The Family, “All You See is Dark” is a good title for the show’s second episode. Despite the return of the presumed dead Adam Warren (Liam James) to his family, there’s not much lightness and joy in the lives of the Warren’s – or anyone else. In terms of the mystery of his disappearance, the truth is absolutely still in the dark.
The opening monologue this time is Adam’s. He’s talking about how once you’ve left home you can’t really come back because everything will be different. A split-screen makes a parallel between Adam’s experiences and his the man wrongly convicted for his murder – next door Hank Asher (Andrew McCarthy). Neither of them can sleep.
Hank gets up to look at a picture of his mother whom died a month before he was released and cleared. That really is a sad thing to have to live with. Hank pleaded out, so for the rest of her life his mother thought her son was a murderer. Through some flashbacks in the episode we see that she had lied to then officer, now detective Detective Nina Meyer (Margot Bingham) and didn’t believe he had anything to do with Adam being missing. It had to have been a major blow when he confessed. Hank goes a junk drawer to find a sharp kind of square blade. He gets up on a chair and there’s this moment you think he means to hang himself, but actually he’s prying open a ceiling tile and pulling down a tin canister. He sits on his bed and hugs it to his chest. What’s up with that?
Meanwhile, “Adam” is in the kitchen apparently memorizing the layout! That’s weird. Then he goes and stands in the doorway of John and Claire Warren (Rupert Graves and Joan Allen) to watch them sleep. His voiceover continues as he’s standing there.
My name is Adam Warren, and I came back… but I didn’t come home.
Is he saying he’s not the real Adam Warren or that he can’t consider the place to be home?
Next is a flashback to 10 years ago. It’s a happier time. John is totally on board with supporting Claire’s political ambitions to get on the city council as she’s drawing faces on a banana and packing Adam’s lunch. The big piece of information though is that Adam used to stop over at Hank’s garage and get help in putting the ships in the bottles! It happened often because he would sometimes miss the bus. Young Willa (Madeleine Arthur), heading out to school herself comes out just in time to see Adam exiting from Hank’s garage. It’s a small thing, but it adds weight as to why she also thought Hank had killed her brother. Maybe she felt guilty for not saying anything about her brother going to the guy’s garage?
The morning after Hank and Adam couldn’t sleep, John is snarky about Claire wondering if Adam was awake, claiming she wanted him for “another photo-op.” They’re at odds over her running, but Claire says she wanted to tell him the night before but he hadn’t come home. Adam’s big brother Danny (Zach Gilford) takes a giant lollipop from a huge pile of candy on the table, but Claire tells him to put it back. All the candy on the table is for Adam because he hasn’t been able to have any treats for ten years. (So much for the mom packing bananas. That woman is gone!) The amusing thing is she tells the family that they need to make things as “routine and normal” for Adam as possible. Since when is a table full of candy routine and normal?
Nina shows up with the police to give an update and set up alarms around the house. It gets tense between her and Claire because of the fact that Nina didn’t catch the right guy before. Claire abandons that discussion when Adam walks in all concerned about what the police will do to the man who held him captive for 10 years. That freaks everyone out a little. Claire reassures Adam they’ll be keeping him safe from now on – totally ignoring that he was asking about his perpetrator’s safety. She didn’t miss it though. It completely has her upset. She just wants Adam, and everything, to go back to “normal.” What normal does she mean? The one before he got taken? It must be because no one in this family has been normal since.
Over at the newspaper it’s all about the Warren case. Reporter Bridey Cruz (Floriana Lima) tells her boss she’s found the doctor who did Adam’s DNA test…only two days after he did it the doctor jumped in front of a train…. The editor says it’s a coincidence. Yeah, no. That’s suspicious.
Claire is continuing her quest to make life “normal” for Adam.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv5vPc2oAfE?showinfo=0]
Is it me or is Claire a little nutty to have Danny, who ditched Adam the first time and is now an alcoholic, take Adam to the mall? This doesn’t seem normal to me….
We discover what is in Hank’s container from the ceiling – a tiny pair of Adam’s mittens! What’s up with that? Did he molest Adam at one point? Maybe that’s why he’s having a difficult time dealing with that 300,000 dollar check the state has given him for being wrongfully imprisoned and why he’s not suing them for it?
Nina is setting up another search in the woods, but some of the other officers are snickering at her theory. The weird guy from last week – with the truck and pock-marked face is around with some hunters and asks what’s going on. He finds out she’s doing a search of the area.
It seems too simple that this is the guy that had “Adam” locked up – but maybe it is?
I like the scene of Hank in the mattress store. Even though I don’t like Hank, I totally feel empathy when he decides to spend ten grand on a really good mattress. ( McCarthy is killing playing this guy!)
We get some more insight into Willa (Alison Pill) when her colleague Ryan (Matthew Rashid) notes that under the circumstances if it were him he’d be taking a day or two off. She calls him a douche for that, but he’s absolutely right. He then suggests they could get a drink later (he’s totally hitting on her – that’s where he not so kosher!) She reminds him she doesn’t drink and she doesn’t date. Willa is only 23. There’s definitely a problem there.
We do know she’s poured all of her energy into politics and has compartmentalized herself quite well. She tells Ryan that if the public wants to see them healing, then darn-it they’ll be healing by the time they do a family sit-down interview. Watching this scene I feel like even though Willa’s got all the trapping of being an adult, she still feels like that 13-year-old who tried to fix things ten years ago.
That night gives us another strange Adam scene. It’s still hard to decide about Adam. This is the scene where Claire finds him sleeping in the closet because he can’t sleep unless he touches the walls wretches her heart – as it would any mother.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYfEoJK8K34?showinfo=0]
However, because of what we saw Adam was doing earlier, memorizing the layout of the kitchen, there is a thought of wondering if this is a set up by him.
Claire the control freak trying to tell the doctor to fix Adam finds herself saying that this person that’s come back isn’t their son. She can’t stand the things the psychologist is saying about the kidnapper being more like family to Adam than his parents. Love John’s reaction:
Claire: You are his doctor, You, you are supposed to be fixing him.
John: He’s not a broken toilet – he’s our son!
Claire: He is not! He is not our son! He…. (deep breath) He is in there, somewhere. Please, just…help us find him.
Ruben Santiago-Hudson i (Fans of ABC’s Castle know him as Captain Montgomery!) is playing Nina’s supervisor – the Chief of Police Len Bucksey. He tells Nina he’s shutting down her search in the woods because her theory seems too far-fetched to be putting the resources into it. Meanwhile, John tells Nina he’s dreaming about killing people. That’s worrisome!
In part because of her concern about John, but also because of her own sense of guilt Nina heads back to the woods to continue her search. We see her walking in the woods – and the pockmarked man watching her through binoculars. Guess she’s on the right track? I really have no idea what to think about Adam and this man. This is good. If I’d figured it out already The Family would be a pretty lame show.
Okay, now Claire has lost it! She’s locked the door to the closet so Adam can’t sleep in there! Wow. She is clueless about trauma and how to handle the situation. How can a person be this clueless? He’s been home, what, a week? This has nothing to do with Adam. It’s about her need to control things and make things the way she thinks they should be. It’s one of those, “I don’t like this person” moments.
Come on now Nina! It was fine earlier when you were in the woods, but hunting a man by yourself, in the dark? This guy locked a kid in a closet for ten years had raped that kid over that same time period. She’s a detective for pete sakes! She should know better!
But wait, now she’s found a metal round door. The guy is still watching her. She rushes back to her police car, calls in for backup and sees the place where she just was going up in flames! Now she’s totally frantic and tells the dispatcher that the perpetrator is burning down the evidence and to send the fire department with the backup!
There’s another flashback around Adam’s disappearance:
Hank’s mom made him take muffins over to the Warren’s the night Adam disappeared. His mom was in total denial. She’s convinced he didn’t do it – but she’s also got to know the kind of stuff he might have done….
Claire asks Hank what his relationship was with her son. When he says Adam was nice to her and was a good boy she takes it as something sinister and can barely hold it together.
After Claire shuts the door Hank runs away. From the stairs Danny watches his mom sink to the floor while ripping and pounding apart the muffins Hank brought over. More reasons for him to feel guilty….
This cuts back to a present-day Danny sitting in a bar. Bridey seeks him out. She totally lies to him about what she does. Says she works at Kinko’s! It keeps her low-level and not out of his league. Danny wants to go home and not drink anymore. He tells her he’s trying to cut down because he’s an alcoholic. When he leaves she tells the waitress they aren’t ready for the bill, bring another round of drinks and “make his a double.” That is so predictable – and not nice!
That night at home in bed next to Claire John hears some banging and rattling. Claire is lying on her side away from him, but hears it too. He asks her about it, and she silently hands him a key. He realizes what she does and scolds her while she quietly sobs. John goes, unlocks the closet and comforts Adam. Then he goes and confronts Hank.
Okay, not that’s not fair. John blames Hank for Adam being locked away for 10 years because he confessed! It was his girlfriend that pressured him to confess! The fact is that if he hadn’t they probably would have tried Hank and convicted him anyway – and he’d have gotten the death penalty. John’s looking for someone to blame, but Nina said it last week – she’s one of the people. Hank may be guilty of many things, but this isn’t on him.
Nina actually found the place where Adam was kept. I’m kind of glad about this. It vindicates Nina and storywise it means the aren’t totally jerking the audience around. That kid – whoever he is – was held in that space, so that pock-faced guy does have something to do with it. The question is what?
There’s a flashback of Claire and her family at a candlelight vigil for Adam and making a plea to the group and the news cameras about anyone having any information. Hank is there that night and he’s actually moved to tears by Claire’s plea – until, in front of everyone, she accuses Hank of taking Adam!
This sends Hank into a panic. He rushes home and seriously washes down the garage with bleach. The music is intense and heavy – but it’s about his fear, not his guilt. Remember, Adam had been stopping by for help with the model ships. His DNA would be all over the garage. That’s why he washes it down and why in the first episode Nina had mentioned that one of the things that Hank must have done was wash away “the blood” from when he killed Adam.
Nina’s boss brings the FBI in on the case so that it won’t be compromised. She’s not happy.
Willa’s running down the strategy about the sit down with her mom. She is so compartmentalized, like, wow! It starts to crack a little when Claire tells Willa to get John on board because she always knows what to say.
This needs a thought bubble saying, “Mom, you have no idea….”
Danny comes home in the morning. He and Adam have a conversation. He is tired of Adam asking him about football and why he quit. He’s not mean, just tired.
Danny: Dude, I’m not the same guy I was ten years ago. Okay?
Adam: Neither am I.
Danny: Yeah, but you’ve got a good excuse.
Adam: So do you.
So far, that’s my favorite scene. Finally, someone is acknowledging that what happened to Adam and the guilt it put onto Danny could have something to do with why Danny is so messed up!
Meanwhile, Bridey tells her editor that she knows Danny has doubts about Adam. How did she get this information? She flashed back to having drunk sex the bathroom with Danny. The editor doesn’t really care. He likes the “prodigal son/Cain and Abel” idea. Great. This won’t end well.
Danny’s conversation with Adam has him looking at old pictures of himself on the mantle and contemplating Adam’s words and thinking more kindly about Adam. That until he realizes that all of the questions and things Adam has said that reference the past are from the things he saw in the family pictures around the house. His suspicions are up again.
Okay, at this point I feel safe thinking that this guy is not Adam Warren. At the same time, he’s obviously someone who was horribly abused. …Unless this is the biggest con game being pulled off by “Adam” and the guy in the woods? No, that doesn’t quite fit. It’s still too obscure to figure out. Again, this is a good thing!
Danny goes to try to get Adam’s dental records but is told “his sister” already picked them up. What? I’m guessing it’s Bridey.
Willa sits her father down to talk to him about doing the campaign things she needs. It starts out with chit-chat about his book, a little teasing about groupies, and John talking about it being good to have the family together. That’s when she hits him with needing his cooperation with photo-opts and that sit-down interview. He doesn’t want to do it.
John: We don’t need the scrutiny right now. We don’t need the press going through our trash –
Willa: – Are you worried about what they’ll find?
Whoa! Willa’s demeanor switches on a dime. She is cold, hard, and accusatory. When he balks more she tells him about being 13-years-old and finding evidence of his affair with Nina on his phone and erasing it so her mother wouldn’t see. Text messages, emails, covering him with her mother when he “was late to birthdays.” She’s been protecting him the entire time. Here’s the killer line though:
Willa: I didn’t know what “inside you” meant at 13, but I knew it needed to be off your phone.
That thing about Willa looking like a girl playing an adult – it’s because she had that developmental time ripped away from her. She’s been taking care of things since she was 13! Of course, having met Willa’s mother, we know where she got the whole “need to control things” behavior from.
Willa sets it up like him doing the appearances is a quid pro quo situation. John sees it as her threatening him. Very quietly she replies that she’s asking him not to make her do that. In other words, yeah, she is.
The ending of the episode is with Claire surrendering to the fact that Adam still will only sleep in the closet. She gets into the closet where he’s asleep and lays next to him. Adam’s voiceover monologue that started the episode (I’m sensing a pattern here.) starts up again. As he talks about not being able to go home again we see Nina at the police station obsessing over the case her boss just gave to the FBI. Then our pock-marked guy at the hunting grounds tells the guy from before that he’d had good luck that day – and goes back to filling up an empty gas container…. Willa is in her bedroom on her knees saying her prayers, while Hank is on his expensive new bed staring at the hole in the ceiling that held his secret.
From there it’s back in the closet with Adam and Claire. Adam’s voice over wraps up with saying that the reason you can’t go home again is that even if everything else is the same, you, are different. You, are the stranger. Claire’s eyes pop open as she hears her son agitatedly talking in his sleep.
Adam: Adam…my name is Adam.
What the heck! More and more it’s looking like this abused boy is there because of someone else. Now we have to wait until next Sunday to find out more!
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