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.