The pace, and my interest, picks up a little more for this episode.
Holly (Cynthia Erivo) arrives in town and lays out her theory about who, or perhaps what, is behind the child murders to a bemused, disappointed and angry investigation team. Though meeting scepticism, she stays with Ralph (Ben Mendelsohn) and his wife, who was present for the reveal and later Jeannie's (Mare Winningham) unexplained visitation catches her interest, and leads to a first bit of evidence that she might be right.
I appreciate people aren't analysing my reviews, but if they were, you'd see that the time between original airdate and when I'm getting around to watching these is increasing with each episode. My criticism of the season in general still holds true, generally I'm struggling as we're so far ahead of the investigation team - but this might be the one where they've finally caught up. Holly lays out her theory, and it goes about as well as she was anticipating, but enough of it lands that the show can keep going. As it ends, the investigators have someone to look at, as the next link in the chain.
The scene with Marc Mechaca's Jack being beaten up by his late mother was perhaps a bit too odd to fit in with the rest of the series. He's seemed otherwise to understand that he's infected by something and compelled to do its wishes - whereas he was "Don't you know you're Dead" in this one, as if he couldn't piece together what was going on. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, with Holly heading off with Jack, and her seeing the telltale infection on the back of his neck. Knowing this is a Stephen King book, secondary heroes don't usually come off that well, so I'd be preparing for Holly's run to come to an end next week.
But we'll see. If nothing else this episode injected enough pace for me to persevere with the rest of the run.