Sorry to you, “Espresso.” Apologies, “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” We have a new front-runner for Song of the Summer thanks to Kristen’s epic improv sesh regarding fellatio and cunnilingus. It’s a bop best performed while in the back of a car driving past the Colosseum, facing three Vatican priests who do not speak English. If the internet doesn’t give us a dance remix within the next week, what are we even doing here? If we’re not all grinding in a sweaty club to Katja Herbers singing “masturbation can be fun” by August, we’ve failed as a society.
Now, you may ask: What are we doing in Rome? Well, this week, David, Kristen, and Ben are tasked with flying to Rome and returning what may or may not be a stolen piece of Christ’s cross to the Vatican. Sounds very cool, very Indiana Jones–ish, I know, but it is not cool. They end up only being there for a handful of hours. Do they even get a gelato for their troubles? Could someone, for the love of God, feed Ben? Alas, the answer is no. No gelato, no food for Benny boy, and that is because this whole mission is spearheaded by the Entity’s Father Dominic, and that guy could not give a shit about anyone other than himself and, like, maybe Jesus? Jury’s out. He’s a real piece of work is all I’ll say.
As it so often does, it all starts with a botched exorcism. The assessors are called in when a priest goes rogue and performs an unapproved exorcism on a woman named Vicky Finch. It goes terribly wrong, and she ends up in the hospital. The church is worried about its liability in all of this and so they call in David, Ben, and Kristen to investigate Vicky and find hard evidence that she really did need this exorcism in order to cover the church’s ass. The running bit that the church and all of the priests can’t even bring themselves to remember this ailing woman’s name or treat her like an actual human hit every single time — deeply incisive, funny, and horrifying all at once!
Their investigation leads them to the Crash Pad — a room in an airport hotel that flight attendants and pilots use when needed. Have we ever seen Kristen throw herself so fully, so quickly into another group? The woman is at home with the boozy, chatty flight attendants the team stumbles upon. Okay, sure, a lot of the boozing and the chatting and the throwing herself into work has to do with stuffing down the pain she’s feeling about Andy. The episode kicks off with a scene of our five Bouchard women in the car following what seems to be an upsetting visit with Andy at the psychiatric hospital he’s recently checked into; when the Bouchard girls are quiet of their own volition, you know things are not good. The guy must’ve looked pretty bad, and they are having a tough time processing. Kristen tells her daughters they need to “keep it together” and be strong for their dad, but secretly, she’s up in the bathroom using the faucet to drown out her sobs. It’s no wonder Tommy the Grief Demon is staying so close. He hasn’t burrowed out a hole in her side and filled it with rocks yet, but we’ve got a while to go before this season is over.
So, yes, work is a nice distraction. A healthy one? Who can say? Regardless, the assessors’ time with the flight attendants yields some great intel. First of all, flight attendants are very superstitious! Apparently, on her last flight, pal Tori informs the group that Vicky thought she saw Captain LeMeyer, a pilot who crashed a plane into the North Atlantic many years ago, killing everyone, who some believe will pop up on other flights when there’s terrible turbulence, looking to crash those too. They also learn that Vicky had a pretty decent side gig going as a mule — not for drugs but for running relics between Rome and the U.S. In fact, she was carrying a highly valuable one on that final flight. Oh, and two other quick things: When the storm and turbulence got really bad on the flight, Vicky said that she needed to destroy the relic or it would destroy her, and when she got off, she was convulsing and foaming at the mouth. That, paired with the boils on her back she develops while at the hospital, seems like this has not been a very cool time for poor Vicky!
The Vatican is very interested in this relic. So much so that Father Dominic and a bunch of Entity dudes arrive to talk to David, Ben, and Kristen. They believe the relic, a piece of wood inside an elaborate chest that Vicky’s husband handed over, is a stolen part of Christ’s cross. Wild, if true! Which is what our assessors will find out since they are being ordered to travel to Rome with the relic and deliver it to the Vatican. Now, I could watch an entire hour of Kristen Bouchard not giving a rat’s ass what a bunch of priests “demand” of her, it really does feed my soul, but eventually, even Kristen agrees because, hey, a free trip to Rome.
Unfortunately, it might be a holiday to remember, but for all the wrong reasons. They are picked up from the airport by those three aforementioned priests who do not let them have any fun whatsoever as they are whisked through Rome on the way to Vatican City — hence Kristen’s epic improv song; the woman has absolutely zero time for priests acting like they’re above everyone else.
And then they basically dump them in a back alley full of trash and have them walk through a bunch of underground tunnels that were used to hide precious artifacts during World War II. The priests are, like, VIP treatment for a supposedly invaluable piece of wood? I don’t know her. David, Ben, and Kristen eventually run into Father Dominic, who, yes, is also in Vatican City; he just didn’t want to travel with the three of them and the relic in case it did, in fact, cause the plane to crash. They are “expendable atheists,” Kristen realizes.
As frustrated as she is with the Catholic Church, Kristen can’t help but be a bit taken aback when they finally enter the room with the other chunk of the cross. I mean, it’s in a glass case with mood lighting and a blindfolded monk praying continuously — it is dramatic in a way only the Catholic Church can be. Unfortunately, it turns out that the piece of wood in the chest is not a match for the cross. It’s a counterfeit. This trip was all for nothing. The team does try to remind Dominic that it was actually to help Vicky and figure out a way to help her with her boils and clawing-at-the-face situation, but that guy can’t even be bothered to remember Vicky’s name, so it’s a lost cause. He does, however, hand David a bottle of holy water blessed by the Pope and tells him to sprinkle that on Vicky and inform her the relic wasn’t real, so she has no reason to feel guilt over taking it, which is … helpful, I guess? As Kristen says, “Wow, the Catholic Church, you gotta love ’em.”
At this point, the episode feels a little tame, doesn’t it? It’s kooky, for sure, and has so many moments highlighting the perfect comedic timing between our main three, but especially coming off last week’s masterpiece, it’s lackluster. During the flight, the plane runs into some serious turbulence. At the same time, David gets an emergency call from the ground. It’s Father Dominic. They made a little whoopsie, you see: The relic was a counterfeit, but the chest? The chest is actually a demonic Bulgarian relic. It’s one of many being brought into New York “to be assembled in service of the ultimate corruption.” Can you imagine if you were sitting in that first row near the phone and you overheard a man yelling, “An ultimate evil is coming to New York?!” while the plane was being tossed around in the air? Not enough “drinky-drinks” in the world to ease that anxiety!
Father Dominic instructs David to destroy the chest before it gets to New York, which is quite a difficult task for a whole host of reasons, one of which being that David is now seeing the ghost of LeMeyer walking around the plane. You know that can’t be good in any circumstance, let alone one in which you’re seated next to a demonic relic. Things get really bad, like, the plane is going down bad, but then David has an idea: He grabs the holy water Father Dominic gave him and tosses it all over the chest. It works. The chest burns right up. Kristen and Ben can’t believe what they’re seeing. Once the chest is fully destroyed, the turbulence ends and all is well. When Ben first started seeing his jinn, he made a comment about only believing what he actually sees. It’ll be interesting to see how, or if, this experience rattles him. On top of which, the team now has some pressing matters to attend to: They need to figure out what exactly is being assembled over on Team Demon and how to stop it.
Now that’s out of the way, we need to talk about Sheryl a little bit.
Kristen leaves her friend Yasmine in charge of her daughters while she’s away, but Yasmine gets a frantic call from her mother and has to leave to help her. Things get dicey for the girls: There’s a blackout, a bunch of terrifying bats fly out of the hole in their basement wall that hasn’t been attended to since season one, and they wind up locked out of the house in the middle of a terrible storm. Who else are they going to call but their grandmother?
Sheryl heads over but has to bring Timothy with her — she may give Leland some grief when he reminds her of their deal, but she actually doesn’t seem that torn up to introduce the Bouchard girls to their half-brother. And I mean really introduce. She tries to play coy with them, but once the bats are gone and the power is back, before Kristen returns, she tells the girls she wants to let them in on a little secret: Timothy is their brother.
The initial impact of Evil immediately cutting to credits after she drops that piece of information is hilarious in a very Evil (and evil!) way, but I do think we’re getting to a point where we need some more info on what Sheryl is doing. She’s an incredible character to watch because you never know what she’ll do or say next (and Christine Lahti is eating every moment up), but it’s becoming a little less fun since we have no idea what her goal is here. She doesn’t seem like she wants to hurt Kristen or her granddaughters, and she definitely hates Leland’s guts, but if her endgame is to be the top demon, someone is going to get hurt in the process. Evil loves to leave things open-ended; it is part of its charm, but in this case, just a few bread crumbs as to where we’re headed would be nice.
Church Bulletin
• I’m sorry but if anyone ever tilted their head and said to me, “Hey, he’s gonna be fine” the way Ben does when Kristen tells the guys about Andy, I would simply crumple into their arms, weeping. My sweet Ben!
• We meet St. Joseph’s newly assigned attorney, Mr. Flowers (played by Merrily We Roll Along’s Reg Rogers), who I’m sure will pop up again — although I do miss our previous church lawyer, Renée Harris!
• The flight attendants are watching The Haunting of Midnight Mass Club. A Mike Flanagan shout-out if ever there was one!
• I would like “Hey, look who’s here — my favorite exorcists!” on a T-shirt, please.
