Last week’s episode of Big Sky was so action packed and full of twists and turns that I could barely live tweet it – there just was no down time! Here’s an update of what happened to our favorite Sheriff, Beau Arlen, last week – and where we leave the rest of our Big Sky inhabitants…
The episode picks up right where we left off, with clueless Luke at first thinking it’s a good thing that he’s run into ex-girlfriend Paige in the woods, but she knows he picked up that rock to kill her – and so does Walter, who “gives him a head start to make it more sporting.” Uh oh, Luke.
Beau finally arrives at the murder camp and Emily throws herself into his arms with “Daddy!” and awwww he finally gets to hold his little girl, reassuring her “I gotcha, I gotcha”.
She’s distraught, telling him how she found Mary and thought she was hurt until she saw her eyes. Poor Emily – at least her dad is here now.
Love seeing this protective Dad side of Sheriff Beau, and Jensen Ackles channels his own protective dad reality to make this scene full of tenderness.
Em tells her dad that she doesn’t think Luke could have killed Mary, but admits that’s just a feeling she has.
Beau is pissed at Avery. Pissed protective Beau is hot.
Beau: Why did you let my daughter wander off into the woods alone?
Avery insists he and Carla had no idea.
I don’t think Avery is lying here, but I sure as hell think he’s lying about alot of other things that have been going on in the camp (and before…)
Hoyt is less than happy to find Tonya and Donno there, insisting they were on vacation which is now ruined.
Donno: 0.0 stars rating.
I love Donno.
Beau reminds Hoyt that they have to treat Tonya and Donno like everyone else.
Hoyt feels kinda the same about Avery, but Beau insists they can’t trust him. When Hoyt isn’t entirely on board, he’s grumpy.
Beau: That sonofabitch, he charmed you didn’t he? With that accent!
He also sort of defends Donno, saying that bad guys can have good points too – like Donno’s sandwich making abilities! Shades of Dean Winchester and his love of a good sandwich.
We’ve got Poppernak on the case too, so that makes me happy.
Meanwhile, Sunny and Buck aren’t exactly agreeing on what the next steps are. Buck admits he moved Mary’s body because he was afraid his DNA was on her anyway. Sunny is genuinely distraught that Mary is dead, saying she didn’t do anything wrong. But Buck is scheming, setting it up that Luke killed Paige, and then Mary to cover that up. When Beau and Hoyt and company question everyone, Buck makes sure to mention Luke’s “toxic masculinity” to sow the seeds of suspicion.
They find Paige’s phone under Luke’s mattress that was planted there, but Beau and Hoyt aren’t quite falling for that, questioning why he would then leave it behind? Fairly quickly they realize it probably wasn’t Luke – because after a flashlight lit hike through the dark woods they find Luke’s body, impaled by an arrow. Ouch.
Cassie has drinks with Cormac, and afterwards he goes to his parents’ house to look for a bill of sale for the burnt truck his dad insists he sold. He finds only the title – and then in an old box he finds a photo of Sunny and a baby….and a hospital bracelet. Uh oh, Cormac is getting a clue.
He later confronts his parents and asks them to stop lying to him, after Sunny spins a tale about that being a photo of his young cousin and an equally suspicious one about why they needed him to pick up a prescription that wasn’t due yet. Hmmm.
Buck wants to tell Cormac the truth about Walter, but Sunny disagrees.
Eventually Hoyt questions Donno and Beau questions Tonya. Gotta say, it would be entirely distracting to be interrogated by Sheriff Beau when he looks like this…
Tonya: I met your ex, she’s a boss, really impressive. I don’t know why you left her.
Beau: Other way around…
Me: Oh. Awkward.
Tonya admits she and Donno were pretending to be married and pretending to be in love (Donno is later all sad puppy when she tells him what she said and awww, he’s got it bad for her).
Tonya also says Beau should be questioning Avery, who has incredible archery skills – and was talking to Luke. A lot.
Avery, meanwhile, is trying to get to Paige’s journal in the evidence bag, with Emily asking him what he’s doing. He lies of course and she advises him to “leave the clues to my dad” and leaves.
Poppernak does a little research on Avery, even though Hoyt accuses Beau of stalking.
Beau: Wrong – investigating!
What they find leads them to question both Carla and Avery.
Beau to Hoyt: Be careful, she’s a lawyer, she’ll use your words against you.
Hoyt: Speaking from experience I’m guessing.
Carla gives us a bit more backstory on Beau when she’s talking to Jenny.
Carla: He imploded and so did our marriage… He never mentioned the shootout? His partner?
Apparently he lost his partner Randy and blamed himself. As Carla puts it, those were very dark days, but she also says he’s a good man and that it “all worked out for the best.”
Meanwhile, Beau questions Avery. There is A LOT of tension in the interrogation of Avery, because the friction between him and Beau is off the charts.
Avery starts off the description of what he’s been doing with what he knows will be a jab at Beau.
Avery: Carla and I had some time in the tent…
Beau: We can move past that.
He eventually cuts through Avery’s crap and says he knows that his company Haypoint is being investigated by the SEC for fraud.
Beau: $15 Million. That could be tempting to someone in a financial situation like that…
Avery: I see what you’re doing – and we’re done. I want a lawyer.
Beau: Well, we both know a good one…
Carla is upset now that she knows that Avery didn’t tell her about the investigation, having an early drink.
Beau: Little early for happy hour.
Carla offers him a drink but he says he’s working.
Carla: Never stopped you before… Sorry.
Hmmm. Also, how did she leave him for Avery??
He asks how Em is doing and she says she’s tough, like he is. He counters, like SHE is.
Carla and Beau reconnect a little, reminiscing about a camping trip they took when Emily was just a baby and they spent all night passing her back and forth because she was teething. Awww.
In the aftermath of all these confrontations and conversations, Carla confronts Avery about his lies, saying she and Em will be getting a hotel when they get back, that she needs time to think. Good move, Carla!
Sunny vaguely threatens Tonya and Donno, saying she doesn’t like liars (projection much?) and promises she’s got her eye on them.
Donno about Sunny: She also may be a witch.
Me: lol
As the bad guys who hired Tonya and Donno arrive, upping the stakes and the danger for just about everyone, Buck admits that he saw a man matching the sketch of Walter in the woods, though he claims he can’t remember where and doesn’t know who he is. Emily remembers that Luke said he saw a light in the woods, and Cormac is able to identify the area – and so they all set out for Walter’s cabin.
Sunny runs up to warn him first, but he doesn’t answer her knocks.
Beau, Jenny, Cassie and Cormac make their way through the woods at night, giving us some beautiful flashlight shots. Those kind of shots always remind me of Supernatural, and I could almost believe that was Dean Winchester, gun raised, in the moonlight.
Paige begs Walter to help her, saying that if they catch her, she’ll be dead. She kisses him and calls him her prince, and that works like a charm – he shows her an escape tunnel and sacrifices himself to give her time to escape.
Beau and Jenny arrest him as Paige runs away.
While everyone is gone, Tonya and Donna frantically search through Paige’s journal – only to find the two pages with the codes ripped out. By Avery. He sneaks out of the deserted camp with the pages in his backpack, as the bad guys watch.
Cassie: That felt too easy.
Beau: I like easy, I’ll take the W’s when we can get ‘em.
Hoyt: I agree with Cassie, something’s not right.
Biggest understatement of the year for this show!
Meanwhile, we got some fun behind the scenes photos from the Big Sky set this week, including Jensen Ackles with his onscreen daughter Cree Cicchino.
They look like they’re having alot more fun than their characters, don’t they?
No new Big Sky tonight, but stay tuned for a new episode next Wednesday on ABC!
caps by spndeangirl
– Lynn
You can read Jensen Ackles’ thoughts on
fandom and Supernatural in Family Don’t
End With Blood and There’ll Be Peace When
You Are Done – links on the home page or at:
There’s a lot of people using other people in this show. Paige is using Walter, Sunny is using Cormack & Buck (to protect Walter) and Avery is using anyone he can-including Emily.
The list of possible bad guys is starting to outnumber the good guys. I’m enjoying this show although it’s kind of put me off camping. Lol
Understandable!
I’ve been enjoying reading your posts about ‘Big Sky’! Especially since English is not my native language and often miss lots of important parts during watching those episodes. Your detailed explanations are great help to me!! Thank you!!
You’re welcome, so glad you’re enjoying my just for fun posts!
When Donno was introduced in s2, he was already an interesting character, but I couldn’t have imagined actually feeling kind of sorry for him in that episode! I look forward to everything he says every week (and to his shirts!), and I was impressed to see that Ryan O’Nan, who plays him, is not only a supervising producer on the show but also co-wrote that episode, which was great! My daughter and her boyfriend brought a strawberry rhubarb pie over for Thanksgiving, and immediately my husband and I said, “It’s a Donno pie!” referencing the one he’d made at the diner earlier in the season. Since he and Tonya are also in trouble with the bigger bads in this series (loved seeing Darius Rucker being a villain again!), it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
We finally learned why Beau was going to the grief counseling sessions where he initially met Cassie when Carla revealed that his partner had been killed and the grief and self-blame sent him spiraling into a dark place. I hated to think that she left him when he was clearly going through such a terrible time, but as you’ve often said in reviews of Supernatural, Walker, and maybe even The Boys, “Hurt people…hurt people,” and in his pain he apparently was drinking too much and may have said and done things that she didn’t want Emily to be around anymore and may have damaged her love for him. I wish she could’ve held off divorcing him and moving on to someone that we now know can be self-serving and deceitful and waited for Beau to get the help he so obviously needed and has benefited from, but she didn’t. That’s why I really don’t want the story to put him and Hoyt in the sack at some point; it’s not professional, which is important to him, and it doesn’t help his life any to get involved with her. He’s still a work in progress who’s making progress.
One little thing just in my opinion: When I heard Buck refer to Luke’s “toxic masculinity,” I really had a hard time believing those words coming out of his mouth. Rex Linn, and therefore we can assume Buck, is just a little bit older than my husband, and while my husband certainly knows what toxic masculinity is, I can’t picture him, or a man like Buck, saying those words, especially in a police investigation, in a million years. He’d say that Luke was a jerk or maybe an a-hole if he felt the need to be more blunt and give examples if asked, but he wouldn’t say toxic masculinity even if he was trying to throw Luke under the bus. But those are just my thoughts about it!
Fun review as always, Lynn! Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!
Finally answering some older comments…interesting what you said here about Beau and Carla in light of what’s happened between them since. And good point about Buck’s use of that phrase – perhaps he read it and thought it would be convincing here!
It seems like there are multiple killers.
The Heart Killer: ?
Luke’s Killer:
Mary’s Killer: Buck
The Ranger’s Killer: Hootie
My guess is Lyle Lovett killed Luke, Reba May have killed Walt’s adoptive parents, and Walt is maybe the Heart Killer. All we know for certain (that they don’t, is that Paigeid not dead and the hiker really did fall off a cliff)
I just went back and read this comment and this is why Big Sky is so much fun – all our early theories and then finding out the truth little by little!