Absentia episode 4 review: More questions, more death
Well, Absentia episode 4 — entitled “Me You Him Me” (good luck trying to remember that in sequence) — had an immense challenge from the start. There was enough evidence against Emily that she had to turn herself in; yet, she was also feeling increasingly convinced that it was actually Radford who was the accomplice involved. The book set something off in her that she couldn’t quite explain.
Back at her hotel room, we had a chance to see a moment that we were certainly not surprised to see — Emily and Nick sleeping together. It was telegraphed from the moment that they had alone time last week, and it was clear even before that because of how he wasn’t spending any time at home at all with Alice. The scars on her back were obvious; easily, we’d claim that this is the most visceral back-scar makeup we’ve seen since Sam Heughan on Outlander.
Obviously, this moment was going to have ramifications — it had to. We just didn’t expect them to be Emily taking off the moment Nick hopped in the show. She refused to go back to prison and was insistent on finding answers of her own. She found herself doing everything that she could to evade police, which involved her hitting up a convenience store and getting whatever she needed for the sake of her survival.
Nick, after going home and disappointing Alice yet again (there seems to be a lot of that right now, and she didn’t even known about the two sleeping together), found himself turning in his gun and badge. Emily, meanwhile, made the decision to visit Flynn at swimming practice, which turned out to be both a very good and very bad move. While she was able to see her son, she also caused Alice to call the police on her.
We feel like most of the audience is going to hate Alice for being the woman keeping Nick from Emily in some regards, but we do feel for her given the circumstances.
What’s going on with Jack?
Given what we’ve come to know about Jack Byrne over the past few weeks, we can’t say that we’re all that shocked about some of his extracurricular activities. He was also not exactly that forthcoming when it comes to giving information to Tommy — it wasn’t that he was hesitant to throw her under the bus. He just didn’t care.
Nonetheless, Jack did guide Tommy over to Emily’s father. Quick note: EMILY’S FATHER IS THE BEST. Seriously. We want to watch a show that is entirely about this guy.
Well, this escalated quickly
Emily called her father in the midst of Tommy’s visit there and basically got permission to make a big move. That move involved kidnapping Radford and holding him at gunpoint — otherwise known as the point of no return. How do you come back from this? Simple answer: You don’t.
It didn’t take a whole lot of time, meanwhile, for the Boston FBI to figure out that Emily had Radford in her possession and was taking him to a place where she could get information. Her methods of getting said information were pretty darn similar to what happened to her, with his head being dumped repeatedly in water. If there was ever a case that Emily was actually guilty of something, she was clearly showing it here.
The reveals
We did learn that Radford was complicit in Emily’s old investigation into Semerov, passing along information to keep him one step ahead. Yet, at the same time he claimed he was innocent in killing him. He also claimed that he was still haunted by the bleeding eye, which is why that image was so prominent in his journal.
According to Radford (who was barely not drowned to death and/or unconscious), the Bleeding Eye is a place as opposed to a person. Emily got her information, but then realized soon after this that Radford probably wasn’t guilty in what happened. As a result of that, she’d put a guy’s life in danger who wasn’t the real responsible party.
Now, we’ve got another mystery — who shot Radford? Was it really Emily? We saw her flee, but it’s notable that we never actually saw her firing off the bullets. It could be possible that the accomplice followed her, killed Radford when she left, and that build the case against her even more.
CarterMatt Verdict
Emily Byrne is screwed. That much we know for sure. Absentia episode 4 was another tour de force for the series and for Stana Katic — the story got super-violent and intense in the closing minutes, and we’re starting to think there are even more questions than answers.
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