1x07 The Queen

[9.8/10] I watch a lot of crap. That’s not to say that I seek it out. But I am a firm believer in taking the good with the bad, especially in art. There are rich experiences to be had within a series or a franchise or even an individual episode if you’re willing to take even the less-than-stellar parts as part of a wider tapestry, one that can enhance your appreciation for what’s truly good. And when you watch a lot of crap, you do it in the hope that you’ll get to that one transcendent moment, that turn toward greatness, that makes the whole journey worthwhile.

“The Queen” is that episode for Castle Rock. I’ve made no secret of my dislike for a lot of what the series has done thus far, but if all this show ever did was give us this individual episode, if every prior installment had been twice as bad as they are now, it would still be worth wading through that muck to get to this incredible, moving, heart-rending episode of television.

As I mentioned in my write up of the previous episode, I am something of a sucker for these sorts of “displaced in time” stories. The way you can sum up the major events in a person’s life, their trauma, their regrets, their great reliefs, by mixing and matching them up, is striking, and done in an incredible fashion here. It’s a strong concept to begin with, and lets us see Ruth’s forbidden wants, her great joys and greater fears, her efforts to protect her son, to defend herself, and to right what went wrong.

But it also conveys her disorientation and mental slips beautifully and harrowingly. There’s something very warm about the way she’ll see herself, even make eye contact with herself, in a prior happy moment. There’s layers of distress in a scene where she’s running from some horror in the present, but gets caught in some nightmare of the past. The way “The Queen” depicts Ruth’s drifting between what is and what was and what will be not only illuminates so many questions from the past, not only gives you Ruth’s side of so many stories that have been threaded through the series thus far, but it puts the viewer in her head, letting them experience the same dizzying jumps back and forth with artistry and cleverness throughout.

It is also an absolute showcase, once again, for Sissy Spacek. There’s plenty to take issue with the show, but the acting and performances, especially for the core cast, is consistently superb. (See also: Bill Skasgard who continues to master this fey and creepy vibe with every move he makes).

Spacek gives an award-worthy performance in “The Queen.” The episode calls on her to not only communicate that same sense of unwellness and confusion as Ruth is pulled to and fro across the timeline, but also requires her to be Ruth at vastly different points in her life, with only the shifts in Spacek’s demeanor to evoke the changes in perspective and state of mind that have changed across decades. It’s a powerful choice to put Spacek at the center of these moments, no matter the date, and Spacek herself earns that creative decision and makes the most of it.

Spacek’s version of Ruth can show the sort of warm affection when Alan Pangborn is teaching her magic tricks in bed (something that isn’t just a slice of life, but which sets up a nice payoff later in the episode). She can show utter fear and heartbreak over her husband or her dog while also showing a practiced calm to try to protect the people she loves. She can show that sort of playfulness and directness that has her joshing with her grandson in a bit of an on-the-nose conversation about his video game or being the only one in the room willing to squarely address her illness. And it can show her being crafty and clever, testing The Kid, tricking him, to try to buy herself time and leeway to make a defense.

It also shows one of the best things Castle Rock and other genre shows aiming for the prestige style can do to be better -- focus! While this episode drifts back and forth through time constantly, it’s also a surprisingly cohesive, and focused story, about Ruth’s experience of these things. Like “Local Color” (the episode centered on Molly Strand) from earlier this season, giving the show over to one character’s trial and tribulations, letting everything else branch out from there, not only helps create something that feels whole, but raises the overall quality of a given episode by letting the show’s creative team focus all their talents and energies on one single theme or idea.

At the same time, “The Queen” touches on a number of important plot points in an artistic way. We learn that Matthew Deaver had a brain tumor of some sort, and there’s the suggestion that his obsession with hearing the voice of god may be an after-effect of that rather than something truly supernatural. We learn that Matthew knew of at least the connection between Ruth and Alan Pangborn, with hints that it too may have had something to do with his harsh manner and that, on the other side of things, Ruth may have turned to Alan after an illness changed her husband into someone we didn’t recognize.

And we see the hardship that Ruth and Henry lived with, under the roof of a sick man who refused to admit he’s sick (unlike present day Ruth). While the show still veers into the supernatural here and there -- most notably with The Kid who is some sort of reincarnation, or at least bears a connection to, Matthew Deaver as he remembers the moments of their lives -- there’s a cold, quotidian sort of familiarity to the Deaver family dynamic.

That’s one of the best things “The Queen” does among many fantastic choices. It blurs the lines between the extent to which these events are caused by supernatural elements like the voice of god or cosmic vergence, and the extent to which this is just a sad family, with a mother trying to protect her son from a sick husband she can’t convince to get help. It gives color to Henry’s abuse and hatred of his father, to Alan’s protectiveness and sense of lost time and most of all for Ruth’s desire to forget and fervent wish that she could have done more to prevent all this from happening.

That’s the hardest thing of all about the episode. It sets up its horror quietly and expertly, as the very presence of The Kid in the house, interacting with Ruth as she slips across time, creates a tension that holds throughout. But “The Queen” intermingles that tension with the sense of The Kid as at least an avatar for Matthew Deaver in Ruth’s mind, and the lingering scars that Ruth suffered from her life her husband and the gnawing regret that she could have stopped things, changed things, made them different and better for her and her family.

So she relives her hardest moments, and in the throes of that fear and confusion, she kills the man she genuinely loves, the one who’d do anything for her, the one who is everything that Matthew Deaver wasn’t. Even then, he silents absolves her, and there too lies the tragedy. In trying to stop the man who caused her so much hurt, in trying to protect against his revived echo, to finally do what she couldn’t bring herself to do before, she fells the man who tried so hard to heal her wounds.

And yet, the episode ends on a note of warmth, albeit one tinged with bittersweetness. We see the long-awaited reunion between Ruth and Alan. We see Alan’s confession that he came back to Castle Rock for her. We see Ruth’s embrace and plea for him not to leave. And it is a moment of real human feeling, of the chance to rekindle something that mores and decorum and necessity could never let you have before. It’s counterbalanced by the heavy symbolism of those chess pieces, of the fallen piece beside the upright queen, seeming to portend their fate, but it creates that sense of genuine affection, freighted with years of missed chances, that makes even an hour of horror feel surprisingly soaring in its sentiment.

That moment would be nearly as soaring if we hadn’t seen Alan and Henry joust and obliquely reference what went on between Ruth and Alan so many years ago. The chronology-skipping scenes wouldn’t be as powerful if they weren’t interspersed with moments we’d already seen, recontextualized through now knowing how Ruth experienced them. And the story of Ruth’s quiet moments of peace and unsuspecting moments of terror would not be so tragic or affecting without the hints and moments we had before.

Much of Castle Rock may drag, or waste time, or squander some of its tremendous potential. But if the result of those prior episodes, the output of everything set up before, can give us this, then by god it’s a worthwhile path, if only because it brought us to “The Queen.”

(Spoilers)
I have to say the editing was really well done because I was confused. I watched twice now.

I keep getting the sense that The Kid is written to seem evil. But then I remember everything I read about post traumatic stress and people who’ve been isolated for long periods of time and he just seems traumatized.

Yes all the Kid/Matthew parts had be convinced at first. Freaky!

But then I remembered the Kid went into Ruth’s house with the record the day before. We say him listening to it but that was it. My theory in this episode is that met met Ruth that day. She talked to him about the record and her husband. Maybe she even made him eggs or was showing him how to make them. (Remember she was trying to help Henry for the first few seconds she saw him in. Episode1 when she thought he was a stranger too). She likes helping people.

I think Ruth was spending time with the clearly lonely and confused Kid. Then this episode starts the day after. She’s freaked out by what the Kid knows because she forgot they spent the day together.

That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. I don’t think the Kid is evil.

The moments with Henry were weird and slow. But this voice of god thing clearly was what Lacy heard about the boy. Since that dog found his head in the woods in episode 1 I hope it’s revealed Lacy had a brain tumour to make him have audio hallucinations of god. Or better yet, we find the real devil in the woods telling people lies and messing with them to do bad things (like make yourself deaf or kidnap a boy...)

Great acting. I feel bad for, well, everyone.
I’m now getting nervous my favourite characters might get killed off. Will have to wait and see I guess.