Summary
The Boroughs provides a bit more shape to what’s really going on in “Another Beautiful Day”, and it’s probably fitting for a show about retirees that the secret seems to be the search for eternal life.
What’s the one thing that all the money in the world can’t buy? Time, of course, which is precisely what the residents of The Boroughs are running out of. It was probably obvious when Art began to age in reverse after consuming the forbidden fruit, but if it wasn’t, Episode 5, “Another Beautiful Day”, makes it pretty clear. Some people want to live forever. And they’ll do just about anything to ensure they can.
Granted, I’m still not entirely sure how all this ties in with monsters and magic peaches and suchlike, unless the ghost of Roald Dahl snuck into the script meetings. All that in due time, though. For now, we have a conspiracy to unpack, starting from where we left off. Into the oven we go…
Spaghetti Junction
The tunnels running under the Boroughs lead, as suspected, to each of the homes in the little neighborhood now occupied by Sam, Judy and Art, Renee, and Wally (and, of course, formally Jack). The monsters – and yes, there are several of them, which is also confirmed in this episode – have easy access to all the properties, and out into the desert.
Sam, Judy, and Wally follow the blood trail from the injured monster until they eventually find it, and Judy puts it out of its misery. It’s a surprisingly humane thing to do for a literal monster, and I’d have probably been a bit more inclined to take Wally’s approach and study it, but the person with the gun tends to be the one in charge.
The Scooby gang is forced to leg it through the tunnels once they hear more monsters inbound, and eventually, they hear Art’s screams coming from the little clearing where he found the tree. We’ll circle back to this in a minute, since the full context requires a bit more information. Needless to say, though, Judy arrives in time to save Art from the “monster” that’s attacking him, shooting it in the chest, but it’s able to flee.
Blaine and Anneliese Want to Live Forever
It becomes obvious throughout The Boroughs Episode 5 that Blaine and Anneliese have been artificially extending their lives. Again, the precise dynamics of this remain mysterious, but that’s clearly what they’re up to. Blaine dreams of it. He glugs down a smoothie that looks like it’s comprised of the peaches Art found dangling from the tree. And his discovery leads Anneliese to target him.
When Art wakes up in the hospital, Anneliese is there. She wants to know how he did it, how he felt – nay, became – so much younger in their interaction in the previous episode. Art remains tight-lipped, but his behaviour is predictable. The second Anneliese leaves, Art grabs his things and rushes back to the mine shafts to find a replacement peach. And Anneliese follows him.
The tree is dying out. It isn’t yielding any more fruit. Through Anneliese, we learn that she and Blaine bought the mine back in the late 19th Century. They both look remarkably good for their ages. However they’re doing it, it doesn’t seem to be the same way that Art did, since Anneliese is curious about the nature of the peach when Art explains it to her. When he gives her the leftover pit, she swallows it hungrily, but it only makes her vomit black goo and turn into what seems to be her “true” form – an emaciated husk, different from the spindly spider things stalking the Boroughs, but no less monstrous.
Needless to say, it’s Anneliese who is attacking Art when Judy bursts in and shoots her. But these things – whatever they are – are more difficult to kill than that, as we’ll see.
Hank Lives
As found out in the previous episode, Hank is very much a part of this conspiracy. He has been working with Blaine for years, as per the photos Renee found, and hasn’t aged a day since. It’s Hank that Blaine sends to clean things up after catching Paz snooping. When he realises he was working with Renee, he pays her a visit, too.
Renee isn’t stupid and immediately tries to fight back, but Hank is able to overpower her. He rather stupidly stuffs her in the trunk of his car alongside Paz, and plans to stage an accident by driving them off a cliff. They’re able to team up and fight back, though, which sends Hank off the cliff, presumably to his death. But not so fast.
Hank is badly injured in the crash but crucially remains alive.
The Secret to Eternal Youth
When Anneliese staggers home to Blaine, he immediately submerges her in a bath full of slime, which seemingly has restorative powers. You’d think this was a bunch of those pulped peaches, but if that’s the case, why was Anneliese so curious about the fruit? A question for another day, maybe.
In the meantime, Blaine lovingly caresses his wife and licks the goo off her face like a creepy weirdo, which is basically the same thing as writing some kind of villain manifesto as far as TV shows go. But the point is that he now has an exceptionally large bee in his bonnet about our heroes. Earlier, he had already gaslit Claire into believing that Sam needed to be transferred to the Manor — under his personal care – because he was showing signs of dementia. At the end of the episode, the gang, now reunited but thoroughly out of ideas, are confronted by Blaine and his security team outside of the diner they were hiding out in.
We can assume that the Manor is essentially being used as a prison for residents who get too close to the truth, but we don’t yet know precisely what that truth is. With only three more episodes remaining, though, it’s only a matter of time before the pieces start slotting into place.
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