Cult Season 1, Episode 7: Suffer the Children

On the show, Kelly has taken her nephew, Andy, to a psychiatrist because he’s having problems after being held by the Cult – including pulling his hair out. It’s hard to get him to talk but he draws a picture of his mother with blood on her head saying she cut out her hair.

Skye is back at work, dressed up for an event, and Peter-who-has-a-crush-on-her is at her computer because his laptop broke and he’s in no way checking up on her, honest. He’s still curious about the clothes and she says she’s going to her friend Jeff’s boss’s funeral (Bert, yup, they killed him).

To the funeral where Jeff describes Bert as the closest thing he and his brother had to a father when their parents died. After the eulogy,  E.J. approaches Jeff and tells him she knows Bert didn’t die by accident (people shot him E.J., that kind of goes without saying). She has made the connection between Jeff asking for Sakelik’s address and Bert dying – and hands Jeff a file; Sakelik’s personnel record. Nate’s missing and Bert’s dead, if Sakelik is responsible E.J. wants a piece of her.

Which is when Sakelik arrives at the wake. Now that’s just tasteless. She informs Jeff that she is personally taking charge of the investigation into Bert’s death. Jeff gives her her marching orders and she leaves with another veiled threat

Jeff and Skye check through the file and Jeff worries about her again since Sakelik is so threatening and she reminds him of her personal stake. Digging through her file they find she has a glowing record as a detective, but she also has a sealed file as a juvenile. A record she has tried recently, repeatedly to get expunged suggesting it may be currently relevant. He vows to get that file no matter what, even if it is a sealed government file.

Time for an illicit and totally not suspicious meeting in a car park. The guy he’s meeting apparently tampered with a jury and Jeff has proof of that – and uses it to blackmail him into giving up Sakelik’s file. The man is surprised that Jeff would stoop to such a level but Jeff says things change.

Am I supposed to gasp at how low Jeff has fallen in fighting the Cult? It may have helped if I’d seen him be a paragon of morality to begin with; he was cut from the New York Times for lying in a story, we know he’s a journalist who believes in ends justifying the means. Also, why else would he sit on evidence of jury tampering?

On the set, the mysterious Stuart arrives with an expensive classic car and runs into Roger, the man who plays Billy. Stuart’s there because he’s opened offices and wants to become a producer – a somewhat indulgent ambition of a man who comes from a lot of money. And he wants Roger to drop down sometime, having praised his talent in the past.

Sakelik sneaks back into the crime scene where Bert was killed and finds her partner already investigating. He wants to double check since they rushed through the scene so quickly. She tries to downplay it, it’s just a home invasion, but he’s not convinced. He doesn’t think Bert was wealthy enough to justify it – and it’s too neat, everything is set up too perfectly for a textbook home invasion. He continues to push for more investigation but she shuts him down. He doesn’t look satisfied or like he’s going to let it drop.

Cult, Season 1, Episode 6: The Good Fight

Skye is in the shower and hears someone whistling. She opens the shower curtains and sees Billy approach with a knife. She leaps back – and he disappears. In the kitchen Jeff asks if she’s ok, she blames it on the wrong tap.

Getting out of the shower she apologises for the party and he says the fault is Lexi for drugging her – and puts the kiss down to that as well. Jeff re-examines the episode with the drugs and thinks it’s just another example of the fans having to recreate everything in the show – Billy has a drug so so too must they. Jeff begins to talk through the connections – when Skye feels Billy’s hand draw across her cheek. When she turns, there’s no-one there. She turns back to Jeff, says his name, and collapses on the floor.

Skye wakes outside, laid on the grass to have Billy standing over her. She hurried crawls away from him – she’s in the compound, on the show with cultists continuing their normal lives around her. She grabs a fork and points it at Billy – who disappears and reappears on the other side of her, and the fork in her hand disappears. She runs but going through a door she’s right back where she started with Billy waiting. He grabs her arm and tells her she can’t leave.

At the hospital, Skye is laid unconscious on a bed and the doctor asks Jeff about the drug – the drug isn’t in her blood stream any more but they don’t know if it’s a result of the drug, what it was cut with or her own allergies. But they can’t do any more than make her comfortable without knowing why she is unconscious – not without a sample of the drug.

Jeff calls Lexi, but she doesn’t have any more of the drug and doesn’t know anyone who does have more. At the hospital Skye’s mother arrives – she’s suspicious of Jeff with him being at the party where Skye was drugged and she’s been worried about Skye ever since she joined the show – something Jeff accepts partial responsibility for since she’s been helping him. Skye’s mother says he can go but he’s staying with Skye.

In Dreamworld Skye continues to try and leave and Billy follows both talking and beaming conversation into her mind until he asks what she wants – she wants to know the truth about her father. He says that’s why she’s there – in Steven Rae’s creation because she hopes to find the truth.

Jeff calls EJ to try and get more information on Dustin – but she’s got nothing and hangs up quickly when Burt arrives unhappy that he’s calling her asking for another favour. That’s a new side of Burt. Another Cultist

And in the hospital, Detective Sakelik arrives. Sakelik asks if Jeff saw the video of Nate and reminds Jeff that Nate is the only thing keeping Jeff safe. Jeff remembers Sakelik confiscating the drug from Dustin at the party – he asks her to help but she refuses.

Cult, Season 1, Episode 5: the Kiss

 

We start on the show gathered around a camp fire with Kelly as a cultist and Billy, taking drugs with the sword-triskele symbol on them. Billy talks to Kelly about being united in a vision – mind, eyes and bodies – then takes off her dress and throws it into the fire while the drug takes hold. He turns her round and asks her if she “gives herself to this joining” when she says yes, they kiss and he says she’s his only love.

The show is on Jeff’s television and Jeff himself is just sending off his article to his editor, Bert, having pushed his deadline close. Bert (an obvious friend who has known them for a long time) asks about Nate and Jeff shows him the photograph they found – looking at the board Nate had up he sees a similar photograph with him wearing the same clothes – including a medallion. His editor notices the medallion and says they have “accept, forgive, release” on them – they’re sobriety medallions. Bert says Nate fell off the wagon (he was a drug addict) but got with the program and didn’t tell Jeff – since Bert was really close to the family, he acted as Nate’s family member in the meetings.

Of course, Jeff asks why a photo celebrating completing the program would be on Nate’s Cult wall and asks after the other man in the photo – Dustin, who became friends with Nate. And Bert knows where he lives.

On the set, Marti (the actress who plays Kelly) is dreading that night’s party where several major fans have been invited – it’s all in costume and she has to give a private tour of the set. She wants Skye to come so she has someone she can talk to (also asking questions about Jeff, “Skye’s guy”) – when Peter cuts in to add his own not-very-subtle crushing on Skye to try and get her to come.

Jeff goes to see Dustin and when he arrives an ominous black pick up drives by (we can tell it’s ominous, the music says so). An ominous black cat meows at him (we can tell it’s ominous, the camera says so) and he sees Dustin’s mother (who’s not even slightly ominous). Jeff lies and pretends to be Dustin’s case worker and learns he’s moved – and it’s apparent he’s involved in the Cult True Believers as well. And he’s all excited about the studio party. And she has an ominous feeling. How very ominous.

Cult, Season 1, Episode 4: Get With the Program

Starting on the show: We begin with a professor making a podcast criticising Billy Grimm and his cult. When someone comes to his door he starts in panic – but it’s only Kelly leading a woman, Rebecca, in handcuffs. She’s a cult member and Kelly says her husband was involved in kidnapping her sister. An no, Rebecca’s not under arrest – but Kelly brought her to the professor because he was the one who “deprogrammed” her.

Then the lights go out and spooky laugher is heard – followed by a flashbang grenade. A group of people come in, tase Kelly and rescue Rebecca – and kidnap the professor.

To the real world with someone contact Jeff, telling him that their husband had also disappeared because of the show. They don’t know if they can trust Jeff, but are willing to try.

And to the set of Cult where Skye brings Marti (the actress who plays Kelly) some research and learns from the make up artist, Lexi, that everyone things she’s sneaking out and sexting Jeff (her denials are not believed). Marti gets rid of Lexi and has her own questions about Jeff. Skye tries to defuse the idea that she and Jeff are love interests except her phone keeps ringing with texts from Jeff.

Jeff and Skye wait to meet the person who contacted them – and Skye has plenty of misgiving and warnings since there violent True Believers are out there. They’re approached by a man who comments on their notebooks about Cult. He and Jeff have some not-quite horns locked posturing after which he concludes that Jeff isn’t one of the True Believers. With his assurance, the woman Jeff’s come to meet feels safe to talk to them. She and her husband, Rami, were fans from the beginning but he became more and more obsessed – until he was kidnapped. The police didn’t want to know when it seemed Rami left voluntarily (especially when the show was mentioned) and the guy with her, Terrence Ross, specialises in finding people lost to cults. She also has her husband’s notes – and a copy of the disc that Jeff used that erased all of his data. She used it on a networked office computer (bet her boss loves her – ever wonder who the people are who click on the “hi remember me from school?” emails? Uh-huh there she is) and, without personal information, it doesn’t destroy the machine or erase itself. Jeff is eager to rush off and check this disc for any info but first he and Terrence need to trade menacing alpha male stares.

As they move off to their cars, Detective Sakelik arrives to warn them off Terrence Ross who is “implicated” in all kinds of naughtiness. Leaving Skye wondering who to trust between the “deprogrammer with the rap sheet or the cop they know is involved”.

At Jeff’s place there’s lots of back and forth while EJ checks the disc and manages to track down the address of where it was burned – a hang out for hackers.

To the show where Billy is teaching the kids how to respectfully slaughter a pig with his signature knife before the professors arrives, bound up in a sack. Billy welcomes him by wiping his bloody knife on the man’s shirt

This is being watched by Detective Sakalik on her phone when her partner arrives with coffee telling her about the wiretap they have on Terrence’s phone. Her phone rings and she spills coffee on herself to get her partner to go look for paper towels so she can call in private – they say they’ve moved Nate to a new location

Cult Season 1, episode 3: Being Billy

 It’s the TV show, with a woman, Libby, in a car on a level crossing with Billy assuring him that she didn’t tell the police anything. He says he knows she was going to. As they talk you can hear a train approach. He gets out of the car and locks it behind her, leaving her stuck inside with a train approaching. As Billy walks away we see her hands are tied to the steering wheel – and the train hits the car.

The show is being watched by three young men on a smart phone, they’ve watched it over and over. They interrupt it because a woman is coming – they’ve been waiting for her. They grab her, kidnap her and when the lights come up again she’s in the front seat of a car, hands tied to the steering wheel with the episode playing. And she’s on a level crossing and the train’s coming.

Or not – it’s a car with a large light on its roof playing train noises. It’s a game “Being Billy” involving re-enacting scenes from the show; and the girl, Gillian, was in on it.

To the Fandom café/club/bar/thing where we join Jeff who is meeting EJ who finds Jeff hanging around in the club slightly weird. He’s asked her to hack his brother’s email before he died since he can’t trust the police. She did (despite ethical complaints) but the email was wiped the day Nate died. There’s only one thing left – and showing Jeff she asks Jeff if he’s considered that Nate may be playing him

To the studio where Peter tells Skye about Stephen Rae’s new wish to have a special graffiti added to the background of several new scenes – he shows her the picture, it’s the Triskele of hands holding swords. The same one she saw in Jeff’s wiped computer which shakes her a little and gives Peter another chance to warn her how paranoid people on the show are about spoilers.

Jeff calls her and they exchange news – and Jeff adds that that morning Nate’s email account sent a group email “Billy says- It’s starting again. Tonight.”

Move on to a party at Fandomain where they’re showing the fanvideo they made – all praising Laura who apparently came up with the idea. But she says she didn’t run this round of the game, it wasn’t her. And the only other person who has a list of all the players is Nate.

Gillian leaves the party and gets a phone call from Billy, sounding like it’s been cut from different clips of the show. It says that he doesn’t know how many followers he has out there – but you’re next – followed by a car running Gillian over.

Nate returns to Nate’s flat and finds the door open and Laura inside going through Nate’s papers. She says she sued to live there, she was Nate’s girlfriend, for over a year. She tells him Nate was getting things together – even taking classes but she hasn’t seen him in a month since he dropped out when he became more and more obsessed with Cult. She also tells Jeff about the game, Being Billy, how they plan a scene and then drag one player who doesn’t know about it into the scene for total immersion (like Gillian in the opening scene). And that Nate has now started the game without her. And that Gillian died in an apparent hit and run

Next day Jeff and Skye go to check the college campus where Nate’s email came from and Jeff tells Skye about how Nate has run off before, shortly after their parents died.

Cut to the show, Kelly and her partner Oz watch Andy, Kelly’s nephew. Oz gives Kelly the file on Libby, the girl dead at the train tracks. Kelly tells him she was close to Billy and she was planning on giving information on Billy to Kelly before she died.

Fangs for the Fantasy Episode 107

This week we discuss The Walking Dead, Being Human (US), Lost Girl and the new show Cult (which is good no matter what Renee says)

Our book of the week this week is Brilliant Devices by Shelley Adina

Our next books of the week are:

4th March - 11th March: Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs
11th March - 18th March: Summoning the Night by Jenn Bennet
18th March - 25th March: Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
25th March - 1st April: The Struggle by L.J. Smith
1st April - 8th April: Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger 
8th April - 15th April: The Queen is Dead by Kate Locke


NB: Our podcast time has changed, it will now be every Monday at 6:30 EST (11:30 GMT)

Cult: Season 1, Episode 2 In the Blood

We’re on the set and Kelly is being showed a body by her partner (can we get a name for him, already?) who has been buried face down vertically. As in, they’re looking at the soles of his feet. Time for a 7 year old flash back to Kelly in a hole, head down, feet up with water lapping around her forehead (aaaargh, this, right here may be my very definition of Hell).  She’s raised up with a rope around her ankles, pulling her out of the well into the rainy night and swept into Billy’s arms. She’s really happy about this unconventional hair care treatment as he welcomes her to the family. Billy, I have to say right now if this is your initiation right, I don’t care if you’ve got immortality, a pet unicorn and the power to manifest bacon from the ether to all new initiates, you’ve lost me.

Returning to the present Kelly tells her partner that Billy is behind the murder and that it’s a message, for her because she was the closest person ever in his cult. On the floor, Kelly finds a coin – at which point Jeff, watching the show, pauses it.

He goes looking through his brother’s notes and desk – and finds a coin that looks a lot like it. At which point Skye wakes up from where she’s crashed on the sofa. They discuss hidden messages on the show, Nate’s notes and the fact the news hasn’t reported Miriam’s suicide (is the Los Angeles news likely to? Is it big enough news?) Jeff repeats that Nate told him to talk to Miriam – well, unless you have a medium it isn’t going to happen.

Jeff goes to Fandomain but finds the back room for Cult fans has been locked up after a second person was found inside with a concealed knife.  Jeff asks after Nate but the barman says he’s never heard of him. He notices Cult is on again and asks if they play it all the time – Creepy Eyed Fan regards him with Creepy Eyes. She’s Kirsty and she works there (Creepy Eyes suits her better).

Jeff gets a phone call – from Billy who says “I’m glad you’re one of mine now” when a pink haired woman says “boo” behind him and actually scares him. It’s E.J. a co-worker of Jeff’s who he asked to meet him. He wants her to check his laptop to see what identify theft software is in it (she is duly contemptuous of his “let’s load up this random dvd!” habit) and to check his phone to see if she can find out where the call from Nate came from – she’s also blatantly crushing so extremely hard on Jeff. She also has Miriam’s last name – Livingstone.

E.J./Jeff/Skye? C’mon you know there’s going to be a love triangle. It’s CW, there are rules! C.W. without a love triangle would be like HBO without gratuitous nudity.

At work Skye is approached by her colleague Paul who tells her about the Network exec who was going to lay down the law disappearing. This makes her get all worried and thinky and he tells her she needs to stop obsessing over the creepy creepy fans – shows need an edge and Steven Rae, the show’s creator, is obsessive about stopping all spoilers leaking and she may end up being suspected if she keeps poking fandom. The fans are fine

Time to see Kirsty, the creepy fan, in a warehouse full of dead animals with a Network executive tied to a chair, wrapped in cling film with his lips sewn together. I think she’s graduated well beyond creepy now. She promises someone on the phone she’d do anything for them, kisses the exec then tells a guy lurking with a knife to “do a good job on him”.

Jeff meets Skye to go and see Miriam’s husband (she’s there because she saw a woman commit suicide in front of her, she wants to know why) and Jeff shows her the call he got from Billy – she assures him it’s standard from the website of the show and nothing to worry about. Mr. Livingstone is packing to leave and is very hostile and won’t talk to them – when they push he’s so on edge he points a shotgun at them and demands they leave.

They go to the police station and for a second Jeff thinks he sees Kelly (who only plays a police detective on television) to see Detective Sakelik (and her Cult tattoo). They tell Sakelik about Livingstone leaving, his fear and extreme reaction but she tells them to back off, stop harassing the man and let her get on with the investigation.

Back to the show and Kelly meets Billy at the crime scene, she says he normally kills people with the upside down burial for betrayal and asks what he betrayed. Billy denies killing anyone and Kelly scoffs – he always uses surrogates to commit all his crimes. Billy says she’d know all about that – given how much she did for him and he wonders what her boss, Captain Brazil, would think about her record.

Back to the real world and Jeff asks more Cult fans about Nate who claim to know nothing. Skye checks Miriam and her husband out and they’re normal normal normal and more normal, nothing suspicious – except Miriam’s funeral is already scheduled, already for this afternoon. Jeff thinks this is a great thing since he can crash it and grill grieving relatives! This is totally not an awful idea guys

Which is when E.J. shows up, introductions follow, Skye meet E.J., E.J. meet Skye. E.J. become jealous angry and snippy, of course. While E.J. digs out her tech stuff Skye clearly clocks on to the huge crush and how Jeff’s “she’s a kid” is so inaccurate. On actual technical news, Jef’s lap top is now a paperweight, all data replaced with a squillion teeny tiny images that when enlarged turn out to be triskelions – of arms holding swords.

Cult: Season 1, Episode 1: You're Next

 

We open with an interview of Billy Grim, a cult leader who provides “connection” to his “family”.

Cut to a man and a woman in a car, at night, driving to Myers Wood. She believes the place they’re going belongs to Billy – and that he has her sister and her sister’s son. And apparently the last victim said “well hey, these things just snap right off” they’re very very clear about the wording. The continue to be dramatic – because Billy wants her out there that night since she left the cult (more ominous music!)

They arrive and get out, she recognising a car from the cult compound. Inside the dark building there are clippings of her, Kelly a police detective, escaping the cult. She closely examines one of the walls covered in scrawl – and sees a face, there’s someone trapped in the walls. Yelling at her partner to cover her, she rips the plaster away, pulling him free. It’s Meadow’s husband, Douglas  - her sister’s husband. She desperately asks him where her sister and nephew, Andy, are. He says “well hey, these things just snap right off” then dies.

Cut out to the credits. Yes, everything we just watched was a television programme. But one fan in a café (Nate) who is studying the show with waay to many notes tells his friend, Miriam, that he’s found something; she gasps that he’s “unlocked the next level”.  He leaves hurriedly.

At the film set, boss man Gary Fisher is approached by Skye, the super eager new researcher who has been surfing the net on some of the fan sights and found ones that actually try to hide. She describes them as having a special connection to the show and some of them seem kind of… scared. He dismisses her because, well, she is being several kinds of ridiculous.

Hah, Skye, welcome to fandom. If you aren’t afraid, you will be!

Move on to Jeff, a frustrated reporter who seems upset that his editor cut his piece on parking conspiracies (uh-huh) when Nate, the spooky fan and Jeff’s brother, calls him. He’s freaking out, which Jeff isn’t very impressed by, but agrees to meet him in a diner. They have a nice info-dumping conversation about how their parents are dead, Jeff being a semi-parent afterwards and how Jeff isn’t impressed with what Nate’s life, oh and I think Jeff has just come out of a relationship, I think. Info dump aside, he’s made contact with “them” last night and now they’re after him. Jeff assumes drugs – which is apparently a past issue with Nate. No, it’s not drugs it’s a TV show – but it goes beyond that. Amazingly enough, Jeff isn’t that impressed by this. Nor by Nate panicking when a red car appears – the same car from in the show that Kelly recognised.

Jeff refuses to listen to Nate, having dealt with his obsessions before and Nate tells him that if anything happens to him, find Miriam and he gives Jeff some glasses with red and blue lenses.

Cut to Skye and she’s working late- well, she’s obsessing over the fan websites she’s found. I know the feeling, sometimes you google your favourite show and 10 minutes later you’re cowering in the corner, staring at your computer in horror gasping “whyyy… bu- whyyyyyy?”

Jeff watches an advert for Cult at the petrol station and gets a staticy calls from Nate, trying to warn him, between the static we hear “hey these things just snap right off” then he disconnects. He doesn’t answer his phone when Jeff rings back

He goes to Nate’s house to check on him and finds a chair saturated in blood, Cult is on the television with Billy looking out.

Cut to later with him explaining things to the police and Detective Sakelik where he spills a lot of his journalist knowledge of crime scenes and is questioned about his relationship with his brother. And they find drugs – Jeff says Nate’s been clear for over year, perhaps not. He tries to convince them it’s about the odd things Nate discovered but the police think it’s more likely to be a disgruntled drug dealer. The television is still on, showing a recording of Cult

On the TV, Kelly is in the Cult grounds talking to Billy about her missing sister and nephew and he tells her she’s been warned about harassing him. She accuses one of his cult members, Joey, who will do anything Billy says – Billy turns around and points out Kelly used to be the same. She demands Joey returns her family but Billy says he has a lot of followers out there – pointing to followers working on the internet – and even he doesn’t know how many. Billy turns up the creepy and gives her a set of red and blue glasses, saying they could be handy. Watching the TV, Jeff pulls the glasses Nate gave him out of his pocket. The credits role, and show the programme’s creator – Steven Rae.

At the studio a man from the network talks to boss man Gary Fisher to try and get access to Steven who is something of an artistic recluse; he wants to meddle with the show to make it more marketable but Gary doesn’t think Steven will want anything to do with him. All of this is watched by frowney researcher Skye who also watches as Jeff is lead in, purporting to be the Post and writing a piece about the show. He tries to get to see Steven Rae but before he gets any further he’s quickly rumbled as an EX-Washington Post reporter. He protests about his brogther to try and stop him being evicted but they give him his marching orders – but not before he runs into the actor who plays Billy – and sees the red car his brother was afraid of.

Before he can leave, he’s grabbed by Skye and taken aside, she asks about his brother disappearing. He says all his brothers calls and texts have been deleted but she knows that’s easier said than done and retrieves them – he has a lot of recent call history and texts from someone called Meadow (that would be Kelly’s sister on the show).  They begin with “don’t do this, you don’t know what they’ll do to you,” before repeating “where are you” over and over. He tells Skye that he’s all his brother has and if he doesn’t try to find him no-one will