Summary
A concrete explanation about Lynn’s death isn’t enough to prevent Before from once again wavering into nonsense in Episode 9.
Before is, in a word, stupid. This won’t come as news to anyone at this point, but it’s especially ironic since it thinks it’s so clever. Episode 9, pretentiously titled “And the Darkness Was Called Night”, is emblematic of so much wrong with the Apple TV+ show that it functions as a kind of case study for how to make bad TV in under half an hour.
Following on from the demented end of the previous episode, Eli has been committed as a psychiatric patient at St. Benedict’s, which is understandable to everyone except him. He’s adamant that he shouldn’t be there, and at this point, his adamance is absolutely preposterous. In the span of a few episodes he has sliced open a child’s head, almost cut his hand off, essentially kidnapped a patient multiple times, and collapsed in the middle of nowhere, ranting incoherently about killing his wife.
Jane thinks Eli might have a brain bleed, so he has an MRI scan. I wouldn’t have bothered to recount this bit but the show makes a deliberate point of showing Eli clench his fist, and he’s wearing his wedding band. That’s not the done thing during an MRI scan, is it? The acronym stands for magnetic resonance imaging – the key word being magnetic. Is this a continuity error? A clue? Am I imagining things? This show is driving me bonkers.
Noah isn’t faring especially well in Before Episode 9 either. He’s freezing cold, his lips are blue, and he can barely choke out Eli’s name between bouts of what the closed captions identify as [babbling] and [talking gibberish]. That made me laugh since you could apply that description to almost every line every character has said throughout the last nine episodes.
Judith Light in Before | Image via Apple TV+
But on a serious note, Noah’s future is looking bleak. He’s on the cusp of being transferred to Ithaca where he will be steadily medicated into a vegetative state because nobody has any idea what to do with him. At one point he starts drooling, and I thought it was saliva at first, but no, it’s clearly supposed to be pool water or something, and none of the nurses even notice. Like, nobody turns him onto his side or anything. His mouth is full of liquid! There’s no wonder that Denise suddenly denies the transfer, only to be informed that Noah is now, rather sinisterly in my estimation, “the property of the state”.
We’ll get back to this in a minute. In the meantime, Eli is summoned to a small group therapy session with Jane, Cleo, and Barbara, who all express earnest concern for his mental health after recent events. He continues to insist he’s fine, but when Barbara brings up that Cleo overheard him say that he killed Lynn, he decides now is the time to confess. He did indeed kill his wife.
But she wanted him to! This is the “twist”, I guess. Eli found Lynn after she had attempted suicide, but she hadn’t done a very good job. Still alive, she begged him not to leave her, to help her, so he did – he euthanized his wife. Barbara, somewhat macabrely, wants to know how, and Eli says, dead serious, “I did it with my hands.”
Jacobi Jupe in Before | Image via Apple TV+
Is this guy a psycho? Why would he say that? I understand it’s the truth, but sugarcoat it a little, man. He could have pretended he used a pillow, or just a vague word like “asphyxiation”, even “suffocation” or “strangulation” if he was feeling especially honest. But “I did it with my hands”, with unflinching eye contact like a serial killer? Not for me, folks. The dude’s nuts.
Later, Denise is inexplicably allowed to see Eli, and he explains his theory for how he and Noah are connected in a bit more depth. He believes that Noah knew Eli and Lynn in a past life, or several past lives, and that something terrible happened to him in that farmhouse, which they were all involved in, and that trauma is what is preventing Noah from healing in the present day. He believes they are three “connected souls”. Yuck.
Speaking of “yuck” – Eli’s escape plan, which consists of slamming his injured hand down on a pen. Before seems to have some kind of contractual obligation to include one scene of horrible violence per episode, and this is Episode 9’s. It would be effective, but it’s so silly and overblown in how it’s handled – complete with the stupid ticking-clock gimmick and crosscuts to Noah being wheeled out of the hospital ready for his transfer – that I just found it amusing.
But it works. Noah is able to slip out of the hospital just as Noah is being loaded into a van – literally just a van, as far as I can tell; there are tools in the back! – and jump into the driver’s seat. “And the Darkness Was Called Night” ends with Eli driving Noah “home”, just in time for the finale.
