We’re in the homestretch as we head into tonight’s series finale of Gracepoint.
Episode 8 followed the Solanos as they tried to put some normalcy back in their lives — Mark goes back to work and Chloe goes back to school, but neither is very successful at getting through their day. Mark goes by the school just as Chloe buggers off with Dean so he goes home and gets Beth and they go to look for her, finding the couple in Dean’s family’s restaurant laughing and dancing to the jukebox, was sort of refreshingly sweet. Chloe tells them she knows about the baby and they realize they’ve all been struggling individually.
Tom is found in the woods and he says he rode out and got lost and that’s that. But is it really. Then some shade is thrown at Paul for being the one to find him. Susan brings Tom Danny’s skateboard, which promptly gets her arrested, while Vince absconds with her dog and threatens him (because…?) Carver and Ellie chase a mystery man from the house at the bluff after he turns on Danny’s phone, but Carver collapses during the chase and when Ellie turns back to help him, their suspect gets away.
In Episode 9, Carver is given a clock within which to resolve things before he’s bumped from the case — turns out the boogedy he’s been harboring is a heart condition.
We finally open the door on who Susan is, and it’s full of the sads as we learn that she survived an awful situation of losing her older daughter to the murder and abuse of her husband, and her younger daughter and son to the system. As it happens, she believes Vince is the child she was forced to surrender, hence all her lurking. She says saw him bring in Danny’s body on a boat and leave it on the beach. She stood over the body for a little while, watching him and wondering about his lifeless body vs. her daughter’s, and then she took his skateboard home.
In her psyche, she’s been trying to keep Vince out of trouble because she’s sure he inherited his biological father’s murderous tendencies, and nothing about Vince really convinces us otherwise. Even Carver is puzzled at Vince inking Danny’s name on his arm if he was just his boss’s son.
Weird young Tom tries to threaten Paul after Paul confronts him about his smashed laptop. Paul responds by handing the laptop off to Carver and telling him that Tom will tell him he hit Danny, but it never happened.
The Solanos try to resume some domesticity, even welcoming Dean to dinner at their home. Mark and Beth still try to sort out their lingering anger and guilt before they go to their baby’s first ultrasound as they seem to come to the decision to keep it.
Ellie’s sister sells information about the night of Danny’s murder to Ellie (not really, but really) and she inadvertently corroborates Susan’s story about Vince when she says she saw a Solano business van parked in the area that night.
Renee slinks back into town and is rightfully treated as a pariah. She tries to make peace with Owen by throwing him a bone about Carver.
We go into tonight with all signs pointing to Vince, but I have no expectation one way or the other that he is. I just hope we actually resolve the case, since as far as I know, there is no second season planned. I’m grateful FOX greenlit this, and aired them all. It wasn’t a precise fit for the network, but I enjoyed the slow build and I’m so glad this cast got to come together for a little while.
Here’s a sneak peek of Episode 10:
Photo and Videos Courtesy of FOX