At least the police finally have the gall to come around and arrest Susan Wright. However, she becomes a suspect after she makes the dumb-headed decision to give Tom the skateboard she was hiding in her home. The board belonged to Danny, and given how she was probably aware of its connection to his murder, the choice to bring it to Tom felt odd. Of course, she will not say a word about why she possessed the object until the police retrieve her dog. (That low angle shot of the police cruisers driving toward her trailer was another of this episode’s stylistic flourishes, courtesy of director Mike Slovis.)
Beyond this contrivance, Tom’s testimony to Carver is rather flat and robotic, perhaps because he is still hiding what really happened during his disappearance. He admits that he planned to find Lars Pierson after finding his name in his mother’s work files and looking him up online. This information should seem weird to any rational person, but not the detectives.
As for other stylistic flourishes that do not work, the music keeps simmering to a ghostly howl during scenes when Paul is onscreen, which feels like a cheap trick to hint us in that he could have a dark side. Meanwhile, that dream sequence of Carver’s, as he stumbles toward the cliffside as Danny, Tom and Julianne stare him down, backing up toward the edge, was unimaginative. With its hazy composition, dissonant music and dead character present, the scene was clearly coming from Carver’s subconscious. Usually, the best versions of these nightmarish moments are absurd but rooted enough in reality to make one think it could not be a dream. Here, it could be nothing else.
The best parts of this Gracepoint hour deal with how the Solanos are still going through stages of grief and then trying to recuperate their spirits from their wounded state. Beth finds a mother from a nearby town who went through a similar ordeal and tries to find glimmers of hope in a future conduit of herself. Mark stops in his tracks while doing some repair work when he sees a photo of Danny in a stack of newspapers. Chloe gets teary-eyed in class when she stares out the window, watching two pals in the schoolyard chatting and carrying skateboards.
This leads to the best scene from this leisurely episode, where the Solanos go bowling as a family. (One can assume that the five-pin bowling center is not a huge attraction in town.) Sure, we certainly could have done without the tacked-on line about how Chloe was about to break Danny’s record. However, just to see these characters in a sunnier place, hugging and rooting each other on is gratifying. They are even thinking about the baby. Appropriately, the moments in the Solano home are bright, far from the muted lighting in this location from past episodes.
It was the humane moments that were the most successful in this uneven hour of Gracepoint. With just two episodes left – next week is off for Thanksgiving – maybe Ellie and Emmett – sorry, Miller and Carver – will rebound from this week of poor leads and returns. (Oh, and that gunshot wound.)