1x05 The Bent-Neck Lady

[7.6/10] This is a tough episode to grade, because the beginning is stellar, the big middle is okay but nothing spectacular, and the ending is striking all get out. That leaves this as one big McDLT of an episode, where it’s not quite clear how the thing tastes as a whole.

Still, I think my favorite part of the episode is the beginning segment. There’s such great on-screen chemistry between Nellie and Aaron. There’s an Up like quality to that opening set of scenes, where you see the instant rapport between the two of them, are steadily moved through the major and lovely events of their lives that are as heartwarming as they are full of affection. And then you see it all crashing down, in a way that’s horrifying because you feel what’s been taken away from Aaron. You see the beauty that she was given a taste of, the peace she was be able to find at last, and feel the devastation of how it is suddenly and horrifically ripped from her.

But then we roll into the aftermath for thirty minutes or more, and it’s pretty dull. There is more color given to Nellie’s relationship with Luke and the bond they share as twins. There’s hints as to her past and the reasons her siblings have beef and trouble with her. There’s a corny confrontation between her and Steven that gives The Haunting of Hill House yet another over the top monologue. And there’s a few more scares. It’s all mostly okay, but just not nearly as compelling as what comes before or after.

There is some interesting exploration of whether Nell’s visions and frights are the result of a genuine haunting or whether they’re part of some combination of a psychotic break from trauma and of her sleep paralysis. We get a little more detail as to what happened on the fateful night when the kids’ mom died, and you can see how after that experience, symbols like the locket or the pocket watch could be momentous but also unmooring for her.

And hey! Russ Tamblyn as her psychiatrist. When I see that, I can’t help but think of Twin Peaks, and a character portrayed by the same actor counseling another very troubled young woman. But one of the best details of Twin Peaks was how its spirits and demons rarely played by any particular rules. They were inscruitble, unknowable, and the scenes where our heroes encountered them were as likely to be bewildering and they were illuminating.

The same’s true for the powerhouse closing sequence of “The Bent-Neck Lady.” There is something beautiful and sad about the spiritual reunion that Nell feels as she is lured back to the Hill House at the (misconstrued) suggestion of that psychiatrist. The fact that she’s able to return to her childhood home and see her siblings as kids, where they all apologize to her, that she recreates her wedding, where Luke is healthy and well and everyone says they’re sorry for disbelieving or doubting or not listening to her, where her husband and her mother are alive again, ready to give her comfort and warmth, is made poignant because we know it’s a lie. Those images are made haunitng by the brief flits of cold reality amid her warm, brightly-lit dance through the house, and the spectres of (presumably the Hill family) swirling behind her as she’s twirled through the bones of this place.

Then it ends in one final curse, one final ruse, where the locket her mother promised her, the source of safety and protection, is unwittingly her noose, and she becomes the titular bent-neck lady, haunting herself as she drifts backward through time in one last horror. There’s power in poetry in that, one that feels as unraveled and temporally stripped as many of Twin Peaks impressionistic sequences. While it’s not quite so avante garde, the end sequence is bold and haunting as hell.

Overall, this was a strong episode at both ends, which makes up for the ways in which it was a little weak in the middle.