'The Watcher' Season 1, Episode 2 Recap: 'Blood Sacrifice'

The Watcher

Blood Sacrifice

Season 1 Episode 2

Editor’s Rating 3 stars ***

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Photo: Eric Liebowitz/Netflix

Okay, well, I spoke too soon about a few things, the first of which being the length of these episodes. Episode two is coming in at a slightly bloated 50 minutes. We don’t need to be watching for this long! Just cut down the time you spend having a dog bark in the distance, which has now happened twice (in the premiere, too) and that’s precious moments back right there. Unless that dog is the Watcher, this is not providing the necessary atmospheric detail you think it is!

Detective Chamberland hasn’t really changed his tune and in fact goes for the full victim blame by suggesting the Brannocks have enraged gentle Jasper by aggressively chucking him out of their house. Let a grown man play in your dumbwaiter, I always say. I actually kind of love that Chamberland’s energy is Okay, and? Like, what do you want me to do about this? I am but a humble small-town police detective. I specialize in bored teens egging cars.

He straight-up tells the Brannocks they should DIY this crisis because he’s not having taxpayer money (as if the Brannocks are not, you know, themselves taxpayers) allocated to solving this particular issue. Is Chamberland a quiet-quitting icon? The funniest part of this scene is when Nora says they can’t spare $7,000 (apparently the show’s favorite quantity of cash; this is also the sticker price the alarm teen quoted for their security system) because “we need that money for the renovation.” Yes, definitely invest in the haunted house you don’t even feel safe enough to sleep in, the site where fair Sprinkles was slaughtered while you all slept.

Nora is convinced the Watcher is Jasper. Dean thinks it’s Mitch and Mo but not so convinced that he doesn’t check out a private investigator, played by Noma Dumezweni. Her name is Theodora Birch, just like a real person! She has this convoluted, unnecessary backstory about drinking and being a jazz singer, and I’m not convinced you need to know any of this, except it’s an opportunity for Dumezweni to chew that scenery. Anyway, she got into true crime in rehab, and she’s so desperate for work that she cuts her rate in half immediately, so now Dean is shelling out $50 an hour for … whatever is going on here. Starting to get a clearer sense of how these kids wound up filing for bankruptcy.

Nora and the children are staying at a motel, ostensibly because Carter has asthma and the reno dust troubles his delicate senses (poor kid, seriously) but really because the house is a scary place full of Jaspers. When they check into the motel, even the receptionist is like, “Jesus, what are you doing here?” (Paraphrasing only slightly.) Dean tries to sell the kids on the motel by telling them it has a pool. Dean, you know what else has a pool? Your house. Ellie knows the real reason her dad isn’t staying with them: He wants to catch the Watcher, whom Dean refers to as a “son of a bitch.” Nora interjects to say that the Watcher could be a woman. Such an important #girlboss moment, thank you, Nora.

That night, the doorbell rings and Dean responds by throwing the door open because when you’re worried someone is stalking and trying to kill you, that’s definitely the best course of action. (Doesn’t he have a Ring camera? Amazon is evil and all, but it would’ve been delivered and installed by now.) Upstairs, music is playing, just like Ellie told her dad it was, but did he listen to her? No, he was too busy slut-shaming his daughter for letting her bra strap be visible out of the neck of a sweater she was wearing inside her own house. Meanwhile, at the motel, Nora gets a phone call that’s just heavy breathing, so Dean comes back to the motel so they can teach the receptionist how *69 works. Nobody picks up because — a horror classic — the call was coming from inside their house!

Karen reports to Nora that the only other bid on the house was a lowball from an LLC. Hmmm. I also just realized her boss’s name is Darren. Darren and Karen. How cute. We get some more letter-perfect delivery from Jennifer Coolidge advising Nora to trust her gut and ditch the dream house: “Sweetheart, you’ve got like, two demonic letters … you need to sell your house immediately.” Nora says she misses New York, and Karen says, “Did you know that New York City is going to be underwater in like five years?”

Dean and Theodora have another confab, wherein Dean explains that Nora (Theodora and Nora … Karen and Darren … Ryan Murphy, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?) doesn’t just want to be safe in her house. She wants to feel protected by her husband because he is a MAN who YELLS AT HIS DAUGHTER for doing harlot mouth with haunted lipstick. I feel like Theodora is engaged in a long improv exercise and literally nothing she is telling Dean is true. I’m not mad about it exactly, just putting that out there.

So the alarm team, Dakota (his name doesn’t rhyme with anyone’s … yet), is at the motel with a nifty little stick to keep the door extra-locked. Nora and Dean — who still wear beige and white almost all the time, clinging to their fantasy, yet some grays are creeping in — have a very odd conversation. Nora parrots Karen (“I’m angry”) and goes on this little tear about how what’s happening to their family (a hyperspecific situation with stalker letters) “is happening to everyone across the country” (excuse me?), and because of this she is taking a stand and will not leave their house (???). Dean loves that Nora is a fighter, and they start making out like the alarm teen isn’t still there.

Alarm teen offers to watch (????) their motel rooms overnight for a cool $20 an hour. Did these dopey idiots even Google the alarm teen? No, they’re just like, Okay, thank you for your service. How did he do overnight security before he had an alarm business? Was he in middle school, posting up outside people’s houses? Suspicious, says I! At this point, I’m more convinced than ever that we’re supposed to find the Brannocks insufferable and root for the Watcher. Are any of you getting that vibe?

At a New York diner, Dean meets Andrew, a very skittish-looking guy who once lived in the house. (Theodora made the introduction. Good work, Theodora!) We get yet another lengthy tangent with a lot of creepy gothic details that makes this episode 50 minutes long for no reason. Like, I’m not sure we needed to know specifically which actors this Andrew was allegedly a talent agent for (Rosamund Pike, Andrew Garfield), but sure. Noted.

Anyway, Andrew and his cellist wife and their young son moved to the Jersey suburbs, which immediately cured his wife’s postpartum depression, as the Jersey suburbs are wont to do. Nobody has ever been depressed there! Once they moved into the house, Mitch and Mo burst into their lives and started babysitting their kid. In the meantime, the wife’s mental health deteriorated because she was hearing night music, so then Caleb, the kid, stayed at M&M’s house all day. And then one evening Caleb reported to his dad that he walked in on M&M and a bunch of other adults standing around in red robes doing a little cult sacrifice around a baby on an altar with its throat slit. They were drinking the baby’s blood because, yeah, obviously, why else would they have gone to all that trouble? (Hope they didn’t have Carrara marble because you’d never be able to get the red out, am I right?)

Naturally, Dean is like, “Just to clarify, your 3-year-old son told you this?” but Andrew knows he sounds bonkers and powers through. Letters started arriving — violent letters encouraging Andrew to sacrifice his wife and son. He explains, helpfully, that he did a little recon and discovered the cult likes to drink the blood of children because of the FEAR that’s in their blood. Oh, okay. So one day the kid was playing in the house and cut himself and Mo just appeared, sucking the blood from his finger!!

So, uhh, they moved out. Back to a one-bedroom in New York! As you may expect, this experience pushed Mom over the edge, and soon after, Andrew came home to find she had hanged herself. The important intel from Andrew at this point is (1) they sold the house to “some LLC” and (2) “Jasper is a good guy; he always brought me my mail.” Okay, the mail is kind of a critical part of the whole situation, Andrew.

This is an absolutely wild use of the source material, I have to say. Spinning this miniseries as being “based on a true story” feels deranged.

Back at the ranch (motel), what an absolutely shocking twist: Ellie sneaks out, lures the alarm teen into the heated pool, and makes out with him. We get around the obvious issue here (he’s 19, she says she’s 16, but I could swear in the premiere that her dad said she “wasn’t even 16,” which, though I’m no math whiz, I believe would make her … 15) by Ellie being the one to initiate and push for said kiss. Coooooool cool cool. In case you’re interested in the alarm teen’s theories, he thinks that the Watcher is Jasper but also that Jasper is harmless.

Renovations continue apace at the Brannock house, which horrifies Pearl (the trees!!!) and infuriates Mo, who has it out with Dean over the jackhammer and such. God bless Margo Martindale’s “You could’ve given us a heads up and we would’ve fucked off to our time-share, asshole,” which was my No. 1 line of the episode until she topped it with “Carrara marble is Italian, you fuckin’ moron!” and “What you can do is not make it tacky as SHIT.” Their fight ends with an extra-ugly twist: “Wouldn’t want you to get melanoma,” says Dean, in the tone of someone who really hopes she will, and she tosses out one last “I’m watching you.”

Unfortunately for Dean, things aren’t any better at work than they are at home. He did not make partner, because he has been “off his game” and “having work-life balance” to “save his marriage.” Absolutely gross shit, so embarrassing for him. Gonna be hard to stay at the office past 4:30 now that he’s gotta catch the train and make it home for dinner!

That night, the Watcher or whoever, decked out in A’s hoodie from Pretty Little Liars, stakes out the house. Dean wakes up to the sound of gunshots, which he thinks he maybe dreamed but then we see M&M being taken out of their homes on stretchers covered in sheets with blood seeping through. Their son reports there was a murder-suicide because Mitch didn’t want to live without Mo, who was in fact sick and only wanted to end her life enjoying peaceful quietude in her humble neighborhood. I guess this rules them out as suspects unless the Watcher is more of a group-project situation. RIP, M&M!

At night, again, the alarm blares. Literally, how does anyone on this block get any rest? Dean frantically checks the dumbwaiter, but it’s empty: Jasper is in the street, grinning, as you do.