Summary
Episode 2 of Sweet Tooth Season 3 spends some time reiterating its underlying themes in a dark subplot about humanity’s fear of and resistance to change.
Episode 2 of Sweet Tooth Season 3, “Thank God I’m A Country Boy”, is one of those little side stories that Sweet Tooth has indulged in a few times during the first two seasons. It isn’t completely disconnected from everything else and still forms part of the overarching quest, but it occupies a good deal of the focus and is intended to develop the season’s – and the show’s, obviously – underlying theme of how people continue to resist the changes brought about by the hybrids and the Sick.
The episode begins with this in mind, focusing on a young boy other than Gus. Theo is even more isolated, though – his best mate is a rooster named Kirby. He lives on a farm with his mother and father, the former of whom is heavily pregnant. With no doctors nearby, this is a pretty major problem.
We’ll come back to it.
The Origins of the Sick
In the meantime, we pick up where we left things in Episode 1. Dr. Singh is trying to make a case for accompanying Gus and the others to Alaska to track down the origins of the Sick, which Birdie apparently brought back from the cave that Captain Thacker discovered when she led a team in to investigate.
If the Sick started there, the key to a cure could be there too. But it means Gus getting there, and Dr. Singh thinks he can help – a belief reinforced by shared dreams that he and Gus have both been having.
So, the gang knows their objective now and are ready to accept Singh coming along. They even manage to deter Rosie’s dogs – for now – by strapping their clothes to a horse and sending it in the opposite direction to draw them away with the scent.
Elsewhere…
Meanwhile, in Alaska, Siana and Nuka are informed that something has happened to Birdie. Large caribou prints lead away from her wrecked snowmobile, and her pursuer is dead.
We also check in with Zhang, who is forcing her pregnant daughter to watch her assist in a cow giving birth – an odd parallel with the main subplot of the episode. Zhang’s efforts to capture Gus with the help of Rosie and her hounds are being rushed by Rosie’s sister being imminently about to give birth – presumably to a hybrid.
Special Delivery
Zhang’s worry is confirmed by Dr. Singh in a roundabout way when he and the others follow a plane to the farmhouse we saw in the cold open. As Singh explains to Ven, the expectant father, there is a zero percent chance that any child born since the Crumble will be totally human.
We can tell by the way Ven treats Gus and Wendy that his thoughts on hybrids are not exactly positive, so the prospect of his wife giving birth to one terrifies him. Singh, Jepp, and Bear help to deliver the child, while Gus and Wendy befriend Theo, who is hidden away upstairs.
This whole story is given an increasingly dramatic slant by a couple of things. The first is that Ven has one of the wanted posters of Gus in a radio room and is very likely to report their whereabouts to Zhang. The second is that Theo turns out to be a hybrid, but his parents have forced him to wrap up his bat-like wings and dull his powerful sense of hearing.
If you were wondering what a father who would deny his son’s nature might do to his newborn when it emerges with a tail and mouse ears, well… turns out he’d try and cut the appendages off with a razor blade like an absolute nutcase.
Let Slip the Dogs of War
Since the gang won’t allow Ven to slice his baby to pieces, he rats them out to the Zhangs. Luckily, a newly emboldened Theo helps them escape in the family van, and they head to the coast in the hopes of catching a boat.
However, Rosie isn’t far behind. She arrives at Ven’s place with the dogs and lets them eat him, but since he told them about Gus, she lets his family live. How charitable!
Sweet Tooth Season 3 Episode 2 ends with the Caribou Man flashing Birdie a picture of Gus, asking who he is. What connection does this guy have with everything? Is he an older hybrid? Perhaps… the first?
All will become clear, one suspects.
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