Salem Recap - The Stone Child

Its another day in Salem and Reverend Mather is not doing well.  He’s drinking, crying and monologuing.  Also asking himself very deep questions and complaining about America.  His Harvard experience is clearly serving him well here.  Mather begins to question his faith and his belief in what he’s doing and begs God for a sign.

Instead we get the new opening credits.  Based on how similar they are to American Horror Story, maybe we should interpret the sign as “rip-off”?

Witches. Marilyn Manson.  Bibles.  People falling on the ground.  Creepy dolls.

Anyway, Isaac is trudging through the woods carrying a cart behind him.  There is a ravine of some sort filled with dead bodies and he dumps in a fresh one.  Where are these all coming from?  Mather only said he killed 3 witches so they must have died of other causes.  Unless he’s lying or drunk, which is always a possibility. 

At the best little whorehouse in Salem, Mather decides to take a break from his studies and engage in more banter with the local lady of the evening.  They talk about filling holes and its pretty gross.  Mather also appears to have serious daddy issues and its quite tedious.  Hopefully he’s paying her well.

There’s a scuffle outside and Alden bursts through the door causing Mather and his lady to scatter.  Alden threatens to kill Mather and instead of defending himself Mather talks about expecting a visit from the Angel of Death since he was a child.  Yikes, this is what a lifetime of hearing about original sin will do to a child. 

In the midst of their confrontation, Mather tells Alden that hellfire is not actually fire, but is instead a pit of burning black tar.  Oh so that’s what the witches were doing in the forest, actually opening the gates of hell.  That seems like a fairly bad idea.  Lets see how this all plays out.

Mather realizes that Alden knows something important and agrees to go to the woods with him to see for himself.  They are intercepted by Hale who wants to imprison Alden for causing a scene during Giles Corey’s stoning.  Alden tries to fight back but he’s overpowered and thrown in that weird holding cell they built in the town square.

Embroidery of the damned.  Mary is relaxing with some needlepoint in her room when Hale comes in for a visit.  They discuss the problem of Alden and Mary claims that Alden is her problem to deal with.  She informs Hale that she is in charge and he must listen to her.  Interesting how everyone has to toe the line with her.  Is this just because she’s the richest woman in Salem or is she somehow the special-ist witch that ever witched?

Isaac is leading Mather through the forbidden forest and filling him in on what he and Alden saw the night of the witches Sabbath.  Then Isaac says a really bizarre thing about how he’s killed a lot of pigeons, but its really sad that the witches killed a dove.  Whats the story there?  Why are you killing pigeons Isaac? 

Mather discovers a weird opening in a tree that he claims is like a cauldron but actually looks a lot more like something out of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting to me.  He sticks his arm in the vagina tree and like a perverse delivery pulls out a human hand incrusted with bugs and various witchy symbols. 

Mary goes to visit Alden in prison and tries to get him to leave Salem.  In turn, he tries to convince her to come with him.  Sounding like a bratty teenage girl, she tells him ”he’s too late. Its over”.  She might as well tell him that she deleted all his pictures from her Facebook page.  I can’t decide if its a deliberate choice that all the scenes with Mary and Alden make her seem about 10 years younger than her scenes with anyone else.  Is this to show the more vulnerable side of the character or does Shane West just bring out the petulant side of everyone?

Alden gets in one good burn (pardon the pun?) when he gives his half of the silver coin to some beggars.  Not really sure if half a coin is that valuable to them, but since this act is SYMBOLIC and MEANINGFUL it doesn’t really matter.

Elsewhere in Salem, a young girl is in the late stages of labor.  The local midwife is about the deliver when Mary storms in and demands to know the name of the baby’s father.  She tries to refuse to let the baby be delivered until the girl gives up the name.  Everyone in Salem is obsessed with people giving up names. 

The midwife, Bridget, tries to reason with Mary, but she eventually forces the girl to tell her the name of the father.  Pause.  Is this going to be Bridget Bishop?  I bet it is and that she will be dead by the end of the episode.  Several hundred year old spoilers I guess?  Bridget Bishop was the first person hanged for witchcraft in Salem.  She owned a tavern and apparently used to like to wear provocative clothes which for Puritans probably meant you could see her wrists or earlobes or something.  As far as I know, she wasn’t a midwife though which means Salem is taking yet more liberties with historical events.  Shocking I know.

Viewing the birth causes Mary to have flashbacks to her own terminated pregnancy and the music of infinite sadness and regret plays.

Hales is tromping through the woods when he meets up with a strange man with a Mohawk.  Okay sure, I’ll just go with it.  Mohawk man takes Hale back to his shack ‘o dead animals and Hale demands to know who broke their circle and interrupted their black Sabbath dance party.  Mohawk man performs some sort of ritual on a dead (?) lizard with creepy sewn shut eyes and it starts breathing in a very fake looking way.  Hey Salem, maybe you should scoot on over to SyFy and hire some of the designers on Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge.  They all seem like lovely people.

Mary walks in the church and we see that Mercy Lewis has been hung up and shackled to the cross and Bridget, Anne Hale and other women of the community are praying for her.  Alden isn’t around so its Bridget’s job to try to convince everyone that there are no such thing as witches and what Mercy needs is prescription drugs and maybe some nice hair extensions. 

Bridget takes it one step further though and accuses the town’s governing body, the Selectmen, and also the Puritans (of which she is one? confusing) of purposely exploiting the witch panic to control the townspeople.  Oh Bridget, you are not long for this world now.

In Mary’s chambers, she and Tituba fight about Mary’s commitment to her “duties”.  There is talk about the blood of innocents and its all rather menacing.  Mary decides that they need a sign to prove to everyone that the threat of witches is real.  And probably to punish Bridget for speaking out against her and the rulers of the town.  Then Mary tells Sibley that she only needs to kill 9 more innocents and her grand rite is complete.  Wow.  I don’t quite know what to make of this news.  I mean we knew Mary was a witch and therefore up to no good, but I thought she was more of the “a boy was mean to me and I’m terribly misunderstood and special so I’m going to try out witchcraft for a while in between watching The Craft  and shopping for black eyeliner” variety.  Like a lot of the girls in my middle school.    Not the actually evil kind who kills people.  I have no idea how they are going to pull out a satisfying redemption arc for Mary this season and its kind of great.  Good job Salem.  Please show more evil Mary and less pouty, journal writing Mary.

Three prostitutes walk into a midwife…
Bridget tries to deliver the baby, but its breech so she has to turn it.  When she touches the woman though, the laboring woman sees the old hag from last episode and runs out of bed where her water breaks and she delivers a stillborn baby onto the floor.  Sad.

Alden, Mather and Isaac are hanging out in Mather’s study and talking about what they’ve seen.  I find this scene oddly appealing and I kind of wish the rest of this show would be about the three of them traveling around hunting witches and exploring their differences all the while realizing they were the same all along.  Like a buddy comedy, but with more hanging.

The cheerful mood is broken however when Isaac informs Alden that he is responsible for dumping the “unwanteds”(Indians, slaves, Giles Corey)  into the ditch we saw at the beginning of the episode. Alden demands they go and reclaim Giles’ body.  When they go into the ditch Mather is carrying the world’s brightest lantern.  Its seriously a super bright concentrated beam that looks like one of the flashlights Mulder and Scully used on X-Files.  This scene really serves no point so I’m fixated on the lantern beam.  Why is it so bright?  Witchcraft?!?

Mary is talking to the prostitute who lost her baby in a weird kin d of throne room space.  She tells a highly abridged version of her own lost baby and convinces the woman to testify against Bridget Bishop. 

Mary tells Mather that she has the sign he’s been looking for and reveals the dead baby which she’s placed in a jar.  She tells him they would be lost without him and walks away towards the camera looking extremely smug.

Mather puts Bridget on trial for being a witch.  He repeatedly questions her and forces her to answer for the deformed child.  Hale interrupts the questioning and once again acts like the voice of reason.  His criticism just riles Mather up more though which I’m guessing is exactly what Hale intended.  Alden joins in and throws his usual weirdly folksy wisdom into the mix.  He then suggests that the three prostitutes should also be put on trial since they were there too and one actually carried the baby.

Mather is not interested in putting his favorite plaything on trial, but Mary reacting to a nod from Tituba suggests that they all be brought before Mercy Lewis for judgement.  All three whores pass, but when its Bridget’s turn Mercy suddenly vomits a huge amount of blood and nails onto her.  Mary dryly asks if they should put it to a vote.  And just like that, she gets another threat out of her way.

Hale and Mary have a small council of war and he lets her know that he and “the others” have doubts about how she is handling things in Salem.  Hales says he saw his entire family burned at the stake and he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to him or his daughter.  Mary basically calls him a coward and assures him she has it handled.

Anne visits Alden in the tavern and begs to join forces with her and take action against the town.  He appreciates her passion and tells her she reminds him of someone he once knew.  Hint, its Mary.   Speak of the devil; she’s back at home when Alden comes to visit her.  He informs her that he will be taking his father’s open selectman seat and plans to fix Salem. 

Mary channels her anger and frustration into some black magic and fills a creepy doll (like there would be any other kind) with animal and insect bits and pieces of Anne’s hair.  I could seriously never be an evil witch.  Way too much touching gross stuff.  And obviously the whole being evil part.  The doll then appears in Anne’s room, honestly looking no different than the assortment of creepy dolls already on her dresser.  Not sure exactly what the doll is going to do yet, maybe just spy of her, but something tells me its very unwise of Mary to plan any sort of attack on Hale’s daughter no matter how jealous she might be.

So that’s where the second episode leaves off.  Its definitely much less nutty than the pilot, but I think that’s a good thing.  It wouldn’t be possible to sustain that level of crazy without numbing everyone to it eventually.  So I’m hoping Salem continues to dish out the weirdness in small doses and spends the remainder of the season building characters. 

Salem Recap - Episode 1 The Vow

So first a little background...

I chose Salem to start my recapping adventure because its been a common topic of discussion in my house. My husband works for Tribune Company of which WGN America is a part so we've been talking about this crazy new witch show for months now.  Somehow over the course of months of updates, promotion and teaser trailers (which seem to get increasingly full of sex and violence) I've made it my mission in life to be Salem's number one fan.

So imagine the depths of my despair when I learned that even though we live in Chicago (the home of WGN) we don't get WGN America so I would be unable to watch Salem this past Sunday.  Sidenote: Really WGN?  Premiering your super gory witch show on Easter?  I get that they probably didn't want to go head to head with the Mad Men season premiere, but still maybe consider waiting a week.

It only added insult to injury when my Salem app (yes, there is a Salem app and yes I downloaded it.  I said I was Salem's biggest fan) helpfully sent me a reminder on Sunday night telling me to be sure to watch Salem.  If only.

Anyway, I've since discovered its on hulu so my dreams are not yet crushed.

We start out in Salem (obviously) in September of 1685.  Two people are in stocks.  They are in bad shape.  The man, Issac is made to confess his sins.  He is given 10 lashes (or "ten hard ones" in the words of the local law enforcement) for the sin of self pollution.  Hard ones is an appropriate term for his particular sin I guess.  Issac screams as he's beaten and the man in charge, George Sibley, decides this punishment is not enough and young Issac should be branded with a scarlet F on his forehead for "fornicator".

Out of the crowd comes a cowboy.  Actually its our hero, John Alden, but he moves with enough swagger that he's practically Indiana Jones.  I already feel like Shane West's portrayal of this character is a little out of sync with everyone else.  He feels too modern somehow.

Alden is clearly a troublemaker.  And some guy who looks vaguely like Jon Voight tells him and us that Sibley won't be happy until Alden is dead.

Instead of killing him directly, Sibley sends Alden off to fight in the French and Indian War.  The night before he leaves, Alden meets up with his love Mary one last time (in a graveyard because why not).  He tells her he will come back for her and gives her half a silver coin while he keeps the other half.  Never in the history of ever has the phrase "I'll come back for you" ever worked out as planned.  I don't have high hopes for Alden and Mary.

Apparently before he left our love birds were doing a little fornicating of their own because Mary is now pregnant.  She confides in her maid Tituba who arranges a special ritual in the woods to take care of her problem.

Tituba leads Mary into the woods and she lays down in a clearing.  Mary is clearly unsure of what she wants to do, but Tituba convinces her that Mary will be punished severely if she has Alden's baby.  She rubs oil on a terrified Mary and suddenly things get all trippy.  Mary starts seeing horned devils, the trees bleed and her stomach is crawling with bugs.  Eventually she screams that, yes, she does want  the get rid of the baby and poof it disappears leaving her with a flat stomach.  Before Salem premiered there were stories of Wiccans getting upset over the depiction of witches, but I doubt the creators care if they are cool with showing an abortion scene.  In the first 10 minutes.  On Easter.

Anyway, title card.  Salem.

Its now 7 years later and much has changed.  Alden returns to find a new minister in town named Cotton Mather.  Salem seems to be taking the Titanic approach and is putting its fictional love story against the backdrop of actual historical events and people.

Mather seems super into the hellfire and brimstone brand of preaching and witch panic has swept the town.  One guy even seems to have a newspaper of some sort with the headline BLACK SABBATH!  The exclamation point is a nice touch, but as I learned in Newsies, headlines don't sell papes, newsies sell papes.

Alden heads to his house and is immediately threatened by not Jon Voight.  Oh IMDB tells me that not Jon Voight is actually supposed to be Giles Corey.  Interesting.  Is he squatting in Alden's house?  Its not explained, but Corey does drop a lot of other exposition on Alden including the fact that Mary is now married to Sibley (who in the seven years that have passed has become an invalid) and is the richest woman in town.  So much for waiting then.

Cotton Mather goes to the local tavern to recruit a few strong men to deal with a possessed girl. The camera zooms in to show his hand shaking noticeably.  Nerves?  DT's?  TV fatal hand disease?  We aren't told yet what the deal is.

The girl in question is Mercy Lewis and she is super possessed in the Emily Rose/Last Exorcism tradition.  She screams and contorts and speaks in voices.  She screams that an old woman is tormenting her, but the men see no one else in the room.  Mather tells the other men that the girl is obviously possessed and Alden lays down his theory that the girl needs "a doctor, not your prayers".  This is what I mean by Alden not fitting within the universe that Salem has created for itself.  We don't know yet exactly what Alden has seen in his time away from Salem, but its probably pretty unlikely that he's been spending much time in the company of Sigmund Freud.  But, this comment serves its purpose by letting Alden be the Agent Scully of this show...simultaneously the smartest person in the room and completely wrong about everything all the time.

After the men leave, we see the old woman too.  She jumps on top of Mercy and bites (?) her.  Unclear.

Its time for church!.  A woman tells her daughter to sit in the front row so she can "dazzle" Reverend Mather.  The girl is a typical sassy teenager and makes a snarky comment.  As you do.  In Salem...

 Mather is too busy delivering a super fun sermon about the devil to notice a cute girl anyway and he goes on and on about the threat of witches.  He yells that even though the have killed three witches already there are still witches in Salem and they could be anyone.  He appears to be losing his audience though because he is soon questioned by Magistrate Hale, the father of sassy girl and the doting mama.  Hale looks and sounds a bit like Lucius Malfoy, but he seems to be on the side of reason so he's cool for now.

Alden decides to get in on the fun and comments that if they are worried about witches, they should also be worried about goblins and dragons and other fairy tales.  This church service is clearly getting out of hand.  Maybe when you spend most of your life in church the usual rules of sitting quietly and listening to the sermon start to get a little old.  Or maybe these people are terrible Puritans.

Alden and Mary exchange frosty pleasantries and she invites him to a dinner that she and her husband are hosting.  Rude.  She's really rubbing her new status in his face.

Later Alden is hanging out at a bar and notices Issac staring at him.  Being a cowboy, or maybe Han Solo, Alden aims his gun at Issac's crotch and demands to know why he is staring.  Issac tells Alden that he is now known as Issac the Fornicator because of the F branded on his forehead.  Is he the only only one to get that brand?  Did they make a special F brand just for him?  Seems like a terrible waste of resources on Sibley's part.  Mary might not be the richest woman in Salem for long with that kind of spending.

Issac warns Alden about the very real threat of witches in Salem.  He begs Alden not to leave Salem again.

Back at Mercy's house, Mather is cutting off her hair and explaining to her father (another Reverend) that he must check her for a witch's teat.  His hand travels down her thigh as "up to no good music" begins to play...

Okay things just got crazy because now we are at a brothel and Mather is plowing some lady friend in a very non-Puritan way.  He's preaching the whole time, which must be tiresome for her.  Then they banter a bit about witches. Not really the smartest thing to do when you're a lady of the night and therefore an outsider in your society and could easily be blamed for any cow that turns up dead or crop that goes bad.

Mather runs in to Alden while he's leaving the brothel and has to make up some lame excuse.  Is this the least discrete brothel ever?  It seems to be right in the middle of town.

Blah blah, book learning vs. school of hard knocks.  We get it show...Mather and Alden are polar opposites.

Yay, more crazy stuff!  Mary drops her robe and tells Sibley its time for his feeding.  Um, gross. Actually its not Sibley she feeding.  She pulls a toad from his mouth and feeds it using the witches teat on her inner thigh we were helpfully told about earlier. Sibley seems to be some sort of prisoner in his own body as long as the toad is inside him.  Looks like Mary lost more than her baby in the woods seven years ago as she's now an actual witch set on getting vengeance on Sibley for sending Alden away to die.  When she looks in the mirror we see the same old woman who was tormenting Mercy.

At the dinner party, Hale toasts Mary and his wife uses the opportunity to throw her daughter at Mather again.  She's more interested in Alden though, but he's not really feeling her.  He looks down and is startled to see her face smiling up at him from between his legs.  Mary playing tricks or his own dirty mind?  Either way Mary is not thrilled to see the girl so interested in Alden.

Mary proves herself to be an independent minded woman by pointing out to Mather the irony that witches can deed their souls to the devil when by law they are not allowed to enter into a contract.  Smart girl.

Alden meets up with Mary outside and she tells him that she was told he was dead and thats why she moved on and married Sibley.  He tries to take the moral high ground by showing her that he kept his half of the silver coin even while he was captured, but she cuts him down by reminding him that he could have written her while he was in New York amassing a fortune of some sort.  Smart girl.  I like Mary so far.  Leg nipple notwithstanding.

In her room, Mary yells at Tituba.  Apparently Tituba was the one who told Mary that Alden was dead.  Mary mourns for her former life and Tituba way oversteps her bounds and basically tells Mary to get over herself because she has all the power now.  There is an awful lot of caressing going on right now...

Giles Corey shows up at Mary's house and tries to blackmail her.  He says he knows what Mary did in the woods the night she gave her baby to the woods.  He says either she will tell Alden or he will. Careful Giles.  You don't want to get on her bad side.

Mather is questioning Mercy to get her to give up names of the other witches, but she's under some sort of curse and can't speak their names.  Now we get the scene from the trailer where Mather straps Mercy into a harness and face mask and has he sniff out the witches like a dog.  This is some seriously messed up stuff.  Where did he even get this contraption?  Has he been building it in secret and waiting for a chance to try it out?

He leads Mercy around town and everyone is rightly horrified of the spectacle.  She stops in front of Mary for a long time before finally turning around and accusing Giles Corey. I told you so Giles.

Ah, so many historical inaccuracies right now!  First, where is Corey's wife?  She was accused of witchcraft before him and he was only accused when he tried to defend her.  As much as I think I like the inclusion of real historical figures to round out the story, I'm not sure about all this.

Corey refuses to plead either guilty or not guilty which is actually true.  Mary and Mather decide Corey must be pressed with stones until he enters a plea.  Corey eventually dies from the pressing, but he never pleads either way.  His last words are "more weight".  Okay, Salem, I forgive the inaccuracies.  Giles Corey is pretty badass.

Tituba is getting ready for a ritual by fashioning a piece of wood into some sort of phallic shaped device.  Interesting.  She lays Mary down on the bed and begins caressing her as ominous and potentially sexy time drumbeats start in the background.  Tituba calls to the devil and does...something...with the dildo while Mary closes her eyes and thinks of England.  Or Lucifer.

A ritual begins in the woods while Issac and Alden watch.  People in animal heads call upon demons (I think?) and they begin to rise from a pool of blood or tar.  Something black and slimy anyway.  The demons writhe around as rave music plays in the background.  Someone kills a dove and its all super trippy and weird.

Issac freaks out and fires his gun at the witches.  They all disappear and Mary snaps back into her body.

Later Mary and Hale meet up and we find out that they are in league and want to drive all the Puritans out of Salem so the witches can take over.

Is there anyone else watching?

Ever get really into a new TV show and realize that no one you know is watching it?  You want to share your every thought and theory but no one cares?  Your friends and family try to listen, but they just don't get it?

I am that person.  I always find myself getting very invested in TV shows that have like 12 people watching them.  Total.  So eventually I find my way to the internet and to the wonderful world of recaps and I feel like I have a community at last.  A virtual water cooler where I can agree about how it was really bogus when Johnny and Joyce left Sam to die in the snow on Siberia.  Or other such important issues.

So that's what I'm doing here.  Recapping some of the random shows that might never become popular, but that I am destined to love anyway.  Hopefully I can be a tiny beacon in the dark for those of us who tune in every week for the unpopular, unlovable and unwatched TV shows.

Anyone else watching?