Recap: NOS4A2 202: Good Father
NOS4A2 202: Good Father: As Charlie Manx struggles back to life, we see his past in a series of flashbacks. Flashbacks that leaves as many questions as they answer.
Photo credit: AMC
Tit for Tat
Pervy night watchman Hicks(Jim Norton) is hot for night nurse Sasha(Kim Director). She is hot for serial killers. Since there is a dead one, Charlie Manx(Zachary Quinto), in the morgue, Sasha promises to have sex with Hicks if he can get pics of the dead serial killer. Head and hands-the tools of serial killer Charlie’s trade.
Hicks ventures down to the morgue, and sees Charlie on the autopsy table, cut open and Vic’s scalpel still in his chest. He takes a selfie with the corpse, and the lights go out.
Photo credit: AMC
Creeped out, Hicks leaves the room to text the pic to Sasha. She still insists on hand pics, and Hicks notices that Charlie is gone.
Photo credit: AMC
In the morgue, Hicks sees the sheet that had covered Charlie and the scalpel. Bending down to inspect them, A rasping Charlie bludgeons him from behind and feeds as Hicks bleeds out.
Photo credit: AMC
Charlie uses a stapler to reattach his ribcage and close his incision.
Nosferatu
In flashback, we see a wealthy couple that have just come from the cinema. It is newlyweds Charlie Manx and his wife, Cassie(Celeste Arias). They had been to see Nosferatu, and Cassie compares her new husband to the old vampire.
Wut? Photo credit: AMC
Charlie is charming to the butler until Cassie retires, then his cold demeanor shows briefly. Upstairs, Cassie has taken down her hair and is brushing it in front of a full length mirror. When Charlie comes in, she reveals to him that she is pregnant. He is elated, because now her father, wealthy Horace Haber(Victor Slezak), will just have to accept him and his proposal for a fleet of chauffeur cars.
Charlie would know about chauffers, as he was the family’s driver until he and Cassie eloped.
Hmmm…not suspicious at all, especially when he has refused to get a place of their own, or get a job to support his family. His remarks seem genuinely happy about a child, but Charlie’s obviously been manipulating the young Cassie for her affections and to get at the family’s wealth. I believe the flashbacks are told from only Charlie’s point of view.
CHX4HIX
Present day Charlie steals Hicks’s uniform and car keys. Picking up a phone, he makes a call to Bing(Ólafur Darri Ólafsson). Bing tells Charlie that even though he put the engine back in the Wraith, it won’t run.
Photo credit: AMC
Charlie tells him to put a child in the Wraith and meet him at the Sleigh House. Put a child in the Wraith, and it will start and drive them itself.
Charlie takes Hicks’s car(animal print interior, personalized plate-CHX4HIX- and all), and escapes the hospital, killing a guard on the way out.
Millie
Young Charlie has become a father, and on Christmas Day, nonetheless. Cassie want to name the baby girl Millicent after her late mother, and Charlie asks permission from Father Haber. He concedes, noting the child is just fine.
Millie, before she got all morbid and creepifyin’.
Photo credit: AMC
Trying to take advantage of the day and the newborn, Charlie pitches the fleet of chauffeur cars again. Father Haber tells Charlie that the qualities that made him a chauffeur-obedience and cloying servility make him an “insufferable son-in-law”. Haber has also been looking into Charlie’s personal life, apparently. Yet he can find no one.
I tell you, Manx. There’s something off about you. What can you do besides drive a car and get my daughter pregnant?
You have no people, none I’ve heard of. And I’ve heard of everyone.
The only Manx I know is a breed of cat that has no tail. I can’t say I care for that.
What is your tale?
Manx demurs, telling Father Haber that he is only thinking of his wife and daughter’s future. But Haber sees through him. He tells Charlie that Millie will indeed be rich. But the money will be put in trust for her until her eighteenth birthday.
Haber leaves, telling his butler:
The man thinks he can live off of me, like a vampire.
Distraught, Charlie removes a flask from his waistcoat and drinks.
Bing Finds a Child
Bing calls upon a house to pick up Mike Demeter(John James Cronin), son of the artist(Tim Guinee) that had the Wraith. He is locked in a cage, with a homophobic slur written on his head. Bing angrily removes him from the home, and offers to kill the boy that did it. The two bond, and Bing eventually coerces him into the car with promises of Christmasland. The car starts, and they head to the Sleigh House.
Truck Stop
Making his way to a truck stop, Charlie arouses suspicion with his bloody uniform.
He calls Millie to tell him that he may not make it home. But he assures her that Christmasland is forever and that she will always be safe. Millie tells him that “The White” has crept up to Christmasland and that the lights had gone out. Charlie tells her that he promises that it will never happen again.
In the truck stop bathroom, he finds another victim, and comes out looking his younger self, fooling the police. He takes the victim’s eighteen wheeler and heads to the Sleigh House.
Waiting there for Bing and the Wraith, he briefly meets Vic’s(Ashleigh Cummings) son Wayne(Jason David). Frightened, Wayne leaves before Charlie can capture him.
The Last Straw
Charlie, Cassie, and a now ten year old Millie(Mattea Conforti) are living in an old, leaky house. There is no money; either the Great Depression took it, or Charlie spent it all after Father Haber died. Cassie offers to find work, and it sends Charlie into a rage. He insinuates that she wants to be a prostitute. Even worse, he suggests that she will happily turn Millie into one. Cassie begins crying, and young Millie has seen them fight. A doting Charlie tells her not to fret as he tucks her in, and they discuss Christmasland.
Photo credit: AMC
Later, Charlie arrives at the run down house he and Cassie and Millie live in with the Wraith. He tells her that he pawned her mother’s jewels for the vehicle, and that he got it cheaply because someone had died in it.
Photo credit: AMC
Finally realizing that Charlie will never let go of his dream even amidst a great depression, and furious at him stealing the only things she had left of her mother’s, she reveals that she had purchased train tickets to her sister’s for herself and Millie, and that they are leaving. Millie insists she wants to go to Christmasland. Cassie tells her that Christmasland isn’t real. Again angered by Cassie’s trying to disillusion his little girl, Charlie offers to drive them instead.
Bing Arrives Just In Time
Even though he looks young, Charlie’s autopsy “Y” incision is bleeding, and he is weak.
Bing pulls up in the Wraith, and places Charlie in the vehicle. His wounds heal and he has his powers back. In the backseat, a now vampiric Mike is grinning like a shark.
Bing is disappointed when Charlie won’t let him go all the way to Christmasland. Instead, Charlie gives him directions to a place that he’ll know when he sees it, and tells him he won’t be disappointed.
WHO WANTS TO GO TO CHRISTMASLAAAAND?
Cassie has taken Charlie up on his offer to drive her and Millie to her sister’s. However, he drives past the turn off, and keeps going. Drinking, he speeds up. In the backseat, Millie giddily shows her mother a handful of her bloody teeth. Startled, Cassie tells Charlie that Millie is hurt and they must find a doctor. He compares her to his prostitute mother as he speeds up.
But Millie is feeling fine and dandy, like Christmas candy. She is giddy, and asks for an Eskimo kiss from her mother. After it is over, Cassie opens her eyes and sees her daughter’s demonic transformation is complete.
Photo credit: AMC
Millie attacks and kills her in the backseat as Charlie’s eyes change to static. He is using his knife for the first time, and they arrive at Christmasland, much to his surprise and delight.
Photo credit: AMC
Finding the Next Child
In the present, Millie is happy to see her father alive and well, and thinks he is going to stay. He gives the children a treat from the trunk of the Wraith-Mike’s artist father. As they feed, Millie tells him that he promised he would stay.
Charlie reminds her that he didn’t promise that; he promised that the lights would never go out again. Millie is upset, and he tells her that there are more children in need of “rescuing”.
Photo credit: AMC
He meets up with Bing at the Graveyard of What Might Be. They agree the child he found needs saving more than anyone-Bruce Wayne McQueen.
Photo credit: AMC
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