Summary
The Hunting Party delivers Season 2’s most grisly case yet in “Elliot Carr”, while also moving the overarching plot along in a compelling direction.
The Hunting Party has always had a penchant for coming up with creepy villains, but even by the usual standards, “Elliot Carr” is a nutter. He’s Season 2’s best villain by virtue of allowing the show to pivot a little into mild body-horror territory, but Episode 8 also moves the overarching plot along in a compelling direction now that everyone’s on the same page about Lazarus being Shane’s mother. The overall effect is briskly efficient front-to-back, amounting to probably the standout installment of this run so far.
Elliot Carr is the rare serial killer who becomes more creepy as he goes along, which is saying a lot since his standard MO is pretty weird in itself. Known as the Connecticut Cobbler — great name, by the way — Carr was a high-end shoemaker in his pomp, making fine loafers and heels from the coveted pelts of exotic animal species and… humans. Yes, as a malignant narcissist stemming from — all together now — childhood trauma, he killed nine people, flayed them while they were alive, and made a pair of shoes from each of his victims. Nice guy.
But it gets worse. During his incarceration at the Pit, Carr was subjected to “Memento Mori” treatment. The basic idea is that he was randomly dragged away for his apparent execution and then, seconds before he was fatally injected, it would be called off. This happened constantly throughout his tenure, always at random times, keeping Carr in a constant state of panic and uncertainty in order to teach him to empathise with the victims he kept alive and tormented before eventually killing them. Apparently, there’s some real-world precedence for this, but I second Shane and Hassani’s assessment that it just sounds like straight-up torture.
This is one of the only Pit therapies that seems to have worked, though. As the investigation proceeds throughout The Hunting Party Season 2, Episode 8, it becomes apparent that Carr no longer has any intention of killing or even particularly harming his victims. He feels such a strong sense of empathy that his entire life is now dedicated to atoning for his crimes. However, since the therapy didn’t address the root cause of his trauma, the only way he can think to do that is through compulsively making shoes out of human skin. Old habits die hard, I guess.
Carr is now a vulture, then, picking up victims who’re already dying so that he can absolve himself of responsibility for harming them. This allows the Scooby gang to attempt a sting operation where Shane poses as a head trauma victim, and it almost works, except the message to stand down all the emergency services doesn’t quite get through to a lone ambulance crew, who mess things up. But no matter, since Carr’s planned delivery of a set of shoes to the family of a prior victim gives him away.
Shoes made of human skin don’t seem like an especially nice gift, but in Carr’s warped mind, they’re a symbol of deep remorse since he’s using his own skin to make them. Yes, in another gnarly twist, it’s revealed that Carr has been making the shoes from his own flesh and using his victims as a steady supply of replacement skin. However, grafts don’t really work like that, so he’s riddled with sepsis. He kidnaps an EMT who can hopefully patch him up, but Bex and the crew arrive in the nick of time to save the guy and prevent Carr from taking his own life. Another successful day in the office.
As for the overarching plot, that’s taking an interesting turn. The crew still thinks that Lazarus is up to something and that the attack on Noah Cyrus’s convoy was just a false flag to allow her to take control of the operation. Shane offers to pump her for info in the guise of being a doting son, since he’s adamant he can remain objective, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Over Chinese takeout replacing a burnt lasagne, Shane clearly falls for Lazarus’s redemptive sob story, claiming she took over because she believes in the work the Pit was doing, thanks to her own rehabilitation. At the same time, Hassani tells Bex that since Lazarus took over, three inmates have disappeared from the new prison facility in highly suspicious circumstances. So, you don’t need me to tell you that Shane clutching Lazarus’s hand in solidarity is a pretty bad sign.
