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The Path

“I’m lost, man,” disgruntled undercover FBI agent Abe Gaines tells disgruntled ex-Meyerist/messiah Eddie Lane at the beginning of this week’s episode of The Path. “I’m in someone else’s story.” He’s not the only one. I have one question for The Path at this point: Why isn’t — excuse me, why wasn’t — Richard the main character?

“Spiritus Mundi,” the penultimate installment of the show’s second season, feels forced in its rush to whisk Richard from leading a reformist rebellion to hopeless, homeless, and reduced to a suicide run after Cal and Sarah expel him from the movement. But that has nothing to do with actor Clark Middleton, who’s done yeoman’s work with inconsistent writing and made Richard menacing, endearing, even inspiring, and always believable. Nor does it have to do with Richard as a character: a compelling outsider-insider who earned a place of authority and respect in the Meyerist movement without the photogenic granola vibe with which everyone else near the top — Bill, Felicia, Cal, Kodiak, Sarah and her whole family — have been blessed. The episode’s flaws are all down to the usual problems with pacing and priorities. So you can’t help but feel that when Richard lights the Meyerists’ records room — and himself — on fire, a major chance to make a better show went up in flames with him.

To be fair, though, Richard’s dead-man’s-charge into the compound to denounce Cal and destroy any future means through which the movement could blackmail its adherents is as entertaining as the show gets. It starts in a beautifully odd way, with Richard pulling his rollerboard suitcase through the woods — which, granted, is only the second silliest thing to happen in that forest this week, what with Mary’s inexplicable Blair Witch wanderings and blood-gushing labor pains out there, but still. Then suddenly he’s shouting at the top of his lungs for all to hear, “EDDIE LANE WILL RETURN! HE WILL BUILD THE GARDEN! CAL ROBERTS IS A SNAKE!” and padlocking the congregants in their meeting hall. At this point there’s just no telling what’s going to happen next, which is what you want from a drama!

Even when it becomes clear what’s about to happen — too clear, frankly, thanks to some goofy crosscutting with Eddie at a gas station, magically spilling gasoline all over the place just as Richard douses the tapes and files at the compound — the very fact that he’s doing something, something so irreversible and unequivocal, is bracing. No more showing up at someone’s house to yell at them for two minutes before leaving for Richard. He’s going to bring the whole thing crashing down, since no one else seems willing or able to do so.

Certainly not Eddie, who has another of his countless changes of heart after one of his countless confrontations with his son Hawk. Egged on by Cal, Hawk believes Eddie has something to do with his mother Sarah getting run off the road.

It’s obvious to everyone including Cal that this is bullshit. For what it’s worth, my money’s on Bill, who took the side of Cal and Sarah (people he despises) against Felicia and Richard (people he loves) way too easily for it to be legit. But it’s still enough to make Eddie give up on his plan to rally his fellow Deniers and depose Roberts’s rule, which he’d been charged up to do as recently as earlier that day. Shit or get off the pot, Eddie, for God’s sake.

At least Sarah seems to have finally had enough of the place. The reason she’s not participating in the big group welcoming ritual for Mary’s baby is because said baby is white, i.e. Cal’s. He was Mary’s victimizer, just as she suspected. “I had Silas’s body,” she tells him, referring to, you know, the man he murdered. “What more did I need? I knew who you were.” I guess now the question is whether she’ll take Eddie’s side against Cal when he comes to the compound. Does she know who he is?