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“The Family” recap (1.10): Willa hits her limit

Hey! We have a pretty good episode this week, though there is a distinct Not Enough Willa problem. Can’t we just give her a spin-off? I would watch Willa manipulate people and put out fires and date hot ladies and climb the political ladder season after season.

Ten years ago, we’re at a tree-planting memorial for Adam. Claire and John each say a few appropriate words, as does Young Willa, who hopes young people will be inspired to follow their passions. Which works well, because that’s what we’re hoping for Willa. Young Danny says “This tree would mean a buttload to my brother” and launches into a monologue about how pointless the ceremony is. Today, Willa sits across from Ben and wishes him happy real birthday, his 19th. Adam would have been 19 in May. I’m having trouble with the tense on that one because we haven’t actually seen Adam die.

Willa tells Ben that Danny broke her nose once, after they’d been all cooped up on a car trip. She wants to know of Ben and Adam fought when they were all cooped up down there in the bunker. He says no. She’s quietly not buying it. Danny and Willa talk about life and snacks in the Governor’s mansion and Claire tells them not to get ahead of themselves. Claire offers Ben a special dinner of Chinese food for, um, his two-month anniversary of being back home. While I’m delighted to finally have a timeline for how long Ben has been “home,” this is yet another trash fire of an idea here on Terrible Plans<. The Warren ladies really think they’re going to have secret birthdays for Ben forever and the men will never figure it out?

Once the boys leave, Claire wants to know what’s up with the fake DNA test Willa got. She wants to know how much of Claire’s soul Willa sold on her behalf. Also, I would like to know if Willa is aware that technician who did the DNA test is mysteriously dead now.

At the police station, Hank is still waiting with his incriminating bird house. Meyer is out trying to find Clements, so Hank waited all night. Hank gets a little caught up in making a point.

The cops (And FBI? We have a weird overlap of jurisdictions here.) are all over Clements’ abandoned car. It looks like he was drinking and driving and crashed, but Meyer knows clean-living Clements wouldn’t do that. She thinks it’s a clever plant. The FBI? Not so much.

Jane is feeding goulash to a shackled Clements and still saying “I’m sorry” over and over. Clements is already working on her psychologically, because what the hell else can he do? He points out that Jane’s dad would no longer be proud of her. He says he has the chills from his infected head wound because everyone who gets captured by Doug gets the same sweaty illness on this show. Clements points out to Jane that a dead FBI agent in the house is an even bigger problem than having a live one.

Meyer comes back to the police station and Hank says that after the ten years’ worth of minutes she took from him, she owes him a few. In an interrogation room, Hank tells her how hard it is to be a sex offender in prison and obliquely refers to screaming at night. It’s weird that the show is pulling punches on talking about prison assault now. It’s like they forgot what the whole premise of this show is. Anyway, Hank wants to be a hero now. Meyer keeps asking him what is in his still-closed bag, which is insane. I’m pretty sure that if you walk into the police station and say that you have evidence that’s relevant to an active child abductor case, there’s a lot less “What’s in the bag, Hank?” and a hell of a lot more “Hand it over, dipshit!” Hank says entirely true things about Doug being at his house and spotting Adam and then being at the political rally. Hank wants the whole world to know that he caught Meyer’s monster. Hank finally reveals the birdhouse, which, again, the police for some reason didn’t just rip straight out of his hands and take straight to forensics, and Meyer sees the logo.

And presumably at some point after that, Hank hands over Doug’s goddamned name and phone number, which he also has.

Meyer reviews her interview footage with Doug. Now she’s beating herself up for not figuring it out when she technically had all the pieces, though she didn’t really have the connections between them. Her supervisor tries to buck her up and then has to tell her to get a freaking warrant instead of just going into Doug’s place firing her gun. I love Meyer, but I have concerns about her learning curve.

Bad Reporter talks with Willa on the phone while stalking her from her car. Willa is walking through the Big City part of small-town Red Pines. Bad Reporter tries some high-school-grade banter (“Which parts of me were you thinking about?”) while Willa pretends to be busy and at the office, doing that shouting-to-someone-who-isn’t-there thing that Bad Reporter already saw her do. Oh, Willa. Plus there’s a ton of street noise. Willa is off her game. Bad Reporter photographs Willa hugging a man who turns out to be the son of the CEO of Biotech Genetics.

Willa went to college with him. (Wait. WHAT? We know she didn’t go away to college. Is there a college in Red Pines? Is it just a giant journalism school?) Willa also gave a toast at his wedding and gave his wife a job. So she does have close friends, even though we have previously established that she doesn’t. Is the big secret of the show that we’re swinging through alternate universes? Bad Reporter thinks that Willa’s connection with Biotech Genetics is exactly the kind that can get you a fake DNA test. Bad Reporter wants the front page. Editor Gus wants the story.

John sees a ton of police pull up at Hank’s house. (Why, exactly?) He asks what’s up and Hank, removing the sign that announces his house is for sale, says “Ask your girlfriend.” Have we learned nothing about getting cocky, Hank?

Back home, Claire and Willa say it’s great news that they’re finally going to catch Ben and Adam’s abductor. But. Willa worries that Doug will bust Ben for not being Adam. Ben points out that if he does, he’ll have to admit that he abducted two kids and one died.

Jane cleans Clements’ wound with apple cider vinegar and talks Girl Scouts. He keeps trying to talk her into being a person again. Clements says she’s not the monster here and couldn’t have known. Jane says twelve years ago there was a boy in their old hometown, and Doug said he didn’t do it, and Jane believed him. Which doesn’t track with Jane and Doug’s earlier conversation, but we’ll assume that she’s being evasive and not that this show regularly sets things that happened before on fire.

Meyer in a bulletproof vest and a squad of police and FBI agents run up to Doug’s house. For some reason, Meyer is in charge, even though it seems like the FBI would have stepped in here.

Meyer sees Doug’s shed, and we get the Music of Knowing. Jane leaves Clements alone with some water he can reach and the police are bursting into the shed. Something’s up, because she’s not reacting to the sounds of the law enforcement rush and they’re not hearing Clements start to scream at Jane not to leave. Meyer sees the trap door. Jane pushes up on the door to leave the cellar. Meyer has her gun trained on the trap door and it looks like Jane is about to get her full-of-evidence head blown off, but WHOA, it’s not the same cellar door Jane uses. Jane is coming out of a cellar in a cabin way, way out in the woods. Damn. OK, that was a genuinely good fakeout. Well done, show.

Ten years ago, 17-year-old Danny screams for Claire because the fridge is empty because it’s 1953 and everyone acts like no one can fucking make food but Claire. Danny yells at Claire for not having moved on enough to make food for him and Willa while John hunches uselessly over a bottle of whiskey.

Down in the cement block room under the shed, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence. Meyer says Doug would know to clean up. The same FBI agent who was at the car finally snaps and says Clements is an alcoholic who fell off the wagon and disappeared a year ago. He’s done this before, and none of the FBI agents think this is anything but a bender. Meyer is reminded that we often don’t know people as well as we think. Have you spotted this week’s theme?

Jane looks at a row of keys and takes down what is presumably the shackle key. She makes tea and breaks a mug. Doug rushes in and asks her what happened, and she says everything she touches breaks. Doug sees the shackle key taken down from the rack and is suddenly very tender with Jane. Somehow in the process of picking up the pieces of the broken mug, Jane has given herself a full bleeding stigmata wound.

Doug tells her he was going to kill himself one night because he had kept “the boy” down there for so long and didn’t know how to end it, so he was going to end himself. But then she gave him a gift: A onesie that said “I love Daddy” Jane replies that she had Googled “Fun ways to tell boyfriend you’re pregnant.” Heh. Doug tells Jane they should tell the police, but to tell them Doug killed Clements. She brings up the fact that Clements isn’t dead and Doug says he’s going to have to be. Otherwise Clements will get Jane sent to jail and they’ll take the baby away. He tells her to stick together a little longer and maybe they won’t have to kill him. I wish this show had just rolled with trying to see who can come up with the most terrible plan, because wow, is this a bad plan.

Jane tells Doug she’d like him to burn in Hell. That’s his ending. Jane. As glad as I am to see you showing your spine, you should extricate yourself, then mock. That’s how this works.

Claire approaches Ben, whom she loves now. After not loving him last week and then deciding he was OK. And also the week before not loving him and then deciding he was OK, but then having a reversal on that reversal. Sometimes this show does not earn its emotional moments honestly, is what I’m saying.

Claire says Danny got his grandfather’s pocket watch for his 18th birthday and then pawned it immediately. Willa was offered diamonds but wanted a “mission trip” to Mali, which the Warrens wouldn’t let her take. I think they just misunderstood, and Willa wanted a trip to Molly. Claire asks Ben if Adam would have liked her father’s wristwatch. Ben says Adam liked newer stuff (when would this have come up?), but Ben likes old stuff. Claire says she’s sorry they can’t celebrate Ben’s birthday, then puts her father’s watch on his wrist.

Ben with his new old watch on sits on a park bench next to Doug. Doug says they searched his house. Ben tells Doug they know his name, and Doug asks what else they know. What the hell?

Ten years ago, young Danny is hanging with his team and eating pizza in the kitchen. Claire tells him it’s a school night and he totally sasses her and says she slept through Thursday. Claire sends the boys out. Danny is mad because his team won the game but John and Claire won’t go to any of them. He says it’s been months since Adam disappeared and they’re ignoring the two kids they have left. Young Willa hears all this, because of course she does

Back at Bar Everyone Always Goes To, Bad Reporter says she’s still picking gravel out of her panties from the last time she and Danny did this. Yeesh. WHe says he’s not going to do this anymore, by which he means share a chick with his sister. He actually says “chick.” Red Pines is starting to swing back in time all over the place now. I really am starting to get into this alternate universes solution. Anyway, regarding siblings sharing a chick, Bad Reporter says she “doesn’t play favorites.”

That’s the extent of her response. Really? Not one person in the writers’ room thought of a more human reaction? She’s just someone who bangs siblings and doesn’t see why anyone would have a problem with that? Thanks again, show, for your sensitive and nuanced depiction of bisexuals. Please enjoy the jumbo variety pack of flaming dicks that is being expedited your way.

Danny says that Willa is not like him and Bad Reporter, she’s special, so this is a big deal to her. Danny says that if Bad Reporter is just using Willa, it’s got to stop. Bad Reporter says OK and Danny believes her because no one on this show learns anything ever. Danny asks the bartender for whiskey to celebrate discovering that he’s a good person.

John picks up Chinese food for the definitely-not-a-birthday-dinner dinner and sees Hank eating alone. He offers to pay for Hank’s dinner, which was a deep-fried whole catfish. Does Hank only eat whole things? Will he be chasing his fish with an entire cake, or does he just do one whole thing course for each meal?

John wants to know what happened with Hank breaking the case. Hank makes the excellent point that one catfish doesn’t make up a ten-year debt and storms out.

Jane comes into the basement. Her water broke. She can’t go to the hospital because they’ll want her name and address and Doug is gone, she doesn’t know where, and she needs Clements to help her. He tells her to get that shackle key and he’ll see what he can do. Jane has a federal agent held captive in the basement and thinking up a fake address is the big barrier she can’t surmount? Does she draw the line at health insurance fraud?

Claire, wearing the bluest pantsuit ever, comes to see Meyer. Seriously, Claire has gone Full Smurf. She thinks she should know what’s up with the break in the case because it’s her son. Which is a perfect set for Meyer to smash back with “Is it?” Meyer wants to know who is living in Claire’s house, because it’s for damn sure not Adam. And since Claire holding back on this piece of information might be keeping her from finding Clements, Meyer is pretty much done with this game right now.

Claire, as the Warren ladies do, goes HAM with her attack. She rattles off a detailed list of Meyer’s failures—including jailing the wrong guy and stopping the investigation while Adam was trapped in a hole for a decade—and compares her to a Whack-a-Mole game for her ability to bounce back after so much suckage. Damn, Claire can get vicious. She says Meyer is going to screw it up all over again and accuses her of banging John instead of looking for her son. That’s not fair, Claire; that was totally a multitask. Claire says that she’ll get to Governor and have Meyer busted to a crossing guard. Meyer knows Doug had more than one boy down there, so Claire had better get her house in order for when she catches him. Claire tells her to go to Hell.

Ten years ago, Danny’s team—the bulldogs—wins the state championship. Danny sees his teammates being congratulated by loving parents, but his are nowhere to be seen. …But Willa is there, with a big glittery sign with his name on it. Later, Young Danny angry-drinks alone on the porch while blasting music on a boom box. He says their lives are screwed. Willa says they’ll be fine—she Googled it and kids bounce back from these things.

This was a really good sequence on its own, but I don’t feel like it fits in with what we’ve seen of Willa and Danny’s relationship up to now. They’ve been prickly before, and now the show needs to have them to have always had a bond, because plot plot Plotty McPlotsalot. So instead of earning it slowly over the season, we get this sudden backstory.

Today, Willa sets the table and looks at the watch on Ben’s wrist and freaks out because Claire was saving it for Adam. She wants to know if Ben hurt her brother, because just as suddenly as Claire loves Ben, Willa is now deeply suspicious of him because Plotty McPlotsalot. It’s one thing for Willa to be suspicious of Ben’s inconsistent story about how Adam died; it’s quite another for her to leap to thinking that Ben is the reason for Adam’s death. We just haven’t earned it.

But Willa’s mysterious instinct is entirely correct because Ben says yes, he hurt Adam. All Adam talked about for ten years was his family. And he loved Adam, but he hated him for having everything. You know what Willa does not do? Ask Ben, who is openly talking about it, to elaborate on what he did to hurt Adam or how badly. The only reason for Willa to stop this conversation would be a meteor hitting the house right at that moment, and even then I suspect she’d be fairly tenacious about staying on track. This show is crazymaking.

Clements, still chained up, tries to coach Jane through giving birth in the basement. The poor actress who plays Jane (Zoe Perry, doing an excellent job) basically has to play out a scene of her giving birth on a cement floor while Clements stares at her vulva.

Back at the Warren place, Claire is all-in for Team Ben, and Willa now can’t handle it. Danny spots it because of their deep bond that the show has only just gotten around to mentioning.

Jane gives birth, apparently pretty damn speedily, but definitely not comfortably. Clements sees the baby and says “I’m sorry, Jane” and she freaks out and wants to know what’s wrong with the baby and he says “It’s a boy.” It’s impossible to know whether Clements is genuinely sad that Jane just gave birth to a boy that Doug will get anywhere near or if he’s just trying to get her to murder Doug. But as someone who’s been rooting for Jane to murder Doug for a couple of weeks now, I can’t really quibble with Clements’ tactics. But yeah, Jane: tear that creep’s head clean off.

Chinese food debris is on the table, and everyone is outside but Willa. Claire asks what she promised the genetics company. Turns out the sex offender microchipping contract and every other law enforcement contract in the state for both terms. Claire notes that that would be her entire soul, then. Willa apologizes. Claire wants to know if there was something else Willa wants to talk about. Willa says no.

Clements tells Jane to go get that shackle key so they can all go to a hospital. She says Doug took the key with him when he went away. Clements says he needs a drink. Does Jane have whiskey? Yes, she does. Uh-oh.

Danny sees Willa looking for booze. She pours them giant glasses of straight vodka. He knows she has a secret, and she admits it, but she won’t tell him what it is.

Bad reporter kisses a sleeping Willa to make sure she really is sleeping soundly and then grabs Willa’s laptop.

Then she downloads the whole hard drive to a thumb drive. Wait. Willa is a) Willa, b) involved in a vicious political race, c) dating someone who she knows will lie and manipulate people to get a story, and d) a closeted lesbian in a relationship that she has every reason to hide from her Family Values mom and her constituents. She doesn’t have a password on that laptop? Did Willa also get clonked on the head? If that’s the case, why isn’t she all sweaty? But no, the reason Willa doesn’t have a password is Plotty McPlotsalot. How does one television program do some things so well and then get so ridiculously sloppy with others? Sometimes I want to grab this show by the lapels and shake it. And then sit it down for a firm talk about lazily perpetuating damaging stereotypes.

Meyer is looking at the lab report from the shed. There was bee pollen in it. Clements raised bees, so Meyer knows he was there, and it was definitely not tracked in from outside.

Doug walks right into the police station. Meyer blinks at him. He points to his own wanted poster and says “I’m him” just as Ben did with his missing poster on the first episode.

Two episodes to go. Here’s hoping for a Willafest. And one that leaves us open for Senator Willa and President Willa and Willa, Prime Minister of the Galaxy.

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