...And On And On And On

Hex Episode 1x02 - "Life Goes On"

Episode Grade: C-


So, this one is not better, as I'd hoped, and yet, somehow, I'm again left believing that there's a good chance it will get better. First time, that pretty much made sense, but now I'm really just being stupidly optimistic. Whatever.

So, anyway. Previously: Rupert exposited his heart out about Rachel McBain, first mistress of the estate GONE WILD. Cassie found a Smurf Penis. Cassie bled in the Smurf Penis. Thelma was a lesbian. Cassie has psychotelekinetipyromanical powers. Cassie looooves Troy, Thelma looooves Cassie, Cassie looooves Thelma but won't admit it. Some rockin' guitar kicks in to attempt to distract from the fact that even a one minute recap of the events of the first episode is kind of dull. Azazeal was a creepy fucker. Love is a sacrifice, love is a sacrifice, love is a sacrifice. Ergo, Cassie was punk'd by Azazeal into sacrificing Thelma, who excellently turned up as a snarky ghost at her own funeral. I think we're all up to speed.

Credits. I would die for something interesting to watch, I would sell my soul for something interesting to watch, so on and so forth.

Generic Club, young people party hard, as is their wont. Cassie orders a pint of non-product placed lager, and promptly throws it on a random guy. Cassie apologises profusely over and over, and he's all "Oh! Oh! My jacket!" and "I'm covered in lager! Really crap non-product placed lager!" and gets with the flirting, offering to buy her another drink. Cassie looks pleased with the attention but turns down the offer anyway. A really socially awkward guy approaches Cassie and starts enthusing about how something she said in class was really, really interesting. If Cassie says interesting things, why not actually show this in the episodes? Socially Awakward starts going on and on about how much he knows about the Aliens films. Cassie doesn't care. I don't care. Nobody cares. What is the point of this? Cassie is bored into seeing Azazeal in full on cheap looking yellow demon-thing get up wandering around the club, and disinterestedly tells "Felix" he's a genius as she wanders off to follow Azazeal. Felix nods all "awwwl-right", and asks some other random girl if she likes Aliens, which OK, was sort of funny.

Cassie wanders the halls (for an unnecessarily long time, of course), and happens upon the guy she spilled her crappy non-product placed lager on earlier convulsing on the floor of the toilets. Cassie looks mildly perplexed at him as he slowly gets up, and runs out of the room, totally ignoring Cassie asking if he's alright. Cassie looks around, then follows.

In the club, Roxanne and Gemma bitchily watch Cassie from a stairway and bitch about how miserable she always looks. Yeah, it's almost as if HER BEST FRIEND DIED a (presumably) short time ago. For fuck's sake. They're horrible people. I got that memo loud and clear last week.

Dancing, dancing, dancing. Cassie spots convulsing lager spill guy (let's jut call him Ted. That's actually picked at random). Ted has bloodshot eyes. Ooooooh. Spooky.

Hey guys, you know what doesn't build up tension when you use it in every single fucking scene to build up tension? Cassie slowly wandering down a hallway, looking mildly perplexed. Also, anything else. So, Cassie eventually finds Ted assaulting some girl, and telekinetics a fire extinguisher to spray in his face. She apparently has to actually tell generic screaming victim to run before the girl thinks to do so, so frankly, I think it's clear she deserved everything she was about to get. Ted chases Cassie outside, who pulls her exact same fusebox trick from last week to throw him off. Come on, you're already recycling uses of a power as broad as that in the second episode? That's just really, really lazy. This time it has the addition of actually electrocuting Ted, but still.

Cassie limps her way home, pausing to note the fact that Azazeal is being a creepy stalker as always. Now, bitches, if you want to bitch at someone for looking completely miserable all the fucking time, this is your guy. Cassie just looks mildly perplexed.

Cassie goes inside, to her room and lies on her bed, crying. She looks over at the bare half of the room where Thelma's stuff used to be, and cries some more. That's really sad and affecting and all, but, I was promised Ghost Thelma. It's been ten minutes now.

Oh, hey, there she is. So, Thelma and Cassie lie in bed in their underwear and make out for a while, in the hopes that this will keep the penises in the audience interested. Yeah, this really is pretty gratuitous. But hey, it's better than Cassie walking slowly down hallways, so, gratuitous away.

Cassie wakes up, and tells Thelma, who's sitting on the end of her bed smirking, to stop doing that. Thelma's all "That's not what you said a second ago", which is cheesy as hell, but she clearly knows it, so it's still funny. Cassie objects to the underwear Thelma chose to dress her in which, also funny. As I suspected, Ghost Thelma is kind of awesome. Especially in comparison to the dreariness that came before she finally showed her face. Cassie ineffectually complains some more, then goes off to class.

Locker Room. Thelma observes that some extra has been eating a lot of natural yoghurt lately. Cassie exasperatedly asks if she doesn't have anything better to do than follow her around. She doesn't. Apart from in the first ten minutes of the episode, anyway. Thelma asks if Cassie's "been stalked by any fallen angels lately", and there's some faux-blasé discussion of such.

Outside, Cassie complains that she "just wishes [she] could make everything normal again." Nice try, but this still isn't the British Buffy, guys. At Cassie's "Why me?" whining, Thelma points out that Azazeal said it was "no coincidence that [Cassie] found the [Smurf Penis]." Cassie corrects her on her pronounciation of [Smurf Penis], and complains some more that she's had enough of Azazeal, and apparently by extension, she's also had enough of media class, since she decides to skip it. Thelma shouts "Skiver!" at her retreating form, and decides to stop following her around for a while.

The Sad Tinkly Piano of Cassie Walking Down A Lonely Country Path plays a Cassie walks down a lonely country path. The camera artfully shows nothing but the backs of her legs for a while. They are pretty nice to look at, though. A little way down the path, there's a parked car, out of which jumps Troy, desperate for someone who can fix his car, because if his car doesn't get fixed, he'll never be able to save kids from the horror of bad school dinners! Also, he's apparently been sitting there for half an hour, even though we can quite clearly see that Cassie can't have walked more than about ten minutes from the college. Troy is hella lazy. Also, Cassie, just by glancing at the car, diagnoses that he's flooded the engine, which is curable by leaving it for fifteen minutes. Troy offers her a lift by way of thanks, and also in the hope that it will keep her from telling anyone how crap he is with cars. Mmmm, contrivancey. Cassie turns down this offer for no discernable reason, so Troy drives along behind her, listing all the heated seats and other such features that his crappy little car doesn't actually have as selling points until Cassie gives in. They make googly eyes at each other for a while. She's really dull, he's really dull, so you'd think they'd be a perfect match, but there's really no chemistry here.

At Generic Café now, Troy is telling Cassie the fascinating story of how Leon sings in his sleep. Xylophone of Ensuing Wacky Hijinks starts up as we see Thelma's head pop out from behind a wall. Cassie spots her spying, looks annoyed and then looks down at the table sadly for some reason. Troy's suddenly like, "Oh shit, not the best person to moan about my roommate to", but Cassie tells him it's fine. Troy helpfully clichés "It's strange, isn't it?" Well, at the end of the day, you win some, you lose some. Cassie tells him people are making it strange by being all weird around her and the like. Thelma stalks around making crazy ostrich faces. I have no idea. Cassie bemusedly tells Troy that the college is planning on dedicating a bench to Thelma, and asked her where Thelma's favourite spot was. Troy says "You must miss her, though", and Cassie tells him she gets the feeling Thelma is still there, watching over her. See, it's funny, because Ghost Thelma is actually there, watching over her! Ha ha! Shut up, Xylophone of Ensuing Wacky Hijinks.

Blah de bleedy, Cassie and Troy go back to college, Jenny greets them with a stern look and says she missed them in Media today, Cassie feeds her some crap about having a doctor's appointment to which Troy gave her a lift, which Jenny totally accepts, because it's Cassie, and there's that weird "Cassie can do no wrong" thing going on with the staff in this place. Troy thanks her for covering for him, and says if she needs company, he's always happy to get away from Leon, "And I promise I won't be nice to you." Okay, heh.

Night time exterior shot. Azazeal stands ominously. He's trying to do that thing with a thin strip of light illuminating just his eyes, but he's a little too short, so it's actually illuminating his forehead. Hee hee! Close up on his eyes, which are bloodshot. He ominously lights a cigarette, and looks at, I guess Cassie's bedroom window. Ominously.

Bathroom. Despite being a ghost, Thelma is apparently perfectly able to pick things up. OK. She can touch things, she can affect people's dreams, this ghost thing doesn't seem like such a bad gig. But then, having Cassie as your sole company is a pretty big down side. Cassie complains about Thelma spying on her, tells her not to do it again. Thelma goes through her stuff and finds a condom, Cassie complains some more with overuse of the word 'just'. Thelma asks "When exactly were you planning to use this... Ribbed for her pleasure? Like that works." Cassie's all "How would you know?", blah blah banter, both stop dead in their tracks outside when they see Rachel standing there. Oh wait, that's the bad lighting striking again, it's actually the girl Rachel sacrificed. She walks up to Cassie, shows her her bloody fingernails. Or, where her fingernails would be if she actually had any. Cassie gapes for a while, then little girl momentarily morphs into cheap looking yellowy demon Azazeal and back again and starts strangling Cassie. Thelma helpfully shouts "Run!" and they do, slamming the door behind them. door handle rattles. Cassie smashes a lamp and grabs the wires for some electroshop therapy. Thelma stands around looking scared. You're already dead, Thelma, what's she going to do? Door handle stops rattling. Night time exterior shot to show passage of time.

Cassie picks up pieces of broken lamp. Thelma paces around and gibbers "That was so not funny. We were having a nice conversation, then suddenly Freak Girl pops up." Yes, I know. I did just watch that. And frankly, Freak Girl won't cut it as a nickname. Must try harder. Cassie tells her to stop freaking out so, Thelma shouts "Ghosts get scared too!" in case we'd forgotten about the ghost thing, what with all the picking up of objects. Thelma authoratively states that they need to know what's going on, and looks significantly at the Smurf Penis. Cassie objects for a while, but then gives in. Thelma says "Good girl... Or something a little less patronising", and at Cassie asking if she wants to be thrown to the nail girl, gives a somewhat hilarious "No miss, sorry miss". Also, Nail Girl won't cut it as a nickname either. Cassie hesitantly grasps the Smurf Penis, gets flashes of Nail Freak Girl showing off her lack of nails again, and Probably Also Nail Freak Girl hanging from a tree. And then the soundtrack gets all "Check out this shocking information" as Cassie describes what we just saw to Thelma in dramatic revelation voice. It's "show, DON'T tell", not "show, THEN tell", writers.

Azazeal stands by the same tree, looking mournful. Well, duh.

Uh oh, people are probably going to be losing interest by now, quick! Naked showering Cassie! Blah blah nipplecakes. Thelma enjoys the show. Cassie is startled when she sees Thelma watching and bitches at her for it. Thelma's defence is "You should be grateful I can't grope you", which is not the kind of thing that would stand up well in a court of law. Also; she can't? Ghost Thelma's abilities are not making much sense right now. Gemma and Roxanne bitchily walk into the room, Roxanne is bitchily describing her horrifying vivid dream last night about bitchily having lots of bitchy sex with Thelma. Bitchily. Cassie pops out from behind the shower curtain to give Thelma a Look. Thelma continues her string of horrible defenses with "Have you any idea how frustrating it is being a lesbian ghost?" Wait, Thelma's a lesbian? Gosh, I had no idea. Gemma bitchily laughs and bitchily proclaims this gross, as Thelma is dead, Roxanne bitchily starts "Well, obviously she wasn't..." to which Gemma bitchily says "Now that would be interesting." Yeah, interesting is exactly the right word to describe necrophilia, Gemma. Absolutely. Cassie decides to piss on their cornflakes by walking out of the shower and glaring at them. Thelma awesomely blows Roxanne a kiss as she follows Cassie out.

Outside, Cassie walks along a path, soundtrack gets all ominous for a while then Azazeal appears and creepily says "Look at you. You're a mess." Also, he's actually smiling, which is really unsettling. Particularly when he tells Cassie "Poor Thelma. I didn't want to do that. But sometimes trivial things get in the way." Yeeeee. He carries on being creepy and vague about destiny and the like, and basically ignores Cassie asking about Freaky Nail Girl, then tells her "We're the same, you and I. If you could see your soul, you'd know", and wanders off. Lingering close up on Cassie's mildly perplexed face. Stop doing that!

Cassie and, at the opposite end of the room, The Bitches, watching Leon and Troy play pool. Leon and The Bitches talk hornily and bitchily, respectively, about whether Cassie and Thelma ever got it on. Troy rolls his eyes at them. Cassie leaves, Troy plays his shot and follows. Gemma bitchily rolls her eyes and says "Oh, off he pops". So, apparently Gemma and Troy aren't dating anymore, I guess. Whatever. I don't care. So, Troy catches up to Cassie, asks if she wants to go for a drink sometime. Cassie turns him down right at the moment because "things are awkward" and "it's hard to explain" and suchlike. Whatever, Cassie.

Cassie sits on a wall watching Troy play football. Thelma hops up to join her, and continues the questioning about Azazeal. Cassie's like "change the record", Thelma starts ranting about what a terrible evil men are, Cassie tells her "You're the most dramatic ghost I've ever known." Hex drinking game for teetotallers: take a shot every time Thelma appears in a scene and there's no overt mention of the fact that she's a lesbian or a ghost. Thelma complains that Cassie never watched her play netball, Cassie deadpans "You were crap."

Cassie sleeps. Creepy lullaby music and random images fading into each other. SKOBOW. The Hanging Tree. Bloodshot eyes. Freaky Nail Girl. Azazeal reminds us that "History has a habit of repeating itself". Azazeal creepily watches Cassie sleeping.

Outside, Jenny catches up to Cassie and says she's concerned about her, it's not like her to miss classes, rah rah rah. Cassie tells her "I've said sorry, what do you want to do, cane me?" Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the answer was 'yes'. Cassie dismisses concerns, as ever. Thelma has apparently been waiting around a corner to pop out and suggest "Maybe you should cry more, try a bit of self-mutilation". Oh, apparently Jenny's name is actually Jo. I think Jenny is close enough. Also, Thelma reports that she writes erotic fiction in her spare time, and adds "It's not very good." Heh. Cassie spots The Hanging Tree and walks over to it. She starts digging around in the ground underneath it, and Thelma helps her out, continuing the mystery of what she can and can't do. What they find under a thin layer of soil is the gravestone of one Esther McBain, ostensibly Freaky Nail Girl, and Rachel's daughter. I don't know why Cassie is so certain of either of these facts, but whatever.

Thelma eats crisps and looks at the painting of Rachel. For no apparent reason, she decides to walk to the other side of the room, where a door apparently opens by itself. Also, she has a reflection. Fine. She grabs a candle and takes up Cassie usual 'walk slowly down a hallway' routine, but she at least has more than two facial expressions. Her ghostly compulsions or whatever the hell have led her into the room where love is sacrifice, love is sacrifice, love is sacrifice, which makes her shiver a little. She notices something on the wall, but I don't have a clue what, because bad lighting again. She opens up a chest, there's a doll inside. And finally, she tears off all the horrible brown wallpaper to discover that the walls are all covered in crude drawings of Robert Smith. Thelma's kind of wigged out.

Next day, Thelma's freaking out to Cassie about, and asks if she thinks it has anything to do with what Azazeal said about history repeating itself. Azazeal, history's habit of repeating itself is nothing compared to this show's habit of repeating itself. Cassie basically just tells her to fuck off.

In the cafeteria, Rupert's with Jenny, so he's in enigmatic mode, not expositional; "Do you know what was considered to be the world's first convenience food?" Jenny's obsessive response is "If I guess right, can we talk about Cassie?" Seriously, woman, get a hobby. Besides writing erotic fiction that's probably thinly disguised from being about you and Cassie. The correct answer is, apparently, "the humble sausage". So, blah blah, Cassie's not dealing with Thelma's death well. The conversation is intensely predictable, but Rupert being kind of cool as ever saves it from being entirely dull. Cassie's mother is, in Rupert's words, "still a fruitcake", which Jenny pointedly corrects to "still undergoing treatment". Rupert asks about her dad, but he's essentialy non-existant (which, again, nice try, but you're still not Buffy). So, is there any reason whatsoever that Rupert wouldn't already know that, besides an exuse to force in some exposition here? No. No, there isn't. Rupert tries to go back to discussing sausages, but of course, Jenny won't allow him to steer the conversation away from Cassie. She wants him to talk to Cassie, as they apparently have a "special bond". But surely not as special as the bond between you and Cassie, Jenny!

Media class, Gemma bitchily reads a Yates poem aloud. Leon giggles at the word "breast", because he's twelve. Troy and Cassie glance sadly at each other repeatedly. Jenny informs them that the poem is about Zeus in the form of a swan raping a woman, and that some people find the poem offensive. Gemma bitchily knows this is because they think Yates is getting off on it, Leon says "You can't blame him for that." Cassie continues to make moony eyes at Troy, Jenny sets the class an assignment and dismisses them. Cassie goes over to Troy to breathily say "Hi", Troy mimics, Leon gets all single-entendre-y as ever, Troy and Cassie glare at him until he goes away. Cassie tells him she's OK for having a drink with Troy after all.

Pool hall, Cassie wants to know if Thelma is ever going to stop eating, Thelma tells her no, because she can eat whatever she wants without gaining a pound. OK, so, totally fixed image comes with the ghost thing. Fine, that makes sense. Also, Thelma doesn't think she's exploiting her ghostliness enough; she could dance naked in the headmaster's office and no one would know. Oh, so her clothes apparently aren't part of the fixed image. No, that doesn't really make sense. Thelma asks what Cassie's up to tonight, Cassie tells her she's going on a date, which makes Thelma choke on her crisps. Cassie's getting annoyed with Thelma, so she gets up to make herself some coffee or tea or whatever. Thelma notices that Cassie's been drawing her own crude picture of Robert Smith all over her work. Ruh roh!

In their room, Thelma's obtained a weird Edea style hairband thing from God knows where. Cassie wants to know if she looks alright, Thelma sadly assures her that she does. Cassie apologises for this whole thing being so hard on Thelma, but she kind of needs it, and Thelma knows it, and tells her to have a good time, and it's the kind of sweetness that there really ought to be far, far more of between these two, dammit.

Cassie gets into to Troy's car, Thelma forlornly watches them leave, then goes of to do some more detective work. Well, first some more eating. She actually buys chocolate from a vending machine. You're just trying to annoy me with this shit now, aren't you? So, Thelma wanders down a hallway for a while eating her chocolate, then spots a Henry VIII family tree on a whiteboard through an open doorway, which leads her to do some investigation into Cassie's family tree. So, she's perfectly able to root through filing cabinets, and hold a torch in her mouth. Fine, fine. Also, she gets spooked momentarily by footsteps outside, which, no one can even see you! What do you think is going to happen? Anyway, her discovery: Cassie's been receiving cheques for large sums of money from, presumably, her father, name of James McBain. Dun dun dun! Oh, also, Azazeal's still staking Cassie. Dun dun dun! And, yeah, that's the thrilling cliffhanger that ends the episode. Seriously, that's a second act break at best. Which, would put it halfway through the episode, which is, incidentally, the point we've reached in this season. Yes, already. There's only five episodes, and the first one was double length. So apparently they've paced what should be one episode as an entire season. Well, I've still got hope for things improving next week, because the second half should start bringing some payoff for all the masses and masses of buildup.