Dear Doves,

I was wondering how Kevin would ever explain away Patti’s death, and who it would be that he might call for help. Episode 8 had Patti in a cabin in the woods in Cairo, NY, slitting her own throat to try and frame Kevin for her ‘murder’. In this episode, Kevin called Rev. Matt Jamison (a good friend of his father’s) for help. Matt drives out to Cairo bringing shovels, water, a change of clothes for Kevin, and....The Holy Bible.

Matt goes to close Patti’s open eyes, and Kevin tells him not to touch her because it’s a crime scene. Matt reiterates that Patti did it to herself and was trying to take Kevin down with her. Kevin says no one else is going to believe that, and if Matt touches her, then he is in on it with Kevin all the way. Matt closes her eyes. This seems to be pretty tough stuff for a ‘reverend’, but then we should be reminded of Matt killing a guy at the casino parking lot after Matt won $160,000.

Kevin and Matt dig a deep grave for Patti and place her in it. Kevin is about to fill it with dirt when Matt stops him, hands him the Bible, and asks him to read the highlighted scriptures. Kevin says he doesn’t believe in that, but Matt says you asked for my help, didn’t you? Kevin replies yes…Matt hands him the Bible and tells him that’s how he is helping him. Kevin recites the scriptures, tearfully and haltingly, which are from Job, chapter 23:

⁸ “But if I go to the east, he is not there;
if I go to the west, I do not find him.
⁹ When he is at work in the north, I do not see him;
when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.
¹⁰ But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
¹¹ My feet have closely followed his steps;
I have kept to his way without turning aside.
¹² I have not departed from the commands of his lips;
I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.

¹³ “But he stands alone, and who can oppose him?
He does whatever he pleases.
¹⁴ He carries out his decree against me,
and many such plans he still has in store.
¹⁵ That is why I am terrified before him;
when I think of all this, I fear him.
¹⁶ God has made my heart faint;
the Almighty has terrified me.
¹⁷ Yet I am not silenced by the darkness,
by the thick darkness that covers my face.

They finish burying Patti, and back at Matt’s car, Kevin pours water over himself (reminiscent of a baptism), cleaning the blood off his body. He puts on the clean clothes. They get in Matt’s car and drive home.

During the ride, Kevin sleeps and has a disturbing dream. He is abducted and thrown into the insane asylum his dad lives in. He tells his dad that he (his dad) is a good man. Kevin Sr. disagrees and says he is decidedly not a good man. He says that everyone knew why they were left behind. Kevin then hears a woman’s voice behind him. He turns around and it’s Patti. She tells him they are going to be together until ‘the end’, and bends down to kiss him. He turns his head to his father, who is leaving, and he says “daddy!” (I thought saying that was funny, as demonic Patti was leaning over him). Patti then screams out an obscenity. Kevin wakes up, dream over. Matt pulls up to a diner on the way home, having gotten hungry.

They’re sitting at a table and Matt questions Kevin as to what Patti said before she died. Kevin says she wanted everyone to understand why we didn’t go (in the rapture on Oct. 14^th). Why we were still here. Kevin then admits to Matt that he was with a woman in a motel at the moment of the rapture. He didn’t know her name. Matt asks “when you were ‘with’ her, she disappeared?” Kevin says yes. Before the rapture he wanted no part of his family. But after it, he wanted them back very badly.

Kevin starts to break down, crying, and goes to the men’s room. He hears someone in a stall moaning and sees blood on the floor. He knocks on the door, opens it up and it’s….Holy Wayne sitting there dying. He was in a shootout with govt agents, and made his way there to die. Wayne tells Kevin not to bother getting help, because he will be dead before they get there. Instead, he wants Kevin to stay with him until the end, and would like to grant Kevin a wish. He says if it comes true, “you will know I am not a fraud”. Wayne says you don’t have to say it out loud, just think it. Kevin thinks it….Wayne smiles, and says: “granted”.

Agents, or a SWAT team, breaks into the men’s room….Wayne falls over dead before they can touch him. They detain Kevin and question him. Matt tells them Kevin is a police chief, and they let Kevin go. Kevin asks who was that man….and the agent says “just some (expletive deleted) who thinks he’s God”.

Tommy is still with Christine and her baby girl. He offers to get a job and take care of them both, just like his own adoptive dad did for him and his mother, Laurie. Christine doesn’t really want the baby…seeing what a liar Wayne turned out to be. She takes her baby into the restroom for a diaper change. Kevin hears the child crying…runs in….and finds the baby lying on the floor…no Christine. He picks up the baby and yells Christine’s name, but she has run away.

We go to a scene with Nora waking up in her house. She gets ready for the day, comes downstairs, only to be confronted with a truly horrifying sight. Someone has placed wax dummies of her departed husband and two kids, sitting at the kitchen table, just like on the day they disappeared. She totally loses it. Even Wayne stopping her pain for quite awhile couldn’t overcome this one.

Jill has joined with the Guilty Remnant to be close to her mother. The G.R. has planted these wax dolls all over town in homes that had raptured loved ones. (Remember that guy that Nora met at her conference who manufactured these things?) This was their big plan for Memorial Day. As you can imagine…it’s not going over too well with the town folks.

It’s night time and Kevin and Matt are just driving back into Mapleton. They come upon what looks like riots and gunshots all over. The angry town people have had enough and attack the Guilty Remnant, even burning down their compound…with some of them still in there. Happy Memorial Day…guess nobody will forget this one!

Kevin goes to the G.R. home and finds Laurie coming out, bloodied and smoky. He grabs her…and she does something she hasn’t done in a long time: she yells out Jill’s name and points to the burning house. Kevin rushes in and tries to find his daughter. He finally finds her upstairs and carries her down and out of the building, saving her life. The G.R. compound is engulfed in flames.

Nora sits at her kitchen table, holding her (wax) kids’ hands. She realizes she can’t get over this, and then is busy writing a “Dear Kevin” letter, fixing to move away. This was too much for her to bear. She refers to herself as a coward, but she really is not, and everyone has a breaking point. She reached hers with this hideous stunt of the G.R.’s. In her letter, she tells Kevin that she thinks she loved him and that he loved her too, and they were good together…but she can’t stand to be around a dying civilization anymore. She is leaving Mapleton. She finishes her letter and drives over to Kevin’s house to leave it for him there.

While at Kevin’s door, she hears something, turns around…only to see a little baby girl left at the doorstep. It is Wayne’s little baby…Tommy has come back (show title: The Prodigal Son Returns), and it looks like he has left her there.

We see Laurie down at the river, looking at the statue of a mother whose baby has been raptured…she must be thinking of what happened to her baby during that ultrasound. She turns around only to see Tommy….who smiles at her. She is glad to see him.

The last scene is Kevin, holding Jill’s hand, walking up to their home. They even found that dog that wouldn’t stop barking, he still had the rope around his neck that Jill cut loose. They see Nora standing there, smiling and joyful, cradling the baby girl in her arms, as she exclaims: “Look what I found!”. That is the Season Finale.

Okay…I have some big take-aways from this production.

1. I know of no other show on TV that has the AC being a half black man with American/Asian roots.

2. They present that people doing wrong, even at the moment of rapture, were taken. (Nora’s cheating husband, Kevin’s motel woman who could clearly see his wedding band, etc.)

3. People with specific intentions got what they wanted at the moment of the rapture. Kevin was free of his family although they didn’t die or get raptured…they just left ‘him’. Nora was free of her family, to pursue her job. Laurie was free of her fetus whom she was contemplating aborting. You know that old saying: be very careful what you wish for…. you just might get it.

4. I know of no other show on TV where the main protagonist quotes from scripture and cries, feeling the immense power of every single Word of God. That was big.

The show returns some time in 2015 for its second season.

Doves….I really hope and pray we are all raptured before that.

May God bless us all.

YsiChrist,

Patty RP