Rhodey Rasch and the Revivers
REVIVAL – Season 1 Episode 3 – (speculative recap) ⁓
Kay and Em
Kay (Maia Jae Bastidas) thinks one of Dorothy Check’s sons killed Em (Romy Weltman) because she and Em visited the Checks that night to buy some drugs. While Kay negotiated with Dorothy (Wendy Lyon), Em went upstairs to use the bathroom and stole a bag of pills, but Andrew Check (Matt Willis) woke up and chased Em and Kay off with a shotgun. Em kept the bag of pills, so if Andrew or one of his brothers killed her, he did not retrieve his drugs at the same time.
Andrew Check
Cooper’s reviver classmate Jordan Borchardt (Flora McInroy) has a run-in with the class bully and Cooper (Hudson Wurster) protects her by smacking the bully in the face with the door to Jordan’s locker. He gets suspended for a week despite Dana’s best efforts to intervene. Jordan’s parents don’t pick her up after school, so Dana takes the girl home.
Jordan and Cooper go upstairs to play, and Jordan’s father explains that he and his wife “…struggled mightily to have a child. Scans, tests, procedures. Doctor said it was never going to happen for us.” And his wife adds: “We prayed and we prayed and then, like a miracle sent from god, she came. I knew every hair on her head, every sigh when she slept.” And Mr. Borchardt adds: “That is not our daughter up there. She came back wrong. And we’ve prayed over it, but our Jordan, the one god sent us, is dead.”
Jordan’s parents, Carol (Bridget Bezanson) and Luke (Zachary Bennett)
Doubtless thinking about Em, Dana (Melanie Scrofano) responds: “I think you’ve had it too good, because if your daughter had been sick, or troubled, and you lived every day knowing that you might lose her and then you did. And then, by some miracle, she came back, you’d fall to your knees and weep with joy instead of crying over what you’d lost. And, okay, she might not be what you wish she was, but she’s, she’s worth — she’s worth loving. I hope you can find your way to do that.”
Their particular religion is not identified, but the Borchardts’ house is overflowing with religious symbols and paraphernalia. Also, they have not taken down their Christmas decorations. We haven’t been told how Jordan died.
Wendy Lyon as Mrs. Check, who paints. Her favourite subjects are chickens.
Dana asks about Em’s fight with Clarice (Kara Wooten) (see previous episode) and is disturbed to learn that she left the bar with someone bartender Nella (Lanette Ware) thought was in a band. “I told her, no musicians,” says Dana, and Nella replies: “Maybe it’s genetic.” Nella could be hinting at things.
The bone disease that afflicts Em, (osteogenesis imperfecta) is usually inherited, and no other member of the Cypress family has that disease, so Em and Dana might have had different fathers. Carol Borchardt’s miracle pregnancy could be easily explained if Jordan’s biological father is not her husband.
Sheriff Cypress (David James Elliott) keeps an eye on Bob Dittman (Derek McGrath).
“Riparian zone. Nine mile forest. No anomalies in the local flora or fauna,” says Dr. Ramin (Andy McQueen) as he dictates notes. “Mineral composition of water and soil samples are normal. Compounds are unremarkable. Still no viable hypothesis on the cause of revival day.” He reads the toxicology report on Adele (Nicky Guadagni) and takes a trip to the Dittman farm, accompanied by Sheriff Cypress (David James Elliott).
In a scene that illustrates vividly how bad decisions are made, The Governor (Shauna MacDonald) decides to tag and track all revivers.
In a room where Adele had been chained to a bed, a bottle is found containing what turns out to be mercuric chloride, and Dr. Ramin hypothesizes that Adele’s son-in-law had been poisoning her with the stuff, possibly accounting for her anomalous revival. Mercury levels have been associated with certain genetic markers (Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms.
Earlier, Em discovered that injuries incurred by revivers before death do not heal, and figures out that if she jumped off the bridge, she must have been dead when she did it, since her bones would have broken on impact.
Dr. Ramin notices growth in the water sample taken from Moore Creek (insert)
After Rhodey (Kaleb Horn) performs at November Dismember, he and Em sit on the rail of a nearby bridge and have a talk. Rhodey, who is also a reviver, falls backward from the bridge rail into the water, and Em decides to do the same. She sees a light partially blocked by her hair as she falls, and this is an image she has been drawing since her revival. (It was likely the full moon she saw that way that night.) Then she has a flashback to Revival Night. On the bridge near where her mother was killed, she sees a man holding a bright flashlight walking toward her from his car. IT is possible the car might have struck her, and she may have been healing from her injuries. The man is not shown clearly, but he looks a little like Blaine Abel (Steven Ogg).
When Arlene tried to attend her daughter’s funeral, Blaine blessed her with something incendiary instead of holy water and struck a match. It turns out that revivers recover (if slowly) even from immolation. Blaine later addresses a group of his followers, and asks them: “Who’s ready for a Holy War?”