Season 1, Ep. 6: Book 74
1 — Sheriff Boyd and Deputy Kenny bury Nathan. Father Khatri gives a sermon at the Church in honor to Nathan. Jade is salvaging technology from cars and materials such as cabling to fix the CB radio or to amplify its broadcast; and an umbrella (I guess if he removes the cover he can use an umbrella frame as a mesh petal dish parabolic antenna).
2 — After the sermon, everyone left the Church to return to their homes. Tabitha entered the Church to talk to Father Khatri. She asks if he can know whether they are dead or alive. Father Khatri says what does it matter whether they are dead or alive. For argument’s sake, if they were dead, they would be stuck in this sort of purgatory. They’d still be stuck. They’d still be searching for a way to go home. All that would change is the home they’re searching for.
Father Khatri tells Tabitha they saw them come to the Town long before their RV crash. He knows her family is alive. She can scratch the “Did we die in the crash?” question from her list.
Tabitha departs and Father Khatri closes the Church’s door. He turns on a lantern and heads to the Church’s basement. The truth is revealed to the show viewer: Father Khatri forced Sara to hide in the Church’s basement and tied her up.
3 — While burying Tobey, Kenny talks to Boyd about how disappointed he is about Sara. She is so nice and thoughtful. His mother thinks of her as the daughter she never had. It’s been hard on his mother to learn what she did.
Boyd tells Kenny he has been thinking about their recent conversation about running out of space in the chess board that is this place. He’s been thinking about the talismans. It didn’t occur to Boyd the talismans could work outside of the Town and the Colony House. The talisman worked at the RV. Boyd’s signal with the jukebox song came to him as an idea to find a way out of this place. He’s gathering supplies. Boyd is going out into the forest with a talisman to explore the boundaries.
Kenny drops the shovel and begins to leave. Boyd screams at him to stop and not walk away from him. Kenny asks if he’ll go alone into the forest and how far away. Boyd responds as far as it’ll take him. He’s doing this to find a way home. Kenny leaves disappointed. If Boyd is so desperate to die, go ahead and do it.
4 — Jim is trying to find answers or flaws in this place. He asked himself how they have lights. Electricity. He unplugged some appliances and started to cut into the cabling and inspect the plugs. They make no sense. The cabling coating has no copper wiring. Nothing. Just rubber coating. The plug has missing parts and is in the wrong position. The lamps and appliances shouldn’t be able to work without copper wiring.
Jade suddenly breaks into the Matthews house with the CB Radio, cabling from the cars, and the umbrella. Jade calls Jim the Rollercoaster guy, I need your help. Come here. Jim confronts him. You don’t knock?
Jade reveals Tobey was the one driving and he was his childhood best friend since Fourth grade. He challenges Jim and Tabitha. Do you want to play house, or do you want to go home? Because I have an idea. Jade pulls out some electronic tools.
5 — In the Church’s basement, Father Khatri talks to Sara, still tied up to a chair with her mouth bound with a towel gag.
Khatri: “Did you know there’s not a single copy of the Bible in town? In our little traveler’s library in the diner, there’re at least a dozen Robert Ludlum and Judy Blume novels, yet not a single copy of the world’s most popular book. I imagine you wonder why you’re here. You’ve done such unspeakable things. And by the rules of the town, you should be in the box. Nathan told me about the voices. Sara, what if I were to tell you that despite the horrible things you’ve done, you can still help the people of this town? You could still do something good. I think Nathan would like that, don’t you?”
[It seems Father Khatri figured out that the voices are real, and not in Sara's imagination or a mental disease influencing her horrible acts. To him, Sara is connected to whatever forces are behind this place. He wants to learn more and use her to find out a way back home.]6 — Jim and Jade are salvaging cabling, technology, and mechanical parts from Tobey’s car. Jim complains why not salvage any of the cars back in the Town? Tobey’s car is all the way where the RV and his car almost collide, far from town.
Jade educates Jim that this is an Audi Q5 with parts sourced from– (decides to switch to down-to-earth speak) — you really wanna pin our hopes to some peasant model jalopy?
[Not sure what he brags about. Audi Q5 parts are sourced from Mexico, India, and China at low labor costs. Of course, premium certified OEM quality parts, but whatever.]Jade and Jim leave back to town with their hoarded Audi Q5 parts. Jade is happy and confident. They are going to play science FTW.
7 — At the Diner, Tabitha and her son Ethan bring boxes of stuff to store in the back of the Diner, which is used as storage for things belonging to past and present residents.
Ethan says this storage room reminds him of the cavern of the Lonely Dragon. When the Cromenockle was lost in the rainbow sky, she found a cavern where the lonely dragon lived and it was full of stuff that nobody wanted. But for the lonely dragon, all the stuff was treasure. And guess what? In one of the big piles of stuff, there was the map of the rainbow sky. So, the lonely dragon gave it to the Cromenockle and then she wasn’t lost anymore. So maybe we’ll find a map in here.
Tabitha responds with a smile: “Yes. Maybe we will.” Suddenly, Tabitha’s eyes look high at the top of the shelf. There is a hand-crafted leather bracelet with copper wires and objects that catches her attention. She won’t say what it is, but it’s obvious she recognized it. Someone she met in her past? Something she saw in a dream? I guess it’ll be revealed eventually.
8 — Jade and Jim Matthews go into the woods with their cabling, antenna, and CB Radio. Jade located the tallest tree in the area. As an engineer, Jim tells him it won’t work. The tree is not high enough for a broadcast. Jade mocks his experience with rotating cups in the park attractions. Jim takes offense and starts to leave. Jade apologizes and reaffirms that he truly needs Jim. He confesses he suffers from vertigo and he’s unable to climb the tree to test the CB Radio. Jim agrees to climb the tree with the cable in tow.
9 — Boyd goes to the Infirmary searching for Kristi. He knows Kristi and Deputy Kenny are close. He wants to know if he is ok. Kristi responds he is still trying to adapt to his father’s death and tries to be this person he thinks the townsfolk need, but that he’s barely managing. Kristi is very honest and crude and tells Boyd that Kenny right now doesn’t need a Sheriff. He needs a Dad.
That hits Boyd like a wave of bricks to the face. He realizes Kenny looks up to Boyd as a father figure, and he has failed as a friend.
10 — Father Khatri continues to talk to Sara, still tied to the chair, but now without the gag. “People think the Bible’s a fixed object– something written, completed. But how can the story be finished if all the players remain on stage? We call it the ‘Good Book,’ but … did you know the Bible is actually comprised of 73 books? Did you know that?”
Sara has not spoken yet but shakes her head to signal she didn’t know.
Father Khatri: “All filled with tales of miracles and wonder. But there is also darkness in the Bible. Gruesome, horrible things. Since the night I arrived, there seems to be a question I keep coming back to. 73 Books. What if we, the people of this town, are living the book that has yet to be written? What if this is Book 74? And, Sara, what if we were chosen?”
Sara: “For what?”
Father Khatri: “I don’t know. Which is why I need you to tell me about these voices. Please.
[A little context here: The large book or binder on Father Khatri's hands is a partial transcript he put together from the Bible from memory. He wrote it while in the Town. It had been borrowed by Lauren. After Lauren and Meagan's deaths, the Matthews family moved into Lauren's house. Tabitha found the Bible transcript and brought it back to Father Khatri early in Season 1, Ep. 6. (Number 2 in this article.]
11 — Tabitha is home. Playing around with the leather bracelet. Pondering. Ethan comes into the dining room and asks if she is ok. He also asks about his dad, who is with Jade. Jim will be back soon. Ethan notices the lamp turn on and off. Tabitha suggest a treasure hunt game. Tabitha grabs a hammer and begins to demolish the dining room’s wall in search of how they have an electric utility to turn on the lights if there is no copper wiring in the cords. The wall interior might answer the question.
12 — Jim climbed the top of the tree and secured the cable to the tree. Jade is connecting the cable to the CB Radio and connecting it to the battery pack.
Suddenly, Jade places his hand on the tree and blood starts to pour out onto his left hand. He panics and looks above toward the canopy. He sees a vision where 3 corpses are hanging from the canopy, bleeding all over his face and chest. He is in shock.
[Upon close inspection, I identify that the corpses are wearing 19th Century U.S. Civil War Union hats and uniforms.]
The same symbol Jade saw in the cellar’s ceiling can be seen engraved on the tree.
[The meaning of the symbol is revealed later in Season 2, when Jade finds the physical location that is the source of the symbol.]Jade turns around and encounters a live U.S. Civil War Union soldier aiming a rifle at him.
After the rifle shot misses, Jade runs like hell to escape the soldier. The soldier shoots a second time and misses again. Jade falls to the ground, and the soldier catches up and stabs him with the blade at the end of the rifle.
Jim calls out to Jade, who is horrified on the ground. It was another vision or lucid waking dream. Jim reaffirms that whatever it is he is seeing is not real. Jim asks what he saw. Jade ran away and told Jim to fuck off.
[Whatever that was, it successfully prevented the test run of the CB Radio kit they salvaged from cars and materials. Looks like foul play.]13 — Sara tells Father Khatri that the voices wanted to help. That they’d been here a long time and had been waiting for someone to come who would hear them, and could help them escape to go home. They said they were like us.
Father Khatri asks why she believed them. Sara responds that they knew things they couldn’t know. The voices told Sara those two cars were coming and asked her to stand out near the edge of town to witness their arrival. The voices said the arrival of two cars in the same day had happened before, long ago, and everyone died. The voices said everyone died because of the people in the two cars, but if Sara did what the voices said, the townsfolk in the present would be safe and could get to go home.
Father Khatri asks how, but Sara doesn’t know. He asks if she still believes that the voices are telling the truth. They promised that Nathan would be okay but now he was dead. She screams.
Father Khatri says if these voices are real, if something here is communicating with her then that means she’s connected to this place in a way that no one else here is and that makes Sara incredibly valuable but both need proof to be able to go to Sheriff Boyd to tell him with absolute certainty that Sara’s voices are not a product of a troubled mind.
Suddenly, Sara cringes in pain. She needs a piece of paper. The voices want to show Father Khatri something.
14 — Back at the Diner, Jade is obsessed with the symbol. He is drawing it over and over trying to find the correct shape. Kenny’s mother serves him tea. He rejects it, and she scolds him in Cantonese. He says he can’t understand her and gives up. He tasted the tea and liked it. She looks at his drawings, takes one, and leaves.
Jade follows Tian Chen Liu into the Diner storage area. She is searching for a notebook. Jade is surprised to see this large storage room with shelves filled with stuff from people who have lived here in the past. One of the books he moves to make room for her search says 1972. Jade asks her what she is looking for, and she “shhh’s” him while she browses through an old notebook. She places his drawing on top of a page of that notebook and turns it around so that Jade can see and compare them.
15 — Sara whimpers in pain, no longer tied to the chair, but this pain is caused by the voices as she frantically moves a pen on a piece of paper. The voices guide her hand and the pen to communicate with Father Khatri what they want him to see.
Sara made a drawing that Father Khatri doesn’t understand. Sara says the voices said they watched him on the day he arrived here. They watched him as he buried the bag and that this was proof that they are real. Father Khatri’s eyes open wide in disbelief.
16 — In the Sheriff Station, Boyd searches drawers until he finds a baseball ball and glove. He took to heart Kristi’s words. Boyd visits Kenny. He is carving new Chess pieces from the wood he axed down. Boyd invites Kenny to throw the ball and help this old man get the rust off. Kenny refuses and continues to carve the wood.
Boyd drops the glove and since the game idea didn’t work out, he decides to open up instead with the truth. Boyd confesses he is sick. His father had the same symptoms at Boyd’s age. Doctors said he had a low probability of inheriting Parkinson’s disease, but here we are. Soon enough, Boyd won’t be able to protect the townsfolk anymore and he needs to find a way out of this place before that happens, while he still can.
The only way he can do this is if he knows the people will be in good hands when he is gone. There are a lot of people who are alive today because of Kenny. Boyd knows Kenny’s father isn’t around to tell him so, but he knows his father is proud of Kenny. He is proud of Kenny, too. “But if you tell me right now that you are not ready for me to go, that you need more time, then I ain’t going nowhere.” Kenny doesn’t respond. He stands up and grabs the glove. “Are we ready or not?” Both go outside to play baseball.
17 — Jim Matthews returns home with the CB Radio and all the gear. He gets no response. Suddenly, he finds the dining room’s wall demolished with all the internal electrical cords in plain view.
Ethan appears with a bucket of dirt. He is helping his mother dig up in the basement.
Jim tells Tabitha he got the CB Radio operational and got some static. It’s a start.
He asks Tabitha what she is doing. She responds it’s like what you were saying this morning. The electricity has to come from somewhere. There are no power lines and all the wires, all the cords, they just go straight down.
Jim asks her to stop digging and to tell him what’s going on with her. She finally reveals what bothered her about the leather bracelet. “Do you remember the bracelet I made you after our first few dates, from the laces of your father’s boots? Remember you lost it at the hospital the night Julie was born? Turn around. Look what’s sitting there.”
Jim argues it is not possible. This is simply a similar bracelet. Tabitha insists it is the same bracelet. She shows him a detail in the bracelet that she accidentally ruined. She reminds him how he responded to her when she told him about that crafting mistake. It is those mistakes that make it unique. He looks closely and realizes it is the same bracelet. She insists that if something impossible is staring at them, then she should continue digging to see where those impossible electrical wirings lead to.
18 — Father Khatri is at his favorite meditation spot in the middle of the circle of ritual stones in the fields. He is digging the bag he buried when he arrived at this place a couple of years ago.
Father Khatri opens the bag and compares Sara’s drawing with the Cosmo Chocolate bar he removed from the bag. The bag had a priest’s garment with a clerical collar. The garment had dried blood.
19 — It is evening. Almost everyone is asleep at the Colony House. A resident named Kevin walks upstairs. Opens the curtain, and looks at one of the monsters holding flowers. This reveals where the flowers Julie encountered earlier outside the Colonial House are about. Kevin has been dating one of the monsters every night in front of this window. She asks Kevin when he will let her in.
| FROM TV SERIES RECAP NAVIGATION | ||||||||||
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| SEASON 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| SEASON 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
