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The Outsider’s sixth chapter, “The One About the Yiddish Vampire,” delivered the show’s first true chokepoint: A cliffhanger-style ending that felt like the thrilling culmination of Holly’s investigation so far. El Coco is forcing Jack to kill Holly. We don’t know how it plans to, possibly, cover up her murder, but the creature is desperate enough to actually pull the trigger, so to speak, on taking her off the game board. And we leave the episode with Holly driving off to a remote location with a severely busted-face Jack.
This episode also brought every major character up to speed. Everyone’s on the same page now, for better or worse. With her arrival in Georgia, Holly presented her findings and far-out theories and then we watched the others scatter and deal, emotionally, with her spooky “show and tell” session.
FALLOUT FROM HOLLY’S FINDINGS
We don’t have to sift through all of what Holly put forth and displayed to Ralph, Jeannie, Howard, and the rest (even Glory Maitland, who was there on Jeannie’s invite), since it’s everything we’ve learned over the past three episodes. Even the new information she discovered on her harrowing bus trip into town (thanks to El Coco trying to wreck the entire ride) about Dayton’s “Renfield,” Tracy Powell – Heath’s first cousin. Tracy was an active accomplice, capturing the girls and delivering them to the monster. He’d obviously been picked and controlled before the murders and not after the fact, like Jack. Unless Jack was picked to help the next murders, which Claude is supposed to be framed for.
Anyhow, the meeting wasn’t just interesting because everyone got to be in the same room as Holly, but everyone absorbed the information very differently. Ralph was frustrated and restless. Glory was infuriated. Jeannie, Yunis and Alec (as we’d find out later) were actually very open to the El Coco madness. Jeannie because of her own experiences, obviously. Yunis, because of his upbringing and natural belief in the supernatural. Alec too was someone who’s given a lot of thought to the unexplained and whether or not true demons were real. Much to the chagrin of Howard.
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And then there was Jack, listening to Holly describe most of everything he’s currently going through as El Coco’s servant. So the room of listeners itself was actually more fun to behold than Holly finally laying all the cards out on the table.
Then everyone retreated to their stations, acting on the new information. Glory — poor Glory — surrendered. She gave serious thought to the consideration that Terry was actually guilty. If not just so she could accept it and start to, maybe, move on with her life somehow. Yunis, in the meantime, started tailing Claude. Good for him. He’s probably going to end up dead, but at least he’s the only person on the right track at the moment. He heard Holly’s findings and took them to heart, knowing that the main goal was to stop El Coco from killing again (and escaping).
Jeannie and Holly (who’s staying with the Andersons), began to dig deeper into Jeannie’s visit, uncovering the creature’s residue on the chair it sat in when threatening Jeannie. It can project itself, in a very light physical form, it would seem. It’s visits are very real.
It’s how Ralph dealt with Holly and her theories that was the most fascinating here, however.
THE SON ALSO RISES
After Ralph finished talking to his department-mandated therapist, where he used the dream he had of his son as a distracting talking point, he was forced to actually consider the possibility that El Coco appeared to him as Derek. Whether it was a dream or not, Ralph’s now so buried under crazy evidence he can’t process that he’s wondering if he was targeted by the entity.
He sees the patterns. He’s studied the melty-face drawings, including new ones drafted by Glory’s daughter. He doesn’t know what to do. So he lashed out at Holly, who he bitterly dismissed as a hack charlatan akin to a phony psychic. Obviously, Ralph could have dreamed about Derek and it’s just a coincidence that El Coco can readily appear to people in other forms. We saw it happen this week when it was Tracy on the bus, and then with Jack seeing his dead mother – and getting the holy hell beaten out of him by her. El Coco, as Jack’s mom, could readily beat the s*** out of him! It couldn’t just be something happening in his mind, Fight Club-style, right? There was so much blood. And specific attacks to the face, like kicks.
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Anyhow, that brutal beatdown, aside from feeling very Stephen King (a monster taking the form of a loved one), felt a teensy bit incongruous with the rest of the show. Not just because former SNL star Denny Dillon, who played the mom, is usually in comedies, but because it was very violent. Sure, this show has violence, but not as much as you’d think. It’s rooted in violence and the story makes its nest there, but displays aren’t all that common. This beating went on for a while, and it messed Jack up so much that his face was overly suspicious the next day. I get that we want Holly to know something’s wrong, but it still took the neck boils to truly signal to her that something was off and she was in danger.
Regardless, my point is the show wants us to seriously consider that Ralph was visited by El Coco, because we’ve seen it use its powers similarly with other people, but it might not have. It’s enough that Ralph thinks it could have though. And, in the end, if Ralph finds out that El Coco did try to use Derek against him, it might be the realization that finally galvanizes his energies against the monster.
