A replica of the closing scene of the original Friday the 13th. Pamela rows a canoe into the lake, a misty haze suffocates the sky. As she trails the distance further, likely the spot of her son’s drowning, she gazes into the water fondly catching a faint, ascending sight of her son. She reaches longingly to grab his hand until a monstrous adult Jason rises from the body of water to grab her.
Of course, this nostalgia-filled illusion serves its purpose for diehard Friday fans. Fulfilling as it appears, no one can quite count this as Jason’s first canon sighting in this prequel series.
Nora, Pam’s unidentified caller in the previous episode, warns her that while the agents who attacked her were untraced, she should expect more.
Pam returns to work at the school cafeteria, where she encounters Jason’s friend, Grace, who offers the matriarch a gift that Jason gave to her before his passing. Pam assures her that Grace should keep the gift as it was meant for her. Grace sizes up Claudette, remembering the moment last summer that she caught Claudette in the throws of afternoon delights. She overhears Claudette mention an exclusive high-school-aged party going on that night.
Middle-school aged Grace crashes the party in a get-up above her years, including a stuffed bra and heeled clogs. Claudette attempts to spare Grace of any humiliation by suggesting she leave, but Grace blackmails her with the incident that contributed to Jason’s lack of supervision just moments before his death. Claudette digs the shame deeper by remarking that Grace should feel every bit more ashamed of her role in Jason’s death–by throwing the ball over the dock that Jason tried to retrieve. Grace storms off, angrily removing her clogs, leaving them in the forest.
Sheriff Brooks asks Pam out to go bowling, where they catch Rita, another townie Pam had befriended. Rita invites Pam to a self-help seminar. Pam accompanies Rita at the seminar until she soon becomes a subject of the spotlight and an object of the host’s fascination. Wilhelm Richter, an aggressively manipulative motivational guru delights himself in publicly denigrating his guests.
Here, when Pam reluctantly takes the stage, she reveals that she used to sing professionally. Somehow, she relents leaning into primal desires toward Richter that not only grab his attention, but his neck too–with her teeth. While harmless, he reminds her to let go, something she revealed she is afraid to do (whether about Jason or something deeper, she does not disclose).
Meanwhile Sheriff Brooks and his partner find disfigured remains by Crystal Lake and deduce that it is from a bear, which becomes an object of an investigation.
Richter sets up Pam for a meditation that conjures images of an operation room, a baby’s foot in water, a young girl restrained by rope. She escapes the meditation, rushing toward the door, when Richter publicly announces their late-night hookup where she was “too afraid to finish what she started.”
She thinks of doing just that as she packs to head home from the hotel. She grabs her bowling ball from earlier, determined to hold Richter accountable. Just as she is about to, a man brutally attacks him for her, about an unrelated, misguided suggestion that Richter gave to that man.
A toothless Richter begs for Pam to help him. Just as one might think Pam would finish him off, she meets him with a satisfactory “Some of us are meant to wear masks.”
As the high school party is swept up by a rain storm, Claudette and Barry seize the opportunity to make out in his car amidst the white noise…until objects hit the car: one of them Grace’s shoe.
A restrained Pam makes the heart grow fonder in this episode. One might expect her to reach her maximum capacity of cruelty, but it must not go unstated that the events in this season exist eight years before the events of the first movie; it can be easy to forget that considering the episode titles recycle the franchise’s movie titles.
In the previous episode, it is evident that Pamela has not murdered in some time. She almost does not recognize herself and scolds herself for misbehaving (“What did you do?). In this episode, she reckons with consequences all the while adapting to her grief. She has not murdered anyone in nine months, and she would rather move on, although the temptation overcomes her with Richter, who is despicably reasonable fair game.
All the while, the actresses that portray Claudette and Grace bring a jilted, even archetypically one-dimensional performance that can take one out of the dark themes of the show and do not compare at all with veteran Cardellini.
Rating: 7/10