The plot for the show mainly asks the question, "What if you got a second chance with someone you've lost?" as the deceased find their way back to their relatives in Arcadia, Missouri. The first episode centered on a little boy named Jacob, who'd died 32 years prior in a drowning accident. He wakes up in a rice paddy in Japan and with the help of Det. Bellamy (Omar Epps), he finds his way back to Arcadia and his bewildered parents. Jacob died in what everyone thought was a simple accident in which he'd fallen in the river and dragged downstream with the current, but the newly rediscovered child explains that he did fall in the river and ended up drowning, but he fell in trying to rescue his aunt. Everyone assumed that the aunt died saving Jacob, but the reappearance of the boy combined with his explanation of that day throws everything that Arcadia believed into question. Throughout the episode, we see just how intertwined the town is. Jacob's cousin Maggie, a baby at the time of Jacob's death, ends up being the doctor to conduct Jacob's check-up after he returns. She was there the day of the accident but of course being too young doesn't remember anything. Her mother Barbara was married to Jacob's uncle, who is the town sheriff, and his best friend now the town pastor. As the truth about what happened to Jacob begins to emerge, so do other long-hidden secrets and skeletons. At the end of the episode, Maggie's friend Elaine has a visitor of her own to contend with--her deceased father. We'd been seeing bits and pieces of him throughout the episode, but we were never told exactly what he was doing there. Now we know, and that's where next week's episode will begin.
My thoughts:
Insanity's balls this first episode was intense. I'm blaming it on PMS, but within the first 20 minutes of the show, I was on the brink of tears. This happened twice within the hour. This show covered such a gamut of emotions, all of them so realistic to the situation. At first thought, you would think that if a departed relative came back, all you would feel is happiness. But then you really think about it. This is someone you saw after they'd died, someone that you'd buried and grieved for. Living without them has become a reality for you. Then bam, they suddenly turn back up? It's a lot to take in, and Kurtwood Smith did a wonderful job of showing that with Jacob's reappearance. He had a hard time reconciling the image of the child he'd buried with the child who showed up at his doorstep and contrary to first thought, he wasn't exactly happy. Frankly, he had mixed feelings, and with good reason. He had become accustomed to living with the knowledge that his son was dead for the past 32 years, and now he's being asked to take all of it back on the spot. Which brings me to another point; on this show the way the person was when they died is the way they come back. Jacob died an 8-year-old boy, and that's who he was when he returned to Arcadia 3 decades later. Unfortunately, his once young parents are now older, a parallel I thought they did an amazing job of showing when Jacob took off running and his dad attempted to keep up with him. It was a painful reminder that even though the boy is the same, his parents and the world around him are not. Jacob's mother took him to church, where his childhood best friend is now the preacher. To watch him explaining the phenomenon of miracles while he was staring at one, I swear I thought I saw the boy in his eyes again, longing for his friend and what had been lost. How terrifying must this entire situation be for someone, to suddenly return to a family they weren't aware they'd left, with no sense of time or how much of it had passed. I really had never thought that far into it; I just knew that I'd love to reunite with my grandma. This show made me consider all of the things I'd left out of my thought process before and while I still love the idea of it, it's about so much more than just seeing them again. Maggie, Jacob's cousin, thought there might be something, no matter how far-fetched, to Jacob's story and as it turns out, there was, but I won't spoil it. She'd been talking to her friend Elaine (Samaire Armstrong) throughout the episode, and at the end she and her friend got irrefutable proof that strange things were definitely going on, as Elaine's father returned.
Overall:
This show is crazy intense. To me, anyway. I think it's a really solid show, with an equally formidable cast and I like that it's not a smorgasbord of huge name actors. The concept holds weight and it's done in a way that's different from a "Once Upon a Time"/"Charmed" type of show. Right now, nobody understands what's going on or how these things are happening, but the biggest question for the citizens of Arcadia at this point is probably who's going to be next. Somehow the plot still manages to have a bit of realism, which sounds rather impossible to do when talking about bringing deceased people back to life, but it does. Instead of the la-di-da, ride off into the sunset sort of happiness, there are honest and raw feelings. Disbelief, anger, lack of understanding, denial, and questions. Lots of them. I do have a couple of complaints; in one scene after Jacob returns his mother is making him a grilled cheese sandwich, but the camera angle was wide enough to show that there was clearly nothing on the griddle at the time that food was being 'made.' I'm fully aware that many times there's no real cooking being done during scenes; my complaint has everything to do with the camera angle and nothing to do with the food. My second complaint is that at the end of the episode when Elaine's father comes back, it's supposed to be pouring rain, yet nobody standing outside is wet. I live in a city where the rain is weird; you can be on one side of the street and stuck in a downpour, but cross the street and be bone-dry. I'm familiar with dry pockets during a storm. There were 5 people outside during this storm, though, and not a single one of them had so much as a drop in their hair. I am guessing that the rain was digitally added into the scene, but it just wasn't realistic. It added some drama in a "It was a dark and stormy night..." kind of way, but everyone in the scene was dry. These are rather small complaints, but I notice these things. As far as the cast, the plot and the actual episodes go though, this series is going to be awesome. I can't wait for next week. I remember describing this as a "Ghost Whisperer" in reverse kind of show, but I can see that it's going to be so much more than that.
Will I be watching next week? Hell yes and I recommend you give it a go, too.
Rating:
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