The Outsider, Season 1 Episode 3 ‘Dark Uncle’ Recap and Review

Clearly some stuff went down on the last episode and the more I learn the more I get confused. Here is my recap and review for Episode 3 of The Outsider ‘Uncle Dark’. For previous or future episodes take a look.

The police have secured the barn and surrounding areas. It seems the clothes at the end of the last episode have been discovered. This truly is the Season 2 of True Detective we deserve. The police are bagging the clothes now, including some sort of crispy looking skin or something. Meanwhile back at his sons grave (we learn his son’s name is Derek) Ralph see’s two guys with shovels head the opposite direction and he goes over to take a gander. It seems to be a fresh grave. In the corner of the cemetery there seems to be a paupers section with a handful of graves that are well visited but not well adorned.

Back at the station Jack is complaining about driving out to the barn. He curses a lot. Also he drinks, we might be friends if he didn’t beat people up while he does both of those things.

Ralph is on leave but he is researching Terry’s father. He was arrested for aggravated battery. Ralph is clearly having trouble using his time off. He can’t let go.

At the strip club Jack is insisting they play humpback whale music because the stripper he is watching is like a whale (YIKES!). He is a total dick to the owner and tells everyone that he is on duty he is just taking his time getting to work. Man, Jack is pretty easy dude to dislike.

There is a bus going into prison and we see the interworkings of the jail not unlike the beginning of the second episode. An inmate looks pensive but I have no clue what that is about.

Jack is real late getting to the barn. Imagine that. He then takes a leak by the crime scene. Again I don’t think this is SOP. Everyone has closed up shop and he is now the only one at the scene. He turns on his flashlight and heads into the freaky ass barn. For the records most barns are freaky so the show doesn’t have to do a lot of work here for me. He sees someone standing at the entrance. Pretty great jump scare. Full horror in this scene. Something hits Jack over and over again. Not sad to see him go. if he goes.

Ralph is watching footage of the shooting. He is having trouble coping and that seems about the most natural occurence with this show.

Jack is back home (not dead, that sucks). He is in a great deal of pain (that doesn’t suck).

Eunice is at a diner giving Ralph the 411 on the clothes found at the bar. They match the clothes Terry had on in the surveillance footage. Also there are finger prints everywhere and they match what they have previously picked up but this time they are fainter which indicates a person, the same person but much older is responsible. Like in their 80’s. Time Travel, not where I saw this show going. There is one set they can’t identify. They also found an unknown fluid (ewwww). They initially thought it was semen but it is of unknown origin. Strange things are afoot in this barn.

A Prison Guard unlocks a door and a couple of the inmates look sideways at one another. An inmate breaks his glasses and holds onto his lenses. It seems like they maybe preparing for something.

Oh shit, Gloria Maitland is talking to her daughter’s teacher. the teacher essentially tells her they aren’t welcome back (this would never happen and would be highly illegal if anything like this ever did…just saying). The teacher also offers to help Gloria home school and says it sucks kids have to pay for the sins of their father. Gloria reminds her that her husband was innocent. This teacher sucks and I hate to see hem portrayed in such negative light.

Howard, Eunice, and Ralph all sit at his office They are unhappily discussing Terry still. Maybe there is some Benjamin Button stuff. They want him to drop it. The PI is also there and offers to send Holly Gibney. Holly seems to be kind of a weird person. They call her unique and make mention of a space ship. Ahh exactly what this show needs, more freaking weird people.

Holly is reciting information about the cars that drive by. She knows a lot of details about a lot of the cars. Alec, our PI gives Holly a phone call and gives her the background on the case. Holly refuses to take the case without a face to face meeting. She is aviophobic and also probably autistic as she demands someone get up from their seat because its her regular seat at the bar.

It’s the oldest trick in the book. Ralph is talking to the therapist and mentions that the oldest trick in the book is being silent until the witness talks. Exactly what the therapist is doing. The therapist asks how things are at home. He talks about how difficult things were for a bit but that is better now. Ralph then brings up losing his son Derek. The therapist wants to know how things were when they were rough. Through flash back we see Ralph kicking some people’s ass at the bar. Seems more like Jack than himself.

There is a Cubbies game. Holly is watching the game and talking to Alec about the first baseball game he ever saw. She remembers exactly who was pitching, the score and other details. Ralph is at the bar too. She is going over the details of her assignment. She is down to help especially for the money offered.

The prisoner who broke his own glasses got a letter labeling him as a child killer and a crude drawing of him being stabbed. He asks the guard why that wasn’t screened out and the guard shrugs. Our prisoner takes out the lens and starts to sharpen it.

Holly is giving Ralph and Alec a good background of doppelgangers. Just like what I did in the first episode. Thanks Holly. She thinks its really a discussion about being Bi-polar but leaves room for the possibility that doppelgangers are real. Ralph ain’t having it and says he doesn’t have tolerance for the unexplained. Holly and the savant nature of her autism embraces the unexplainable at least partially as a response to her disorder. She does not have an actual diagnosis. Everyone has always said “fuck if I know whats wrong with her”. Ralph is sad her parents dragged her around. She leaves abruptly. She leaves by telling Ralph she knows he doesn’t drink that much but did it to make her feel comfortable. She appreciates it.

Hands, two different hands. One going up stairs covered in goo. The other on some sort of door. We then get a pan to a prisoner who is pulling some sort of shank out of his leg. Like he has been hiding it in there or something. That does not seem sanitary. Its nighttime, and we get a series of vignettes of how everyone sleeps or doesn’t sleep. The youngest Maitland daughter is standing next to her mom’s bed and tells her mom she needs to call Ralph because ‘the man’ has information he told her to tell Ralph. Its the next morning and Ralph, and his wife, are at the Maitlands. Gloria is adamant that he is there to make her feel better, and to only easy her mind.

They are all talking to the little girl and trying to convince her that it was a dream. The man told her “something bad would happen if Ralph didn’t stop what he was doing”. Gloria shues the kids upstairs and is pissed that Ralph didn’t help. Ralph’s wife decides to talk to her. While they are talking in the other room they comment that Holly is full on crazy. Meanwhile, Gloria and Ralph’s wife decide to have another go at her daughter. The daughter has seen the man four times. The first time she saw him he looked her daddy but was really mean and made her cry. The second time she saw him his face was blurry. The third time he looked more muscular and ‘inky”. Ralph tells Jessa to tell him to talk to him directly next time. Jessa says he doesn’t scare me he makes me angry. But that the man wants them all to be scared.

Holly is in a room and sees the people who were in her room previously, like in a flashback of sorts. She sets up her religious statues and heads out to a restaurant close by. She spies some cameras in the parking lot. A cop car pulls up. She tells him she is looking for the head of mall security. That’s him in the car. He talks about being short-handed but offers to help. She wants the tapes from the date when the truck was stolen. She explains that the truck was stolen and used in a homicide. They swap contact information and business cards.

Jack is drinking and has some pretty awful looking wounds on his neck. He falls off the stool and is in a ton of pain. My guess is from those wounds. They look angry. Ralph’s wife is back at the Maitland house. She wants to check in on everyone including Jessa after everything they went through in the last couple of days. Jessa slept through the night. There is clearly a connection between Jessa and Ralph’s wife. There is a quaint conversation about one of the girls at a slumber party watching Leprechaun and how the parents dealt with the fear afterward. Terry told the girls Leprechauns exist but that they couldn’t leave Ireland

Holly is there to visit Terry’s father. The nurse won’t let her up. The nurse thinks that she is reporter and has her escorted out. Lots of people have been there to visit the dad. But those people aren’t there to talk about Terry, it is something else entirely. Something the police are into as well. She calls Ralph to check in with that information. Holly returns back and starts to do some research on the other crime. It seems to be two sisters who were kidnapped and killed. It was a hospital worker. Maybe the hospital worker who was responsible for Terry’s dad. It’s the guy with the broken glasses.

Her comes the people who are going to kill him. Before the guy can kill him he slits his own throat. The last shot of the episode is Jack with his messed up neck shaking and saying “whatever I need to do….whatever I need to do”.

Some Thoughts

1. Man what am I gonna do without Jason Bateman in this show. He is great and his earnestness really helped sell it.
2. We know that the “other” version of people degrades over time. That feels really important. Also it looks like a snake shed its skin and left it in the barn at the beginning of the episode. That also seems super relevant.
3. We are back to a Stephen King trope used a lot. An African-American mystic with quasi religious/spiritual powers. Not my favorite trope even if Cynthia Erivo is fantastic.
4. This is starting to feel a little like Fallen. Which happens to be a movie I really enjoyed. Tiiiiiiime is on my side, yes it is!”.
5. The Wound on the back of Jack’s neck is really gross and I think its location is really important. People who have dreams about being stabbed in the neck often feel conflicted about their commitments. Maybe that will matter to Jack later on. Probably not. He seems like a dick without much commitment to anything.