Room 104 – Avalanche

By: Jennifer Vintzileos

This episode of Room 104 delves a little deeper into the human psyche of a retired wrestler and the reality he is trying to reconcile through fragmented memories. There are two main characters, retired wrestler Doug Avalon (Dave Bautista) a/k/a “Raw Dawg Avalanche” and a woman named Tamara (Natalie Woolams-Torres), who we see through most of this episode. But as Doug proves through telling the story from his perspective, we’re not quite sure if Tamara is real or whether or not the story we are hearing is truth or some version of Doug’s truth. Personally, I think it may be a little bit of everything.

As the first scene opens, we are witness to some form of bizarre use of storytelling with dolls. Doug is portrayed as a shirtless, muscular doll with unruly hair, potentially alluding to his days as a professional wrestler. We are then introduced to another doll that is placed in the shot, Dr. Destruction. Doug begins to weave a story where he and Dr. Destruction were in a rumble in the ring—Dr. Destruction taking down Raw Dawg with a “Vertical Suplex Power Slam.” But according to Tamara in the prior week’s session, Raw Dawg had been the one to give the power slam to Dr. Destruction.

We are back in the dollhouse version of Room 104, this time with a little boy doll. Doug isn’t quite sure why this boy is in his story yet Tamara encourages Doug to try and engage this particular scene. As the scene now switches to a real-life reenactment, Doug is dressed as Raw Dawg when he meets the little boy (Evan Girard-Sun) who appears to be one of his fans. To appease the boy, Doug picks him up to demonstrates the Vertical Suplex Power Slam only to lose control and watch the boy fall to the floor. The scene switches back to the dolls with Raw Dawg sitting on the bed while we assume the little boy is the body under the white sheet.

The introduction of this scene sparks something in Doug, a moment that Tamara is determined to use as a breakthrough of sorts. She continues to push and prod Doug to stop going around in circles with his stories until finally a change—Doug acknowledges that someone has gotten hurt by him possibly, even though we are still not sure what that means.

The scene changes again, this time to a bar. Tamara keeps pushing Doug to follow this narrative. Where we once in the hotel room, it is now made to look like a bar where a patron dressed as a doctor starts verbally attacking Doug and he utilizes his wrestling skills to beat the doctor up. With the doctor down on the floor, Doug starts yelling, “I am not a violent person!” He threatens to beat up everyone else in the same breath before breaking down in tears and claiming the doctor was a monster that had hurt him.

Finally, we see the room in what feels like real time. Doug is ambling into Room 104 with a cane before sitting down on one of the beds. He sees a life-sized version of the boy doll, along with a life-sized version of a doll in scrubs – the “doctor” being his Dad. What the audience gleans from the scene is Doug sharing the most personal secret of all: his father would rent a hotel room for them to hang out, eat pizza and his father would sexually abuse him. As Doug calls out to Tamara this time, he is met with a now-empty room and silence.