Summary
Widow’s Bay is at its most consistently uncomfortable in “Beach Reads”, deepening the setting’s social texture alongside its deeper evils.
If the horror in the previous episode of Widow’s Bay was a monstrous face-sitting Sea Hag, then the horror in Episode 4 is being socially ostracised. And based on “Beach Reads”, I know what I’d rather face off with. Through Patricia, of all people, this half-hour – perhaps the best of Season 1 thus far in terms of texture and sense of escalating build-up – explores the terror of public embarrassment and shame and then turns it into a Wiccan nightmare for good measure.
I don’t yet know how all this connects to what Tom experienced with the Sea Hag, or any of the things going on with Shep or the hotel in the two-part premiere. Much like how Widow’s Bay seems to be making reference – sometimes subtly and sometimes less so – to every movie in the storied classic horror canon, it also seems to be just pulling genre cliches out of its backside every episode. Whatever’s wrong in this town, it isn’t choosy about how it manifests.
But Tom barely factors into “Beach Reads” until the end. The focus is all on Patricia, whom we catch up with, finally free from the town hall, attending a wine-and-cheese party that she was presumably invited to cursorily but that nobody expected her to actually turn up at. You can tell because whenever she tries to communicate with anyone, they generally just ignore her outright, with the one exception being a woman named Shelby who is new enough in town that she hasn’t yet learned that Patricia is the local pariah. For a brief moment, Patricia gets to brag about almost being a victim of the heavy-breathing Boogeyman killer, having been spared only by hiding under the bed, but the gossipy local women quickly quash that by insisting that Patricia has been inventing and embellishing the whole story for years.
In a way, this calls back to the ambiguity that swirled around Tom’s initial experiences with the supernatural, and the fact that we’ve basically confirmed that what he’s experiencing is real strips some of this angle of its mystique, since it’s basically guaranteed that Patricia is telling the truth now, even if nobody believes her. But Widow’s Bay still commits to the bit, not only raising the possibility that Patricia is a pathological liar but also justifying the position of her antagonists a bit by revealing that they’re salty about Patricia casting herself as the Final Girl in a spree that got their friends messily murdered.
“Beach Reads” kind of needs us to believe in the possibility of Patricia being a desperate fantasist, since a good chunk of the remainder of the episode occurs in her head. After being embarrassed at the wine-and-cheese party, Patricia turns to an abandoned self-help book titled Your Turn: Out With the Old and in With the You, and following its advice, resolves to throw her own lavish shindig with herself cast as the main attraction. It’s very clear to the audience – there are a bunch of very funny jokes contained within its pages – that the book itself is up to no good, but Patricia buys every word, attaching her self-worth to the success of a party that she invites the entire town to and insists that Dale DJs.
As soon as it seems like the party’s a success, you know something is deeply amiss, but Widow’s Bay Episode 4 takes its sweet time revealing what, and even then does so really cleverly and patiently. Of course, Your Turn is really a grimoire that has ensnared Patricia in its thrall and has cast a spell on all of the partygoers. The first big clue we get is a panning shot which reveals the reflection of the attendees as they’re listening to Patricia’s toast – they’re all standing transfixed and open-mouthed, like zombies. It isn’t until Sheriff Bechir arrives that the illusion is punctured. Patricia realises that she’s making punch from the blood of dead animals, and that the tiara on her head is really a set of antlers made from twigs.
The reveal reworks a bunch of earlier scenes and conversations in a horrifying new context, messing smartly with perspective and editing to pull it all off. The open-mouthed party people all attempt to drown themselves like lemmings, until Patricia is able to save the day by burning the spellbook in a raging bonfire. Nobody thanks her, though. On the contrary, they blame her for the entire thing, associating the whole event as one more facet of whatever pathology compelled Patricia to lie about the Boogeyman killer. She’ll never be free of other people’s perceptions, even when she saves the day.
Someone does have time for Patricia, though, and that turns out to be Tom. At the very end of “Beach Reads”, he and Wyck find her roaming the street and take her with them to check on Reverend Bryce, supposing that they might need her depending on what they find. It’s a nice moment for Patricia, since even though the party wasn’t exactly a hit, she found some purpose and connection after all. It’s not a great moment for Bryce, though, who’s discovered dead, having hung himself from the back of his office door. Widow’s Bay is still out for blood. And it’s starting to find it.
