A swimming pool. Oh dear they built a swimming pool.
Considering they had ghosties that could drown you in a bathroom
sink last season, building a swimming pool is so very not a good idea. And
yes, there’s a ghostly figure and dark shadowy stuff. Dry land! Dry land!
Ellie, our medium, is still squatting in the building
(remind me again her reason for being in this place?) And she’s still being followed by the glowing
girl who drops black marbles (and gives her images of the child being carried
off by a bald man with the scary symbol carved into his head). The name of the child is Eve, or so she
writes on the wall. I tell you, the youth of today and their graffiti,
shameful!
At the bar, Kiera is introduced to the swimmer Cass and
her trainer Dominic a former swimmer in the Commonwealth Games. Dominic leaves
and Kiera starts plying Cass with vodka. And Ellie comes down to get a drink with Max
(the bar man who she’s squatting with) being ultra-ultra nice as seems to be the
norm. Ellie shoots down his offer to be a friendly ear rather abruptly to be
honest. Kiera decides the best way to
clear Cass’s head is for them all to go to the pool semi-fully clothed in the
middle of the night. There is much slashing and ducking and Cassie gets a
ghostly vision – of a woman being dragged to and thrown in the pool during the
asylum days where she was held under (the asylum had a pool?) – and seeing a
black clad ghost of her under water. She comes to the surface and urges
everyone out of the pool (damn ghosties ruin all the best parties) using the
excuse that they’ve been drinking and it’s not safe. As Cass leaves the pool,
Ellie notices she has some scars on her wrists.
Dominic is passive aggressive and snippy about Cassie
coming to bed late (she trains at 5:00am). Kiera and Ellie leave, with Kiera
commenting on both Dominic’s control freakiness and also mentions the scars on
Cass’s wrists believing they are marks of an attempted suicide – but Ellie
shuts her down, disliking the assumption and the gossip.
The next day Max continues to play on the ghost hunting
website and Dan walks around in a towel letting us know that while Jed has left
the show, we still have some mighty nice eye candy around. We get some nice
little inserted character development learning that Dan doesn’t get on with his
family – and that Ellie grew up in care. Max also questions Ellie about her
little freak out the night before – recognising a ghost sighting when he sees
it. Being the nice guy he is, he offers to go down to the pool with Ellie to check
it out. But down at the pool Ellie gets another vision of the ghost being held
under the water back in the asylum days and turns and leaves, unwilling to
talk.
Warren and Kiera are sorting through Kate’s things and
Warren discusses how he doesn’t expect Kate to return (since
she was kidnapped by the creepy bald guy last episode, this seems likely)
since Kate has been so angry with him since Jed’s death. Kiera is parsing
through the stuff she wants to keep when Dan comes in – they’ve lost one of
their potential residents because of the Haunted in Bedlam website. But they do
conclude that, given the time the pictures were posted, that they must be
posted by someone from within the building (Max most likely).
Cass is back swimming and being stalked by the spooky
ghost - and we get the first drowning attempt, her hair caught in a vent at the
bottom of the pool after she’s lured by her stopwatch left next to it. But when
she gets back to the edge – she see her stop watch hasn’t moved. She returns to
boyfriend Dominic, worrying that she’s over training but he pushes her to keep
going.
Ellie, meanwhile, is playing marbles with her glowing
imaginary friend, Eve and catches Max watching her – so snarls at him before
being ambushed by another drowning girl vision. Max tries to help her sort
through the vision but she rejects him, finding his help too much and wants to
handle it on her own. Which is why she goes down to the pool, alone. She
manages to spook herself a little but nothing happens (except the tension
ratchetting up a little), though Dan tells her the pool is closed because of
Cass’s accident.
Which, as Ellie relates to Max, doesn’t make much sense
given how strong a swimmer Cass is. Max, however, is hurt that she shut him
down so sharply before and tries to play silent treatment – which lasts for 3
seconds with Ellie asking for his help with much eye-rolling. Frankly, while
Max requiring her to ask for help is a little childish, the fact she shut him
down and stomped off saying she’s doing everything alone then came back and
assumed he’d help was deserving of some response. Nor am I impressed by her eye
rolling over it.
They resolve to warn Cass that there’s a territorial ghost defending the pool that has taken issue to her – admittedly a hard sell. But Max fights reluctance with lots of praise for how good Ellie is with people and what a good listener she is (she is? Since when?). He leaves and she goes to talk to Cass, though it doesn’t help that it starts with another vision. We learn that Cass has always been training – first bullied by her father into it and now living with Dominic – though she says she does love it, though she seems almost to be convincing herself. She and Dominic had been in a car crash when she was driving and his injury stopped him becoming an Olympic swimmer – so he now focuses on her. And, predictably, the “hey there’s a ghost trying to kill you” conversation doesn’t go well.
Meanwhile Dan has found some files about the asylum’s
pass and Warren’s family. He hopes to use them to lure out the ghost hunter who
runs the website – Warren agrees but is obviously discomforted, which is pretty
natural considering he knows what happened when his father ran the asylum. Dan
does some snooping into Warren’s account on the computer. He has a brief snark
fest with Kiera. Warren has gone home for the night and has another of his
spooky dreams (the same kind Kate had in season 1). Kiera catches up with him
and finds him very distracted and confused. We get some more of her backstory
and character development as well with her past and some relationship
discussions between her and Warren, with the age gap and what it means. Warren
also now has a new tattoo – the same star and B symbol engraved into the creepy
bald guy’s head.
Ellie reports her failure to Max who is very comforting,
but also worried that Cass doesn’t accept the warning – he runs out, heading to
the pool.
Cass goes down to the pool and is showering - but blood mixes with the water, apparently
from her wrists. And we see the ghost shadowing around. She gets in the pool
(don’t you normally shower after being in the pool?) and after many tense near
misses – is pulled under in drowning attempt number 2. Max and Ellie arrive to
find her floating face down and pull her out of the water. She’s not breathing
but Ellie, the paramedic uses mouth-to-mouth to bring her back.
Back at Max’s and Ellie’s flat they talk it out – and Ellie
suggests Cass take a training break and offers to go with her to speak to
Dominic about it. Predictably, Dominic isn’t pleased by Ellie is there for
moral support. Cass doesn’t want to swim, she’s been pretending – he feels she’s
wasted the last 2 years if she doesn’t keep training, she feels she’s wasted
the past 2 years on training. She lays down the law.
Max and Ellie go back to the flat to celebrate. And Ellie shows max her B mark – which she’s always had but now she’s seeing the symbol in her visions and it worries her. He’s seen it in the building and they infer a connection between her and it.
Unfortunately, it’s not over that simply – back at Cass’s,
Dominic is laying on some majorly abusive guilt, even using her suicide attempt
and the car accident to attack her. He throws a bag at her and tells her to get
out (run, Cass, run!). She leaves, naturally in bits, and takes a knife with
her. She goes to the pool, gets in with the knife and starts to cut herself. But
then returns to the surface and throws the knife away, angrily. She tries to
leave the pool – but the knife has disappeared and the ghost grabs her and
drags her under the water. They struggle and return to the surface – where the
ghost shows her cut wrists; Cass looks down and sees her own wrists have been
cut.
And Ellie gets a new vision. The woman who was tortured
by drowning, who killed herself in the pool, slashed her wrists first. Ellie
quickly takes this to Max, seeing the parallels with Cass – and they run to the
pool. They arrive to find Cass floating in the bloodied water. Max jumps in to
pull her out – but it’s too late, she’s dead
Ellie and Max review, with Ellie blaming herself for not
saving Cass and realising how dangerous what they’re doing is.
This episode wasn’t as spooky and frightening as the last
one – but it was definitely more emotional impactful and I think excess
supernatural elements would have distracted from that.
I do like that Dominic’s behaviour is called our
repeatedly as controlling and that Ellie was there to help her stand up to him.
But I think I’d have preferred it if the impetus wasn’t so much ghost related (and
if more was done or recognised) – Cass was being controlled and bullied, that
alone is motivation enough, not just the evil drowning ghostie. One thing that
is somewhat novel is seeing an abusive relationship that isn’t physical –
because this kind of emotional abuse is just as abusive (and has just as dire
consequences) as physical abuse, but on TV (and in life) we tend to default to
physical abuse in our assumptions. I would have liked very much to have seen
some consequences for Dominic.
Max is just so… nice. I think I would find him annoying
as well being so very very very NICE. Yet, at the same time, Ellie is very not
nice. I think she lashes out at Max in a disproportionate manner especially for
a woman who was so desperate for someone to believe her not long ago – and who
managed to parachute her way into Max’s flat after he gave her a bed for the
night – which is still unexplained. And after the great help he gave her last
episode, including saving her life.
I think Max’s puppy-dog niceness is annoying, but not
nearly enough to be deserving of Ellie’s treatment of him.
I find myself liking Dan and Kiera despite themselves
more than anything. Dan’s arrogance and cockiness is probably going to be
grating at times (like last episode with Kate) but they are both being
developed into fuller characters than expected – and fuller than Molly last
season.
I am impressed that the POC are in very non-stereotypical
roles. Dan is playing the young, supremely hot man and general yuppy and Kiera
is playing the uninhibited, impulsive wild-child (with a minor edge of Mean
Girl)
All in all, the season has started well, even if I’m not
entirely happy with the reboot.
