Main cast: Cathy Moriarty (Aunt Maris Siska), Soo Garay (Maris), Karina Aktouf (Sofia), and David Bowie (The Host)
Director: Jean Beaudin

Gemma Files once again provides the screenplay of an episode of The Hunger, which is of course based on her own story. She really must want to break into show business, or the people behind this show must have had some incriminating stuff that she doesn’t want to be made public!

Still, I’m glad she does this, because just like with the previous episode that she wrote the screenplay for, this episode manages to explore the psyche of a woman far better than most other episodes in this show.

Anyway, Bottle of Smoke sees Maris inheriting everything belonging to her late aunt, who also shares her name. Having recently suffered a miscarriage, she sees this as an opportunity to be away from her husband, whom she intends to divorce soon, and perhaps start life anew.

Ah, what’s this? She also inherits a mysterious bottle that gives this episode its title, along with tape recordings and a handy journal of her aunt to explain what it is. It contains a genie, ooh, that can make all her wishes come true.

Naturally, because this is supposed to be a sexy show, these wishes are carnal in nature, and it is said that once you have experienced the pleasures a genie can give, no mortal man’s touch would ever compare or be enough ever again.

Now, this is a slow burn episode. Don’t expect rumpy pumpy moments, just many scenes of Soo Garay rubbing her own body and making constipated moans as the genie in question is just bad CGI of wispy laser beams shooting around the room.

Instead, this episode is more of an attempt to introduce the bottle and, perhaps tad too late, attempt to reconcile the younger Maris’s post-miscarriage trauma with the promise of forgetting all the pain and suffering by becoming lost in unspeakable pleasure.

Of course, this show being what it is, way too much screen time is spent on women caressing themselves or acting touchy-feely with one another, without any adequate effort made to get me to understand or care about any of the characters in this episode.

Still, the episode has me intrigued about the nature of the bottle, and the whole thing is, for once, coherent. It may not be a success, but it tries, and in a way, it succeeds in being one of the better episodes of this season.

I know, the bar is low enough as it is, but there are certainly many far worse episodes than this one!