Tabitha and the Borrowed Phone
FROM – Season 3 Episode 1 – SPOILERS ⁓
Tabitha
Tabitha (Catalina Sandino Moreno) has awakened in hospital. Dr. Brody (Sharleen Kalayil) tells her she is in Camden, Maine, was found unconscious on the side of a trail outside of town with no identification, and that police have been contacted. When the doctor leaves the room, Tabitha disconnects her IV drip (somehow without setting off an alarm), gets dressed, grabs the lunchbox Victor (Scott McCord) gave her before she left, and calmly walks out of the building. As she exits, a police cruiser arrives, but the cop does not notice her.
Will Lang as the ‘western star’, perhaps the leader of the creatures that attack Boyd in the barn.
After borrowing a phone from someone on the street, Tabitha call her mother to let her know she’s all right, but declines to give her location. Her mother says a police detective would like to hear from her, but Tabitha hangs up before getting his number. Needing someone to talk to, she heads for the local Catholic Church and its confessional. An unnamed priest (David Tompa) suggests that she look inside Victor’s lunchbox, and when she does, she finds something written inside: If found, please return to: Victor Kavanaugh, 1597 Burrow Street, Camden, Maine. At that address she finds an older man (Robert Joy) who asks her (urgently) where she got that lunchbox. She realizes immediately that the man must be Victor’s father.
Victor’s dad
Tabitha and her family disappeared on the way to Yellowstone National Park from Glendale, Arizona on 20 February 2022. (see previous post). Yellowstone is and Camden are both located near the 44th parallel, but are some 4,000 kilometers apart. It is perhaps worth noting that the map in the sheriff’s office, which has pins to indicate places from which the townspeople have originated, has eight pins positioned near the 44th parallel. It is also possibly notable that the trip during which Deputy Sheriff Kenny disappeared had both a starting and ending point in Texas, quite a distance to the south.
Map in the Sheriff’s Office showing origin points of the town’s residents. Many pins are located along the route one would take to travel from Yellowstone to Camden, Maine
Back in The Town, all the food crops have rotted in the ground. Donna (Elizabeth Saunders) becomes the voice of doom and suggests the soil has been poisoned. Tian Chen Liu (Elizabeth Moy) is the voice of reason, and puts forward the idea of planting small crops in several different areas. (It is unlikely the soil has been poisoned because trees and grasses in the area have not been noticeably affected.)
A mini-crisis develops when Randall (A J Simmons) responds to the food shortage by trying to confiscate Ethan’s favourite goat. He is stopped at gunpoint by Victor who is quickly disarmed by Sheriff Boyd (Harold Perrineau), and the goat is at least temporarily spared from slaughter.
One of the totems found by Kenny and Jim in the woods.
That some of the animals must be killed for food becomes a generally accepted idea. Donna is asked to estimate how best the animals should be put to use, but no actual calculations are made. Other townspeople panic and make a run on the food stores at the café . The ghost of (or Boyd’s hallucination of) Father Khatri (Shawn Majumder) earlier suggested that winter might be approaching, limiting the time available to grow new crops. The food situation seems dire.
Jim Matthews (Eion Bailey) decides to go look for his wife, so he and Sheriff’s Deputy Kenny (Ricky He) head into the woods. Before they leave, Jim’s daughter Julie (Hannah Cheramy) tells him: “It not your fault, Dad. None of this is your fault.” The way she says it creates the impression that she might actually be thinking the opposite.
Halifax model Shuoxin Fu in her TV debut as a kimono-wearing woman who appears to Elgin (Nathan D Simmons) in a dream.
Kenny and Jim get lost in the woods and spend the night in a cabin, where Jim realizes that he should have stayed home to protect Julie and Ethan, and decides he will return to town the next morning.
After dark, two groups of creatures appear. One group heads for the Matthews’ house, and the other lets the livestock out of the barn. Boyd runs outside in an attempt to save the animals from the attackers. One of the cows is killed, but Boyd, assisted by Tian Chen Liu, gets the other cow into the barn. After locking the barn door he realizes it is a trap and at least six of the creatures are in the barn with them. The creatures restrain both of them, and Kenny’s mother does not survive. At the Matthews’ house, Julie answers a knock at the door and the Granny creature (Sarah Campbell) enters, but curiously does not kill either Julie or Ethan (Simon Webster), both of whom flee through the back door and, aided by Sara (Avery Konrad) conceal themselves in the shrubbery.
Miscellaneous Info
Jade (David Alpay) creates a network of strings. He lies under it, probably trying to envision the drawing he has been puzzling over in three dimensions.
When Kenny says goodbye to his mother before he leaves with Jim, he puts his hand on the back of her head, very near to the same spot where she is later wounded by the creatures in the barn.
The church where Tabitha goes to confession is actually St. James United Church at 181 Portland Street in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Audrey’s Little Shop of Plants (102 Portland St., also in Dartmouth) is visible in the background after Tabitha leaves the hospital. The shop likely draws its name from a character in the horror musical LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, (music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman) In the 1986 film, Audrey was played by Ellen Greene.
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