The witches brew up a killer finale.
Here is our review of Salem season 2 episode 13.
SPOILER ADVISORY:Watch it first, read it, watch it again.
The season finale was so unexpected it had gasp moments that had nothing to do with frights.
It was as flawless as it was fun.
Last weeks episode ended when Mary (Janet Montgomery) made the ultimate sacrifice a mother could make.
Never underestimate a witchy mama.
The stars were crossed.
Her empty vessel of a son was filled with a monstrous soul.
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A monster is a god seen through fearful eyes.
God is blind and deaf.
Salem is a small town, likePeyton Placeor Collingsport Maine, in the gothicDark Shadows, and tongues wag.
Anne lit a fire under him and brought him back into the good fight.
Cotton Mather gets the truth and it makes him sick.
He throws his soul up through his throat.
Seth Gabel is playing it full force here.
Cotton decides to let love conquer all.
Isaac the Truthteller (Iddo Goldberg), go fuck yourself and get thee to a dentist.
I know Im always picking on his teeth, I wish hed pick his teeth once in a while.
The former Fornicator should just let Mercy Lewis (Elise Eberle) drink.
Mercy really is going to shit.
She has been abandoned over and over.
Mercy has been dangled, mangled and tangled in all the small-town intrigue.
This will have given her strength.
Mercy is at the beginning of a terrible reign.
)Mercy already has a resume filled with her work with children.
She got a special letter of reference just for her work with Salems resident devil child.
Hey kid, you kiss your mother with that mouth?
What a perverse memory comes out of that little kids gaping hole.
Theres an unsettling sickness thats worse than any of the wince factor bits that Ill get into later.
When the devil gets down, he really gets low.
He simplifies the oedipal complex to its barest roots.
He is the rapist hiding in the body of the unaborted child.
I feel sorry for his mom when he hits puberty.
Mary throws down on the Countess like shes a fifties greaser calling a rumble.
Up until this point, Mary had been playing the resigned martyr, welcoming death.
My woods, she says and peels the paneling with her fingernails acting like a switchblade.
It was cool and she was cool, like the Fonz was supposed to be cool.
But really, how cool could he be with Anson Williams sitting at his table?
(Thats aXenain-joke.)
Kick the shit out of her, warrior princess.
Lawless is as far away from that iconic character as she can be.
The Countess is suffering all the indignities of unrequited love.
She is spoiled and has a real sense of entitlement.
Lawless has the potential to bring true entitlement to a role that very few actors possess.
There are only a handful of actors who carry that much historic weight.
Salemmay be fun, but its not often funny.
A lot of the humor of the show is carried in Lucy Lawlesss unspoken retorts.
They clearly enjoy playing off each other.
Wince moments:The devil bites the hand that feeds him.
The crunchy munchy sounds the devil child made and the quick cuts we heard were beautifully disgusting.
Titubas (Ashley Madekwe) death was a motherfucker.
Alfred Hitchcock terrorized the blonde Tippi Hedron with all-white seagulls inThe Birds.
The prince of darkness revokes the former slaves freedom with a barrage of black beaks.
Anne Hale joins the dark side and then some.
She sees she can thrive as a woman only through mystical intervention in the perennial age of man.
Cotton, however enlightened he may be, finds that hard to swallow.
But it is her I love.
Mary Sibley is the one I must have.
That can be Marburgs epitaph if she were more than sleeping.
All her babies want mother Mary in their hour of darkness.
She cant just make it be.
So the countess tasks one with taking the young queen out to the woods for slaughter.
How could that go wrong?
Didnt the Baron learn anything from Snow White?
Or maybe, as onThe Addams Family, those stories just never registered.
But really how did the Countess not see that coming?
Just earlier that day the little devil told Tituba he knew every lie she ever told.
Hes the father of lies, he knows his own.
John Alden will come back to town.
This is the most fun show currently ending a season.
I giggle at my discomfort.
This may have been a perfect season closer.
Maybe, like Agent Scullys red hair onThe X-Files, a little too perfect.
Every scene was perfectly crafted for iconic status, picture perfect.
Its a whole new world for the orphan Satan.
The Witching Hour was written by Adam Simon and directed by Brannan Braga.
Rating:
5 out of 5
