Summary
The Boroughs adds more meat to its supernatural mystery in “A Pyramid”, offering a bunch of new clues and developments without skimping on the wit and emotional sentiment.
Despite the fact that it’s hardly rocketing along, The Boroughs isn’t being shy about fleshing out its supernatural mystery either. This is a good balance, I think, giving you the character texture of a slow-moving plot, but not depriving the audience of information to the extent that they stop being engaged. Episode 3, “A Pyramid”, contains by far the most movement in the overarching monster story, but it also has the strongest character interactions, since we’re not doing that silly, frustrating thing of characters not believing information that is staring them in the face, even though it might be pretty unlikely.
We now know much more, including what the monster — or monsters, it’s worth pointing out — have been doing to the residents. Crucially, though, we don’t know anywhere near enough to make sense of it, which keeps us hitting “next episode” without any hesitation. Late developments hint at an even wider-ranging mystery with even bigger potential implications, but we’ll deal with that towards the end since there’s a lot less clarity in that area for now.
Judy Joins the Scooby Gang
Following Sam’s hands-on demonstration in the previous episode, Wally is fully on board with the monster theory. He has even spent seven grand — “You can’t take it with you” — on a HPLC (High-Performance Liquid Chromatography) machine to determine the origin of the reactive blood that Sam scraped from the hammer. The results indicate right-handed chirality, which basically means that it didn’t come from any known organism. It isn’t a coyote with mange or a shaved chimp. It’s something else.
In lieu of more of the liquid, the only other way of determining what it was is to figure out what it was doing in Jack’s mouth when Sam discovered it. That means breaking into the funeral home and conducting an autopsy. Unluckily for Sam and Wally, Judy saw them disposing of the hammer from across the street, and has been putting her journalist skills to use ever since in trying to figure out what they’re up to. When they break into the funeral home, she’s waiting to ambush them.
Sam and Wally have to read Judy in to keep her on side, framing their investigation as an effort to get justice for Jack, which she’s obviously inclined to do if he was murdered. While Wally conducts the autopsy, Sam dips out on account of possible “fluids and odours”, and has a lovely scene with Judy where they talk about her affair with Jack. Alfre Woodard is great here, and it’s particularly funny for both characters to make fun of Neil, who turned up earlier looking for Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, the album Claire was asking for, and gave Sam a book on grief, positing the idea that it’s much more of a pyramid instead of a linear process. Neil’s a college professor, so ostensibly a smart guy, but both Sam and Judy find it hilarious how wrong he is about losing someone. There are certain things only age and experience can teach you.
Monsters Are Hungry
Wally discovers puncture wounds in the back of Jack’s throat. Some are old, and some are new, but they all lead to the base of his brain, implying that the creature was periodically feeding on him while he slept. Sam and Judy ask Wally to check their own mouths, and they, too, have the same marks. Creepily, the creature has been feeding on everyone.
This theory is proved at the end of the episode when we see the monster unfold itself from the vents and feed on Renee while she sleeps next to Paz (more on this in a minute). It’s a horrifying image, but its purpose is left mysterious for now.
Hank arrives to break up the funeral home party, responding to a report of movement inside. Sam surrenders himself while the other two hide in a coffin — which is a nice callback to Wally buying the memory-foam one in the previous episode — and pretends to have simply been saying goodbye to Jack. Hank takes him away while Sam sees a flickering image of Lilly outside the funeral home. Is this just a manifestation of his grief, or something connected to the main plot?
Renee and Paz Get MUCH Closer
We get a bit more background on Renee in The Boroughs Episode 3, including the fact that her husband is suing her — again. They used to be business partners, but following their divorce, he essentially cleaned her out, forcing her to move into the retirement community with her mother. When her mother died, she simply kept living there. Some of this she mentions to Art, and the rest she shares with Paz, with whom she’s becoming increasingly close.
This starts with the motion sensor in the community storeroom going off. A box gets knocked over, but despite the camera picking up motion, nothing is visible. Renee goes to investigate and meets Paz there, but there’s no sign of anything, even when they watch the footage back at Renee’s place. Paz assumes there’s something wrong with the camera, but in the meantime, the two of them hook up, so they miss Hank walking into the storeroom with a weird scanner and wondering aloud what “Scar” is up to. As we suggested in the previous episode, Hank’s reticence to investigate the quartz thefts is because of an ulterior motive. He knows more than he’s letting on.
Tree Of Life
While all this is going on, Art heads out into the desert on his own personal quest to find meaning, which has taken a bit of a turn since he saw all the crows, including his friend Brooks, plummet to the ground. Art is taking this as a sign of divinity, of something greater than himself, and he’s determined to get to the bottom of it.
Art’s quest leads him through the desert to the entrance of a mine — I think? — with a door thudding against its hinges. He cuts the palm of his hand on the door as he enters, and follows the tunnels to a space underground where a lush tree has grown in shafts of light from the surface. The tree tinkles with glass ornamentation, and growing from one of its branches is a glittery orange fruit. This is all very From-coded.
When Art grabs the fruit, its juices heal the wound on his hand. “A Pyramid” ends with him instinctively taking a bite of the fruit, but we’ll have to see how that shakes out in the next episode.
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