Main cast: Fritz Weaver (Mr Hallet), Richard Edson (Jack Bateman), Gina Gershon (Ann), and Ed Kovens (George Spiros)
Director: Bette Gordon

I believe I have said before that I find the second season of Monsters to be far more interesting and better put together than the first season. I’m also starting to think that the second season marks the show entering some kind of puberty as well, as Jar is another episode in this season that has sex, some mild gore, and humor that is on the grown-up side.

Private investigator Jack Bateman checks into an inn near a swamp. Many people, including the woman he is paid to locate, have checked in here and gone missing. Could the woman Ethel Cooper has met whatever fate that has befallen those people?

Also checking in are Ann Spiros and her husband George. George is old and mean, and she has plans to get rid of him.

Finally, Mr Hallet the innkeeper has around the inn mysterious jars containing a face-hugger of sorts that can kill by doing, well, baby face-hugger things and then melting the victim’s remains as well as its own form completely. Well, I guess that solves the mystery of the missing clientele! Ann, naturally, sees this as a perfect way to be rid of George.

Jack, naturally, becomes smitten with Ann.

The best way I can describe this episode is that it is what happens when Judd from Eaten Alive is well adjusted enough open an inn, and instead of a crocodile, he harvests whatever-they-are into jars to sell off as the perfect murder weapon to those in need of one.

This is an interesting Monsters episode because it doesn’t explicitly punish bad people like any typical episode of this show.

Instead, it focuses more on the Hitchcock-ian shenanigans of the people in this inn, with Mr Hallet always lurking in the background to enjoy the fallout.

Richard Edson looks very hot here, and Gina Gershon is cast as the femme fatale for a reason. The lines they say can be cringy, but they put on a good show along with Fritz Haber and Ed Kovens to make this an enjoyable episode.

Sure, the whole thing is tad on the predictable side, and the episode for some reason hobbles itself by showing pretty early and unnecessarily the content of the jar. These are pretty significant issues that keep this episode from being more memorable than it could have been.

Still, though, this is one of the more entertaining episodes of this show, maybe even on the show so far, and it certainly helps to pick up the momentum of this show.