Evil Recap: The Baptized Baby Blues
Happy birthday, Father David! This year, your special present is a race against time to stop a man from killing himself and his family! (And oops — we tossed the receipt, so you can’t return it.)
Meanwhile, Sheryl, of all people, kicks in a gift of her own: a major leg up for Team Good in the impending apocalypse. And the fact that her actions make Leland’s life a whole lot harder? Icing on the birthday cake.
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Read on for the highlights of “How to Save a Life.”
‘YOU KEEP HIM UP AT NIGHT’ | Sheryl arrives at the church, surprising David when she slides into the confessional and says she wants to explain — not confess — something important. “There’s a good chance in the next few weeks I’m going to be murdered, and I want Kristen and my granddaughters to be safe if I am,” she announces. She goes on to say that Leland will be the agent of her demise because “He tried to kill Laura… and I found out, and I tried to kill him.”
A horrified David tells her to go to the police. “Father, The 60 have too many friends at the police,” she says. “This is the one place Leland is afraid of: The Church. You keep him up at night.” If Dr. Townshend does achieve his goal and kill her, she adds, “Tell Kristen she needs to protect Lexis. Leland thinks she’s some kind of John the Baptist to the Antichrist.” And then, just because Sheryl’s spilling all the infernal tea, she lets a gobsmacked David know that baby Timothy is the Antichrist — and she wants to get him baptized.
But because Sheryl is no longer allowed near the child, the sacrament has to happen during a very specific window of time: the hour that Timothy’s surrogate mother, who is friendly with Sheryl, has with him once a week. After some initial resistant, David reluctantly agrees. “You should tell Kristen what you told me,” he counsels, but Sheryl stomps out of the confession booth before he can pray the Act of Contrition with her.
SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? | In his latest request for remote viewing, Father Dominic puts some objects — including a dagger and a Danish — on a table, gives David coordinates, and tells him to do his thing. But all David sees is Kristen, disrobing as she prepares to get in the shower. (!) When he says he’s having trouble, Father Dominic suggests he pray to clear his mind of AOLs, or analytic overlays. But David chooses to go for a hard run, instead.
He returns to the rectory to find a ton of people in his room with balloons and cake. But he doesn’t know any of them, and soon we see that he’s in the middle of a vision of a surprise party for a man named Tyler (played by Save the Last Dance’s Sean Patrick Thomas). A knock on the door ends the vision: Ben and Kristen are there with a cake (and booze) to celebrate David’s 40th trip around the sun. The cake is decorated in four different styles, courtesy of Kristen’s girls. “Who did the red one?” David wonders. “Lexis,” she replies. “Red’s her favorite color these days.” (Side note: Remember all the red symbolism from earlier in the show’s run? That, combined with all the other callbacks in this episode, are making me even sadder about the series’ upcoming end.)
Later, when our favorite trio is a little toasted, David tells the other two about his vision. Kristen gets in close as she wonders whether he’s envisioning “what life would’ve been like if you had made different choices?” But the contemplative mood is broken when they bust out a well-lubricated, a capella version of The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”
SAVE ALL THE DANCES | That night, David wakes to another vision of Tyler and his wife. Via their dialogue, we learn that they had a 6-year-old son who died in a car accident, and they’re trying to climb out mourning. Tyler stresses that he wants his family, which includes two daughters, to always be together. And after his wife leaves, he loads a handgun and David realizes that Tyler plans to kill his family and then himself. “God, no!” David prays, frantically, as Tyler points the weapon at his sleeping daughter. Just then, the family dog starts licking Tyler’s hand, and he crumbles, sobbing that he’s sorry. The highly upsetting vision fades soon after.
Father Dominic doesn’t care, though, when David relates what happened. “Evil coming to New York is your mission,” he reiterates, but David refuses to help and instead takes his problems to Sister Andrea. She doesn’t love that he’s engaging in remote viewing (or “magic tricks,” as she calls it), but she eventually gives him a tip: Playing the “heavenly chord” will help.
And it does! The music helps him call forth the vision, and he recognizes something on Tyler’s desk: the drawing of the Black angel that Adina drew in Season 3. But the fact that Adina doesn’t know Tyler or his family make David question everything, and Ben is right there with him: “Isn’t it possible that all of this is a trick of the mind?” But another vision of Tyler in crisis convinces David that the man and his family are very real. And when Kristen and Ben help him sort through his AOLs, they realize that Tyler has a book in his study that Dr. Boggs gives to all of his patients.
Turns out, Tyler doesn’t see Boggs… but his wife does. With the shrink’s help, they tail Tyler’s wife home from therapy and realize she lives in Leland’s building, directly below Leland’s apartment. They talk their way in, pretending to be representatives of a school that Tyler and his wife want to send their girls to, and David waits in the study for Tyler to come home. “God told me to come,” he tells the grieving dad, convincing him by relating details of his vision from the previous evening.
“That presence you felt in the room, that was God. He saw you and showed himself to you to prove that he is not absent. He has not abandoned you or your family,” David says, adding that God wants Tyler to go to a treatment program and heal. “Anything, I’ll do anything,” Tyler says, sobbing and collapsing into a hug from David, who’s also undone.
BLOODY HELL | At that very moment, The Manager and important stakeholders in Leland’s diabolical organization are gathered for a big occasion centered on little Timothy. But the evil bigwigs don’t know what Sheryl did (and what Leland recently learned about): Despite otherworldly interference, she had Father Ignatius baptize the boy, with Sister Andrea’s help, when the timeline for the whole shebang unexpectedly got moved up.
But Leland doesn’t let on that the infant may no longer be inherently bad. So he plays along as all of the big bads take turns slitting their palms with a dagger very similar to the one Father Dominic showed David near the start of the episode. “Welcome to the new age!” The Manager says after Leland has bloodied his own hand, unveiling a painting that we aren’t privy to. Leland looks shocked as he beholds it. In a cradle in the middle of the pentagram painted on the floor, Timothy giggles.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments!
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