Summary
The fifth episode of Grotesquerie has a standout single-take tracking shot that comprises half the runtime, giving it a frantic energy some of the prior chapters have lacked.
From bad to worse; out of the frying pan into the fire. Pick whichever idiom you like, but that’s the vibe of Grotesquerie Episode 5. The half-hour – the shortest runtime of any episode thus far – is a descent into madness, a red-tinged hellscape of abuse and violence that is navigated by a single-take continuous tracking shot, like that great episode of True Detective.
Grotesquerie hasn’t been an especially experimental show thus far, at least not on a formal level, so this trick – and it is a trick; you can see the cuts if you’re looking for them – is appreciated. It’s also wildly effective, lending the first half of the episode a frantic vibe that really suits it.
Worst Motel Ever
Picking up where we left off in Episode 4, Lois and Megan are transporting their bloody new passenger, whose name is Andrea, to a nearby motel. As if it wasn’t obvious enough from the air quality, things are amiss out here in the middle of nowhere, and that catalyzes at the motel.
Everything’s off. The receptionist is hiding bruises on her face. The pool is purple and acidic. Andrea promptly disappears, leaving a trail of bloody footprints and rags, the only other employee, Nick, is potentially violent, and Lois and Megan both feel ill omens in the air.
I hated Lois here, but I suspect I was supposed to. She doesn’t take Megan’s concerns seriously, mocks her prayers, and just wants to take a break – right now, at the worst possible time. Her receiving calls from Nurse Redd about Marshall made me think that this was perhaps some kind of dreamscape, with Lois and Megan both exhibiting the worst aspects of their personalities – snappy indifference for Lois; fearful, near-obsessive piety for Megan – because they were being compelled to do so by the warped environment. It’s a little unclear.
Megan Takes A Bullet In The Season’s Best Sequence
Things spiral quickly. A car crashes outside. Nick’s violence against the receptionist worsens; he tries to drown her in the acid pool, but when Megan intervenes, she quickly rushes back to the desk to keep pretending everything’s fine, her face covered in even more wounds. It presumably isn’t an accident that this place, at least for Lois, is defined by violence against women, since several of Mr. Grotesquerie’s victims have had that connection.
Soon after, gunshots ring out, breaking the motel’s windows, and Andrea returns, screaming. There’s a standoff between Lois and Megan and Nick and the receptionist, with Andrea in the middle. A car pulls up and the occupant – the killer, presumably – exchanges gunfire with both groups, grabbing Andrea and dragging her into the vehicle. Megan rushes to intervene but catches a bullet.
And breathe.
This is all done in that single tracking shot, and it really is excellent given how many moving parts there are. By contrast the back half, which is a bit more investigatory, feels a bit sapped of energy, like the hangover after the night out.
More Murders
With Megan laid up in the hospital and Father Charles at her bedside, Lois is left to continue pursuing leads on the potential killer. Hanover has been combing through her previous arrests for ideas of people who might have a vendetta against her, and a name sticks out – a parolee named Glorious.
I’m unsure of the timeline between leaving the motel and getting Megan to the hospital. Does Father Charlie’s presence there exonerate him? Either way, the real killer goes on another spree, this one claiming the lives of several pregnant women in a maternity house. It’s another grim affair. The women were all killed with the retractors used to perform C-sections, their babies plucked from the wide-open wombs.
Lois takes a message left behind – “Let the dead bury the dead” – as another personal taunt. Soon after, she’s called to a house where the children say their pregnant mother was taken the night before by a strange man. Following this lead, Lois is led to a crashed car full of bloody towels, and then to an orange grove, and the woman with her newborn baby in her arms, wrapped in newspaper. “He’s going to kill me,” the woman stammers, before repeating, “He’s coming” over and over as Grotesquerie Episode 5 comes to a close.
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