Mr. Mercedes recap: 'Nobody Puts Brady in a Crestmore'
As I wrote at the time, last week’s Mr. Mercedes ended with an incredibly tense thriller sequence that was the highlight of the season so far for me. So this week’s episode, understandably, is mostly about the fallout from Bill’s battle with the Brady-controlled Al in his home.
Ida is the first-responder in this case. After distracting Al long enough for Bill to shoot him, she helps Bill to his feet and mops up his blood, while her date calls the ambulance. There’s actually no need for that last part, though, because Donna already called the cops after hearing the whole encounter play out over the phone. This has shaken her quite a bit. Just as she was finally reconnecting with Bill and helping him find a life beyond police work, she literally hears him murder a man over the phone. Thankfully for Bill, the homicide is easy enough to explain. Al’s already been in trouble with the law for killing Montez’s dog and stealing his gun, and once the cops go to his house and find his brother Reggie dead on the floor, it seems like an open-and-shut case. Bill and Montez, of course, know that there’s more to it than that. But that will be tough to explain.
It will be even tougher for them to act against Brady once Felix Babineau finally gets what he’s wanted. The last time we saw Brady, his internal mind-cave exploded after Bill killed Al. We see Brady waking up on the floor of his destroyed cave. His readings are crazy, and in the wake of this destruction, it seems Brady’s control is not what it was; he inadvertently moves his finger while Felix can see. That’s all the proof Felix needed that his insane, illegal treatment is working — he’s going to fight like hell to get his name in the medical history textbooks.
Holly, though, has other ideas. While Bill’s friends are all visiting him in the hospital, she sneaks into Brady’s room and uses tape to secure a sample of his hair. I thought for sure Brady was going to use the opportunity to take control of her mind, but thankfully he’s still too weak for that.
Felix could sure use a win with Brady because he’s losing his contest with Cora. He may have won their battle last week, but she’s still winning the war. In retaliation for him holding her passport hostage, she’s now helping her pharmaceutical partners exile him from the project.
NEXT: Wakey, wakey
Felix’s only hope is to make progress very fast, so he pulls strings with the attorney general (Montez’s boss) to stop Montez and Bill from transferring Brady to the secure facility at Crestmore. In doing so, he also stops Montez’s dream of prosecuting Brady and riding that publicity to the top job. Instead, the attorney general now wants to prosecute Brady himself. And even though the sweater-clad hospital manager now agrees that Brady must be transferred before any more of his employees turn up dead, the attorney general is friendly with the hospital owner himself. I really like how this season has showcased the conditions under which evil is allowed to grow and thrive. Instead of dealing with Brady like the mass murderer he is, everyone sees him as their own ticket to fame, history, and money. I suspect there will be more dead bodies to come.
While visiting Bill in the hospital, Holly has an emotional moment coming to terms with how much she cares for him. That’s not even her only major character development this episode. After providing Brady’s hair sample to her contact and asking his chemist friend to scan the sample for various illegal drugs, she even asks him out. Love to see Holly come into her own; really hope nothing extremely horrible happens to her in the next few episodes.
I’m not clear exactly sure what’s going on in the wreckage of Brady’s brain, but apparently, he’s waking up. I had been waiting for his mother to show up in his ghost-filled dreamscape, and she finally does — wearing the creepy clown mask, of course, because nothing in Brady’s brain is normal. After that, though, Brady follows his little brother up the stairs of his brain basement, walking up into the light.
This is followed by an apparition of Brady in his ice-cream-man uniform whispering to a sleeping Bill. When Bill wakes up, he immediately drives to the hospital — where Brady is nowhere to be found. I’ll admit, I was a little confused by the structure of these last 10 or so minutes. First, we see Brady about to be transferred, until Felix stops it. Then Bill arrives shortly after, and Brady’s gone. But it’s not clear whether he got up and walked out on his own, or got transferred against Felix’s orders, or what. It’s a little too confusing to be a cliffhanger. But now that we’ve recovered from last week’s action, I’m excited to see where we go in this season’s final two episodes.
