1x09 Screaming Meemies

[8.2/10] What stands out to me in this one is the real horror of a mother losing her grip on sanity, who fears what the world will do to her beautiful babies, and so decides to kill them to “preserve them” as they are now rather than let them grow into something sullied by what lies beyond her doorstep. To be honest, it’s a little much at time, knowing how these sorts of things really do happen, to the point that seeing it dramatized as a ghost story starts to feel crass.

But I can’t deny its effectiveness. Hats off to Carla Gugino, who absolutely sells the weakening grip on sanity of Olivia Crain. The way she drifts between being a loving mother, to a frightened caretaker, to a possessed creature is effortless and layered. It’s nice that, after so many episodes devoted to so many other characters, Olivia gets one all to herself, both because it helps us to understand her, and because it gives Gugino a chance to truly shine.

The obverse of that is the performance of the actress who played “Poppy”, the 1920s woman who Olivia hallucinates. I appreciate the creep factor of this fast-talking walk-in from His Girl Friday, but the performance was mannered to the point of cheese which took away a lot of the oopmh for me. There were still highlights, like the horror that swept in when she used the same rapid-fire patter to describe dreams of her own children’s deaths, but for the most part, it was a little too kitschy of an element to add to the broth of this episode.

Still, “Screaming Meemies” absolutely brought the disturbingness with Olivia’s interactions with her children. This is an episode that puts a lot of the pieces we’ve seen in prior episodes together, and witnessing her descent, her “pied piper to Jonestown” affect with her youngest children and their friend, and how close a call it is to the Crains having to confront the fact that their own mother tried to kill them, is truly horrifying.

It also manages to help explain Hugh’s actions up to this point. The kids think he killed Olivia, and the cops seem to as well, but it’s a lie he’s willing to bear, even if it means that his sons and daughters are raised by a relative, if it protects them from having to face the real truth about their mom. But he also doesn't come off like a saint here either, essentially furloughing his wife when she’s desperately asking him for help. It paints a complicated picture of these events and the dynamics within them, which I appreciate.

The hardship of what’s going on between Olivia and her young son and daughter is magnified and complicated by what we know happens to Nellie and Luke when they do grow up. To hear kids talk, in indirect but still potent terms, about depression and addiction that awaits them in their future, is really harrowing. To be frank, I think it’s the first thing in the show that’s really rattled me. And having Olivia wander into her adult children lying on that “silver table” or dead on the floor is disorienting and disturbing. The accuracy of Olivia’s image of that calls into question an “it’s all in their heads” explanation, which the show seems to shed a bit here, at least in-universe.

It’s also a little sudden and oblique, but I also appreciate the implication that Luke’s “imaginary friend” Abigail, who has old timey clothes, is in fact a real girl, and (presumably) the retro-dressed Mrs. Dudley’s daughter. That’s a twist with some punch, underscored by the horror of her being Olivia’s unwitting victim to the horrific tea party she holds while unhinged.

Overall, there’s some pieces of this one that drag, but it’s the scariest episode of the series so far, and one that puts a lot of the pieces of the puzzle together in a satisfying way, which counts for a lot.