Walt investigates the murder of a gas station owner, and the distraught young woman last seen with him. Walt asks Henry to help track her back where she came from, and Henry and the Ferg have an amusing bonding moment when Ferg impresses Henry with his knowledge of rocks. Then they discover some rabbit hutches, but inside one of the hutches there’s a baby, not a rabbit. It’s a toss-up whether that rabbit or the baby is cuter. Henry continues on his own, tracking the young woman to a mining company. The company is mostly a red herring, and because of that it’s not quite Henry’s moment to shine as much as I had hoped from the description, but he does get a brief moment of awesome when he’s not only his usually sarcastic, quippy self, but also acquits himself in hand-to-hand quite well. There’s also the brief flashback that suggests Henry followed Walt to Denver, so he may know the truth of what happened (which would put him up on me since I still have no idea what that’s about).
It turns out the young woman Evelyn has been missing for two years and fallen into a creepy cult where the women get the names of the months. Kudos to the writer who thought of that, because that is messed up. Also messed up is the cult leader getting his followers to drug themselves and die on railroad tracks. Is tying women to railroad tracks ridiculous parody, or is it rare enough to circle back around to being original? I couldn’t really decide, but there’s no question it works as peril, older than dirt ploy or not.
Small moments that stood out this week:
Henry gets the best line of the episode, schooling the security guards in their attempts to be racist pigs and call him ‘kemosabe': “I would be Tonto. You would be kemosabe.” The level of scorn in Lou Diamond Phillips’ voice was just perfect.
Overall, I thought this a strong episode that utilized the characters well in a mostly standalone episode, but one that holds some promising kernels for trouble on the horizon. Agree? Disagree? The comment box is yours.
Note: The show re-airs the pilot episode next week and comes back with the penultimate episode of the season, on August 5.