Madeline Brewer in a scene from Netflix’s “Hemlock Grove” Season 2. Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer for Netflix.
We open in a motel that not even Norman Bates would want to operate. Roman (Bill Skarsgård) books a prostitute only to turn her down due to the bruises on her body.
Believing in customer service, the woman’s pimp offers a different girl and lists all of the types. Roman asks if any of them are “type A.” While the pimp thought Roman was referring to personality, the upir was actually referring to blood type.
Clearly not satisfied with the customer service, Roman feeds on and kills the pimp.
Now, that is how you start an episode. As for the rest of it, we saw the introduction of a new character and new problems for both the Godfrey and Rumancek family. Your recap, below!
From Lichfield to Hemlock Grove
“Orange Is The New Black” star Madeleine Brewer made her debut in this episode as Miranda Cates. Her story starts off with her driving down a stormy road, clearly fleeing away from something at home since she listens to voicemails from a man who seemed infuriated to see her gone.
Soon, Miranda isn’t very happy that she left home since practically seconds after her first scene begins, she is hit from the side of her car by a truck. With her head scratched and bloody, she stumbles upon Roman’s house and asks to use his phone. While this may seem like the beginning of every B-horror movie, Roman does not hurt her and instead allows her to wait inside for a tow truck.
Later, Miranda goes to Templar’s Towing and Repairs where she gets help from Peter. Repairing the car’s damages will total $3,200 and without insurance, Miranda is not able to foot the bill. But Peter tries to be a nice little puppy and looks into used car parts for her. The two of them bond and seem to hit it off but Peter is not thrilled when he realizes Miranda is staying with Roman. When Peter tells her to watch herself, Miranda’s response is nothing short of ironic.
“What’s he going to do?” Miranda asks. “Eat me?”
Is this foreshadowing? With Roman, we can never tell.
Miranda almost takes Peter’s advice and lies to Roman about calling a cab and booking a hotel but tries to make nice by telling Roman that when she becomes a rich and famous author and collects art, she will look him up. Roman, however, insists that Miranda stays at his place.
As Miranda connects with Roman, we learn that she was traveling to California from Bangor to get away after a bad break-up, likely with the same man who left her all of those voicemails.
We also learn that Miranda’s father died from an explosive device in Afghanistan and of course, she has to have sexual tension with Roman because they both have dead fathers. That is the foundation of every good TV romance. It almost becomes something more when Roman kisses Miranda on the neck but she turns him down and says she should get to bed.
However, that does not stop Roman from watching his new friend take a shower. But he’s probably just checking out all of the crazy tattoos painted on her body.
The Rumancek family
Things start off much easier for our favorite family of gypsies than it did in the previous episode with Destiny (Kaniehtiio Horn) getting reunited with her lover, Andreas (Luke Camilleri),but the sunny days do not last long for the Rumancek family.
For starters, Peter (Landon Liboiron) can no longer visit Lynda in jail since she had her visitation privileges suspended after assaulting a corrections officer. That doesn’t sound like the sweet mother we’ve grown to love but this is actually the least of Peter’s worries since he now has these disturbing dreams to worry about.
This time, in addition to seeing the white mask and snake, he also sees a motel, gunfire and the words “GONE SIS” in neon letters. To figure out the meaning of these dreams, Peter enlists the help of Destiny. For some reason, Destiny has the power to interpret dreams when she drinks a concoction with the dreamer’s spit mixed in. There’s some things we’ll probably never understand about this show.
It gets more terrifying when, after drinking, a mist surrounds Destiny and worms crawl through her skin. This causes her to vomit and lose consciousness.
After this experience, Destiny is terrified and tells Peter that there’s something out there, it’s bad and Peter should not be a part of it.
Of course, the show would not be entertaining if Peter actually listened. After talking to Andreas, Peter learns that “GONE SIS” is actually the name of a trailer park for “horny truckers” called “WAGONEER OASIS” with some of the letters darkened.
Peter goes to the Wagoneer Oasis to learn the truth about these dreams.
Dougray Scott (L) and Joel de la Fuente (R) in a scene from Netflix’s “Hemlock Grove” Season 2. Credit: Steve Wilkie for Netflix.
The Godfrey family
No one has a bigger problem than Olivia (Famke Janssen) though. She is actually starting to experience what some may call “human emotions.” It turns out the injections administered by Pryce affect the part of her brain responsible for empathy. She even feels bad for a bird after it flies into her window and dies.
These emotions end up inspiring Olivia to talk to Roman (who just received a horse as a gift — more on that later) about the cravings he is experiencing. She tells him that he will get more bloodthirsty every day and to come to him before he messes things up for the other upirs. Roman, not wanting anything to do with his mother, immediately pushes her aside. Later on though, Olivia lies to Pryce and says the conversation with Roman went well.
On the other side of the Godfrey family, Norman (Dougray Scott) and Marie (Laurie Fortier) are filing a wrongful death suit against Godfrey for what happened to Letha. Will Pryce finally get what’s coming to him?
Later, Olivia calls Norman to let him know she was thinking of him but only gets his voicemail. Olivia, who refuses to have human feelings, flicks the dead bird off of her windowsill with her cane.
Olivia’s parenting skills seem to have been passed on to Roman as he struggles with fatherhood and is clueless about what to do with his crying daughter. But at least Roman does find time to eat a snack as he made a new meaning of being so hungry, he could eat a horse. In case you didn’t understand that reference, he ate his horse.
The return of the white-masked man, oh, make that “white-masked men”
Toward the end of the episode, a drunk older man wanders through the woods and stumbles upon what looks like a baptism with one fully clothed man splashing holy water on a shirtless man.
When the two men turn around, it is revealed that they are both wearing the white masks introduced in the premiere and are not happy about being discovered. So, they kill the man by wrapping a wire around his neck, causing blood to squirt on one of the man’s faces. If the guys didn’t want to be discovered that badly, couldn’t they have just done a private baptism?
Let’s hope the identities of these masked men will be revealed as Peter goes to Wagoneer Oasis.
Grade: B+
Check out the recap of the last episode here.
Follow Jeremy Rodriguez on Twitter: @RodriguezJeremy
