Forget Easter eggs and callbacks, this week’s Big Sky episode was so scary that it could have been an actual Supernatural episode! Here’s my Jensen Ackles/Beau Arlen centric recap of the scares, as well as what we learned about the sheriff in this episode.
The episode starts out with the stereotypical horror movie opening, a woman cleaning up after a dinner in her very dark house on a very dark night, with a creepy figure lurking outside the windows. In typical horror movie fashion, when the dog starts barking, the woman goes outside to investigate – and promptly gets murdered by what looks like some kind of furry monster. Aaaaah!!
That’s the monster of the week that Sheriff Beau and Jenny are hunting, trying to figure out if it’s the husband (who she was cheating on), the daughter or her slightly shady boyfriend, or the guy she was cheating with perhaps. (Spoiler alert: it’s not any of them!)
In the process, we get to see more of Beau’s good instincts.
They meet with the grieving husband and daughter, trying to figure out who might have wanted the woman dead. As they walk out of the house that’s the scene of the crime, Jenny says it’s usually the husband, but Beau’s not so sure.
“Something’s not right about that house,” he tells her.
Also I love Hoyt’s Zeppelin tee shirt. Does that count as a Supernatural Easter egg? I was kidding with the “forget about those” – of course there were some!
Beau looking at the neighbor’s camera footage of the killer: Werewolf? That’s a first for me!
(Dean Winchester is laughing somewhere right now…)
Beau and Jenny also visit an antique shop that looks straight out of a Supernatural episode to question the mom’s boyfriend, and the whole thing is incredibly creepy and shot in a suspenseful way that had me jittery all over again.
The shop owner/boyfriend surprises them carrying a giant ax that he isn’t using as a weapon, but it spooks Beau and Jenny anyway. Understandably.
He’s the one who sold the woman the wolf mask because of course he is – and we’re all thrown off the scent for a while.
They also question the daughter and her somewhat shady boyfriend, but he doesn’t have any cuts on his forearms either so that’s a bust – however, we do get to appreciate Sheriff Beau from every angle in the process.
Beau also mentions his brother again in this episode, their relationship sounding both loving and fraught, and I won’t lie, I’m really hoping we get to meet this mysterious brother at some point! Apparently Beau’s brother used to take him to creepy antique shops, one with a severed finger in a glass that somehow pointed to you no matter where you were in the store. Supernatural, anyone??
We get some more backstory on Beau in this episode too, including finally meeting his ex wife Carla. She makes him grumpy in a rather adorable way, calling him a big old man-baby, to which he insists “I’m not doing this,” smiling but clearly rattled.
He also refuses to remember Avery’s name (or that she did tell him they were all going camping but he just wasn’t listening). His dismissive “pfft” to discussing Avery is priceless – and I wonder if it was an Ackles adlib!
Apparently communication was an issue for them, though Jenny assures Carla that Beau is getting a lot better at it.
Jenny the second she’s gone: You’re still in love with her.
Grumpy Beau: I am not!
Hmmmm.
Jensen Ackles is too good an actor not to let us see the cracks in Beau Arlen’s I-don’t-care bravado though. He’s vulnerable with Carla in a way we haven’t seen him be very often, softer and clearly capable of being hurt by her.
Look at him standing there with his bowlegs … Beaulegs… looking a little bit forlorn as Carla walks away. Awww.
Big Sky is dabbling in the meta pond ala The Boys and Supernatural recently, so there’s also a little joke about how Jensen Ackles is aging backwards with Beau insisting on continuing to use a ten year old photo of himself for the sheriff’s department. (Cassie had complained about the lost hiker posting an old photo of himself)
Still searching for the hiker, Cassie goes on a “date” with Cormac that starts racing through the woods on four wheelers and ends with finding the dead body of the missing hiker dude. I guess Walter didn’t do such a great job of re-burying him, did he? Oops.
Can’t blame Cassie for hanging out with Cormac though…
Also meanwhile, Sunny continues to lie to everyone around her in an attempt to pretend that everything is A-Okay and multiple people have not gone missing and keeps insisting to her husband that Walter (her child who was adopted by another couple who died mysteriously) is not dangerous. It looks like it’s going to come to a showdown between Sunny’s son and her husband, and I honestly don’t know how that’s gonna go, but it sure as hell isn’t gonna be good. I can’t believe how truly terrifying Reba can be!
Emily continues to be suspicious and have good instincts just like her father, still searching for the knife her dad gave her and still suspicious of Luke, who always seems to be hanging out at the stream in the woods.
No Denise in this episode and not much Poppernak, but Beau gets to call him “Popstar” again and I continue to be tickled that Ackles likes to come up with nicknames to adlib for him.
Back on the case, we find out it’s not the woman’s husband after all when he’s attacked and almost killed. If I woke up from unconsciousness and saw this leaning over me I might faint all over again though, just saying.
Now the daughter is missing, and the urgency ramps up. Beau finally uses that gut instinct he keeps talking about, realizing that something about the house is indeed off, that the proportions aren’t right. (He knows this because he built houses when he was younger). It turns out he’s right – they follow a bloody handprint to a closet, and then to a secret room inside where a drugged Autumn is being held by the dad’s business partner, Scott. Who, extra creepily, had planned the whole thing for a long long time.
This scene was terrifying, as the creepy guy crawls out from under the bed in true Sixth Sense fashion and gets the drop on Beau and Jenny, stabbing Beau as they fight (in the back, which….extra ouch for Dean Winchester’s fate right there). Just when you think he’s down from Beau’s fists, and Jenny is making sure he’s okay, in true horror movie fashion he goes after them again.
Beau spins Jenny around and she aims her gun at him, shooting him before he can get to them, and WHEW, is it hot in here??
It’s interesting to see that this case gets to the sheriff who seems so emotionally defended much of the time. “Why does it seem like the monsters always win?” he asks Jenny as they watch the tearful reunion between a traumatized Autumn and her wounded father in the hospital, the dad saying he should have protected her. It’s a callback to Supernatural too, to the time when Dean Winchester felt the same way.
Getting to know Beau is a slow process since he’s only a part of the story in this show, but little by little I’m really starting to like him.
Jenny knows this case got to him, and also knows how worried he is about his own daughter.
Jenny: A loving dad can’t protect you from everything, but it goes a long way.
Beau: We still talking about them or about somebody else?
Oh yeah, this case got to him – a missing daughter, in danger. A dad regretting that he didn’t protect her. A helpless sense of the monsters winning. Very Dean Winchester, but apparently very Beau Arlen too. I can’t wait to find out more!
We end with Walter refusing to listen to his mother and her husband when they tell him he needs to relocate – and the unexpected reveal that Walter has someone with him in his cabin – Paige! (Who Tonya and Donno are now looking for, on the request of some mysterious guy with a gun).
The plot thickens! But more importantly, next week we get Beau on a motorcycle!
I won’t miss that episode…
Pretty pretty caps by spndeangirl
– Lynn
You can read Jensen Ackles’ thoughts on
fandom and Supernatural (along with the
rest of the cast) In Family Don’t End With
Blood and There’ll Be Peace When You Are
Done. Links at:
