I’m getting more and more curious about what happened to “Evil: Season Two.” Something clearly happened. Because Mike Colter all of a sudden gets his becoming-a-priest arc back, complete with Leon Addison Brown returning (from eight or so episodes ago) as the Black reverend who’s trying to convince Colter to give up on the Catholics. It’s also a big return to “Evil” minimizing the Catholic Church literally being an international child rape cabal while emphasizing the number of assholes who work for the Church. It’s a bizarre take.
The supernatural mystery this episode is a haunting at guest star Ato Essandoh’s house. Essandoh (Alfredo from “Elementary”!) is barely in the episode. He’s only in it a little more than Elijah M. Cooper as his son, who’s the actual target of the ghosts. Essandoh and Cooper are only there to introduce an evil doll into the episode. An evil doll and some weird water damage. The former links up to Katja Herbers’s home plot, while the latter leads to Colter questioning his priestly decisions again.
Lots of priestly questioning. And even though there’s some resolution to it—with both sweet and ominous scenes for Colter. While he’s got friends’ support of the priest thing, nun Andrea Martin is trying to get him into the robe as soon as possible because they need to fight some capital E “Evil” next season. Michael Emerson’s fake redemption scheme is starting to come to light.
The Herbers home plot has daughter Brooklyn Shuck babysitting a kid (Zachary Golinger) with his own scary doll, and she ends up stealing it. Or does she?
Some significant developments in the plot for Kurt Fuller, who tags along with the team on their investigation this episode because he wants to write a book on the paranormal Church investigators. Fuller’s real good. He’s got some very dramatic scenes. He’s also got some intentionally unsurprising ones, as he finds a way to annoy the team members one-by-one while they try to work.
The biggest plot–and potentially most momentous for the show’s future-—is Christine Lahti hanging out with weird, evil rich guy efficiency expert Tim Matheson. Matheson’s got plans for Lahti; some of them make her uncomfortable, which is a little odd given her arc over the last few episodes. It’s like she escalated, then they forgot and took her down a few notches. Presumably next episode—the season finale—will have major cliffhangers for her. It’s kind of Lahti’s show at this point. No one else’s plotline is anywhere near as consistently compelling.
Also, Herbers isn’t doing great with her character’s newly zen demeanor. It doesn’t come off insincere; it comes off shallow.
But it’s a good episode, especially for one with so much rampant Catholic whataboutisms. They intentionally and forcibly pshaw child rape at least twice.
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