Monday, July 8, 2013

The Returned, Season 1, Episode 5: Serge et Toni


7 years ago, when now bar-man Toni and Serge lived with their mother in the houses on the edge of town – Toni stomps into his car, angry that their mother let Serge out. (At this point, if you haven’t guessed Serge isn’t the serial killer, you haven’t been watching the show).

Serge looks for a woman lone at the underpass – and attacks Julie in her cat woman costume. Only now we see the end of the attack – while Serge is chewing on Julie’s organs, Toni comes up behind him and hits him with a heavy metal pipe. Toni takes the barely alive Julie to the hospital and dumps her outside the entrance.

He takes his brother’s body and buries it. Except Serge wakes up half way and starts screaming for his mother – Toni hits him over the head with the shovel and continues digging. In the house, their mother prays and cries.

Now that’s an intense opener.

In the present day, the resurrected Serge has the still alive and unharmed (by him anyway) Léna (who passed out from her back wound last episode) in his bed in the abandoned house. He destroys her mobile phone.

When Toni arrives, he hears Léna fall out of bed – but Serge convinces him that it’s their mother, returned from the dead, and that she doesn’t want to see him. Toni leaves, seemingly more afraid than upset but definitely stunned.

When Léna wakes up, Serge tells her she fainted and helps treat her back with some home remedies – all the while visibly trying to restrain his serial killer desires.

Camille continues her campaign of stalking a confused Frédéric and acting like they’re a couple. She goes home to find Claire severely worried about Léna disappearing from the hospital, but Camille is more pouty about Léna’s love life than whether she’s ok or where she is.

At Helping Hands, Pierre is told the startling news that Victor has disappeared – and so, apparently, has the “homeless lady” (who I assume is the late Mrs. Costas) as well. At this point one has to really question the wisdom of leaving small children alone around people you know so little about that you refer to them as “the homeless lady”; for that matter I have to question a social services that thinks it’s a good idea to dump unattended small boys in adult homeless shelters.

Mrs. Costas has taken Victor to the Diner (with the very unsympathetic waiter after Simon’s assault) and Victor’s actually talking – asking where his parents are, why they haven’t come back and reminding us that he is very very creepy indeed.

To the lake, with Adèle, telling a group of children its history. Under the lake is a village, when the old dam broke it was flooded; they built the new dam and expanded the lake covering it. She gets mesmerised by Simon mid-explanation, and the question of why Simon killed himself; her distraction worries her daughter, Chloé. Under the lake, the divers find not just the ruined village but many many dead animals, all seemingly in good condition with no visible injuries.

That’s creepy. Not as creepy as Victor, but still creepy.

Adèle and Thomas still have a tense time, Adèle not accepting his reasons for hiding Simon’s suicide from her. Worried about her mother, Chloé tells Thomas about the “angel” Simon. Simon is still at Helping Hands but Pierre tells him to leave and hide since the police will come searching for Mrs. Costas and Victor. Poor Laure has the job of telling Julie that Victor has gone missing because they left him alone with an unnamed homeless woman rather than leave him in Julie’s care. Julie is very very very unimpressed, tells Laure that, if Victor returns, she certainly won’t be telling the police and slams the door

Honestly? I can’t say I blame Julie, not even slightly. Time to see some more bizarre behaviour.

Pierre decides to take Simon to live with Claire and Camille, get all your zombies in one place it seems. Claire agrees with this and leaves Simon – a completely strange man with a biography that is limited to “rose from the dead” alone with Camille.


Some more mystery – Lucy, in the hospital, is magically healing, her wounds disappearing. To add to the creepy, Thomas goes to the lake to be shown the gazillion dead animals being pulled out of it (though the engineers pretend the diverse were just doing routine checks).

The priest drops in on Adèle after Thomas’s random ramblings last week, but he’s even more out of his depth than those drowned animals and she doesn’t have much patience with him – especially since he encouraged her to live with Simon’s memory. She also seems to be leaning more towards Thomas out of the two.

The police find Mrs. Costa and Julie questions Laure about Victor – but they split up and Laure doesn’t trust Mrs. Costa because, well, she’s telling them the truth about who she is. The police think she’s delusional but Julie, who treated Mr. Costa, saw Mrs. Costa’s picture and knows what she looks like. She questions Mrs. Costas, confirms she knows her and Mrs. Costas is quite open about being dead – and Victor as well, who died shortly after she did along with his parents. Victors off doing something but he will return. Julie asks how do they know they’re dead – because she feels dead herself; Mrs. Costas tells her there’s only one way to be sure. Which sounds ominous

Camille delivers a message to Adèle from Simon about running away together – but Adèle doesn’t want to go. Camille throws in some doubt and guilt by revealing she’s also dead, that she knows what Simon’s going through, especially since the person she loves no longer wants to know her.

Let’s get some more creepy – the animals entered the lake and drowned apparently running from something that scared them so much they’d rather die. That includes large deer, goats and boar. Ominous indeed.

Serge kills a deer hunting, so there are still some wildlife left, and Camille continues her hunting of Frédéric . In the hospital Jérôme learn of Lucy’s incredible healing – her organs healed and her stomach wounds closing despite the fact she should be dead. Looks like they got someone who died and returned almost instantly.

Claire plays host to Simon who covers for Camille, telling Claire she’s asleep –Claire is ecstatic because she hasn’t slept since returning. Also since returning she has been constantly human – just like Simon. Claire also rhapsodises over Simon being a father

The word “brains” comes to mind. Can’t think why

Another advantage of zombie metabolism is it allows you to drink your own weight in vodka – allowing Camille to beat Frédéric in a drinking contest. As a forefeit, she kisses him passionately – watched from the back of the pub by the newly arrived Jérôme, who is looking for Léna. He drags her away – and as he does Camille yells at him to stop – and calls him “papa”.

Julie takes Mrs. Costa’s test – and sits on her windowsill ready to jump when Laure arrives. Laure begs her not to and tells Julie she loves her and pulls her back inside. Julie claims she didn’t want to die, it was just a test, but Laure is worried about her. Julie snaps back and Laure responds in kind “next time you want to cry for help, try pills, you won’t survive that fall.” More snarling is delayed by a report on Laure’s radio on finding Victor. Julie insists on going with Laure.

Creepy Victor goes to Helping Hands to see Pierre – with ominous music playing and him creepily appearing in windows. Pierre asks where he was and Victor responds with “I was dead.” Officially the creepiest kid ever. He follows that up with “you killed me. You killed my parents.” Pierre tries to claim it was his accomplice and he tried to save Victor – who just says “no” and all the power goes out in the town. UBER CREEPY! The masked man appears, his old accomplice, and points a gun at Victor. Pierre knocks the gun out of his hand and attacks him, pushing him back but quickly losing

Laure and Julie arrive, asking what happened – the masked man is gone.

On the road, Toni sees Serge walking with his gun and stops – he sees Serge is covered in blood and asks what caused it. Serge says it was a deer and Toni asks about Lucy, assuring Serge he can tell Toni, he won’t do anything again. Of course, Serge didn’t remember his death and now realises Toni murdered him – he points the gun at Toni but can’t bring himself to shoot. Toni asks for his forgiveness so their mother will forgive him as well. Serge refuses

Simon goes to see Adèle to ask why she didn’t show up where he said, she tells him to leave and asks why he committed suicide (which, of course, Simon doesn’t remember or understand). Adèle says they don’t need him and he’s dragging them into the grave and Chloé performs some expert heart ripping – telling him to go, that he chose to die rather than be with them, that he’s dead.

Simone leaves as Thomas arrives – we hear Thomas shout at Simon to stop – and then a gunshot. Simon falls to the floor, dead.

And Camille gets a late night visit from Frédéric  and they make out on her bed –possibly them doing far more. Frédéric asks who she is. She says they love each other that’s all that matters – and he calls her Camille and runs from the house. She cries in Claire’s arms

Julie takes Victor home with her (better than the shelter, clearly). And in the hospital, Lucy wakes up



The plots are starting to come together. The returned are getting to know each other and more and more people are learning about the returned. We also have a treble load of creepy random events going on. Everything’s building to a crescendo, you can feel it

Maybe they were born at the same time, but the 4 years Camille has been dead makes the age gap between her and Frédéric more than a little creepy. It makes it awfully creepy indeed.

It seems Victor managed to make Pierre see visions – testing him to see if he were willing to defend him? That would explain the nosy neighbour’s odd suicide perhaps. This doesn’t make him one bit less creepy


There’s still not much to say, the show moves forwards, but pretty slowly. It’s all building up