‘Black Spot’ on Netflix Episode 2 Recap: Hungry Like the Wolf

Here’s what we know about Black Spot as of the completion of Episode 2. Pretend I’m about a half dozen quirky law enforcement professionals piecing this together if that helps.

It’s a paranormal cop show that keeps an overarching mystery—who or what is stalking the people of the murder-happy forest town of Villefranche—on a low simmer while bringing a new case to a boil each episode. That places it more with the “monster/serial killer of the week” mold of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The X-Files, and Hannibal Season One than with Twin Peaks even at its most episodic.

It’s not above tossing a crying baby off a cliff into a roaring river as a fakeout to drum up cheap heat.

It occasionally displays striking proficiency with horror-fantasy imagery and makes the absolute most out of its misty arboreal setting.

It’s not above buying slo-mo shots and horror-movie music cues wholesale to drive its points home.

It’s pretty good at setting its top cop, Laurène Weiss, apart from a bajillion other characters in her tough-as-nails-but-full-of-secrets vein, courtesy of actor Suliane Brahim, the head of an engaging, attractive, even amusing ensemble.

It’s not above dipping into horror-imagery wells—like mysterious symbols and antlered monsters and the proverbial wolf in the woods—you’d think would have run dry by now.

Seeing a pattern emerge just yet?

Titled “A Wolf’s Dream” after the white wolf (“Ghost! To me!”) that keeps appearing to Major Weiss, and eventually just to the viewers at home, the show’s second episode feels indicative of both a high creative ceiling and a low creative floor. Creator Mathieu Missoffe, director Theirrey Poiraud, and company have a lot of things going for them, but originality isn’t one of them, and I worry that will come back to bite them in the end.

In this installment, Major Weiss discovers a baby in a box in the woods with a white wolf guarding it, and—nah, hang on, let’s just sit with how fairy-tale that is for a moment. Our hero finds a baby, in a box, in the woods, with a white wolf guarding it. It’s Little Red Riding Mowgli or something, I dunno. I’ll give them points for not caring if anyone thinks this is ridiculous; that’s what makes it work, to the extent it works at all.

Major Weiss and Villefranche’s finest discover that the kidnapper, who was subsequently murdered, was a struggling single mom who suddenly came into money. But the baby is kidnapped right out from under them all over again, before they can hand him over to his frantic parents.

After a lot of emoting that thematically connects the missing baby, Mayor Steiner’s missing teenager, and Weiss’s own mysterious disappearance years ago (one her father encouraged her not to tell the truth about, were she to remember it fully), the truth comes out. In shades of last episode’s revelation that the victim and suspect had a secret connection, the cops discover that the kidnapper is the grieving widower of a mother who killed herself and her baby during a postpartum depressive episode that the kidnapped baby’s social-worker father failed to diagnose.

Then it’s baby-tossing time.

Don’t worry, there’s too much time left in the episode at this point, and too little resolution to the mysterious wolf situation, to really believe the guy killed the baby. But that just cheapens one of the most shopworn “we’re really serious storytellers” devices out there even further. If you’re going to murder a child more or less on camera in the service of another X-Files clone, at least have the courage of your convictions.

Anyway, the wolf returns to put Weiss on the trail of the kidnapper, who pulled the old bait and switch with some swaddling clothes after finding he couldn’t go through with the actual killing. The little tyke is returned safe and sound.

Meanwhile, Mayor Steiner and his wife are growing estranged over their daughter Marion’s disappearance; his mega-rich jetsetting dad’s return to town doesn’t help matters.

Elsewhere, Weiss’s daughter Cora uncovers a recurring symbol of three trees she believes is a clue to Marion’s whereabouts. District Attorney Frank Siriani has the makings of a Crazy Conspiracy Wall in his hotel room. (He refused to be bought off by the mayor with the gift of a house he could move into instead.) And fnally, we discover the wolf has a master.

The thing petting the wolf definitely has antlers, so fans of Hannibal and True Detective and Channel Zero have a little something to look forward to.

Just a little something, though. It’s going to take a lot of work for Black Spot to shake free of its influences and be worthwhile on its own terms, if that’s even something it’s interested in doing. Like I said up top, the pieces are there for sure. Who knows what shape they’ll take?

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Stream Black Spot Episode 2 ("A Wolf's Dream") on Netflix