I'm sorry, I can't hear you. No one can.
Family Day at Brightcliffe brings news from home - but not all of the patients have a home to hear from. A series of strange clues lead Ilonka to investigate the Paragon, the cult that formerly occupied the hospice's property. Kevin begins telling a dark multi-part story.Tropes in this episode:
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: Cheri's family is completely absent from family day, with no official explanation. She claims that her mother is a successful actress currently filming a movie in France, and does receive multiple expensive gifts from someone. Mark takes her at her word on this, but then is skeptical when she also claims offhandedly that one of her ancestors invented liquid soap and coined the term "Palmolive".
- Character Death: Tristan succumbs to her illness and dies.
- Cliffhanger: Ilonka and Kevin discover a secret subbasement at Brightcliffe with the mysterious hourglass symbol etched on the floor. Then the elevator that got them there mysteriously starts going up while Kevin is still on it, leaving Ilonka alone in the dark.
- Nice Guy: The unnamed janitor who cleans up Tristan's former sickbed. He takes the time to comfort Natsuki about Tristan's death by giving a monologue about how death is the end of pain, and quoting Jim Morrison.
- Retcon: Within-story. Kevin gives his protagonist the calling card of leaving a note with a smiley face at every crime scene. However Spence and Amesh immediately call him out on repeating himself, as he had previously told a story with a serial killer who left a bloody smiley face at the scene. Kevin concedes and changes it to the hourglass symbol that Ilonka discovered.
- The Reveal: We get some insight into the backstories of several patients, due to their families visiting for Family Day.
- Anya is an orphan with no family to come and see her.
- Amesh is the child of Indian immigrants who were recently deported. His aunt and uncle are trying desperately to get them asylum so they can see Amesh before he dies.
- Like their daughter, Sandra's parents are devoutly religious.
- Kevin's mother is obsessed with family legacy, and is currently trying to groom his younger brother into becoming an ace student and athlete like Kevin. She also claims that Kevin's father somehow disgraced the family name. Kevin also has a girlfriend named Katherine, which he neglected to mention to Ilonka.
- Spence's mother is conservatively religious and refuses to see him, either due to his illness, sexuality, or both. His father does visit and tries to make excuses for her, but Spence immediately sees through them.
- Natsuki's father is a deceased war veteran. The dog tags she wears are therefore presumably his. Her mother is still alive and frequently comes to see her.
- Cheri either has wealthy but completely absent parents or just wealthy absent relatives. Mark seems to believe her when she claims the former. Either way, she seems to have been effectively abandoned at Brightcliffe, with expensive gifts coming occasionally instead of visits from loved ones.
- Relative Error: Inverted. Ilonka verbally mistakes Kevin's girlfriend Katherine for his sister, while lying about how Kevin had told her all about his family. Ilonka is mortified by her mistake and quickly flees the scene.
- Secret Room: Ilonka and Kevin discover a secret subbasement beneath the morgue, that can be accessed by the main elevator by pressing the hourglass symbol and the "B" button at the same time.
- Shout-Out: Many:
- In Kevin's story, Dusty has a poster in his bedroom for The Evil Dead (1981). He also has posters for Led Zeppelin, Bob Seger, and New York Dolls. His victim, Nancy, meanwhile has a poster on her door for Nirvana's album "In Utero", as well as for Soundgarden and R.E.M..
- The unnamed janitor quotes Jim Morrison as a way of offering comforting words to Natsuki when comforting her over Tristan's death.
- Spence and Amesh reference Kevin telling a previous serial killer story, with a smiley face drawn in blood at every murder scene. This is identical to the MO of Red John in The Mentalist.
- Sigil Spam: The hourglass symbol continues to appear, and Kevin even incorporates it into his story, much to Ilonka's annoyance.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Despite dying in this episode, we learn absolutely nothing about Tristan other than her death leaving a profound effect on Natsuki.
Tropes in Kevin's story:
The Wicked Heart (Part 1)
Based On: The Wicked Heart by Christopher Pike.
- Adaptational Deviation: In the book, Dusty's calling card is leaving a literal white card with a swastika on it on the empty pillow of his victims. Here, he leaves a card with an hourglass symbol (which Kevin retcons from a smiley face in real-time) on the nightstand of the victim. In fact, there are no Nazi references at all in part one. Dusty also buries Nancy's body in a cave in the desert in the book, while here the story is implied to take place in the Pacific Northwest and the cave is damp and it's clearly raining outside. TV-Dusty's body count is also significantly larger, as there are at least eight ghosts haunting him by the end of part 1, whereas in the book Nancy is only his third murder, and he has become convinced that he will be able to stop at six. He's also physically haunted by the screaming ghosts of his victims, whose screams are temporarily silenced with each murder, whereas in the book he is compelled by a mysterious whisper in his sleep to commit murders to temporarily silence.
- Adapted Out: Shiela's book-boyfriend Matt is nowhere to be seen here, meaning she is free to pursue a relationship with Dusty.
- Beneath Notice: Dusty is described as being perfectly ordinary in every way. Nice but not charismatic, with good grades but not outstanding. Everybody likes Dusty but nobody really knows him. Shiela even realizes with shock that they have been lab partners for months and she barely spoke to him. Despite this he's somewhat charming, enough to get a date with Shiela.
- But You Were There, and You, and You: Kevin casts himself as Dusty, and his mother as Dusty's own catatonic mother. Kevin's girlfriend Katherine becomes Dusty's first on-screen kill Nancy, Ilonka as her best friend Shiela, and Dr. Stanton is the detective investigating the case. Natsuki, Cheri, and Sandra can also be seen playing the ghosts of Dusty's previous victims.
- Calling Card: Dusty leaves behind a card with an hourglass symbol (which Kevin incorporated after seeing the same Paragon symbol in real life) at each of his crime scenes. Because he's so thorough in disposing of all other evidence, it's usually the only evidence that anything had happened at the scene.
- Cliffhanger: Kevin ends part one of the story with one, telling to club they will all have to stay alive a little bit longer if they want to hear the end.
- Disposing of a Body: Dusty's main M.O. is to break into the victim's house while they sleep, place a towel over their face, and bludgeon them to death with a hammer on top of said towel to stop any blood spatter. He then carefully wraps the body up in garbage bags, drives it to a secluded cave and buries it. We see him do this with Nancy with methodical ease.
- Exact Eavesdropping: Dusty is nonchalantly going through his locker when he hears Nancy and a friend talking nearby about how Nancy's parents will be out of town for the weekend, and rather than taking the chance to throw a party she is instead opting to have a quiet weekend by herself. Meaning she will be completely alone in her house at night.
- Hell Is That Noise: Dusty frequently hears a horrible noise in his head. It's the ghostly screaming of his past victims.
- Haunting the Guilty: Dusty is constantly haunted by the screaming ghosts of his previous victims. Whenever he kills another person, their numbers grow, but he receives a temporary reprieve and can no longer hear their screams. Emphasis on temporary...
- Jacob Marley Apparel: The ghosts haunting Dusty all appear wearing their pajamas or sleeping clothes, with gaping wounds in their foreheads, indicating Dusty killed them all in their sleep.
- Parental Abandonment: Implied. Dusty's father is not mentioned, and he lives with his seemingly catatonic mother, meaning he's the main provider for his household...somehow.
- Serial Killer: The Themed Visionary variety. Dusty murders fellow teenagers on a regular basis, based on the torment he receives from recurring visions of his previous victims. Each time he murders someone, the number of ghosts haunting him grows. He also leaves behind a subtle calling card.
- Shout-Out: Dusty also has a copy of The Gunslinger in his locker, and Nancy has a copy of Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One’s Own".
