Mouse Trap – Episode 3 resumes with Jim Matthews (Eion Bailey) speaking to the voice over the phone claiming to Thomas. The voice clearly knows his history as well as how to get under his skin. Once the voice subtly threatens Julie (Hannah Cheramy) and Ethan Matthews (Simon Webster), Jim races to the farm to discover them exactly where they said they would be. As Boyd Stevens (Harold Peerrineau) alerts the residents to the approaching night, he notices Jim’s urgency and asks if everything is all right. Jim will choose not to share his encounter but he will ask Boyd if things are getting worse. Boyd’s lack of response practically tells him everything.
Henry (Robert Joy) is asleep in his recliner when he hears glass breaking in the background. This will lead him to the kitchen where Tabitha Matthews (Catalina Sandino Moreno) has just dropped a dish and cut her hand. Henry will repair the wound until Tabitha becomes focused on the distant sounds of clanging bottles.
Victor (Scott McCord) retraces a homemade map of the tree line surrounding the Colony Home and begins digging something up while Boyd and Ellis Stevens (Corteon Moore) discuss catching one of the creatures/monsters. Ellis is clearly opposed to the idea and so is Donna (Elizabeth Saunders) when she shows up during their talk. Acting as the voice of reason, Donna points out that they couldn’t likely even make the creatures talk if they somehow managed to capture one. She’ll also remind Ellis about his pregnant wife, Fatima (Pegah Ghafoori) before demanding they drop the thought and storming off.
After refusing Clara’s (Katerina Bakolias) offers of the last of the cows, Fatima will sneak outside to the rotten vegetables and begin feasting. She does not go unnoticed and Tillie (Deborah Grover) appears rather disturbed by the incident. Elsewhere, Kenny Liu (Ricky He) has led a small procession back to where he and Jim discovered the vegetables. Dale (Cliff Saunders) is the first to not the strange edifices, but it is Jade (David Alpay) who claims their positioning indicates that they have been used to warn intruders away, similar to how they use the talismans.
Jim attempts to smooth things over with Julie and Ethan by making lunch but only makes matters worse by blowing up over Ethan’s incessant questions about burying Tabitha. Things only get worse when the phone begins to ring after Ethan and Julie storm off. At the same time, Henry is sharing Miranda’s (Sarah Booth) bottle tree with Tabitha. This one is nearly identical, except for the missing teleportation hole. Much to Tabitha’s surprise, she’ll learn that as a local artist, Miranda had installed similar trees all around town. The original is several towns over in a public park and just happens to be where her visions started.
While Boyd builds a memory board to identify the location and names of the buried bodies at the cemetery, Father Khatri (Shaun Majumder) teases him about his ‘colossally stupid’ plan, which is shortly revealed to be nothing more than luring one of the monsters into a house and trapping it with several talismans. Their conversation will end on an even sourer note when Khatri points out that the monsters said their goal was to break Boyd and they have certainly succeeded at changing how he’s been doing things as of late.
Sara Myers (Avery Konrad) is right in the middle of repairing Nathan Meyer’s (Paul Zinno) shattered snowman ornament when Victor shows up clutching a dirty suitcase. He’ll also ask for some bedspreads and a place to build a fort so that he can tell a story. As stunned as Sara appears to be, she complies.
Tillie throws Tabitha for a loop when rather than demeaning her for eating the rotten vegetables she shares a story about her own pregnancy. According to Tillie, for three weeks during the second trimester of her first pregnancy, she developed a strange taste for the insides of eggshells. She hid it from her husband and never told him since the strange urge went away after three weeks. In turn, Fatima not only shares her fears about the baby but she also tells her about her supposed inability to have children.
Henry and Tabitha will have a strange experience after he agrees to take her to see the original ‘bottle tree.’ When they get into his car, the radio comes to life with the song, ‘Blue,’ which not only happens to Miranda’s favorites but Jim and Tabitha’s as well. Henry chalks it up to being a small world.
Jade and Dale get into a brief argument when Dale brings attention to his lackadaisical approach to foraging. After a few heated words, Jade storms off to another section of the forest where he ends up experiencing a hallucination of himself pinned to a tree by a railroad spike through his right eye socket. He’ll approach the figure and it will reach out and choke him. Dale will see the whole incident go down, but from his point of view, it almost appears that Jade is simply playing games. This only causes a bigger rift between the two.
Close by, Kristi (Chloe Van Landschoot) and Kenny end up in a similar argument when she tries to ask how he’s doing. He’ll deflect by telling her that she should be more worried about collecting food. Their spat will soon be interrupted by Jade on his way into town. Jade’s urgency to return to town leads to a separate argument that ends with him storming off once again. This time Kristi will go after him and get her right leg snared in an animal trap.
Boyd makes a brief stop at the diner where he finds Bakta (Angela Moore) and Ethan cleaning and putting away dishes. This encounter leads to a dark discussion that suggests Ethan has given up hope of returning home. Although Boyd attempts to convince him otherwise, the conversation doesn’t end on such a great note. Things aren’t going much better with Kristi as the failed attempts to release the trap only cause the arguing to become more intense.
Fatima almost appears insulted when Tillie suggests using Tarot cards to determine her baby’s fate. Despite that, Tillie ultimately convinces her to play along by pointing out that Fatima probably never believed that a downed tree would lead her to a magical world that she couldn’t escape. Tillie also shares the story of the origins of the cards and her one-time belief that the cards were silly. After Fatima shuffles the cards, Tillie will take back the deck and lay 4 of them facedown. Right before turning the first over, a large crow or raven crashes into the window. Seconds later another will follow, this time breaking the glass and surviving just long enough to cause complete pandemonium inside the Colony House.
Against his better judgment, Dale follows Jade to the strange edifices where he disassembles one to borrow two large steel or iron rods. They’ll return to Kristi and free her ankle but that’s merely the beginning of their problems. According to Kristi, her ankle needs to be relocated and while advising them on how to do it Jade has another hallucination of the same individual. This time, he is drinking what appears to be blood from a skull.
Right before Boyd shows up on the bus, Randall (A.J. Simmons) has a stirring hallucination of his own. He’ll briefly think he is being swamped by what appears to be bees or locusts. Once Boyd snaps him out of it, he offers to trade accommodations with him. Although Randall’s final answer isn’t revealed at the moment, Boyd tells him that he wants to watch the monsters coming out of the forest.
Tabitha has a break from reality when a bout of car sickness and the promise of saltines lead to the discovery of Jim’s bracelet in the glove compartment. She eventually makes Henry stop the car and begins accusing him of playing a cruel prank on her. Once he realizes she is going to get out, he’ll stop her and take off speeding towards the tree, which is apparently just up ahead. They will be T-boned on the way and end up in the back of an ambulance on their way to the hospital until they encounter a downed tree. This is where the episode ends.
From Review
Another great episode that deserves an easy 6 out of 10. I’d rate it even higher, but a lot of the content felt unnecessary and drawn out at times. I’m also not a fan of the continued hallucinations. For me, this is too much like the previous season. I sure hope it doesn’t turn out that they are in some dream state or never broke the curse of the music box.
It sure appears that Tabitha has made her triumphant return to town, and if that’s the case, she’s not alone. I would have liked to see Victor and Sara’s encounter get a bit more attention, but I’m betting that’s being saved for later episodes. Lots of crazy things happening.
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