Tuesday, November 6, 2012

666 Park Avenue: Season 1, Episode 6: Diabolic



 After last episode, it’s no surprise that Jane is having nightmares about the man with the axe. Henry is comforting and 2 detectives are due to interview her. They arrive and Jane is very nervous.

Jane walks the detectives through what happened – but when they take her to the dumbwaiter she climbed up they find that it’s old, dusty and festooned with spiderwebs, clearly hasn’t been used in a long long time. They ask Henry if he saw either the person who was killed or the attacker – which he didn’t (and the body has disappeared). They start suggesting it was a hallowe’en prank. The detectives start throwing a whole lot of doubt at them and Henry snaps at them.

The next morning Henry finds Jane on the computer. She quickly minimises the screen when Henry arrives and goes to make pancakes. Henry checks the site and finds she is apartment hunting. At last, the common sense to run!

Henry catches up with Detective Cooper for progress since Jane is scared enough to want to leave and Cooper talks about her imagining things or being mentally ill, and detective Jarvis is even more abrupt – they found no body and no damage. They leave and Henry gets a phone call from Laurel, his PR stalker trying to jump start his political career – which means he has to go to a political lunch. At the lunch he does very well – but he thinks Jane should have been there. Laurel thinks Jane is a liability and she doesn’t understand city politics.

Gavin hears that 4 more of his properties had also been targeted, their security system’s hacked. Someone is sending a message that they can get to him – him and his wife. Gavin insists that Olivia not be told. He even calls a doctor – Dr. Scott (still carrying the bruise from Brian last week)- to test Olivia and take blood from her to check if she’s ok after the kidnapping. He also asks Dr. Scott to bring the results to him first – with a reminder of his underpayment of the rent. It seems, with his education loans, the doctor is living beyond his means. Ah a man in need! Gavin likes them – and a loan is arranged for $50,000. You’ll regret it, Scott.

When he gets the test results back, he tells Olivia it was just too much champagne and not enough food that made her faint, but when she leaves to make coffee, he tells Gavin it was chloroform. And we find out why Dr. Scott needs the money – he gambles, a lot. And he’s already getting his regrets when his chest opens in a serious of wounds – burns almost – spelling $50,000. That’s one hell of an IOU. He goes to see Gavin who refers to his gambling debt and offers him a different way to pay Gavin back – it’s useful to have a doctor on call. But that doctor had better come when he calls.

Gavin also magnanimously forgives Tony for his failing to keep Olivia safe last week and Tony thanks him for saving his life. Of course, Gavin has a job for Tony – he wants someone brought in for a meeting, someone who will probably refuse but he’s sure Tony will be persuasive.

In a building many scales less opulent than the drake, a man unpacks his back and pulls out Gavin’s spooky wooden box. He starts to open the box but he gets a call – saying he, Mr. Wallace, just earned a million dollars for the box. Wallace thinks if he’s willing to pay a million dollars for it, someone else may be willing to pay more. The voice instantly raises his offer to 3 million on the condition that Wallace does not open it.

2 gentlemen come to see Mr. Wallace and find him prone on the table, gasping and whimpering and unable to move – he doesn’t look well at all. One of them comments that he shouldn’t have opened the box, snaps the spooky box closed and takes it. His associate sets the place – and Mr. Wallace – on fire.


Olivia takes Jane to lunch to try and get her mind of things, though Jane is still disturbed (and more so by the police reaction). When she leaves the table for a moment, a Mr. Victor Shaw takes her seat to tell Olivia that her husband is a monster and she needs to distance herself from him. Olivia gives him some quality disdain as he goes on through his speech about how bad and wrong and cruel Gavin is, but he tells her to get a blood test from a doctor who isn’t in your husband’s pocket and see what really happened – and leaves. Olivia looks… troubled and thoughtful

Gavin is talking to a Mr. Trent, a man who drove the car to scare Olivia. He’s arrived in the newest fashion of a bag on his head. Gavin wants to know who hired Mr. Trent and he is willing to be very very persuasive. One of Gavin’s men, Sam, leaves because he doesn’t want to see this and asks Gavin what he’s going to go to the man. Gavin responds “the same thing I’m going to do to you.” Sam, wisely (albeit rather later) runs – gets in the lift which doesn’t kill him! It just shakes him up a bit and dumps him in an infinite corridor full of doors that don’t open and exits that lead to more infinitely long corridors.

Detective Cooper returns to see Jane with a new question – she identifies a photo of the man in the devil costume, a man who has been missing for 2 days, a man whose phone she used to make the call to Henry. Her story doesn’t look so shaky now, He asks her if she’s been concealing any information and she tells him she did see her attacker’s face – Peter Kramer. A ghost. Worry not, detective Cooper has an open mind. Which could be useful because she’s hearing the ghostly Sam run back and forth along the halls.

Speaking of, he’s about to hang himself from a light fitting, looking awfully stressed, when Gavin arrives “before you use the exit, we should talk.” Sam is the one who betrayed him and Gavin knows this by the look in his eyes when he saw Mr. Trent in the chair. He believes he can still use Sam

Olivia wants to know the truth – she got that blood test and demands to know what happened. And, to my shock, he tells her. And that it was the safe in his office and she apparently knows what that means and they’re in danger. She identifies Victor Shaw to Gavin

Gavin and Victor meet for dinner and Victor maintains his threats take everything Gavin has – he wants the Drake or he’ll open the box and release what is inside (Gavin questions whether he can). It also seems Gavin saved Olivia from an obsessive lover – who was very unusual and who Gavin imprisoned. Gavin leaves a box and tells him this is his chance to walk away from the fight and leaves. In the box is Sam’s head – Victor does not seem overly perturbed by this.

Jane and Henry have their own confrontation. Henry discovers the old newspaper article in which it describes everything that Jane described of her attack. He has doubts whether she’s making it up. And when they talk she reveals that she wants to go back to Indiana – but she knows she can’t ask him to come with her. She tells him she’s seeing things and was attacked by a ghost and he wants her to seek professional help, referring to her grandmother who was insane. Henry leaves and she scatters her papers in frustration, seeing.. something in them (don’t ask me, I paused it and still can’t see it). She examines the picture more clearly with a magnifying glass and sees the necklace – her grandmother’s necklace – around the neck of Peter Kramer’s wife. The little girl ghost, Jocelyn, is her grandmother (or her grandmother bought the necklace from a pawn shop – y’know, if we wanted to entertain a rational explanation)

Detective  Cooper, outside, is also investigating the Drake – all the strange goings on and settles on Kandinski. Which is who Gavin is visiting in prison with a job offer. We later see Kandinski rushed to hospital with a stab wound where he enters the care of Dr. Scott – and Scott gets a call from Gavin. Oh I do like his machinations.


I dislike the way Olivia is being treated – side lined and even her own health results being filtered through Gavin. Yes Gavin is evil but he’s supposed to love and respect his wife – and I don’t buy the whole “I have to treat you as a clueless child with delicate fee-fees” as an excuse for keeping important information away from your wife; it isn’t compatible with respect. And “I don’t want to worry you” always turns into either “I didn’t want you to be mad at me and the way I’ve screwed up” or “oh look, you’re in danger now because of the secrets I kept.” I am very glad that she has been looped back in and that she seems to know about the box – so she’s not just a clueless victim. I think I prefer her as a co-conspirator with Gavin far more than her being blissfully unknowing

And we have Jane, the “hysterical” woman and the boyfriend who doesn’t believe her. We’ve seen this before so many times. I’d quite like to see the roles switched now and then.

Things are finally devloping in the plot and with no distractions - or only a minimum of them. I don't know, maybe it's too little, too late, but I should be being pulled in now, and I'm not.