The Fall of The House of Usher – Goldbug

Insomnia can strike in times of stress and there is no time that is more stressful than during the death of a family member or while trying to launch a new company. This is why Tamerlane can’t sleep, and it’s affecting everything in her life, especially her marriage and her sanity. With her company Goldbug about to launch and her siblings dropping like flies, the last surviving Usher daughter feels the weight of the family’s business on her shoulders and the pressure is starting to smother her. Add in a stalker trying to drive her crazy, and she is barely holding it together in the sixth hour of Mike Flanagan’s homage to horror master Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher.

Just go to Sleep

We open with Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) telling Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) about Tamerlane’s (Samantha Sloyan) death and how it all started when Bill (Matt Biedel)  left her. While on her own, Tammy has no one to worry about her lack of sleep and she could use it. She keeps dozing off and forgetting things–like turning off the gas stove. We see her nod off throughout the day as she tries to focus on her heavy workload; the launch of her company is only days away. Little does she know this bout with insomnia has opened the door to her nemesis, the escort Candy AKA Verna (Carla Gugino) and out of the corner of her eye, she spots what looks like the women drifting through the apartment, Hidden behind every corner and evaporating in doorless room, Tammy can’t figure out how she keeps getting passed the trained bodyguards outside her front door. Nobody gets through to those guys, but someone did because they left her a green box on her kitchen counter. When she opens it she sees some sort of bloody bug-infested organ and then in a blink, it’s gone.

Cut to Roderick–pun intended, who is covered in blood and holding one of his priceless possessions–two giant sapphires plucked from the mummified eyesockers of Egypt’s Pharaoh, Queen Twosret. The jewels were thought to give her powers and sight in the afterlife. As the fourth wall crumbles, Roderick flexes his billionaire’s muscle when he shirks off the word priceless–everything has a price, even the eyes of a goddess. His power and a bit of patience allowed him to go through time and yank those blue stones right from the Queen’s head, “Does that make me a God?” he asks a lineup of his dead children. “Don’t all answer at once,” he jokes as their silent and mangled spirits stare back at him. Enter Mads (Mary McDonnell), the woman Verna said should be her own kind of Queen when the two met in that bar 40 years ago. Verna told her she had Cleopatra’s eyes, which is ironic considering the rocks in Roderick’s hands. After she walks into his office he tells her Pym (Mark Hamill) is already cleaning things up for them. He told Roderick to get out of the house now that the news broke about what happened to Vic (T’Nia Miller) and Al (Paola Nunez). Mads is under the assumption that someone–probably that bartender, killed Vic but then she looks down at her brother’s desk and sees a bloody heart device in a napkin. She can’t believe it and asks him if he removed the thing himself and that’s when he says he couldn’t leave an illegal heart device at a crime scene that ties back to his company. He also says that there was nobody else in the apartment; he watched Vic with his own eyes drive the scalpel through her heart. He also knows for a fact nobody helped her slice and dice her girlfriend, “she did that all on her own.” Madeline is now more convinced than ever that someone or something is after their family. She doesn’t care who it is, or what it is, she just knows that the firewall Roderick built around the family is now crumbling before their eyes. She reminds her brother that Vic had a board seat and now that’s open. It seems like this woman could be ripping the company away from Usher’s control. If more of them die then the family will lose control of the board and the company will fall into the hands of a hostile takeover. That truth seems to ignite a spark under Roderick. Business is something he knows, it’s what he understands. He tells her to gather the board so he can put the squeeze on them; he needs to make sure they can count on their votes. Madeline tries to get him to focus on who this mystery woman is, but the board is where his mind is. Pym (Mark Hamill) will figure out the rest, it’s what he does best.

Freddy is About to Crack

When Roderick doesn’t come home that night his wife Juno (Ruth Codd) starts to worry since her phone calls keep going unanswered. We see her at the breakfast table portioning out her Ligodone for the day, and with a glass of orange juice she downs a handful of her maintenance drugs. The pills seem to go down better than the news breaking she sees on the TV. It’s about Victorine and Al– the police are ruling it a murder-suicide. We also see Frederick’s (Henry Thomas) and Lenore’s (Kyliegh Curran) reactions and while everyone  else is shocked, Freddy seems unemotional. “I guess we’ll have to go to another funeral,” he tells Lenore, like it would be an imposition. Now his teen daughter is nervous because after he told her in the last episode their status makes them a target for the crazies, she can’t help but wonder if any of them are safe. He tells her she is safe, and blames Vic’s death on her ambition getting the best of her. He thinks it was always bound to happen and this shocks Lenore too. She also has ambitions – she is most like her aunt Maddie, so what does that mean for her survival? The way he is acting is so concerning. He should be upset but instead he can barely contain his glee. He even goes on to say that the other siblings weren’t Ushers– as if their deaths didn’t matter because the blood between them was thin. His main focus seems to be his wife, but we can assume he doesn’t have her best interest at heart either. He is still obsessing over that burner phone and it is probably the only thing that’s keeping Morelle (Crystal Balint) alive in her hospital bed. Lenore sees the cracks forming in her father’s facade and they are getting deeper by the day. So much so that she doesn’t want to leave her mother’s side when it’s time to go to school. Her father is harnessing some sort of animosity towards the woman and she picks up when he slips and calls Morelle a liar.

Next, we check back in with Tammy and Bill–who is back to see if his wife is okay after hearing the news about Vic. She plays it off like she is fine and then reminds him of their prenuptial agreement. It states he leaves her with nothing but the clothes on his back, but all Bill wants is Tammy. Why, is the real mystery here because his wife hurls volatile insults at him like an Olympic champ. She attacks his character, his intelligence, and his self-worth. When her viciousness starts to crumble she blames her mood on the lack of sleep. It is getting in the way of her Goldbug launch and that makes her even more nervous. This business is so important to her because it’s a chance to prove herself beyond the Fortunato fortune. It’s beyond anything the family has ever done before and it shows the world they are more than pill pushers. She is trying to make her mark in this family of nepo- babies and vipers, and the stress is wrecking her mind, body, and marriage–ironic since the company is all about a healthy body and mind. Bill doesn’t hear her because the second she shows her vulnerability she looks up and the room is empty. He left and his keys are on the kitchen island.

A nervous Lenore checks in with her grandfather since the school gave her the day off for her family tragedies. Instead of going home to her mother and father, she went straight to Grampus–who seems to have a better relationship with her than he ever had with his kids. He shrugs all of the recent unpleasantness off as an unsafe world but promises he will take care of her no matter what. She said she’s not worried about herself, she is worried about her father, Frederick, who is acting weird. Her Dad is not the only one. Roderick starts to ramble on about dreams and reality and how sometimes they can be one in the same. Behind her he sees all of his dead children: Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota), Camille (Kate Siegel), Napoleon (Rahul Kohli), and Victorine, and that couldn’t possibly be because he’s not sleeping. In fact, he claims the insomnia is giving him an edge mimicking what Tammy said to her husband Bill.

Meanwhile, we see Mr. Pym is retrieving all the Fortunato property from Vic’s house. He is literally yanking it right out of the police’s hands. Computers, files, even one of the bloodied murder weapons he takes, and they just have to stand by and watch this family circle around the law and do as they please.

The Queen Checkmates The King

It seems nobody can get a hold of Roderick. That is why Tammy shows up at the house looking for him and runs into Juno who says the only person who is responding to her texts is his assistant, and she says Roderick is fine. The family is in crisis mode, and that’s when we get a peek at what drew Juno to this insane family to begin with. She asks Tammy if she’s ever walked around their large house on her own;  it feels so empty. She goes on to explain how she never had a family so when she married into this one she thought she would feel a part of something. Instead, she always feels alone and forgotten about. She thought that the tragedies would bring them together and now they’re more apart than ever. Something about what she says cools the usual flames Tammy has for her, and she lets the words marinate, especially the ones about being alone. She doesn’t offer any sympathy– really, for Juno’s feelings, but she does let her know it’s not just her their father ignores. They are all like this–always too self-absorbed to see the other people in their lives.

We check back in with Maddie talking to her assistants about her algorithm project. She is convinced if they can crack “consciousness mapping” they could live forever on the informational highway. She wants that algorithm ready for the board to vote on A.S.A.P. and sends them on their way. Enter Arthur Pym with news about that woman they are looking for. He found a photo of her in a file on Vic’s desk–she was a patient named Pam. The picture is of the same woman who keeps popping up at all the Usher’s final moments. He also says that there was an address attached to the photo and she was right, the family is being targeted. The address in the medical file led him to Eliza Usher’s (Annabeth Gish) house.

We cut to Dupin sitting in her living room with Roderick, confused as to why this mysterious woman would use this address. He asks if Arthur went inside to confront her and that is when Roderick asks him if he knows what Pym does for a living. The attorney assumes the fixer does anything they ask him to– probably dismemberment of dead hooker-corpses. Roderick laughs, Pym is not that boring, and that gives us a very good indication of what a dark and twisted employee the man is. The topic jumps to the Trans-global Expedition from 1979 to 1982, which we learn was a team that circumnavigated the globe. At age twenty-five, Arthur Pym made the team. While Roderick and Dupin were digging around in the basement of Fortunato’s looking for evidence on Griswold and those forged documents, Pym was seeing things neither of them could ever imagine. So, of course, he found her. Dupin remembers the Trans-globe Expedition because at the time he had been unemployed. It was 1982 when the travelers returned from their trip and that was just after he had been in that basement with Roderick at Fortunatos. He can tell Auguste still blames him for losing his job and he is surprised because “isn’t that all water under the bridge?” Before he can answer, the window behind Roderick explodes and a bloody and dead-eyed Tamerlane walks across the broken glass, She haunts him as he cowers on the floor and of course, Dupin doesn’t see any of this, All he sees is an old man crying and huddled on a dirty floor of an abandoned house, but these episodes keep happening and sooner or later he is going to find out why. They can’t all be related to his dementia, can they? Dupin lends him a hand up and the scene cuts to 1982 when the younger versions of themselves are shaking hands on this breaking an entering deal. Annabel (Katie Parker) reminds them both how dangerous this mission is but the two men are determined to uncover the truth, even if both of them are working from different sides of it. Later that night Annabel expresses her fear over her husband getting caught. She doesn’t want him to break the law even if it’s to help the law take down the criminals he works for. She is also concerned that all of this is going to backfire on them and they will lose everything that they’ve worked for, including what little security they have. She asks if risking everything is worth it, and young Roderick (Zach Gilford) says it is that important. She trusts her husband so she can’t help but be proud of him for doing what’s right. The following night,  Roderick almost gets caught making copies in the basement file room. He manages to hide behind a door so that the janitor doesn’t see him and then gets everything Dupin (Malcolm Goodwin) needs to take this company down.

Back to the search for that mysterious woman, Pym calls a meeting with Madeline and Roderick to discuss what happened to Vic. There were no drugs in her system and that doesn’t make sense to her father– who watched her stab herself. She was unhinged and not herself so he’s having a hard time believing she wasn’t on something. Madeline is now convinced the nameless woman was in the apartment with them but Roderick was there and he didn’t see anyone. He turns to Pym asking what exactly that woman did to each of his children- not that she was there, but what did she do? Pym says he’ll find out, but what he does discover is that the bar that they said they met her in doesn’t exist and it hadn’t since 1975. That’s four years before they met Verna for their New Year’s Eve alibi. Pym did his research; he knew every female bartender within a 5-mile radius of Fortunato’s in the year 1979 and none of them matched the description of this woman. He ran her image through facial recognition software at the police station and he didn’t get any hits. That changed when he used Madeline’s algorithm and partnered it with the facial recognition software and BOOM! He found a library’s worth of photos of her standing next to a slew of soulless billionaires. From the Koch brothers to Donald Trump to some of the world’s most villainous money-makers and earth-shakers, it seems wherever this woman goes a certain type of society ripping wealth follows. It’s when they see the photos go back to the Vanderbilts and the man who started Monsanto in 1901 that things get exceptionally weird. How does she look the same and how come she is never standing alongside unifiers, only greedy dividers? There is not a single Mr. Rogers or Barack Obama in the bunch, so maybe Verma is Karma? Could be, but maybe she is just death coming to deliver that final comeuppance. We’re still not sure what her official job title is but we can guess it has something to do with the myths around ravens and the worst people with the fattest wallets on Earth. Roderick doesn’t buy any of this and  thinks the photos were doctored to throw them off her scent. Madeline knows it’s the same woman from the bar and she reminds him of what happened the night they met her. It seems like this is something Roderick spent a lifetime trying to forget, so he deflects and calls her crazy. Maybe he is right,, they do call her Mads and some think madness is a higher form of intelligence. Nobody is smarter than Madeline Usher. According to Pym, the photographs have been online for years, so it doesn’t seem like they’re photoshopped because how would the person predict this very scenario years before it happened? The man who has seen everything has never seen anything like this. He is starting to wonder if this is the FBI or the CIA setting them up. The question is, why? Madeline knows why and she knows her brother is wrong. This woman has traveled time and space to come for them and they should have seen this coming.

Torture for the Truth

During a movie night with her mom, Lenore is ecstatic when she gets the injured woman to say one word. She goes to tell her dad about it but he is still using the cocaine he got from his brother Napoleon and he can only concentrate on bowling in the living room–as you do when you are a billionaire. Lenore can barely catch his attention so she keeps it brief, just one question: how come the doctors didn’t come by when they said they would? Freddy tells her not to worry, he is taking care of everything and her mother is doing so much better. It doesn’t seem like he is taking care of anything, and that is probably on purpose. Lenore is worried, and she should be. When we next see her father he is snorting lines next to his wife’s bed and mixing up some drugs to put it into her IV. She looks terrified,has he done this before? She tries to signal to him to stop but instead, he asks her if she can still hear him after he renders her motionless. On this cocktail, she can hear and see but cannot move and he is giddy over that idea. He has torture on his mind and we know why, he wants vengeance for whatever he thinks she did with Perry. With a cruel look in his eyes we know Morelle is in for a long 12 hours of whatever he is planning.

With everyone looking for Roderick, Madeline finds him camped out in the office basement talking to that brick wall again. She is surprised to hear he has been doing that for weeks now and tries to get him to leave by reminding him that it is Goldbug launch day and he should be seen by the press offering support to his daughter. If not for her, he can at least be there for the company because, with all of these deaths and trials, they’re drowning in the markets. Surprisingly, Tammy is acting more like the savior to the Usher family than he is and his sister calls him out on it. He ignores her and asks if she hears the bells, and Mads leans down like she’s going to listen and then smacks him in the face! He needs to get it together. She seems to be the only one in the family who hasn’t been mentally affected by what’s going on but that might change soon. Madeline knows what’s going on and he does too, so she has no idea why he’s playing stupid. He was there that night and he remembers what Verna said so none of what has happened should be a surprise. He acts like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about and again he hides behind his diagnosis. His brain and heart are dying, so he is not even sure if she’s real, he isn’t interested in worrying about a bartender who may or may not be 122 years old, because what is real is he has no desire to go upstairs and make an appearance for Tammy’s sake.

The press room is packed with everyone waiting for Tammy and her Goldbug presentation. Her father isn’t there but Juno is in the front row trying to support her stepdaughter. Perhaps she thought they had a connection at the house and since the woman is desperate for family she thought maybe the last living daughter would be too. Madeline gives Tammy a pep talk but all she wants to know from her aunt is where her father is. If Goldbug is such an asset to the company, then why isn’t he there to cheer her on? Madeline shrugs it off as just a man thing, they are “both stupid and simple” and she doesn’t need them anyway. It’s her beautiful face on the cover of this company–not Bill’s and not Roderick’s. Then she gives us a little insight into her love life when she mentions–with contempt, her first husband who bored her to tears. Even though Tammy misses her husband, her Aunt Madeline tells her she’s better off without him. We watch as her niece shakes off her pain to try to emulate the cold and unfeeling attitude of her aunt.

Break Both Legs

 Eventually, the insomnia catches up with her, because moments before Tamy is supposed to go on stage, she dozes off for a minute and when she wakes up she hears Verna doing her speech. She rushes onto stage dropping F-bombs in front of the press and it is an embarrassing start to the launch that she struggles to recover from. It was not Candy she heard but the host who was about to introduce her. The audience is stunned by her outburst but as she starts her Goldbug pitch the crowd settles in for the show. As she talks about her company changing lives and the world–a common theme with this family, she notices Verna sitting in the audience wearing the same green dress she is wearing and this stalker has gone too far. She starts to see the woman everywhere; in the audience and the video playing behind her. That’s when things take a violent turn because the Goldbug ads running on the big screens behind her switch to a sex tape of her, Bill, and Candy! She freaks out takes the microphone stand and starts smashing the monitors. Everyone in the audience starts getting flustered and when she turns to see Verna get up out of her seat, Tammy launches the microphone stand at her but it hits Juno in the face instead! Tammy runs from the auditorium at the same time Aunt Mads is stalking the audience looking for that bartender, she knows she must be in the room. Her eyes lock on Verna across the room and she pushes her way through the crowd until she grabs Verna! She touches her but the woman disappears like smoke and leaves black soot on Madeline’s hands.

Back at Tammy’s house, the reality of what just went down with her precious company starts to set in. She is a mess and it is only going to get worse from here. Candy is in the house pretending to be her as she talks on the phone to Bill about the launch. It’s as if Tammy is watching a performance of her life and the escort is in the starring role. She can’t take it anymore and grabs a fire poker and tries to swing it at Verna but the vision disappears and then reemerges down a mirrored hallway talking about calling Bill. Tammy still has time to apologize, she can lay down the fire poker and make amends with her husband since it is obvious she loves him. Even if the Usher’s heart can’t function properly. One by one she smashes the mirrors when she sees Verna’s reflection and the glass shards lodge in her face and feet. Verna starts to insult her about the twin she absorbed in the womb–a clear indication she thinks Tammy is toxic to everything she touches. Tammy doesn’t know who this woman is so Verna says maybe she’s that twin “I spent 40 years growing strong enough to take over your brain.” Candy’s voice echoes in her head as she makes her way to her bedroom and her mirrored ceiling. When she looks up she sees Verna looking down at her and in one of the most beautiful death scenes I’ve seen on television, Tammy leaps into the air and swings the fire poker at the mirror! As she floats down to her bed the shards of glass impale her and she dies, a bloody and lonely death. Five dead Usher kids and one more horrible Froderick to go! If we have learned anything about the ravens in this episode, it’s that they might deliver good fortune but they will rip it away with ease like the little devilish minions they are.