episode two of “the third day” get’s so many things right, and a bit worse

The Third Day’s second episode, called “Saturday - The Son”, continues to make things weird for our main character: Sam. Jude Law finds more and more clues as to why the island is so obscure and mysterious, and audiences get lots of fascinating imagery, but to match that intrigue is the growing frustration of the lack of explanations for all these weird happenings. Also, it can get hard to watch Law’s character stick on this place when every instinct should be telling him to get the hell off. As the series provides more excuses for his stay, the actor does give another above-average performance, and so does Katherine Waterston, who joins us in this week’s episode. They somewhat keep you invested, but how mediocre can this thing get?

What truly keeps this series from being anywhere near a good watch are the questions that keep piling up like a Jenga tower. The oddities of last week’s adventure obviously continue to haunt Sam as the continuation runs on, and that brings many confusing realizations to viewers. First off, the island apparently appears familiar to him, but does it? Has he even been there before? There are also strange mask-clad people attempting to kill him with makeshift weapons. Is it in his head? And then there’s Epona’s grief-stricken father who blames him for her death. Wait, what? Isn’t Epona alive and well? What is this series doing to my mind? The agony of it all makes for a disappointingly upsetting hour with a few good scares and a pair of solid performances.

Hopefully HBO will tie in all our desperate questions later on in the next few episodes, but so far, all we’ve gotten is a conjunction of potentially exciting and terrifying doors with no keys. If, perhaps, we are able to unlock the mysterious we want to solve in the future, I will give it more credit than it’s getting from me at the moment. However, nothing resembling that has shown up yet. It’s truly a disjointed mess that struggles to keep itself together with the lacking amount of positives the series holds on to. The Third Day is in equal parts surreal, gorgeous, and awfully chaotic…Something that grabs your attention, but doesn’t quite know what to do with it. The acting keeps it afloat, but the horror show needs a real boost.

Also, I forgot to mention in last week’s review of episode one that we have a newcomer, Jess (Katherine Waterston). The two met when Sam entered his given room, and found her sleeping in the bed. From there on out, they were magnetic, inseparable. Romantic? Eh, not so much, their relationship is more weird than lovely, just like literally everything that happens in this thing. His descent into madness is one of the show’s main strengths, as returning director Marc Munden successfully makes his maddening world quite relatable to the one we’re living in right now. He’s locked in this desolate place, and everything feels so relevant. But that also causes a few issues.

The character! He’s a family man, he loves his children…It’s all lovely stuff, but it becomes harder and harder to relate to Sam when he keeps making the most baffling decisions. At first, he’s desperate to get out of the place, with no cell reception, and his broken down vehicle. Sometime in the afternoon, the causeway is submerged by the tide, and there isn’t any way to get to the mainland. Each day that his stay goes by, he has sudden urges to explore. He always turns around when he’s finally at the connector to civilization, he actually goes near those psychotic killers, he heads into the woods. All very good decisions for the story, but increasingly irritating for us audiences wishing he would drive away. It’s that easy, SAMUEL. Episode three better be a masterpiece, or this show is losing a viewer.

The final opinion is: The Third Day’s “Saturday - The Son” is a fascinating and well-acted continuation, if only everything would just get a bit clearer now. Ah, whatever, this hurts my brain. I would say…SKIP IT

TV Review: The Third Day - Episode 2

episode two of “the third day” get’s so many things right, and a bit worse

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