PROJECT BLUE BOOK – Season 2 Episode 4 – SPOILERS

Susie (Ksenia Solo), who has been directed to arrange Quinn’s kidnapping, attempts to sedate him with an injection. (Putting knockout drops in his coffee might have been easier.) Her efforts fail when Quinn is called away to Hopkinsville, some 600 kilometers southwest of Columbus. Unhappy with the failed abduction, Daria (Sofia Milos) and two of her thugs take Susie (aka Mishka) into the Ohio countryside and show her a shallow grave that has been prepared for her. Daria then assures Susie that she will recruit her daughter in the same way that she recruited her, something Susie clearly doesn’t want. Then she tells the goon with the shovel to “finish it”. He whacks Mishka over the head with a shovel, knocking her out.

First, if you are going to kill somebody without an audience around, why take the trouble to threaten them? Perhaps Daria is a sadist, or perhaps she is running a game on Mishka, hoping to make her more useful in the future. Second, who executes somebody by hitting them over the head with a shovel? A gun would have been much more certain and effective. And the guy tasked with the job of covering her with dirt stops in mid-burial and goes off to sit in the car. This is further evidence that Daria does not really want Mishka dead.

Alakananda Bandyopadhyay, writing for Meaww, suggested that they were planning to bury Mishka alive. One would think that, in that case, they would dig a deeper hole. (She was not tied up, and the grave was so shallow that, even had the burial been completed, she would have had only about a foot of soft earth to claw through.)

Last episode, when Hynek is ridiculing IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE for its scientific inaccuracies, he says: “would anyone still walk around with a concussion like that?” In this episode, showing no noticeable side effects from that knock on the head with a shovel, Susie gets up out of her grave, overcomes the guy who was supposed to kill her, and drives away in his car.

In the best scene of the episode, Mishka confronts Daria in front of her home. They exchange ideas for keeping cut flowers alive longer. Susie suggests putting sugar in the water, while Daria says adding vodka works better. (The truth is, a mixture of sugar and vodka in the water works best. The sugar feeds the flowers but also promotes bacterial growth, which is inhibited by the vodka.) Then Mishka grabs Daria by the throat and shows her a photo of one of her agents who has been turned by the Americans. “I am going to kill him for you,” she says. “Then we’re even.” After getting assurances about the safety of her daughter, Miska puts away the gun. Daria says: “I wish you both well,” and seems quite genuine about it. One gets a sense that there might have been a degree of personal involvement at one time between Mishka and Daria.

Other stuff that happens: Mimi (Laura Mennell) got to take a road trip to southern Kentucky and solve a UFO mystery. Quinn (Michael Malarkey) is still oblivious to everything going on with Susie, and The Fixer (Ian Tracey) is pissed off at Hynek for telling the CIA about their encounter in Washington. So pissed in fact that he clubs Hynek over the head with a gun and (presumably) kidnaps him. The CIA guy, Daniel Banks (Jerod Haynes), who got Hynek into all this trouble, confronts the Generals with the Pentacle Memorandum (see previous post) and ends up getting challenged to a boxing match by General Harding (Neal McDonough). Banks is heavier, and has a few years on Harding, so that fight probably wouldn’t be a long one.

On 21 August 1955, the occupants of a farmhouse outside of Hopkinsville, Kentucky told local police that aliens had attacked their home. The incident is a very unusual one. Twelve to fifteen aliens were said to have approached the farmhouse. The people living on the farm were a bit drunk and shot at them (reportedly for four hours) until they went away. Then the creatures supposedly came back the next night for more of that. Such persistence on the part of alien visitors is almost unheard of, and no physical evidence of aliens or their ship was ever found. Four itinerant carnival workers were visiting the farmhouse at the time of the alleged attack, so Mimi’s explanation of a hoax involving trained carnival monkeys is not an outrageous one.

NOTES

Aidan Gillen has an as yet unspecified role in THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD, a female-driven modern western starring Angelina Jolie as ex-firefighter Hannah Faber. The film is based on the 2014 novel by Michael Koryta about about 14-year-old Connor (Finn Little) who, after witnessing a brutal murder, is issued a false identity and hidden away in a wilderness skills program for troubled teens. The killers somehow find out where Connor is hiding, and pursue him into the Montana forest. Filmed in and near Albuquerque, THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD is expected to be released in the US on 23 October .

Khalilah Joi (Valerie Mann in “Abduction”) is Jackie in APOLLYON, a film (in ten chapters) about cults, demons, and serial killers. (Apollyon is the Greek name for Abaddon, the biblical angel of the abyss.) The trailer on YouTube seems to deal only with Chapter One, titled The Black Awakening, in which detectives pursue serial killer Hayden Kroll (Ty Trumbo) with the help of paranormal investigator Sara (Sheena Colette). Directed by Sean Rosa, APOLLYON was filmed in Miami and Orlando Florida, and will be released in the US on 28 February .

Joi is also Tee in Patricia Cuffie-Jones‘ new series STUCK WITH YOU. Episode Two of the six-episode dramedy, which stars Tammy Townsend and Timon Kyle Durett, will air Thursday 20 February on UMC.







