“Before” Episode 2 Recap: “The Scientist”

“I’ll help you.” Eli, a widower therapist who tries to help a strange boy named Noah Beforeshe repeats the phrase to him over and over again in what I consider clumsy but very obviously sincere, archaic Dutch. Now that he recognized the language in which the normally mute boy screamed for help during the attack in the last episode, perhaps he could reach him. Perhaps he Power help him.

“I want to go home,” the confused kid replies in perfect English.

It’s not inherently funny – it’s the first thing he’s said in weeks and his foster mom Denise is delighted – but if you’ve ever had children or worked with children, it’s a very funny moment. Here’s a guy who contacted a linguistics professor or semiotician or something (played by violinist Itzahk Perlman for some reason) to get his hands on cutting-edge technology capable of identifying virtually every language ever spoken. He deciphers a mysterious sentence uttered by a boy with an unusual diagnosis and a tendency to break into his house. Even though he has no idea why the kid is drawn to him Or why he speaks in a dead dialect, this guy, who was undoubtedly wondering what to say in response, memorizes a sentence in the same dialect and repeats it over and over again in hopes of breaking through the boy’s psychogenic fog. Answer? “I want to go home.” Children, am I right?

But this is not a simple request to return to Denise’s apartment. Indeed, Noah later called Denise “mean because.” She she won’t take him home either, even though she can’t say where “home” is. Right now, this explanation of why he thinks Denise is mean is a bit of a relief. Despite the fact that she is played by one of the nicest actors of the last thirty-odd years, there is really little to recognize in her dark eyes. He’s also the type of person who agrees to talk to his troubled child’s therapist at home and then pours himself a long sip of cabernet while they talk. This kind of move might seem concerning, so it’s good to hear that Noah’s complaints about her aren’t any worse.

When asked, Denise replies to Eli that she suspects that Noah is truly “afraid of himself” and not of some external thing; she cites his screaming fits and slow loss of language when he moved in with her. If I were her, I’d pay a little more attention to his stacks of creepy drawings, all of which feature the image of that farmhouse from Eli’s refrigerator in some shape or form. I would also wonder a little more why my son seems to mentally locate his future therapist and break into his house, but that really just worries Eli.

Of course, there are many things that bother Eli. In the last episode, he trashed his apartment by stepping in dog poop, the straw that broke the camel’s back. In this episode, his panicked daughter Barb shows up at his work; Seeing the condition of the place and learning from his servants that he was in the hospital, she naturally put two and two together. The fact that he is physically healthy but still more interested in his patients than her is one of those good news and bad news for Barb, who is clearly struggling with her own problems. However, she is the one who encourages Eli to actually talk to her about her mom’s suicide; he puts it off with a “yes, yes, we’ll make lunch.”

However, this leads to another funny bit where the show allows us to believe that Eli’s wife or some other supernatural being has magically cleaned his dilapidated house, and he finds a note from Barb about the cleaning service she hired. Later, Eli is visited by an attractive woman named Sue-Ann, who seems to want something from Eli that he is not yet ready to give; it seems like now that his wife is dead she’s trying to fool him with romantic plans, but she’s really just a real estate agent trying to convince him to finally sell the place. Writer and creator Sarah Thorp has so far peppered both episodes with quick “Huh! This is not what I expected!” moments that go a long way to liven (and brighten) everything.

However, the centerpiece of the episode remains Eli’s attempts to find out what is happening to his patient. A harrowing MRI goes wrong when the boy hallucinates one of those black, tentacle-like worms, this time tiny, protruding from the top of the chamber and slithering into his IV wound. AND So I wish they had taken the time to use practical effects for an image that is inherently tortuous and awkward; The CGI just doesn’t feel as scary and disgusting as it should. (Being scarier than actually scary is a constant problem for the show.)

Later, during a one-on-one session, Eli teaches Noah what he calls “crazy play,” using blocks to help the boy express what he is angry about. (He was inspired to do this by Noah asking him, “Are you mad?”; since he sometimes talks like he’s from the 17th century, I thought he was asking Eli if he was mad in an old-fashioned/European way). it looks like Eli is having a breakthrough, and Noah reveals that what pisses him off the most is “people who hurt other people…bad people who do bad things.” The kid’s nose starts bleeding just like Lynn did in one of Eli’s hallucinations about her. “You know!” the boy growls. “You know what you did!”, Lynn repeated again. At the end he says to Eli, “I can’t take it anymore”… in Eli’s own voice, just as Eli told the specter Lynn.

Does this mean that Noah’s situation is somehow related to Lynn’s suicide? What is the connection to the mysterious farmhouse or to Noah’s photographic memory of the exterior of Eli and Lynn’s Manhattan home? Does his use of old-fashioned Dutch have anything to do with the days when New York was known as New Amsterdam? What about the initials on the back of the farmhouse photo “BW”? Is this all connected, or is the supernatural just a random way to help Eli overcome his own demons? The fact that there are eight episodes left indicates that there is still a lot that we don’t know, and neither does Eli.

Meanwhile, the series was the greatest artistic success in Eli’s dreams. Whatever else you think of what’s going on, and whatever you think of Crystal’s performance (I like it, but I don’t think he’s had a chance to do more polished work with this material yet), the man repeatedly dreams of being mutilated and killed – by Noah, by Lynn, by himself. It’s the depth of desperation and darkness beneath the surface warmth that seems to attract everyone in Elim. I wonder how much Noah and the phenomena surrounding him will be brought to light.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about television for Rolling Stone, Vulture, New York TimesAND wherever there is oneReally. He and his family live on Long Island.