Main cast: Dermot Mulroney (Henry Tooms), Diana Silvers (Kimberly Tooms), Tembi Locke (Dr Helen Saunders), and Meredith Salenger (Rose Tooms)
Director: Patrick Lussier
Dermot Mulroney is one of those actors whose attractiveness skyrocket with age. Just look at him! The silver streaks in his hair, the gorgeous face, even the hint of a dad bod belly… nice. The throbbing veins in his forehead can be distracting, though, as I find myself wondering whether I’d see him experience a stroke right in the small screen.
Oh yes, Flesh & Blood. Well, the folks behind Into the Dark sure waste little time throwing up the whole big house and a scared lady episode at me. This kind of thing is something the folks at Blumhouse Productions can do in their sleep by now, so making this episode must be like slumming for them.
Kimberly Tooms lives in this big house that is being renovated by her father Henry. Since her mother was murdered about a year ago, Kimberly has developed agoraphobia that prevents her from leaving the house. Her shrink visits her at home for her therapy sessions, but so far Kimberly has made little progress. Well, in this episode, she quickly discovers that a necklace her father has given her looks a lot like the one worn by a young lady before she went missing recently, and starts to wonder. Rummaging through the house, she soon finds strong hints that her father is not the loving daddy she believes him to be…
Okay, let’s get to the crap parts of the episode first. One, Henry Tooms must be the worst serial killer ever—this isn’t a spoiler, because the episode makes it very apparent early one that he’s the bad guy—because he just leaves these clues all over the place for his daughter to find. Since he sure doesn’t act like he wants to be found out, this means Henry is a moron. How against did he manage to conceal his crimes for this long? And giving his daughter the necklace worn by his latest victim in her photos! Is this guy for real?
The script tries to show me how Henry tries to gaslight his daughter into first thinking that her medications are making her paranoid and later being the one that drives him to his killing spree. Unfortunately, he’s terrible at it as nobody in this episode believes him even a bit. So, once again I have to ask: how on earth did this guy manage to get away with what he did for this long again?
Many of the problems in the script could have been avoided if Henry had been portrayed as a frighteningly cunning and charismatic monster whose true nature is revealed only at the penultimate moment of the episode. That way, there will be suspense to be savored in this episode, and the viewer may even wonder whether Kimberly is just being paranoid, perhaps due to the side effects of her medications. Instead, Henry is revealed to be a psycho killer early on, and much of this episode devolves into a tedious, increasingly repetitive pattern of Kimberly trying to escape him and him cornering her to rant and rave like a lunatic clown, before she gets away again and the whole thing repeats itself.
The cast is fine, and it’s so nice to look at Mr Mulroney even when he’s acting like a crazy clown exiled from clown school for being too insane even for them. It’s just a damn shame that the episode is both long and repetitive, with little suspense or tension to be enjoyed. Instead, it’s just a monotonous pursuit of a young lady through a house that is apparently made of tissue paper, judging from how easily walls and floors break apart in the episode, and I’m just bored by the whole thing.
