Bellevue – You Don’t Understand Me At All

By: Maggie Stankiewicz

With Brady’s (Billy MacLellan) limp and lifeless body still firmly pressed against the windshield of his own car. Annie (Anna Paquin) attempts to free herself from the vehicle. Only a few yards away, Adam’s (Patrick Labbe) hooded body slips back between the trees, remaining within earshot. Annie opens the door and tells him to call 9-1-1. It’s over she explains, but he insists that the cycle hasn’t ended quite yet. Without another word, he sprints away from Annie and the approaching first responders. Peter (Shawn Doyle) shows up and talks to Annie while she sits in the back of the ambulance. Annie admits that Adam saved her, but that provides little comfort to Peter. Peter, steadfast in his desire to protect Annie and break the cycle, admits that he wants to kill Adam. The information rattles Annie, but she knows that they all have a hand in this cycle – this rigged poker game.

Eddie (Allen Leech) shows up next and Annie comes clean to him. He disregards her confession and instead urges her to leave Bellevue with him and Daisy (Madison Ferguson). It’s not as simple as he wants it to be, they all know this…but he’s going to try anyway. Annie skips any more outstanding confessions and goes to the police station to debrief Briana on her brother’s untimely demise. Elsewhere in Bellevue, Adam is stirring up even more trouble. He calls Tom (Vincent Leclerc) and implies that he’s kidnapped his daughter Hannah and left her in the woods. Acting as any crazed father would, Tom runs through the snowy woods as his daughter Hannah cries out for him. He trudges on, guided only by the sound of her voice, and cries out as his foot falls between the jaws of an active bear trap.

A good Samaritan reports Tom’s own shouts for help. Annie and Virginia (Sharon Tate) make their way to his rescue. While Virginia assesses Tom’s situation, Annie follows the voice of Tom’s little girl. Within seconds, both detectives make uncomfortable discoveries. Virginia finds the name “SANDY” carved into Tom’s chest. Annie finds a recorder playing Hannah’s voice. This entire incident was a carefully crafted ruse. They strap Tom to a stretcher before breaking out into another argument about Adam. Peter wants to arrest or kill him (whichever comes first) and Annie wants to protect him. This is a recipe for disaster and everyone involved is aware of it, especially Eddie who has decided it’s time to pack Daisy up and move her out of Bellevue. Daisy is resistant, insisting that Eddie can’t take her without Annie. Both of her parents are too messed up to properly parent her – and she runs off with that harsh truth in mind.

Annie and Peter meet up with Maggie (Victoria Sanchez) to discuss the death of Sandy Driver. Maggie reveals more of what she knows about that fateful night. Maggie relives her painful adolescence where Maggie was forced to take part in a blood oath of secrecy – one that covered up Sandy’s fate and sealed that of her daughter Jesse. Maggie reveals that Tom, Lily (Janine Theriault) and Father Jameson (Joe Cobden) all had some level of involvement. Maggie went so far as to reveal that some were crueller than others – with Jameson at the top of the list. This revelation prompts Peter and Annie to recall a clue that Adam left outside of the church – the lion. They spring into action and find Father Jameson, strung up though alive, with the name “SANDY” etched onto his forehead. They cut him down. The truth is quickly rising to the surface.

Years ago, malice mixed with teenage shame and jealousy. This prompted Lily, Father Jameson and Tom to tie up and torture Sandy, leaving her for dead in the shack. Their motive? Lily wanted to be Mary in the school pageant and the boys were ashamed of how much they liked Sandy’s “dirtiness.” Based upon this confession from Father Jameson, the detectives confer and decide that Adam will be leaving them no more clues. Adam wants Lily to be left alone, broken and undiscovered, the way she left Sandy – and the way Adam finished the job for them. Annie is on the precipice of understanding Adam’s hand in all of this, from the letters to the ambiguous intentions, though her repressed memories are still holding back the truth. Did Adam kill Sandy out of mercy, or something else? All that’s for certain right now is – there was no sin in Sandy’s death.

The term “mercy” resonated with the two of them, so much so that they take their investigation to Mercy St. – the location of the town’s prized brewery. A full-fledged investigation takes place, complete with patrol cars, ambulances, and a fully armed squad of enforcers. It is within the brewery that they discover Lily, alive, but badly tortured like the other two of Sandy’s abusers. Her torture was poetic, buried beneath the dirt, much like the secret she had kept for all those years. Peter puts her into the hands of the EMS, and backs away, detached from his affair. All of this distraction awards Adam the time to visit Daisy. He introduces himself as her uncle, and she lets him inside – emulating her mother a little too closely.

She identifies him as the man who left the riddles and he owns up to his cryptic antics. Daisy confronts him about the incident in the car, where he frightened her. He apologizes and they descent into a conversation about her grandfather, and Annie’s childhood. The conversation turns to Jesse and they discuss the parallels between her and Sandy Driver. The conversation is much more open and subdued than the others that Adam has participated in, but there is still a ripple of deceit in the air. Adam’s intentions are so unclear, his actions unpredictable. Adam and Daisy are bonding, so much so that Eddie is unable to find her. Did she leave with him? Or did he take her? Eddie alerts Annie of their daughter’s disappearance, and all bets are off. They become frantic, following the jumbled and convoluted clues that Adam has left for them. Paper cut outs in the trees, abandoned structures in the woods.

Annie realizes that she will need to find Daisy on her own. Annie is Adam’s sun, his little light, the one that he will forever orbit. Peter holds Eddie back, giving Annie a head start into the woods. This leads her to the shack where Sandy Driver was imprisoned.  Adam stands a little beyond the shack with Daisy, who is unharmed. Annie sends Daisy back to her father. This is what Adam wanted. He wanted Annie to see that he killed Sandy out of mercy. He gets what he wants. A platform on which he can tell Annie about the opportunities with her that their father forced him out on. The incident that landed him in the woods where Sandy was trapped. In a flashback, we see Adam breaking into the shack to discover a terrified and tormented Sandy. A stranger that he’d known forever. Exiled and excommunicated, together. Sandy begged Adam to kill her and he obliged. Their pain would be felt for generations to come.

Adam was supposed to follow suit. He was supposed to kill himself to punish others for their crimes, but he couldn’t follow through. The sight of a smiling Annie brought him back to the brink. Annie listens, but her questions are louder than his pleas for sympathy. She criticizes his riddles, his methods, until she breaks down. Her father killed himself because of Adam. Annie wasn’t enough to keep her father alive. Annie wasn’t the one who mattered, even though Adam was the one who was sent away. Adam rejects this notion, claiming that he and Annie are the same, and that Daisy is part of the cycle’s end. Adam’s love for Annie is possessive, constricting, fatal. He pulls her in for a hug and she reluctantly falls into him, crying silently. He might feel okay with her, but his love has caused her pain. She cannot come with him, she cannot and will not end the cycle with him. Adam will not take no for an answer. In the same way he killed Sandy, he wraps his hands around Annie’s neck. She struggles from his grasp, and manages to use her concealed gun to shoot him. A cycle was broken. The cycle of Adam’s abuse. The gunshot rings out and Annie’s family, Eddie, Peter and Daisy run to her side.

Time has passed since Annie shot her brother and abuser. Eddie truck is packed up. Peter arrives just in time to say goodbye. Annie is bitter that Peter left, and Peter is bitter than Annie will soon be leaving with Eddie and Daisy. Annie pretends to be bulletproof, find in the wake of Adam’s death – but Peter knows better. He pulls Annie’s sleeve up to reveal scratch marks up her wrist. Eddie comes outside to break up their tense goodbye. Annie sends him back inside. Peter deserves his goodbye to Annie, his surrogate daughter, his protégé. Peter is carrying heavier burdens. He’s carrying the secret that Adam told him in the confessional – but Annie shuts him down. She doesn’t want to hear it. He keeps trying, but Annie begs him to keep the painful truth inside. Annie asks if he can live with it on his own. He looks into her eyes. Is easing his burden worth adding onto hers? It’s not, so he lets her go in one final gesture of love. The only problem is that it’s not a father’s love. He’d been waiting for her to grow up. He’ll always wait for her, even as he watches her, Daisy and Eddie drive away.

The darkness of Annie’s final moments with Peter are juxtaposed by Maggie and Danny sitting side by side, watching videos of Jesse laughing in the sun.