story. Or at least, he needs to.
Rosemary’s exchanges with Patricia are equally tremendous. “Dead baby, dead baby, lesbian,” Rosemary notes more than once as she crosses out deceased Warrens who never had children.
Patricia: “Can you please stop saying lesbian?”
Rosemary: “I can’t say lesbian now?”
Patricia: “It’s the way you’re saying it.”
Rosemary: “Anyway, this next batch, all [r-words].”
Normally, I don’t find the r-word funny, especially now that so many shows, movies, and blowhards on social media seem to think they can use the word whenever they want, because dammit, that’s what our forefathers really fought for in this country. It is very funny here, though, because Widow’s Bay makes it clear that it’s an awful thing to say and is instead a reflection of Rosemary’s less-than-woke attitudes. That’s another thing this scene does very slyly: further develop Rosemary’s character while making us question whether we can trust her version of events, even though she’s obviously “done her research.” (You guys, I hate to type this, but I’m pretty sure that if Trump exists in the Widow’s Bay universe, Rosemary voted for him twice.)
It seems obvious that we should take at least some of what Rosemary says with a grain of salt. For example, when she recounts the tale of Frances Warren, she recalls how she was rescued by Barnabus Fisher: “Barnabus Fisher finds you on the way back from a whaling trip, takes pity on you, little girl, feeds you, clothes you, raises you. Wealthy man. It must be nice.”
But everything Rosemary describes later — about Barnabus forcing Frances to marry him at age 14 and eventually have a child with him — seems extremely not nice. It sounds like child sex abuse and, as Rosemary herself acknowledges, a miserable few years of marriage that presumably were preceded by a ton of other miserable years for Frances. (Somebody search the Epstein Files for Barnabus Fisher and let me know what you find.)
Also, look at the painting of Frances and Barnabus, the one that almost crushes Tom to death when he tries to rip it off the wall. Barnabus looks like Count Olaf from the Lemony Snicket books. If it turns out that guy was a real sweetheart, I will eat all the truesight mushrooms I can get my hands on and lock myself in the Widow’s Bay inn for a full week with the clown murderer. There is, for sure, more to that story, including nuances that a woman who still doesn’t get why it’s disgusting to call someone the r-word might not notice. Surely there is a lot more to all of the stories embedded in that genealogical document, which, curiously, gives the men some very nice names (you know damn well Joseph “The Faithful” Fisher was a rampant adulterer) and the woman such non-judgmental monikers as Sophia the Heretic and Ungrateful Hortense, who was referenced back in episode two.
Ultimately, Tom, Wyck, and Patricia are left with a moral quandary: Should they kill Ruth on the presumption that the spell on Widow’s Bay will immediately be broken if she expires? Wyck is, of course, pro. Patricia is con. Tom, as usual, is not sure what to do, but is distressed enough to seemingly side with Wyck as the episode ends.
“You want Evan to grow up in a place that does something like that?” Patricia asks Tom as they debate Ruth’s fate. In her infinite wisdom, the finest Final Girl in Widow’s Bay raises what is really the ultimate question this series is trying to answer, and maybe all of us are trying to answer, too: In a place where a relentless amount of bad shit happens, what kind of community do we want to be? Do we want to be the type of people who respond to ugliness with more ugliness? Or do we want to resist those impulses and figure out how to endure while honoring the better angels in our natures?
Perhaps the finale will tell us. Honestly, I hope it doesn’t. I want at least eight more seasons of this show.
• I don’t believe for one second that Ruth is the last living descendant of Richard Warren. I am certain there could be others. It would not surprise me at all if Patricia turns out to be one of them. She was born on the island. We have learned next to nothing about her parents or family. A couple of moments in this episode hint at this possibility. When Tom asks who the descendant is, Patricia immediately shuts down the idea of trying to find out. “Don’t answer that,” she says. “It doesn’t matter who it is.” She may be trying to prevent whoever it is from becoming a target. But if she has some inkling that she could be a descendant, that also could explain her hesitation.
• Also, later in the episode, when Wyck argues in favor of killing Ruth because she’s lived a long life and “never married and didn’t have children,” Patricia immediately blurts out: “Well, thank God I’m not a descendant, or I guess my throat would already be slit.” This is a classic defensive Patricia response, but it could turn out to have a double meaning if she, too, has some Richard Warren DNA in her system. Also — and I am really spitballin’ here — maybe that’s why the more recent incarnation of the Boogeyman was trying to kill her: Maybe he wanted to undo the curse and thought Patricia was the key to making it happen.
• Several commenters in these recaps have wondered if there is some sort of issue with time on the island. I have been pondering the same thing and thought about it again during the opening flashback, when we see Thomas Warren’s skin start to blacken and decay as that boat gets farther from the island. Holyoke Warren also says she is losing her vision, the same thing that happened to Tom’s wife when she was on that ferry. What if people die the closer they get to the mainland because the island keeps them suspended in time for some reason?
• Speaking of, it seems notable that poor Frances’s father/husband (shudder) is called Barnabus, a name shared with the main character in the TV show Dark Shadows, who happened to be a vampire. Is it possible that the curse on the island involves turning some of its inhabitants into bloodsucking vampires who are immortal as long as they don’t travel too far away? I mean, this is kind of a big pop culture moment for vampires. So maybe? Mark this as a possible addition to the evidence board.
• This may not mean anything at all, but it struck me that Frances Warren’s married name was Frances Fisher, a name she shares with an actress whose lengthy career has included roles in the short-lived ABC drama Resurrection, about a town where dead people come back to life (!), and on Watchmen, where she played the wife of a police chief and the member of a white supremacist organization. Most relevantly, she also played the mother of Kate Winslet’s Rose in Titanic, a film in which her character actually survives … the sinking of a boat.
• Best Visual Gag of the Week: Boy, talk about an embarrassment of riches in the physical and visual comedy department. There are so many good candidates in this episode. I love the back-and-forth between Tom and Garrett, who comes to Town Hall just as Tom leaves Town Hall and heads to the lighthouse to find him. (Garrett: another character who surely has an interesting backstory we have yet to learn.) But Matthew Rhys, as Tom, losing his temper, failing to rip up a wall calendar, then crippling beneath the weight of that painting he yanks off the wall, is just gold, through and through. Rhys is doing John Ritter-level work, and that’s the highest compliment. Give him an Emmy, for God’s sake.
• Best Line of the Week: I snickered when Tom made a point of telling all the tourists taking shelter that Martha’s Vineyard is also being hit hard by the storm. But the winner for me comes with another hilarious visual gag: the sight of the shaman, Todd O’Connor (Chris Fleming), getting sucked up into some sort of tornado vortex before he can take shelter at Town Hall. Just before he flies into the sky like Nathan Fielder at the end of The Curse, Todd sees Tom and immediately yells, “Hey, Wyck.” Bless Todd, he died as he lived: confused, disorganized, and convinced that Tom’s name is Wyck.
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