"Haunted, episode 1x04: Abby"

Staring: Matthew Fox, Russell Hornsby, John Mann, Michael Irby, 
Lynn Collins

Guest staring: Golden Brooks (funny, I knew a dog with the same 
name), Mahershalalhashbaz Ali (I’m trusting the IMDB spelling 
on this even though they totally misspelled his character’s 
name), Tamara LaSeon Bass, Louisa Abernathy and Mya (remember 
her? She had, like, one hit song back in the 90s? No? Me 
neither, really.)


Okay, so I was just going to skip over this episode as, while 
it interested me the first time, I mostly find it boring now 
and I can boil the entire plot down to a haiku. In fact, I did. 
I typed it in a file marked “haunted04”, which my computer, it 
seems, promptly ate. Not that I can’t just write it again and 
pretend nothing ever happened, but since I have to start over 
anyway and the recap is bound to be more interesting if I go 
into it pissed off I figured what the hell.

Oh, good, we’re just jumping right into it. Frank arrives at a 
crime scene that appears to have way too many police cars 
seeing as the victim is already dead and not being held 
hostage. It takes about five hours for Frank to enter the 
building – which is either a warehouse or a defunct train 
station - and he is accompanied the whole way by really 
annoying club music. Did I mention I’m coming into this pissed 
off? The body is laid out on a slab of raised concrete, more or 
less spread eagle, surrounded by chalk drawings and candles. 
Well, I think I can solve this one right now. This is obviously 
the work of Opus Dei. I mean Silas. I mean...oh, just read “The 
DaVinci Code”.

Marcus thanks Frank for coming out here in the middle of the 
night and says he saw a case just like this one a couple years 
ago, right down to the occult voodoo crap. The brick of 
exposition slams into the back of Frank’s head and he asks if 
that was in LA. Nope. Back when Marcus was a cop in New 
Orleans, a detail about his past we are just now learning. 
Frank, still dazed from the brick, asks what happened. Marcus 
says it was a murder-suicide and looked open-and-shut. A guy 
named James Landry just up and killed his parents one night 
because his last screw fell loose, then he arranged them in 
occult fashion, wrote a lengthy letter confessing the entire 
crime and blew his brains out. Except this crime scene is 
practically identical so either he was wrong about that first 
case or Landry’s ghost is going on a killing spree. Not that he 
suggests this second possibility as that would be too clunky 
even for this show. He says he needs a partner on this. Frank 
laughs. “Like old times, man. You know how you missed the job,” 
Marcus begs. “Bad pay. Scumbag bosses,” Frank reminisces. “Bad 
coffee,” Marcus adds. “Stop it, you’re gonna make me cry,” 
Frank chuckles. Marcus laughs. Oh, he’s not kidding. It is, 
actually, that easy to make him cry. “What do you say?” Frank 
agrees easily. “Whatever you need, man.” I put on my slash 
vision goggles, rewind this exchange, tweak the dialogue a bit 
and come up with this:

Marcus: Like old times, man. You know how you missed me.
Frank: Bad hangovers...bruises...
Marcus: Walking funny for a week.
Frank: Did you ever replace that headboard?
Marcus: All metal frame, baby. And I got some of them fur- 
   lined handcuffs, so you can pull all you want and it 
   won’t even leave a mark.
Frank: (groan)
Marcus: Whaddya say, baby? Wanna give it another try?
Frank: I’ll be there at nine.

I don’t know, I kinda like that version better. And no, I have 
no idea why I always make Matthew Fox’s characters the 
submissive ones in any slash scenario, so don’t ask.

Frank crouches next to the body and tries to look like a 
professional investigator. Then blood starts creeping away from 
the body and up the nearest wall, forming itself into the word 
“mine”. A mad cackle comes from across the room, where a wild 
haired (read: crazy) girl in a night gown is standing. She 
disappears and we cut right to a funeral parlor. Well, that was 
abrupt.

Marcus brings Frank to talk to the victim’s brother Alex, who 
looks a little like President Palmer Light from “24” 
(Whatshisname...David’s brother). The victim’s name is Henry, 
by the way. For future reference. Alex says he just doesn’t 
understand how something like this could happen to their family 
again. Frank looks baffled. “Again?” Alex says yeah, a few 
years ago, you know, Rachel’s parents... Marcus’ face lights up 
at the name. “Rachel?” Alex says yeah, his cousin, you know, 
the woman standing over the coffin over there. “Rachel Landry”. 
Rachel looks over and Marcus gapes at her with obvious 
recognition that has nothing to do with the fact that she was 
obviously related to the first victim whose last name she 
shares.

Apparently they just turn around and walk out. Marcus says 
Rachel found the bodies and confession letter. And nobody ever 
suspected her? Really? I mean, if James had a history of 
violent behavior, thoughts of suicide, obsession with 
sacrificing things to the Dark Lord Uvulatak’umsaleth then by 
all means, call it open-and-shut. But a young man just suddenly 
snapping, killing his parents, writing a lengthy confession and 
performing a random voodoo ritual before offing himself seems 
highly suspicious. Except apparently Rachel had plenty of 
witnesses that say she was at the library that night. So Marcus 
goes to plan B: brother Alex did it. “Is there anything else I 
should know about,” Frank asks. “Like what,” Marcus asks 
innocently. Frank says oh, I don’t know, how about the fact 
that you were ogling Rachel like you wanted to lick whip cream 
off her firm, naked breasts? Marcus denies it, of course, 
saying he hasn’t seen her in six years.

Welcome to Interrogation 101. Today we are going to cover ways 
NOT to question a possible suspect. Marcus notes that Alex and 
his brother were in business together. Computer software. “A 
competitive field”. “Any idea why your brother was in such a 
bad part of town,” Marcus asks, giving Alex a look that clearly 
says “GUILTY!” Alex gets nervous and says he had meetings there 
sometimes, but nothing that night. Marcus says really? What 
about you? You have any meetings there that night? “I assume 
that’s your clumsy way of asking for an alibi, detective,” Alex 
says. Yes, Alex. Yes, it is. Alex says Marcus has no reason to 
suspect him. Marcus thinks the idea of two family members being 
murdered the same way by different people is a little far 
fetched. Alex snits that as far as the Landry’s are concerned 
it was a simple murder-suicide. “Or are you now saying you made 
a mistake?” Clunk. Marcus gets all up in his grill and asks 
where he was that night. “At home. Alone.” Anybody who can 
corroborate that alibi? Harvey?

Meanwhile, Frank is with Rachel in the breakroom or something. 
She says Alex would never hurt anybody despite what Marcus 
might think. Frank says yeah, well, he’s just doing his job. 
“He’s a good cop.” “Yeah, and a good man,” she muses. “Yeah,” 
he says dreamily. Kidding. She says he was very “kind” to her 
after her parents died. That’s one way of putting it. She says 
James had “emotional problems” but he was “gentle”. A harmless 
kitten, really. Until, you know, he committed a double murder 
for no apparent reason. She sniffles and Frank hands her a 
handkerchief. She’s as surprised as I am that a modern man 
would actually carry a handkerchief around in case he ran into 
emotional women in danger of running mascara. He says his 
grandfather taught him a gentleman should always carry one. 
Huh. My father (a baby boomer) always carried a handkerchief 
around too but that was because he used it to blow his nose. 
Hardly a gesture of chivalry. Great. Now I’m gonna start having 
dreams wherein I confuse Matthew Fox with my father. Just kill 
me now. 

Bar. “I bet this ritualistic crap is just there to throw us 
off,” Marcus mutters. Really? Figure that out all by yourself? 
He thinks it’s just about money. And Alex stands to inherit 
from both the brother and the aunt and uncle a couple years 
before. Marcus says they’re checking on it. Frank wants Marcus 
to tell him the rest of this Rachel story. Marcus plays dumb. 
“C’mon, you looked at that girl like...” “Like I’d seen a 
ghost,” Marcus asks. “For lack of a better cliché, yeah,” Frank 
says. Oh, there’s certainly no lack of clichés on this show. 
Marcus says they met when he was working the case and she 
“needed a friend” seeing as she’d lost her entire immediate 
family. Marcus took advantage of that needy desperation 
apparently and presto clingo they started dating and talking 
about spending the rest of their lives together. Dude. What the 
hell is wrong with you? Instead of getting the hell out of 
there before they ended up hurting each other or in therapy or 
both he bought a ring and planned to propose. Frank, smack him 
for me. Luckily she ran out on him before he could realize it 
was a bad idea based on shaky pretenses. He never saw her again 
and he never really got over her.

Sometime later Frank pulls up outside the crime scene and hears 
a baby crying. Mark Snow bangs a few ominously hollow drums 
while he goes to check it out. In accordance with the Mulder 
and Scully school of investigation he whips out what is 
probably an expensive flashlight and waves it around randomly, 
not really lighting anything. The light manages to catch 
something glittering in a hollowed beam but before he can check 
it out the candles circling where the body used to be all light 
up by themselves and then surge like flamethrowers. A chaotic 
jumble of screechy “ethnic” music clomps across the soundtrack. 
Frank just goes back to the sparkly thing which turns out to be 
a pretty little cloth sack. He stars at it while the camera re-
sets behind him and then rushes across the room toward him. He 
turns at the last second (naturally) and the flashlight catches 
a glimpse of Crazy Nightgown Girl flying past him, shrieking. 
She disappears, but Frank waves the light around for a few more 
seconds just to be sure.

Frank’s apartment. For some reason we get a brief shot of Frank 
puttering around wearing the same white tank and sweatpants he 
apparently always sleeps in. Then we switch to him sitting at 
his desk and he’s wearing a blue dress shirt. Could somebody go 
wake up the editor? Thank you. He dumps the contents of the 
sack on a piece of paper. It looks like random crap pulled from 
a garbage can. Except there’s a picture of the victim in 
between the pile of dirt and what looks like a hairball, so it 
must be significant. 

So he takes it to a voodoo shop, where he finds Mya. He asks 
how one would go about cursing somebody. She asks if he’s mad 
at his boss or his wife for leaving him for another man. Hey, 
she is magical...she can see into his television future. 
“Because we don’t do that here,” she snits. He says no, please, 
it’s important and then apparently uses his previously unseen 
powers of hypnosis on her because she caves easily and escorts 
him into a back room. He hands her the sack. She says it’s a 
“black magic charm” and identifies each object as she pulls it 
out. Coffin nails, grave dirt, the “picture of the man who is 
cursed” (thank you, we couldn’t have figured that part out on 
our own). Frank says he’s dead. She says the curse has a lot of 
bad mojo but it’s not enough to actually kill anyone. He asks 
what the point is then. “Does any of this actually do 
anything?” Yes, it wrecks havoc on your vacuum cleaner. She 
says it mostly scares anyone who believes in this sort of 
thing, which clearly is not Frank. “I smell doubt coming off of 
you like cheap aftershave.” “Well, I actually wear cheap 
aftershave,” he smart alecs. She kindly refrains from rolling 
her eyes at his lame attempt at humor and points out that he 
could have read all of this in a book, so what does he need to 
ask her for? He says he’s seen things that convince him he 
can’t dismiss anything whether he believes in it or not. 
“Something’s going on here and I don’t understand it, but 
people are dying.” She says her religion (voodoo, I guess), 
believes there is evil at work as much as good and if somebody 
wanted to do some real harm they could “buy the help of a 
malevolent spirit”. Frank asks if this hypothetical bartering 
process could still take place after a person is dead. “Well, 
after death you have the greatest offering to give a spirit in 
exchange for it’s help. Your soul.” Frank’s phone rings while 
he ponders this. It’s Marcus. He says they need to have another 
talk with Alex.

Pretty little cottage in the woods. Alex snaps that he doesn’t 
need money because their parents left them plenty of it. Marcus 
points out that this is not the best argument. Frank, wondering 
when he’ll ever get to play the bad cop outside of the bedroom, 
asks when his parents died. When they were little. Murder? 
Accident. His father fell asleep at the wheel. Frank asks if 
accidents run in the family along with murders and suicides. 
Alex says he has no idea what Frank means. “Yes, you do,” 
Rachel says hollowly. “Tell them.” He sighs and says there’s 
some legend in his family about some crazy employee of his 
great grandfather who put a curse on the family. Have I pointed 
out that the family is African American? Yeah. I don’t think 
“employee” is the most accurate descriptor. Rachel believes in 
it. She says they have everything: money, love, happiness but 
“sooner or later anyone we’re close to, anyone we care about, 
gets caught in the crossfire.” She and Frank both look at 
Marcus in case the lingering camera shots weren’t enough to 
drive home the meaning of that.

Marcus’ apartment. Marcus, apparently, wears the same outfit to 
bed as Frank, only the pants are a lighter color. Seriously, 
it’s Southern California. Why is everybody wearing sweatpants? 
On a shallower note: would you get a load of those muscles? 
Sheesh. Rachel shows up, saying she wants to talk. “About what? 
How you threw us away over a curse?” She says she knows it 
sounds crazy but back when they were together Alex’s brother 
showed her records going back a hundred years detailing all the 
bad shit that has happened to anyone who even though about 
getting involved with their family. “Henry knew it wouldn’t be 
long. Eventually she’d come for all of us. I was just trying to 
protect you.” By leaving, he snots. “Don’t you know I would’ve 
done anything to keep you safe?” Yes, well, unless you’re an 
exorcist or a very powerful black magic wizard I doubt you 
could have done much. She says she was just trying to do the 
right thing and starts to leave. He breaks down instantly and 
begs her to stay.

Elsewhere, the camera operator is making further steps toward 
this show’s goal of mapping out every pore on Matthew Fox’s 
face. Frank is constructing a family tree, on which all of the 
names are crossed out except for Rachel and Alex. Apparently 
accidents do run in the family. The baby starts crying again. 
He follows the sound to a hall closet where the crazy girl is 
“bouncing” a baby rather violently. Because the best way to get 
a baby to stop crying is to shake it up and down with the same 
movements you would use to toss a salad. Also? Her mouth 
appears to be oozing blood. She disappears and reappears on the 
other side of the room, sans baby, using the blood in her mouth 
to finger paint words on Frank’s wall while laughing 
hysterically. “Their souls will be mine.” Crazy ethnic music. 
Screeching synthesizer. And scene.

Morning. Rachel is rolling around in bed moaning and not in a 
good way. Marcus, who seems to have spent the night sleeping in 
a chair next to the queen sized futon she’s sleeping in, wakes 
her, informing her she was having a bad dream. Yeah, usually 
when you wake people in the middle of a dream they KNOW what it 
was about. In my experience it’s only when you let them sleep 
even though they’re screaming and thrashing and kicking you and 
they wake up on their own in the morning that they have no idea 
what the hell you’re talking about when you say they kept you 
up all damned night. And now I guess we’re going to find out 
what happens when I recap while I’m *really* pissed off because 
the episode and the drive I had it saved on just completely 
froze right here and I couldn’t get either one to work right 
for several hours. Sometimes I really hate technology. Rachel 
apologizes for waking Marcus. He says he was already up. 
Because you know, those cops, present and former, just don’t 
ever sleep. She asks if he’s planning to just sit there night 
after night watching her sleep. He says yeah, got a problem 
with that? Well, it does tend to make a girl self conscious. 
Particularly if she has a history of waking up in a puddle of 
drool. She just smiles and asks why he has to protect her from 
so far away. Ahem. He smiles and climbs in the bed and they 
make out a little but the scene cuts away before it can get 
interesting. This was broadcast television, after all.

Frank meets Marcus in the park for a little discussion about 
his concerns regarding Rachel. “Normal concern or one of those 
weird hunches you’ve been having lately?” Frank says both. 
Marcus tells him to relax, she’s fine. Oh, and he checked out 
Alex’s records. Turns out he happened to be in New Orleans the 
night of the first murders. Marcus guesses his “witness” to 
that will give a rather flimsy story. Frank notes that six 
years is a long time. Marcus is kicking himself for not digging 
deeper the first time. Yes, if only you hadn’t gotten 
distracted by the pretty daughter of the victims maybe you 
could have caught the real killer. Though I doubt it since the 
killer is not technically corporeal, which makes it kind of 
hard to put them in a cell. He comforts himself with the 
knowledge that they’ll have enough to arrest Alex soon. Frank 
notes that that will be hard on Rachel. Oh, I’m sure Marcus 
will be keeping her too busy to think about it. Marcus thinks 
maybe that’s why she’s obsessed with this voodoo mumbo jumbo – 
she’s deeply in denial that her cousin is capable of wiping out 
half her family. Frank says well, in the meantime she shouldn’t 
be staying in Alex’s house. Marcus gets a shit eating grin and 
says that parts taken care of already. Frank is a little 
quicker on the uptake when sex is involved in the equation, it 
would seem. He says it’s nice to see Marcus smiling for a 
change. “Yeah, I almost forgot what it felt like,” Marcus 
muses. Which part?

Frank goes to visit Alex, who is sitting by his pool reading. 
Alex greets him by saying these visits are a “nuisance” and 
he’s getting a lawyer for Frank to talk to from now on. Frank 
shows him the family tree he researched and neatly organized on 
a fancy template. “How sentimental,” Alex snots. “It’s even 
suitable for framing.” Frank sighs and points out that Alex and 
Rachel are the last of their bloodline. Pause. “Fascinating,” 
Alex says dryly, handing the tree back. Is this really how 
Jack...sorry, Frank spends his time instead of solving murders, 
Alex wonders? Frank loses patience and reminds Alex that he’s 
the only suspect the police have and if he wants to prove he’s 
innocent he’s gonna need to help him out a little. Alex sighs. 
“What do you need?” I can think of about a half a dozen answers 
to that off the top of my head but Frank goes for the old 
boring “documents” and “records” that might fill in the gaps in 
his research. 

Elsewhere, Marcus comes home to Rachel cooking him dinner. 
Y’know, they may be cute, but this scene is boring and, 
frankly, we all know she’s doomed. So here’s the gist. ‘Damn I 
missed you’. ‘Yeah, well, this is nice but you realize nothing 
has actually changed’. ‘Yeah, yeah, here’s the ring I was gonna 
give you before you ditched me. I’m still planning on giving it 
to you sometime. Somehow. Mark my words, I WILL PUT THIS RING 
ON YOUR FINGER.’ Yes, it is that clunky.

Frank is wearing his sleep clothes and poring over the research 
on the Dalcourt/Landry family. He writes “birth mother unknown” 
under the name “Travis Dalcourt” and then Gus starts barking at 
something. This really is his sole purpose on this show, isn’t 
it? Also? That is not the same dog that was in the pilot. I 
mean, he kind of has the same coloring but he’s bigger and has 
shorter hair. The closed bedroom door starts rattling 
ominously. Frank throws it open but there’s nobody there. He 
wanders through the hall (without his gun this time!) and 
sticks his head back in the bedroom to reassure a very nervous 
looking Gus that it’s all right. Aww. This, of course, is the 
cue for the crazy ghost girl to zoom out from nowhere and send 
him flying into the wall. We don’t get Gus’ reaction shot but I 
imagine he has a thought bubble over his head that reads “you 
were saying?” Frank goes back into the bedroom and finds a 
little notebook laying on the bed. I didn’t see if that was 
there before and I don’t care. It’s the diary of one of that 
great grandfather’s “employees” that talks almost exclusively 
about Abby, the “child” “Mr. Everett” took a “fancy” to. Pretty 
soon Abby was pregnant and wanted the child to have his name. 
Of course, since it’s birth mother was a slave this was 
unlikely. So she was locked away and kept tied to a bed, 
apparently, until she went crazy. By the way this is all voice 
overed with little flashes of the scenes she’s describing and 
this last part is accompanied by what used to be a pretty girl 
turning savage looking and laughing that maniacal laugh we’ve 
been hearing all episode. The baby wouldn’t come out naturally 
so Daddy Dearest had the diary writer cut it out without proper 
sterile equipment or surroundings. Abby had enough time to 
babble some voodoo hexes cursing the baby and the family for 
the next hundred years. Daddy took the child in without anyone 
knowing he was the father so Abby basically had the last laugh 
as the child got his name after all. And that name, of course, 
was Travis Dalcourt because ghosts in this universe are pretty 
blunt in the clues they give Frank. Also? Man, am I glad my 
great-great-great-great grandmother only pissed off a priest. 
The women in my family may have cursed love lives but at least 
the priest wasn’t a vengeful nutcase who haunted us for several 
generations. (No, unfortunately, I’m not kidding).

Frank shows the journal to Mya, who does absolutely no emoting 
at all when she asks “what have you gotten yourself into, Frank 
Taylor”. Go back to singing. Leave the acting to the 
professionals. Frank says the more important questions is “how 
do I stop her”. Mya sighs. “If I tell you, are you gonna 
believe me or are you gonna ask questions and start trouble.” 
He promises he’ll believe her. “You can’t stop her.” Frank 
blinks spastically. “What?” “A man like you, you can’t stop 
this kind of anger.” Could you maybe phrase that in a way that 
doesn’t sound like an attack on his manhood? “You don’t 
understand it,” she adds. Slightly better. He says maybe he 
does. She concludes that he’s lost someone. Specifically a 
child. Damnit, we almost made it through an entire episode 
without bringing up the dead kid! Gah! Blah blah father’s love 
means his spirit is bonded to Kevin’s. Whereas this Abby girl 
put a death curse on her own child. So no, he probably doesn’t 
understand. Nor would any rational person with a normal 
nurturing instinct. Also, Mya points out Abby has been fueled 
by revenge for 100 years so what makes Frank think he can stop 
her now? Frank says she’s threatening a very close friend(s on-
again, off-again fiancé previously unmentioned). Mya says tough 
shit. “If she can’t get around you, she’s gonna go through 
you.”

Rachel and Marcus go to get something of Rachel’s from Alex’s 
house and find his dead body. Frank arrives some time later and 
Marcus tells him Alex slashed his own throat and wrote “forgive 
me” in his own blood on a nearby glass cabinet. What, did he 
cut his wrist first or something? Because I don’t think writing 
death notes in your own blood is high on the list of priorities 
when you’re choking on said blood. Frank thinks it’s fishy. 
Duh. Marcus thinks it fits his theory that he killed all those 
other family members for money or whatever and was suddenly 
struck by a guilty conscience. Frank thinks it’s odd that two 
people Rachel described as sweet and harmless would act so 
bizarrely. Like they’re possessed or something. He finds a 
voodoo curse bag between couch cushions and points out that 
suicides don’t normally put hexes on themselves. Marcus groans 
that Frank can’t possibly be buying into this curse business. 
Oh, if you knew the things Frank was buying into these days. 
Frank non-answers that he thinks Marcus was right and James 
killed his parents, but he doesn’t think he was in his right 
mind at the time. He finds plane tickets to LA with Rachel’s 
name on it and points out that she claims she flew out the day 
she heard Henry died but the date on them is two days before. 
“What are you saying,” Marcus asks warily. He’s saying you’re 
too close to the case and your personal involvement is clouding 
your judgment. Oh, wait, that’s me. Frank asks where she is. 
Marcus says she’s upstairs lying down. Because it’s not the 
least bit strange to do that in the house where you just found 
your cousin’s body and which is crawling with police officers. 
Frank takes off to find her. Marcus tries to follow but is 
stopped by a phone call from the Lieutenant. 

So Frank arrives alone to the bedroom to find her sitting on 
the floor sobbing, surrounded by candles and holding a knife to 
her wrist. Ethnic music. Frank, instead of calling Marcus or 
really anybody to come help him, WALKS IN AND SHUTS THE DOOR. 
You’re a genius, Frank. Apparently he still thinks he can 
negotiate her out of this because he tries to get her to hand 
the knife over, which, naturally, doesn’t work. Well, you 
didn’t really think it would be that easy, did you Frank? 
Rachel waves the knife like maybe she might stab him. 
Seriously, Frank, it’s called BACKUP. Rachel babbles that “she 
made me remember what I did. I didn’t want to.” She killed 
them. But “she made me do it”. Frank says he can help her. 
Right. She says she has to “end it”. “It’s what she wants”. And 
this is Abby’s cue to appear, cackling, behind Frank. Frank 
gets insistent, saying Rachel can fight her. Rachel argues that 
she killed them and can’t live with it. Frank points out that 
she knew not what she did. Also? Marcus loves her and if she 
wants to be with him she’s going to have to fight this. That? 
Is an understatement. Not sure it’s the best argument in the 
world. He keeps coaxing her to look at him but Abby is standing 
right over his shoulder pulling attention so that’s probably 
not working as well as he thinks it is. Surprisingly though, he 
does seem to get through and she hands the knife over.

Okay, I’ll admit that when I first saw this episode I didn’t 
think Rachel would actually die. I was well-versed in the Dead 
Girlfriend of the Week cliché (I watched Diagnosis Murder and 
Kung Fu: The Legend Continues for crying out loud) but I 
thought the rule only applied to the lead, not the sidekick. In 
other words: Marcus could have a girlfriend but if Frank tried 
I knew he would be solving her murder soon thereafter. I now 
realize I was naïve. 

Frank turns to stare down Abby, who chuckles and then whooshes 
over to Rachel and starts whispering in her ear. “Frank, I’m 
afraid,” she whimpers. Then Marcus arrives, distracting Frank 
long enough for her to run over to a mirror, break it, loudly 
declare that she can’t live with this, damnit, and slit her 
throat with a shard. Marcus races to catch her and some random 
police officer arrives only to be screamed at by Frank to call 
an ambulance NOW DAMNIT. Shut up, Jack. “I’m so sorry,” Rachel 
says without the slightest hint of a gurgle. “I love you.” 
Um... shouldn’t you be dead by now? She dies. Marcus sobs. 
Frank glowers at Abby, who is smiling happily and interacting 
with her baby like a normal mother as opposed to the detached 
loon we’ve seen all episode.

Funeral. Marcus...get ready for it...PUTS THE ENGAGEMENT RING 
ON RACHEL’S DEAD FINGER. Then he goes outside, where anvils are 
falling from the sky like rain, to talk to Frank. Marcus says 
there’s obviously something “going on with” Frank since he 
hasn’t been the same since the Mason case. “You never wanna 
talk anymore,” he whines. “You’re so cold and distant. And when 
we’re together you get this far away look like you’re thinking 
of someone else...” Oh, fine. I’ll take the slash goggles off, 
but I warn you: the actual conversation is pretty boring. 
“These hunches you get. Knowing where people are going to be, 
what’s going to happen, when somebody’s in trouble.” Frank says 
nothing so Marcus continues a one-sided conversation. “You 
don’t wanna talk about it. Well right now I guess I don’t 
really wanna hear about it.” You’re totally sleeping on the 
couch, buddy. “But as my friend and my partner...” Dude, you 
haven’t been partners in a professional sense for how long? Now 
you’re just baiting me. “...I need you to answer me one 
question...” Man I wish I was funny enough to come up with 
something really clever here. He says he trusts Frank to tell 
him the truth because he thinks “somehow” he knows. “Is there 
anything I could’ve done to save her?” Frank assures him he did 
everything he could. “Doesn’t feel like it,” Marcus says 
numbly. 

And we cut to a long shot of their backs wherein nothing 
happens for so long that the screen almost cuts to black 
*before* Frank puts an awkward hand on his shoulder. Man, 
that’s *cold*.

Oh my god, there’s a preview on this file. “Next week, Matthew 
Fox is their only hope to find peace”. Sucks for them since 
Frank couldn’t find his ass with both hands. Frank almost falls 
off an overpass, his eyes turn blue while Dante talks about 
possession (yippee), and stumbles around a house blindly. 
Um...there’s less than a dozen episodes of this series and some 
channel decided to run two a week? Also? That last shot of him 
in the shower was from the pilot. I believe I pointed out the 
manliness of the water lily lotion in the recap. What, were you 
that desperate to get in a shot of him without a shirt on?

Oh, and the Haiku that I boiled this whole episode down to 
originally, for anyone who’s interested, was:

Once there was a girl
A former love of Marcus
She died. That is all.