The CBS procedural takes a bold, weird step toward next week’s season finale.
Meanwhile, three long-running story arcs boil over in a script credited to Dewayne Darian Jones.
Kristen (Katja Herbers) tries to keep the shows very first monster behind bars.
Credit: Elizabeth Fisher/CBS
Her heart-afflicted daughter Laura (Dalya Knapp) goes to the hospital.
And Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson) reveals his unexpected past and an even more unexpected friend.
And Justice x 2 benefits from talented guest stars Gbenga Akinnagbe and Emayatzy Corinealdi.
Corinealdi was most recently seen elsewhere on CBS in a main role onThe Red Line.
Both performers play characters who arent what they seem.
Corinealdi plays Sonia, a woman who really enjoys the set.
Shes wearing red, a stylistic nudge to worryEvilviewers.
Equally worrisome: When Sonia brings Lando home for a drink, we find out he carries a gun.
But Landos the one who should be scared.
Sonia starts quoting some of his old routines a dance to crush cockroaches and then knocks him unconscious.
Lando if that is his name spends the rest of his life strapped to a chair in Sonias basement.
His only company: David, arriving at what he thinks is just a typical existential Catholic check-up.
Instead, he has to watch Sonia and Lando unfurl the long tail of historical atrocity.
Did Lando/Jeans violent comedy constitute an actual call to violence?
And if so, what would be the appropriate moral response?
Sonias not buying it.
And I dont think David ever does, either.
For them, the bigger question is: What sort of punishment would God demand?
Sonia quotes Old Testament passages.
Theres another factor here, terrifying and unknowable.
Twice in the episode, Sonia stares at the basements brick wall.
A dark, tiny-yet-cavernous hole almost forms a cross.
Her expression is unreadable: Freaked out, receptive, seeking.
Intense ominous whooshing layers onto the soundtrack.
The last time we see that opening in the wall, a cockroach crawls out.
And, in his comedy act, Lando/Jean called the Tutsi cockroaches.
For Sonia, that humor was an act of terror.
She recalls the violence of the Rwandan Genocide: The most terrible sound was the laughing.
The rapists and murderers were parroting Radio 2 gags as they crushed skulls.
Akinnagbe spends the episode tied to a chair and bleeding from a slashed ear.
So its a true feat of acting that he makes Lando/Jean oddly sympathetic.
And one thing I love aboutEvilis that every character is smart enough to intelligently justify themselves.
The Tutsis, they were wealthy, they had power, he protests.
Every comedian makes fun of people, but you make fun of people in power.
That doesnt make people into killers.
That dialogue points toward larger controversies in the whole evolving notion of comedy.
Do jokes have to be, like, moral?
What happens if some lunatic takes comedy too seriously?
Is there a line that should not be crossed?
The gags we hear from Radio 2 are horrific but did Lando/Jean understand the context?
Conversely: did heinventthe context?
In this case, Sonias the final arbiter.
And its interesting howEvilgives her act of killing some ethical grounding.
She waits for her prisoner to apologize.
She tells him his soul is clean.
And then she shoots him not for revenge, she explains, but for justice.
But where in Gods teachings does it say you should take justice into your own ear-hacking hands?
David is left crumpled on the floor, waiting for the police to come and mop up the mess.
Does he see the cockroach?
Would he consider it a symbol, calling back to a dead mans jokes?
Falling down a stairway to an hours-long bleed session counts as an improvement.
Midway through this episode I thought to myself Gee, hes really a Job figure for the series.
Job actually gets a shoutout this week, but its in Kristens subplot.
Shes trying to keep Orson LeRoux (Darren Pettie) in prison.
LeRoux was last seen in theEvilpremiere condemned to life behind bars.
New evidence has come to light.Anothermurderer that Davids team brought to justice has taken the blame for LeRouxs crimes.
We can guess that this is the result of Lelands internet-of-terror, connecting horrorshow perpetrators together.
Good luck explaining that to a judge, though.
Leland himself shows up at the trial, and taunts Kristen in the corridor.
Im gonna do for you what God did for Job, he declares.
Her daughters will die; her house will burn.
Its an apex bad guy speech, filmed by episode director Rob Hardy in stark scary-funny close-up.
God, you talk too much, Kristen interrupts.
And then cuts him down to size.
She can use the internet, too, and shes well doxxed him.
Like Lando, Leland Townsen has hidden an old identity.
Hes plain old Jake Perry, a twice-divorced insurance adjuster from Des Moines.
One marriage ended when he had trouble getting it up.
Its an amusing twist.
I love Emerson as a performer, but Leland has been the most overtly melodramatic piece ofEvils puzzle.
The surprise revelation that hes barely worthy of a surprise revelation sharpensEvils point without dulling its purpose.
Hes a regular guy who decided to turn himself into a villain.
Im always waiting for the balance to shift too far in either direction.
Or is that just a manifestation of his madness?
It works both ways.
Little Laura has quite a scare and then experiences a medical miracle.
Her heart has healed, all on its own.
Credit her youth, maybe, since child bodies are always changing.
Or, maybe, its a higher power.
Kristens husband, Andy (Patrick Brammall), has taken up Buddhism, it turns out.
Its not a big deal, he swears: Not a religion, a practice.
Hardly strange for a well-traveled American to explore some new spiritual opportunities as he approaches middle age.
And still, Kristen has reason to worry.
Andy was chanting in the hospital, asking for Laura to be healed.
Part of the chant was offering his own life in exchange.
Its just a mantra, of course.
Andys place in this world could be perilous, though.
Hes setting off on a trip to Denver, taking Kristens place in the latest mountaineering adventure.
He wont be gone long, he swears.
Hes unquestionably a nice man, and unquestionably the third wheel in the shows prominent will-they-wont-they arc.
