Homoestasis 1x04 'Roadhouse Traveller'

by Michael Jay & Matt Bartlett

Quint's car breaks down in a two-pump town where three owners of a bar believe him to be a fairy-tale monster.

Episode four of Homeostasis rolls around, then, with the show stabilising its mix of plot development, surreal and metaphor-heavy situations and a dollop of double meaning nicely after the extended opening episode. Last week's effort was much darker in tone but kept things rolling, so with the trusted hand of Mike Jay steering this one I'm expecting another solid outing for the show.

We open with a road-weary Quint trying to keep his blurry eyes on the road, almost falling foul of a deer prancing innocently across the road (I don't think they're innocent at all, for the record - I think they do it on purpose). Quint checks his map - and this time, pow! There's Deer #2. Quint's airbag goes off in his face and his car skids out of control, crashing into a tree trunk in a scene reminscenet of The Long Kiss Goodnight. Forced to leave the wrecked car and mortally wounded deer behind, he stumbles up onto the Interstate again but there's no-one in sight. Back at the car, he tries (badly) to finish the dying deer off before getting back onto the road, this time managing to hitch a lift from a passing trucker. Quint gets dropped off in the nearest town, staggering into the bar and making a request - COFFEE, GORDON COLE STYLE. O-RE-GON!

Act I opens with a creepy house out in the fields, with equally creepy chanting voices reciting some twisted nursery rhyme as we venture inside. The archaic contents of the house give way to three young brothers in the front room, the youngest watching as the older two continue to chant the rhyme. The boys' grandmother wanders in and starts to tell the boys a story, a moral tale about good and evil that starts with three ne'er do well brothers wreaking havoc in their town. The eldest tries to stop the most evil of the three from doing any more damage, but apparently gets the life sucked straight out of his body for his troubles! Ew. Seems the mudhole the boys used to play in was home to some kind of evil force that had taken Kurt over and made him do all those bad things ("honest, officer! the mud made me do it!"). Kurt begged for forgiveness and the spirit of a white deer (starting to catch up yet?) appeared, curing the eldest brother and making the boys promise never to play near the evil mud (narf) ever again. The eldest of the grandkids doesn't buy the story for a minute (and a bloody long chunk of dialogue it was too - could've done with being broken up a little), but the boys promise to always be good before rushing off outside (once Max, the youngest, has been cooed back to normal by Grandma). There's a fair few typos and grammatical bugs in this bit, unfortunately - could've done with a bit more work in the final edit to tidy it up. Flash forward fifteen years and we're now in the present day, where Max and his brother Mark are running a roadside cafe. We hear Quint wander in and make his coffee request, before a grumpy Max stomps outside to pout his way through a cigarette - the direction indicating he clearly feels his life is fading away stuck in this dead-end town. Mark scolds Max for smoking, mentioning how their deceased Grandma would dissaprove (and how she got 'sick,' ominously), before Max introduces himself to Quint and offers him a place to get set up for the night. Eldest brother Matt arrives, and despite not being too happy that Quint is crashing there it's Max who shows Quint his room. Max makes another 'I coulda been a contender' comment, mentioning the 'evil' in the town he wants to get away from, before leaving an increasingly bemused Quint to his rest. Later, the boys are heading home, Max's attempts to daydream interrupted by his grouchy brothers. They arrive at the house we saw them in earlier, which is spookily just how it was fifteen years ago. The boys go through an almost ritualistic set of chores to close the house down before retiring to bed. Just what is going on here?

Back at chez Peete with Grandma slowly succumbing to the illness that the boys mentioned earlier, although her delerious rants thatthe evil mud is sucking her life away doesn't get much sympathy from Max, once again. With a neat little cutaway we flash forward a few more years, with everything still pretty much as it was - the boys caring for their sick grandmother. Grandma's sedatives finally kick in as she blames the boys for her illness, then pleads with them to save her. Back with Quint as Matt wakes him up and takes him back out to rescue his stricken Nissan, but when they find it, the dead deer on the bonnet has not left a pleasant smell behind at all! Matt asks what happened to the deer, and after stumbling through a story where he witnessed animal control shooting a stricken deer from his childhood, he explains he finished the animal off. Matt, however, knows there's more to this story, and as the links back to the deer Grandma Peete was talking about start to rack up, a quick cut to show Max and Mark going through Quint's things brings us back to Quint and Matt as they return to town. Matt seems distracted and angry, which makes Quint all the more nervous, before Matt pulls into an auto shop to get the Nissan rescued. There's more music playing in the background as the reach the hickiest repair shop in town (what is it with all the music cues this week?), but once Matt's left the auto shop manager gets more talkative, asking what Quint's doing getting mixed up with them and mentioning the 'strange things' the boys' grandmother used to talk about. Quint isn't sure what to make of it and takes his leave, but Matt's been watching the whole exchange - and he doesn't look pleased!

Back at the Grandma's house again, the boys looking shocked as she's just imparted some grave secret or other to them (I must add here that the flashbacks are a little hard to keep up with - in an already disorientating show like this, you need to give the audience some help when you're hopping back and forth in time, otherwise you just get even more lost). The local medic, Dr. Forrest, arrives at the door with Grandma's pills, and as Mark meets him it seems the boys haven't been picking it up for a while! Forrest pushes his way inside but gets a hammer/candlestick to the head (I have to say both because the direction gets a little fuzzy here) for his troubles. Mark starts to beat the bejaysus out of the poor doc, reminding the watching Matt that the doc will kill Grandma if they don't stop him. Forrest manages to make it outside, but the two boys follow him outside, and with one slice of a shovel Matt ends the doctor's role in proceedings. Yikes. So, clearly, there's a whole heckuva lot going on here that Quint's mixed up in (again), so let's hope we start getting some answers soon! A final flash forward takes us to Grandma's death, as the three boys look on in silence. Back at the bar, the three boys discuss what to do, clearly feeling that Quint's murder of the deer classifies him as more of the 'evil' they've fought their whole lives - is a shovel to the skull in Quint's future? Seems the brothers have killed a few people before, victims 'sent' to them by the 'protector,' and they plot to kill Quint that night when he gets back from the garage. Quint meets Mark, who apologises (forward planning there) before letting Quint enter the bar - and whack! There's the shovel. Mark drags him away as we fade out...

Act IV has a Quint-flashback, as he rifles through old boxes of stuff in his home at the age of thirteen. His mother, Gwen, joins him, but when Quint asks why there are so many clippings about the Sente family, saying he read a story about a mother who killed herself and her baby. Gwen ominously says it was the best thing for them, before we jump back to the present, as Quint comes round. He's in the basement as Matt descends the staircase, baseball bat in hand, and Quint can barely defend himself from the frenzied attack that follows. Matt screams at Quint, demanding to know why 'he' keeps coming back, why he sent their Grandma mad, getting his hands round Quint's throat and throttling the life out of him! Mark pulls Matt away and saves the day - or does he? See, Mark's got some rope and wants to do this the quiet way, letting Matt slug Quint out cold before tying him up. Up in the bathroom, Mark is filling a tub with some heavy duty bleach as Max searches the shed for some kind of tool. This is all going a bit Children Of The Corn, isn't it? A storm is kicking up as Max trudges back to the house, where Quint comes to in the basement again. Matt reminds Quint of what happened the first time he came round (as Dr. Forrest can relate), and it's clear now the boys think Quint is the latest incarnation of the evil spirits their Grandma warned them about. Max is still heading back to the bar as a tornado touches down behind him, closing in fast! Mark returns with a damp rag dipped in homemade choloroform, but before he can put Quint out the tornado hits home, shattering the windows in the basement, and in the confusion Quint manages to free himself, stabbing Mark in the arm on his way out. However, with the tornado outside Quint has to seek shelter inside the house, and the two brothers below are soon on his trail. Quint's suddenly running for the bar instead (what happened to hiding under the table, then?), but no sooner has he found his belongings than Max has tripped him up. Max is pinned by debris, however, a victim of the tornado's attack, and Quint leaves him to his fate. Or does he? He sees Mark and Matt trying to free their brother - and comes back to help. They dig Max out, but he's a goner, and the brothers watch as Quint finishes him off as humanely as possible. We dissolve to the last gas station in town as Quint asks for a lift again - and this time, he's heading back to Springfield!

So. A great story, very self-contained in terms of the larger story arc of the show as it focuses almost entirely on the tale of the boys and their struggle against the 'evil,' rather than Quint's own personal journey, but hampered by some very messy pacing, structure and direction that sabotages what had the makings of an excellent episode. The single-minded resolve of the boys to always try to do what's right, even if it means committing acts of great evil, is reminiscent of the brilliantly amoral horror movie Frailty, but as this doesn't really kick in until the last Act, the effect is lost. The flashbacks to Grandma really clutter up and slow down the story - very little happens to further the plot in 75% of them, so why do we keep jumping back to them? And I know it's a niggle rather than a complaint, but giving all three brothers such similar names means it's easy to get mixed up over who's doing what to who in the action. Presentation wise, this is also a little clunky compared to the tight formatting of previous episodes - this needed a more thorough final edit to even out the action and keep the pacing in check. That said, the final Act is genuinely great, amping up the tension as Quint tries to escape the zealous brothers, but despite Quint's act of euthanasia at the climax, the whole story feels very anti-climactic because of that. The implication is obviously that Quint's actions made the brothers see he wasn't evil, but we don't really get any sense of closure over the situation as no sooner has that happened, than we're at the gas station and Quint is off again. So overall, the potential for a cracking episode but let down by some uncharacteristically wonky writing and some glaring continuity holes.