Main cast: Lisa Ann Hadley (Merriam Rusk), Daniela Olivieri (Norissa Nylander), and David Bowie (The Host)
Director: Alain Desrochers

The Diarist is based on Gemma Files’s short story of the same name, and she wrote the screenplay herself. Therefore, she has no one to blame but herself for this thing!

In this one, Merriam Rusk, who fancies herself a witch, is in the process of casting a spell to make her faithless ex Dave suffer even pain and more pain.

As she works on her spell, her actions catch the eye of her wealthy grandmother’s enigmatic new nurse, Norissa, who may know more about the whole situation than Merriam suspects…

The positives here are that this episode is very coherent, which is a trait not always present in some other episodes, and some of the scenes are very well lit and shot. Really, this is a very nice episode to look at. 

It’s also a slow burn kind of episode with Lisa Ann Hadley putting on a sultry and sensual performance despite not really taking her clothes off much—that’s the job of Daniela Olivieri and the bloke that plays Dave—which goes to prove, I guess, that witches are all the fun.

There is not much here in terms of excitement, aside from the token love scene that is obviously shoved in to qualify this episode as “sexy” or something, but the episode is nonetheless an arresting one, if only for me to want to see whether Merriam will succeed in her quest to rain agony and torment on Dave.

The thing is, Dave is an unworthy recipient of such passionate hatred. The worthless worm is such a one-dimensional asshole, so it reflects poorly on Merriam that she can’t just move on to a bloke that is more deserving of her woo-woo wooing.

Because the guy in question is such a worm, the impact of whatever this episode is trying to tell me is diminished considerably. That’s a shame, as if the guy had been tweaked to be a more well-defined character, this could have been a more nuanced and even intelligent episode.