11.22.63: Episode 2

Episode 2

"The Kill Floor"

Here is my recap of the second episode of 11.22.63.

I find myself in quite the state as I write this for you. I managed to fall asleep on the couch very early last night. Now I am awake at 5:30 in the morning. I'm in the dark, I'm highly medicated. Usually when I sleep for a very long time like this I wake up with a headache that lasts the entire day. So I took no chances, even though I feel fine, and took a bunch of headache medicine. And now I am kind of in a daze, yet I am very awake and alert. Highly caffeinated as well.

I was going to watch the Book Thief, but then I suddenly remembered that I had yet to watch the second episode of this show. Sweet. I had enjoyed the first episode a lot, and had been eager to keep watching more. It's quiet, it's dark. Perfect time to catch up!

The episode starts with a brief recap of the last episode, which is good because I am not a champion at remembering things. As I mentioned in my recap of the first episode - I don't remember specifics of the book much because I read it several years ago and have read hundreds of books since. So if this show starts to stray from the source material I probably won't notice it.

The first scene brings us to Harry's childhood. He is being chased by a pack of bullies, who knock him to the ground and steal his pants. The leader of the bullies holds him down and spits in his face. A big, wet, nasty load. Very gross. Harry remains motionless and unresponsive so the bullies eventually get tired and leave him alone.

Jake encounters the boy in a small diner, and helps him out with his no pants situation. This seems to steel Jake's resolve to save the boy from his father. The kid has already had a rough enough life. No wonder he is such a sad sack in the present day.

He goes to a local bar to find Harry's dad, Frank. Frank comes in with a bunch of co-workers from a plant that has just shut down for the day. He is told that Jake has been looking for him, so he goes to talk to Jake. Immediately you feel on edge with this guy. He seems like he has a short fuse and could go off at any minute. He just oozes menace.

They get drunk, and Jake tells him how he is there as a writer trying to capture the struggles of the real working man for his book. Frank asks Jake if he would like good material for the first chapter of the book, and Jake says yes. Frank takes him to the meat processing plant where all of the guys work. He walks him around and shows him all the disgusting things. I feel really on edge with Frank around. I thought for sure he was going to attack Jake or lock him in the room with the entrails and all the flies, but he doesn't.

Finally Frank takes him to the room where they kill all the animals. He brings out a cow and tells Jake to smash its head with a hammer. He had taken offense at Jake saying he and his comrades were scrambling around in the dirt to make a living. So now he was testing Jake to see if he considered himself one of them.

Jake refuses to kill the cow, and it seems like Frank and his goons are going to beat Jake up or something. But Frank takes the hammer, kills the cow himself, and walks out. This was a pretty tense opening 20 minutes of the show. I thought for sure it would erupt in violence at some point, but it did not. Good, dramatic, tension building story telling here. Something that Breaking Bad pulled off effortlessly - and this series seems to be doing an admirable job at as well.

The next day finds Jake safe in his hotel room. He heads to Harry's house while his father is at work and gives his mother tickets for a weekend away. Jake probably thinks that the family won't die if they aren't home. But I get the feeling that this won't be enough. He'll have to kill Frank if he wants to change the past.

Jake has dinner with the boarding house owners he is staying with. The husband tells Jake a long, boring war story about terrible things he had seen and done while overseas. Honestly, I zoned out during this. It's a very long scene. Someone knocks on the door, and it is Frank. He apologizes to Jake for his behavior the night before and wants to have a talk with him. Great, just who we wanted to see...

We can tell that the stern woman in charge of the boarding house doesn't approve of Frank, even though he acts in a very polite manner. Jake gets up and leaves with Frank, which he really shouldn't do. Frank is dangerous and unpredictable, not someone you want to be alone with.

Frank takes Jake to his butcher shop and shows him around the place. Seems like a nice visit, until he calls his wife out of the back room. She is bruised up and appears to have been crying. She has the tickets that Jake had given her earlier in her hand. Frank thinks that Jake was trying to get his wife out of the house so he could sleep with her.

He proceeds to beat Jake up (totally knew it was coming, at some point) and throws him out the front door of the butcher shop. Jake realizes what he has to do, and he goes to buy a gun. That night as he sleeps, he has a dream of a conversation he had with Al before coming into the past. This was touched on in the last episode, but explained in greater detail here. About the past not wanting to be changed, and strange things happening to keep the past from being changed. Al even believed that he developed cancer because the past was trying to keep him from changing things.

Jake wakes up and rushes into the bathroom to vomit. He has symptoms of food poisoning, but wonders if this is simply the past trying to keep him from killing Harry's father. It is Halloween, so this is when the murders supposedly had taken place. Jake watches Harry's house from the shadows as he waits for Frank to come home. According to Harry's story, the murders had taken place at 8 o'clock.

As he waits, he is grabbed from behind by some young man from the town, a knife to his throat. The past again trying to stop him from changing a major event? He tells the kid the truth about being from the future out of desperation. The kids tells him he can't be right because the time is 8:05 and nothing has happened yet. Cue screams coming from the house.

Jake threatens the kid at gunpoint and runs into the house to save the day. The kids are alive, but the mom is being assaulted with a large sledgehammer in one of the upstairs bedrooms. After a grueling battle, Jake kills Frank, but not before getting smacked around himself. He confirms that the wife and all the kids are alive, and then he runs from the house.

Jake drives away, the rain coming down in droves. He finally pulls over to a water spigot and uses it to wash his face and hands of all the blood. Um hello - it is raining very hard. Did you really have to pull over to a water spigot? He seems happy with himself that he's saved the kids, but traumatized that he just had to kill someone.

But he didn't get away scot-free. The kid from before comes out of the bushes, fixing a gun on Jake. He has a newspaper clipping in his hand from the future containing the story of JFK being assassinated. How did he get a hold of that?

The kid wants answers. And he wants them now!

End of episode.

Well, I thought this was pretty good. I liked the slow dramatic build with Jake encountering Frank, that relationship deteriorating with each passing moment. There were a few slow spots here and there. It has been a while since I have read this book, but I don't recall this particular section of the novel being so long and drawn out. Certainly it wasn't 1/8 of the entire thing.

Whether or not it stayed true to the source material or not, I liked it. I enjoy the fact that until the very end of the episode, all the JFK stuff was pushed to the side for a while. While stopping the assassination is the main focus of the series, I think this was a necessary thing to do for this particular episode. Attempting to kill Frank and change the past is a big thing for Jake, and I like that the show gave it the attention it deserved. As a stand alone episode, this was really good.

Judging from the previews it looks like we will be getting back to the JFK stuff in the next episode, which is expected. I'm eager to see what happens next - if Jake comes back to the present to see what effect his actions have had on Harry's life. If he stays in the past and resumes his quest to save JFK with the help of this kid. I don't remember what happens in the book, nor do I know if they are going to change things for the show. We shall have to wait and see.

Love the show, can't wait to see more.

I'm wide awake now, it is starting to get light outside. I could go out and get some fresh air, or maybe I could continue to drink coffee and lounge around in front of the TV for a few more hours. And by maybe I mean that this is exactly what I am going to be doing. Time to watch the Book Thief after all.