Recap / The Midnight Club Episode 4 Gimme A Kiss

The makeup covers it well enough, but not perfectly. Never perfectly.

The club explores a hidden chamber, where Sandra's unsettled by items in the room, and tries to get the club interested in Christianity. Kevin attends Katherine's high school Prom. A voice calls to Spence through the intercom. Anya sees a dark shadow.

Tropes in this episode.

• Age Lift: The titular club is revealed to be close to 40 years old. In the original novel it is less than a year old, as it was founded by its current members.
• Anywhere but Their Lips: As a show of his forgiveness to Sandra after her heartfelt apology, Spence silently kisses her on the forehead.
• Berserk Button: Spence is annoyed when, during group therapy, Sandra tries to use their collective fear of the unknown after discovering the hidden basement to get them to pray with her and/or potentially convert to Christianity. He's then incensed when she tries to use Tristan's death to justify all of the patients' collective exhaustion and fear, and that they should basically give Christianity a try for Tristan's sake, when everyone but Dr. Stanton knows their current feelings are based on being rattled by the discoveries in the basement, and have nothing to do with Tristan. He takes personal offense because his mother's conservative branch of Christianity influenced her to disown him for both his sexual orientation and his illness.
  Spence: One of us died yesterday, and that is not...NOT a chance to recruit!
• Book Ends: The episode starts with Ilonka finding a book with hourglass symbol written in the back pages, seemingly in blood. In the end, she finds another book in the library with the same symbol emblazoned on the leather cover.
• Brick Joke: Sandra had previously been accused of having her stories always degenerate into what the club calls "Angel Porn", ie angels having being a huge factor plot-wise for no other reason than because Sandra likes the subject. Despite her protests that her current story isn't not about that, it still ends with Angels present.
• Cliffhanger: Anya is spooked by something in the hallway and flees to her room, where she watches her own shadow stand up from her wheelchair, become a skeleton, and reach out to her, causing to to scream in terror. Ilonka and Kevin later find her wheelchair turned over and her unconscious on the floor...
• Cliffhanger Copout: The previous episode ended with Ilonka being stranded in the secret basement, with the elevator taking Kevin back up against his will. The opening here shows he just took it back down to her and she was never stranded. They also then bring their fellow club members down to show them.
• Disappointed by the Motive: The club is nonplussed when, in Sandra's story, the murderer's motive is revealed to be anger over being infected with Oral Herpes. Sandra tries to insist that it's a big deal.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In-universe. Sandra tells her story as an attempt to apologize to Spence for offending him, and clumsily uses Oral Herpes in the plot as a stand-in for his HIV. Spence is too flabbergasted at the ridiculousness of the metaphor to even be offended by it.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Ilonka, with a bit of prompting from Shasta, realizes that the numbers incorporated into Julia Jayne's art therapy drawings actually correspond to the Dewey Decimal System, which is used to organize Brightcliffe's considerable library. Upon searching for the corresponding number, she discovers a mysterious book with the Paragon symbol on the front.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: Sandra tries to give her story's villain, Alice, a serious motive by revealing her ex-boyfriend gave her Oral Herpes. This causes Kevin to interrupt at the ridiculousness of the twist, with Amesh being delighted at the absurdity, and Spence rendered silent with incredulity when it becomes clear Sandra used an STD as motive in reference to his own HIV.
• Foreshadowing: Several:
  • Sandra mentions early-on that her favorite thing in the world are old black-and-white detective movies.
  • Anya's messing with her own morphine dosages is becoming more of a problem. By the end of the episode she is barely aware of her surroundings from having taken too much.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The original Midnight Club logbook has several:
  • The original club members names were: Nancy Anderson, Aziza Wilmot, Ashley Deutschemann, Dean Blair, James Gibbons, Thomas Hartley and Gale Ritchie.
  • Some of the original club's stories are listed too. These include "Among Us", "Under The Moonlight", "A Chilling Scream", "Close Enough", "Happy Killaversary", and "Spellbound".
• Friendship Moment: A few:
  • Ilonka has a conversation with Cheri about how their diseases make it harder to look like themselves, and how she misses her hair, which Cheri empathizes with, as also wears a wig.
  • Anya, despite being her usual sardonic self, makes the effort to help Ilonka with her nausea by offering some of her own morphine, despite it having been shown that Anya is dependent said pills, meaning she is willing to endure physical pain to help Ilonka feel better.
• Granola Girl: Shasta continues to emphasize this part of her personality, as she reveals she owns a naturopathic wellness company selling products with ingredients sourced from the forest around Brightcliffe.
• Hearing Voices: While passing the recovery room that Tristan had previously died in, Spence hears a mysterious voice say his name from the intercom. Finding the door locked, he convinces Mark to investigate, but they find the room mysteriously empty, with no obvious source of the voice.
• Hijacked by Jesus: Sandra admits that her story did end with angel porn, despite her insisting at the start that it would do no such thing, and says she doesn't know why she can't not do that with her stories.
• I Warned You: Twice:
  • Sandra has previously been accused of putting Angels in all her stories. Despite her insistence she won't this time, she does in the end, seemingly without even realizing it.
  • Spence predicts that, out of pity, Kevin will probably be made Prom King when he attends Katherine's senior prom, as well as Kevin having to endure multiple pity conversations. He's 100% correct on both.
• It Was Here, I Swear!: Spence hears the intercom from the recovery room call his name, checks the door and finds it locked. He immediately gets Mark, who checks and finds the room both open and empty, despite Spence's protestations that it was definitely locked.
• Jump Scare: The episode opens with Ilonka lighting a match in the basement and briefly seeing the ghost of the Cataract Woman.
• Living Shadow: Anya continues to be haunted by the living shadow that she had previously seen. She remains terrified of it as it approaches her, but it does not appear to cause her any harm besides scaring the hell out of her.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Spence half-jokingly wonders what Ilonka and Kevin were doing alone together in the basement that led to their discovery, and openly asks if he should call Katherine.
• Non-Answer: Ilonka asks if Shasta knows anything about the Paragon, describing them as a Wellness group with a bit more of a cult edge. Shasta vaguely says she doesn't know anything about cults before changing the subject.
• Oh, Crap!: Several:
  • Sandra is deeply unsettled by the secret basement, especially upon cult robes, and a ceremonial knife and bowl, and desperately tries to get everyone to leave immediately. Spence, Natsuki, Amesh, and Cheri agree and they all rapidly leave with her.
  • Ilonka is rattled when the logbook abruptly ends with bank pages, bloody handprints, and the hourglass symbol drawn in blood.
  • Spence is unsettled when the intercom from the seemingly-empty recovery room calls his name.
  • The club has a collective one when they all see Spence's newly-developed lesion.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Anya, who is usually very astute and precise, lightly crashes her wheelchair at the club meeting and genuinely seems confused by Kevin's attire, despite knowing he just got back from prom. This is because she is high on her hoarded supply of morphine.
  • Amesh is impressed by viciousness of the characters in Sandra's story, considering her nice-girl persona.
• Precision F-Strike: Twice, both by Sandra, who usually never swears.
  • At one point she uses the word "shitty" to describe the situation with Spence, which Kevin is impressed by.
  • While honestly apologizing to Spence, on behalf of other Christians and herself, she describes herself as "Like, legitimately fucking sorry.".
• The Reveal: The Midnight Club is far older than any of the current members anticipated. In the secret basement holds a logbook that kept the minutes, members, and story titles from club meetings stretching all the way to it's founding in January, 1969. For added shock factor, the book states the club was founded by Julia Jayne.
• Shout-Out: Several:
  • While exploring the basement, Amesh narrates it as if he's the Dungeon Master of a D&D campaign, with Natsuki playing along.
  • While discussing the cult in the basement, Amesh comments with the seeming non-sequitur "Cthulhu fhtagn", which is actually a phrase associated with the Cthulhu Mythos, and originates in the short story ''The Call of Cthulhu".
  • The logbook of previous stories told by an older generation of the club include one called "Spellbound", and Ilonka mentions a passage about a story called "The Starlight Crystal", both real books by the original author of the parent work, Christopher Pike.
  • As Kevin is heading out to the prom, "Ordinary World" from Duran Duran's ''The Wedding Album" plays.
  • A Freeze-Frame Bonus of the logbook has one to ''Among Us".
• Sigil Spam: The hourglass continues to appear, this time in the logbook of the original Midnight Club (drawn in blood to boot), and Shasta confirms that it's carved in at least three trees the forest around Brightcliffe's.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Sandra is terrified that poking around the Paragon's previous occult activity will eventually lead to this.
• Uncanny Valley Makeup: Downplayed. Kevin thinks he looks like this, when Ilonka does her best to give him a glow-up for Prom, and downplay how pale and thin his illness has left him. He comments that he looks like a skeleton that fell face-first into a bucket of paint.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Ilonka experiences nausea from her illness and/or medication and throws up in her and Anya's bathroom offscreen.
• Your Days Are Numbered: While this is true for all of the patients, Spence's HIV medication is no longer working and he's started to develop KS lesions, meaning his condition is rapidly worsening.

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Tropes in Sandra's story:

"Gimmie a Kiss"

Based On: Gimme A Kiss by Christopher Pike.

• Accidental Murder: Alice hits Jake in the head with a chair while he's pointing a gun at her, causing him to instinctively pull the trigger and accidentally shoot her in the heart.
• Adaptational Deviation: A few. So that Jake and Alice can stand in for Spence and Sandra, female Jane Retton in the book becomes Jake Retton here, and the male Lt. Fisher becomes the female Detective Fisher. This also means that the straight relationship between Jane and Kirk in the book becomes a queer relationship in the story. The entries from Jake's diary are also implied to be completely true, while Jane's entries in the book were simply fantasies. Jake also takes refuge in a full bathtub during the fire, rather than a running shower, and doesn't suffer the Agony of the Feet from the fire that Jane does, only slightly burning his wetsuit.
• Adaptational Explanation Extrication: Two:
  • Alice's method of murdering Kirk involves diving into the water after him and holding him down under the water, out of view of the yacht party, counting on the fact that she can hold her breath longer than him. In the book, she hedges her bets by also carrying a hidden tank of Nitrous Oxide, which she stole from her father's office, and forces Kirk to breathe from it while underwater, knocking him so that he drowns.
  • Jake's trick with the dental records only really makes sense if the coroner somehow mistook Sharon's clearly-female burned corpse with a male corpse, highly unlikely given the variety of differences even at the skeleton level. This makes slightly sense in the book because there the male Jake is the female Jane, because the coroner would be looking at a female skeleton with falsified dental records of living teenage girl, so mistaking Sharon for Jane might be more likely.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the original book, when Sharon comes to confront Jane at the cabin, Jane is already being attacked by the mystery gunman and Pistol-Whipping the first person who comes in the door, which is Sharon, who is knocked out. When the cabin starts burning, Jane tries to save the unconscious Sharon from the fire, but is unable to get her to breathe through the oxygen mask and she dies in the fire. Here, Sharon is murdered by the gunman and Jake never attacks her, and she dies of the gunshot long before the fire can kill her, meaning Jake is not partially responsible for her death.
• Affectionate Nickname: Alice calls Jake "Kid", while he calls her "Angel".
• And You Were There: Sandra plays the protagonist, Alice Palmer, Dr. Stanton becomes Detective Fisher, Spence as Jake Retton, Kevin as Kirk Donner, Natsuki as Patti Brane, Mark as Vice Principal Jason Hyde, Ilonka as Sharon Less, and Tim as a TV news reporter.
• Batman Gambit: Jake's second trick with the SCUBA gear relies on the killer being impatient enough to wait for only a short time as the cabin burns before concluding he's dead and leaving the scene, meaning Jake doesn't run out of oxygen from his tank or have the burning ceiling collapse on him, allowing him to get out of the tub and run through the fire and exit. The killer later brags she waited a full five minutes before departing, meaning Jake was completely right in his assumption.
• Big Bad Friend: Alice, the best friend of Sharon and Jake, is the mastermind. As revenge for Kirk infecting her with Herpes (and Jake hooking up with him in secret) she was the one who photocopied Jake's journal and outs him and Kirk to the school. Then she killed Kirk when he tried to save Jake from downing. All to break Jake and Kirk up. Then, when she learned of Jake and Alice's plan from Alice, she tracked them to the cabin, shot Alice, and set the cabin on fire to chase Jake out and kill him too.
• Chekhov's Gun: Two:
  • Jake uses SCUBA gear to fake his death, and brings it with him to Sharon's parents' cottage while laying low. He later uses it to survive the fire, by getting in the full bathtub while breathing through it as the house burns.
  • Alice's toothpick habit comes back around when Jake finds a toothpick at the location where the shooter must have stood to shoot Sharon from outside the cabin.
• Death by Adaptation: Alice dies from her gunshot wound here. In the book, Lt. Fisher bursts in before Jane and Alice can die from the nitros oxide gas trap Alice has set, and Jane is arrested.
• Decade-Themed Filter: The story is deliberately in black & white to evoke the Noir films of the 30s/40s.
• Demoted to Extra: Detective Fisher, despite getting the opening monologue, does pretty much nothing here except listen to Alice's story. In the book, the detective is significantly more involved, and takes part in the climax, preventing Alice and Jane from dying from the gas, arresting Jane in the process. Here she exits the story after Alice is done with her version of events.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Sharon is shot in the back and collapses in Jake's arms, where she dies seconds later.
• Distinction Without a Difference: When accused of publishing the scandalous news story, Jake countered that he didn't publish it. His editor published it. He wrote it. The vice principal doesn't care.
• Faking the Dead: Jake does this twice. First, he and Sharon come up with a plan to fake his death by provoking Kirk into throwing him off the yacht, pretending the drown with the help of SCUBA gear, and intending to hide for the weekend and reappear at school on Monday to mess with Kirk and Patty. Later, he uses the same SCUBA gear to survive being stuck in the burning cabin until it became unbearable. Then he altered the records to make Sharon's corpse appear to be his own.
• Forced Out of the Closet: Someone steals Jake's journal and makes multiple photocopies of an entry detailing his secret romance with Kirk, and posts it around the school, outing him, but not Kirk, who is able to deny it.
• Genre Shift: Up until now, the other Midnight Club stories seen so far have all been some flavor of Supernatural Horror. This is pure campy Noir. It also marks an Adaptational Deviation, as the original book is a Mystery/Revenge Thriller, but without most of the Noir trappings.
• The Ghost: Alice's father is never seen. Apparently he is the town's wealthy dentist.
• Gone Horribly Right: Subverted. Jake and Sharon seemingly did a brilliant job making it look like Kirk had pushed him overboard in a fight and he drowned. So well that Kirk dove in after him to try and save him, and seemingly died in the attempt, despite Alice trying to save him. This means Jake cannot come forward without the authorities thinking he murdered Kirk. However, in reality, Alice jumped in and drowned Kirk herself while pretending to try and save him.
• Hand Wave: When Alice questions Jake about how Sharon's body was mistaken for his, he waves this away as him having broken into the office of father and altered the dental records so the police would make this mistake.
• How We Got Here: Alice enters Detective Fisher's office, and then gives her an explanation of why she's there, which takes up most of the story.
• Identification by Dental Records: The story starts with the burned corpse of Jake having been found in the ruin of Sharon's cabin, identified this way. Except it's really Sharon's body, and Jake altered the records.
• Internal Reveal: After Kirk's death, Sharon is so horrified that she reveals to Alice her and Jake's plan to fake his death.
• Jump Scare: While Alice is telling her story to Detective Fisher, she briefly sees an apparition of Jake outside the window in the rain.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Sharon goes the her family's cabin to try to get Jake to confess the prank to the authorities, due to guilt over Kirk's death. While she's trying to explain that it's never too late to try and make up for their mistakes, she shot in the back and dies before completing the thought.
• Molotov Cocktail: Sharon's killer throws one through the window of the cabin just after murdering Sharon, which sets the exit alight.
• Motive Rant: Alice gives one to Jake once he has her tied up at his mercy.
• Narrative Profanity Filter: Implied. Alice's habit of sucking on toothpicks is framed like she's smoking, complete with using a cigarette case and ashtray, as if Sandra is is describing her smoking but just changing the word "cigarette" to "toothpick".
• Oral Fixation: Alice likes chewing on toothpicks. It's deliberately framed as if she's smoking.
• Private Eye Monologue: The story opens with one from Detective Fisher, despite her not being the narrator for the rest of the story.
• Take a Third Option: Jake is stuck in the burning cabin. He could easily run out any of the exits, but there is at least one armed person outside waiting in the dark for him to do just that. Or he could let himself die in the fire from guilt over Kirk's death. Instead he quickly fills the bathtub with water as the building burns, then safely submerges himself in it when the heat and smoke before too intense, using his SCUBA gear to breath underwater and prevent smoke inhalation. He hopes the killer will be too impatient to wait until the building is entirely burned down, then braves the fire to escape.
• Red Herring: Jake has a confrontation early on with the vice principal, who wants him to kill a scandalous news story about their high school athletes using steroids, and Jake refuses and quits the paper. The doping scandal is set up as a potential motive for the leaked journal, but it has absolutely no bearing on the story after the scene concludes.
• The Reveal: Alice planned the whole thing as revenge on Kirk for infecting her with Oral Herpes.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: While her wealthy father is away, Alice bribes the captain of his yacht to let her throw a raging party out on the water.
• Shout-Out:
  • A high school setting for a noir, complete with hard-boiled dialogue, is possibly one to Brick.
  • As she is dying Alice goes through a string of these.
  Alice: Forget it Jake, it's murder town. And if this is the stuff dreams are made of then I wanna wake up.
• Title Drop: Kirk writes "Gimme a Kiss" in large bold letters in his journal in the opening of the story.
• Totally Radical: Inverted. All of the characters speak in incredibly hammy hard-boiled dialogue.
• Turn in Your Badge: Not a cop, but played like it. VP Hyde threatens Jake to pull a story from the high school paper on student athletes doping by threatening loss of his badge (his press pass) and his pen if he doesn't. Jake refuses and instead quits the paper.
• Ugly All Along: Alice reveals she's using makeup to disguise the minor Herpes sore on her top lip. She plays this trope to the hilt when revealing the cold sore to Jake.
• Unreliable Narrator: Turns out Alice left out a few crucial details in her story to Detective Fisher.
• Villain's Dying Grace: Alice and Jake apologize to each other as she's dying of her gunshot wound. It then becomes literal grace when the Sharon and Kirk show up as angels to guide her to the afterlife.