Photo: Elizabeth Fisher/Paramount+
I’m sorry, Evil, I didn’t realize I was going to roll up to my weekly wackadoodle horror show and sob repeatedly. Admittedly, as both a writer and a member of the Dead Dad Club, an episode that features a demon that steals your words and the demon of grief did hit close to home! Evil has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, but one of its most impressive is that it relishes in being completely off-the-wall bonkers and yet also can be so emotionally affecting on a personal, human level. How does it do that? I remain amazed. While I may have a personal connection to “How to Build a Coffin,” even at an objective level, I can’t stop thinking about this episode. It’s easily one of Evil’s top 5. It has everything you could want out of this show — including so much Sister Andrea; there is never enough Sister Andrea. Grab your bowl of mini marshmallows, you little demons, and let’s dive in.
Father Ignatius has called on our assessors to help out a couple in the parish, Jennifer and Stuart, who are at their wit’s end. Stuart is an entertainment reporter, and not long ago, he had an episode on air that looked very much like he was having a stroke; Only nothing of the sort is showing up on CAT scans. He’s only getting worse and they have no idea what to do. Jennifer thinks that even simply the power of persuasion of an exorcism might help snap him out of it. It all feels par for the course, relatively speaking.
Then, in true Evil fashion, things get weirder. It seems like Stuart’s condition is somehow spreading. And not just to his wife, but to David, Kristen, Ben, and even Father Ignatius. They’re all having issues finding the right words as if they’ve just been snapped right out of their pretty little heads. Enter Sister Andrea. She, as always, knows what’s up. Stuart for sure needs an exorcism — there is a demon afoot. And he’s a nasty boy — not in the fun way. Sister Andrea has been tracking this guy as he wreaks havoc on everyone he’s around, and he just grows bigger and bigger with every word he steals. No, really, we watch him expand in real-time. It is something you can’t unsee, unfortunately. Eventually, the team schedules an exorcism for Stuart, and while the exorcist priest does his weak-ass thing, David lets Sister Andrea attend so she can take care of business. On the outside, her business looks a lot like a crazed woman wielding a pair of giant ceremonial scissors around at nothing in particular, but we know she’s a badass demon warrior. This time around, the demon himself winds up being his own worst enemy: He grows so large that he can’t fit through the doorway to escape and Sister Andrea pops that dude like hellish pimple he is. Case closed!
But this is not the only demon the good Sister needs to contend with at the moment. While doing Father Ignatius’s laundry (don’t get me started), she notices what seems like very large bite marks in all of his shirts. Sister Andrea has no time to explain herself to people who probably wouldn’t believe her anyway, so she simply starts investigating what’s going on with Father Ignatius’s side on her own. He is very put off by it! Apparently, Monsignor Korecki warned him about Sister Andrea, calling her “reverent but occasionally unbalanced,” which feels like a compliment, if we’re being honest.
Father Ignatius is having trouble sleeping and winds up falling asleep in the middle of the day a lot; he laments to Jennifer, who asks how he’s holding up in the wake of Father Korecki, Matt’s death. He is finding it best to simply plow through the day and focus on work. When Andrea finds him asleep at his desk one afternoon, she finally gets a nice look at what’s going on: A giant hole has been burrowed in his side (only she can see it) but a tiny demon with a big New York accent, who is currently pulling out pieces of Father Ignatius and filling him with rocks. When Father wakes up startled, she tries to explain that they need to talk about his side — there is something weighing him down. Get it?
Sister Andrea returns and lures this tiny demon out of the hole he’s burrowed with a bowl of mini-marshmallows, as one does. Her trap works, and she’s able to get a little face time with the tiny guy, interrogating him to try to figure out exactly what kind of demon he is. It doesn’t take long. Eventually, the demon turns his sights on her and starts talking to her about futility and the meaninglessness of life and how she could’ve had a life with her great love Paul, but she gave it all away for God and now Paul is dead. She knows it now for sure: he is the demon of grief. He prefers to be called Tommy. Icon, legend, the moment Andrea Martin is so moving in this scene while doing so little; the change in her face as the grief demon brings up Paul is all you need to know exactly what she’s feeling. Martin is such an asset to this show, it cannot be overstated!!
Knowing who this demon is, now Sister Andrea can figure out a better way to help Father Ignatius — luring the grief demon away with marshmallows just won’t cut it. She decides, instead, to talk to him about Matt. Father Ignatius has been bottling up and avoiding his grief, providing the perfect opportunity for that grief demon to take hold. He bristles at her mention of the Monsignor, but she presses on, she is forcing the conversation. This scene is magic. Martin and Wallace Shawn are so wonderful here and the dialogue is simple but powerful and so true to the grief experience (this episode was written by Aurin Squire and directed by Darren Grant). She simply brings up thinking about how funny Matt was and suddenly you can see that weight lifted from Father’s shoulders. He is lost in his memories of this man he loved and it feels good. “Does it hurt thinking about him?” she asks, knowing of course it does. “Very few people want to talk about people that died, why is that?” she wonders. But she already knows the answer: “We’re afraid of hurting.” But then Father Ignatius says something so true and so lovely, that you know this scene was written by someone who understands grief: “I’m hurting, but it makes me smile. Matt made me smile.” This myth has been perpetuated around grief that it’s easier to not bring it up — but easier for who? In truth, pretending like it didn’t happen can be even worse. Yeah, it’s sad and painful to talk about the person you lost, but it turns out acting like that person never existed or burying their memory hurts even more. Will you sometimes find yourself sobbing into your chicken salad hoagie because you used to split chicken salad hoagies with that person who is now gone? 100 percent. But it feels so much better in the long run to talk about them. You have to remember them. Otherwise, that pesky grief demon is going to get you. Even just this short conversation between Sister Andrea and Father Ignatius does wonders and before long that grief demon has nothing left to do but hop out of the hole in Father Ignatius’s side and flip Sister Andrea the bird. She won. She promptly stomps on his head.
But if you thought that was the only emotionally devastating scene Evil is serving up in this episode, you are dead wrong. Wait, should I not use dead? Too soon? We had a very close call!
Leland Townsend is learning about the joys of fatherhood, by which I mean antichrist Timmy is projectile vomiting, shitting everywhere, and on top of all of that, he just will not stop screaming. Being a parent is life-changing, isn’t it? He is going out of his mind. He enlists Sheryl’s help and for the price of several demon transfusion bottles (you know, the stuff keeping the pep in her step), she arrives and quickly realizes the only thing that will soothe this baby is the sound of his birth mother’s voice.
Thankfully, Leland has an in at Kurt Boggs’s office and he has his minion send him all of Kurt’s recordings of Kristen’s sessions so he can play them on a loop and enjoy that sweet sound of silence. But those recordings offer him much more than a reprieve from a screaming antichrist — it gives him an idea on how to tackle his Kristen problem. For exact reasons that have yet to be revealed, Leland really, really needs Kristen to be an integral part of Timmy’s life. In one recording, Kristen is crying about Laura’s health. She admits that if Laura were to die, the only way she’d be able to cope would be to have another baby right away. She also tells Kurt that Andy always wanted a boy and maybe that’s why he keeps leaving. Leland realizes he’s been playing this game all wrong: He needs Kristen and Andy closer together and now he knows how to get Kristen on board with another baby: Kill Laura. Leland is so fucked it is terrifying. And also the best.
Leland Feliz Navidads the hell out of poor Andy and he arrives for one more little hypnosis session in the closet. This time, Leland uses it to inform Andy that he is going to kill Laura as she sleeps. He is going to wake up at 3 a.m. and inject her with a serum that will cause cardiac arrest. She was supposed to die two years ago anyway. Andy is unable to move, but you can see him trying to fight these orders already, tears rolling down his face. I don’t think Patrick Brammall gets enough credit for how good he is in this role. (Also have you seen his show Colin From Accounts? So good and so different from Andy!)
Evil has given us some truly intense sequences over the years, but have any been full of such palpable dread as when Andy goes home and slowly starts playing out this plan. He hands Laura the little packet of herbs to help her sleep, as instructed, and tells her she is the best daughter in the world — Laura is so loving. Evil is really priming us for something awful. I cannot express just how panicked I was having an internal debate throughout all of this: On one hand, I was sure Evil could never kill off a Bouchard daughter, but on the other, I was sure Evil had no rules! Evil does whatever it wants!
At 3 a.m., Andy wakes from a dead sleep and walks into the room where his four daughters are sleeping peacefully. He slowly pulls off Laura’s sock to inject her between her toes, but again, he is trying so hard to fight it. Leland’s hypnosis is strong, but Andy’s love for his kid is stronger, sorry Satan! He shakes as he hovers above her foot with the needle and finally is able to inject it into his own arm. He collapses on the bedroom floor. The entire few minutes are almost unbearable, in the best way.
I did shriek, worried that Andy might be dead — if they’re killing off any Bouchard, it’s going to be this guy, sorry — but we find him and Kristen in the hospital the next day. He’s had a “cardiac episode,” but will recover. She hops on the phone with her guys and tells him that she found a needle in his hand. She is at a loss. When Andy wakes up, Kristen suggests a 12-step program. The needle, again, points to a drug habit Andy must be covering up. But Andy continues to refute that. He doesn’t know what is exactly wrong, but he knows that it isn’t that. It’s something else. It’s something worse,” he tells Kristen. He wants to be committed to a psychiatric hospital upstate. He wants to be kept separate from Kristen and the girls because he’s afraid, for some reason he cannot explain, that he’s going to hurt them. Kristen sobs on top of him. “I want our old life back,” she says. Through tears, “We’ll get it back,” Andy assures her. HOLY HELL when Kristen finds out that Leland is behind all of this she is going to do so much worse than slamming his face in with a high heel.
But before that, she’ll have more than just Leland to contend with. As the camera pulls out, we find that little grief demon hanging out outside of their hospital room. Grief demons are nothing if not persistent.
• Renee’s back! You remember Renee from season three, right? The woman from Science Club who was also the leader of a cult and hooked up with Ben? Well, his jinn, a qareen, he believes, calls her to hook up and Ben has no recollection of the call. It winds up being a good thing because he can actually talk to her about what’s going on. She thinks he could be experiencing a multiverse theory situation here. The ion beam could’ve split him into two realities and in one the jinn is real.
• Ben’s jinn does seem to be getting more powerful — now it’s terrorizing him by sexualizing his relationship with Kristen and getting angry about his scientific theories always being sidelined. Ben’s trying to drown it out, but it’s getting more and more difficult. I’m worried!
• “I actually didn’t need many words last night.” Mr. Shakir!!
• Anyone else find it deliciously, well, evil, that Evil gives us that scene in which the nuns at St. Joseph’s are told they need to take on even more of the cooking and cleaning in order to free up the priests for prayers and other very important priestly duties? That it’s the women who really need to think about “what our Lord means by service?” Sister Andrea is experiencing the same kind of misogyny in the workplace that Sheryl is over in demon central. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on Team Demon or Team God, fuck the patriarchy!
• Oh and hey, happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there who will fight demonic hypnosis to do right by their kids!
