666 Park Avenue has been officially cancelled by ABC, which means they only have a handful of remaining episodes to provide some semblance of closure for anxious viewers. Given the schizophrenic nature of the series so far, I’m not entirely optimistic, but here’s what went down in episodes 7, 8 and 9.
“Downward Spiral”
Jane is still determined to leave The Drake, despite everyone’s efforts to convince her to stay. Olivia entices her with a fancy architect job, Nona sadly professes that Jane is the only person in the Drake she can trust and Henry just tries to pretend like everything is still hunky dory. Jane is really starting to infuriate me. Okay yes, leave The Drake; it’s clearly a demon’s lair. But you do not have to flee the entire city! New York is HUGE. You can’t find ONE non-evil building to live in?!?
Jane’s problems escalate when she has a creepy dream about a little blonde girl playing in the lobby of The Drake. Nona has a starring role in her dream, referring to herself and the little girl as ‘children of The Drake’. When Jane wakes up, she hightails it to Nona’s apartment and asks Nona point-blank if she waltzed into her dream last night. Why yes she did and thank you for asking! Nona drops a few bombs on poor Jane. 1) She introduces Jane to her catatonic grandmother who hasn’t spoken in years. 2) She shows her an intense collection of newspaper clippings (started by Grandma and continued by Nona) full of horrific ‘accidents’ that occurred at The Drake. 3) She hands Jane a photo of the little blonde girl, taken in the lobby of The Drake in 1992. Jane recognizes the girl … because it’s her! But how could the photo be real? She lived in Indiana until high school and she’d never been to The Drake before. Jane is still terrified of The Drake … but also dying to find out how she’s connected to it. Which emotion will win out?
Henry decides – with Gavin’s help – that this contentious time in his relationship with Jane is the perfect time to propose marriage to her. Ugh, men! Olivia whisks Henry away to a jewellery store where every single engagement ring just happens to be exactly what Henry can afford – $3000. Now that’s the kind of evil scheme I can get behind!
Brian and Louise are separated while she’s on a fashion shoot in Miami. Brian is still convinced that his wife stepped out on him with Dr. Scott. When Alexis stops by to ‘comfort’ him, Brian finally lets her have her way with him. Later he crosses paths with Dr. Scott who swears he never sent Louise a hook-up text and clues Brian in about his sexy Halloween romp with Alexis. Brian confronts Alexis and accuses her of tricking him into sleeping with her. Welcome to reality Brian!!! He’s horrified to learn that she’s moved into The Drake. This Fatal Attraction plotline really needs to disappear. It’s a boring, tired cliché.
Dr. Scott is wrestling with his conscience after enabling Kandinsky to murder two hospital staff and escape police custody. He whines to Gavin that he didn’t know what Kandinsky was going to do with the scalpel he sewed into his stomach. Oh really? Did you think he was going to go through the trouble of ripping a blade out of his own flesh so he could pop out of bed and assist in surgery?! Ugh, men … again! Dr. Scott demands that Gavin cut him loose. Gavin does not take that well. “You’re done when I say you’re done.”
Victor Shaw is still harassing Olivia, trying to convince her to break free of Gavin’s tyranny. I seriously can’t tell if he’s hitting on her or using her. In any event, she ain’t buying it. She reports directly back to Gavin who suggests they use Victor’s own plan against him.
Everything comes to a head at a symphony gala. Dr. Scott shows up packing heat, hoping to eliminate his Gavin problem. Jane and Henry get all weepy over their undying love for each other and take off early for some alone time. Olivia pretends to ally herself with Victor, sashaying over to him and puckering up. Unfortunately for Victor she gives him a big fat kiss full of poison, courtesy of some toxic lipstick. He immediately keels over and is rushed into an emergency vehicle. So you’re telling me that this lipstick was so deadly that it knocked a man out with a soft brush of the lips … and yet the women actually WEARING the lipstick was totally fine!? Olivia just wipes it off and goes about her business. Come on! Dr. Scott drops his revenge plan to accompany Victor to the hospital, but is horrified to discover Kandinsky behind the wheel of the ambulance … driving to The Drake instead.
Jane is sidetracked from her romantic tryst with Henry when Nona intercepts them on their way upstairs. Her grandmother is missing and she wants Jane to help find her. Henry leaves them alone while he waits upstairs to pop the question. Jane and Nona’s search leads them down into the basement where they find Nona’s grandmother staring at the mosaic. She seems entranced by Jane’s necklace and Jane and Nona realize that it matches a piece on the mosaic. When they remove the piece and replace it with the necklace, the mosaic opens up to reveal a spiral staircase winding down into the dark. Jane says, “I think this is something I am supposed to do,” and starts walking down the stairs. Dear Jane: you are officially an idiot. As Jane is descending the staircase the mosaic begins to close, trapping her inside. Oh no, something bad happened. Who could have seen that coming? Oh yeah … EVERYONE!
“What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”
Henry is freaking out because Jane has been missing for 36 hours. Apparently Nona failed to mention the magical spiral staircase to anyone else. Jane finally pops up in Times Square, wandering in a daze … with no memory of how she ended up there. But she’s definitely been traumatized somehow. When the nurse tries to take her blood pressure, Jane has a violent shrieking fit and has to be restrained. Henry feels completely helpless and more than a little worried that his beloved is truly going bonkers. He wants to take Jane home, but she’s stuck in the hospital for observation for at least 48 hours.
While under sedation, Jane overhears the nurses discussing a similar patient – Julian Waters. He was also a resident of The Drake, who disappeared and was found in Times Square. And he wouldn’t stop ranting about a spiral staircase. Jane sneaks into the D-Wing (where they keep the especially violent patients) to speak with Julian through his padded door. He creepily whispers that he didn’t go down the stairs. “He came up the stairs.” That does not sound good. When she returns to interrogate Julian further she finds him hanging from the ceiling, with mysterious symbols written on the walls (presumably in blood). Jane is finally sprung from the hospital by her handsome, helpful cop friend. Seriously, what IS this dude’s angle here? Does he just want to get in the crazy chick’s pants?
Jane visits Nona and asks for help retrieving her lost memories. Nona takes her to see a powerful woman named Maris who has a reputation for solving mysteries. Jane notices the same symbol Julian drew in his room, etched into Maris’ doorframe.
Louise returns home to Brian and fesses up about her prescription drug addiction. She lied about the Miami fashion shoot and went back to rehab instead. They’re determined to have a fresh start together. Everything is all lovey dovey, sunshine-y and passionate … but there are a couple of teensy problems. First – Alexis shows up and starts boo-hooing to Louise about her affair with a married man who won’t leave his horrible bitch wife. Second – Brian apparently needs Alexis’ magical vagina to write anything. Yeah … you read that correctly.
After Brian slept with Alexis he experienced a burst of creative energy and began frantically working on his stage play. But when he recommitted to Louise, he suddenly couldn’t write a word. Was it writer’s block you ask? Oh no, it was much, much sillier. Brian’s word processor stopped obeying him. It simply wouldn’t display any of the words he typed. Being the resourceful guy he is, Brian reached for a pen and paper. But all of his pens ran out of ink simultaneously. Okay then … pencil it is! Snap – those are all broken too. Yup, that’s right. The almighty evil force of The Drake has taken it upon himself to mess with writing utensils. This just got real. If we’re going to be torpedoing writers, I suggest we start with the people who keep barfing out scenes for this awful plotline.
At least we finally learned that Alexis is not a crazy stalker. She is just another hapless victim of Gavin’s, forced to do his bidding. I wonder why Gavin is so intent on destroying an unassuming playwright? Maybe he was forced to sit through a bad night of theatre and he’s still really, really pissed off?
But Gavin currently has much bigger problems that the arts. He’s holding Victor Shaw captive while Kandinsky ‘delicately’ tries to extract the location of the red box. It becomes a game of emotional chess; family secrets are revealed and old wounds are re-opened. It turns out that Victor’s father Joseph was one of Gavin’s victims and Victor is looking for payback. Gavin pokes at him, bringing up painful abandonment issues. Victor swings back by revealing the truth about Sasha’s suicide, taunting Gavin with the knowledge that his own daughter despised him. “She figured out who you really were. What kind of man you really were. That’s why she killed herself. You terrified her.” Gavin finally pries the information out of Victor by inducing some type of hallucination and pretending to be Victor’s father. It’s a really weird scene. Gavin appears to be Victor’s father, then the image disintegrates into a skeleton, and then he’s Gavin again. Creepy.
Gavin confronts Olivia about Sasha and she admits to burning a suicide note to protect him from the truth. Olivia visits Victor and demands to know how he found out about Sasha. “She told me.” Whaaa??? Victor claims Sasha is still alive. Olivia tries to brush it off as a lie, but Victor reels her in and promises to take her to see Sasha if she releases him. “After I’m gone, you’re going to wonder for the rest of your life if I was telling the truth.” That’s some intensely stellar manipulation. How could any mother live with such nagging doubt?
Gavin ventures into a church to retrieve the red box from where Victor stashed it and has a really fascinating exchange with a priest. Gavin saunters right into the confessional booth and the priest recognizes exactly whom he’s dealing with. He’s surprised that Gavin was able to enter hallowed grounds, but he doesn’t look frightened or shaken up. Gavin merely smiles and says he loves churches. I’m intrigued by the subtle interplay of good and evil in this scene and I think this series could have used more of this kind of energy. There was no crashing thunder or chanting or anything … just two men on opposite sides of the spiritual universe having a conversation. I also loved that we didn’t see how Gavin retrieved his red box. We just see him placing it back in his safe afterwards. It leaves you wondering if the priest simply surrendered it or whether Gavin dispatched of him in some horrible way.
“Hypnos”
After Jane’s recent psych ward staycation, Henry is busy playing homemaker, nurse and annoying overprotective boyfriend. He even takes the day off work so he can hover more effectively. But Jane still manages to evade his watchful eye by claiming laundry and sneaking off to visit Maris the psychic instead. If Henry’s plan is to prevent further mishaps, he’s doing a crap job. Even if Jane were telling the truth about the laundry … isn’t that down in the basement? Exactly the spot Jane disappeared from less than a week ago? Top notch babysitting dude – really.
I haven’t warmed up to Henry since the series started and this episode perfectly illustrated my issues with him. His straight man/clueless boyfriend routine pulls him out of the meaty action at The Drake. We’re forced to sit through boring political plotlines and listen to his dry career aspirations just so he can get some screen time. In this episode it was a vacated council seat that Gavin put him up for. Henry met with a political consultant who immediately dismissed him because of Jane’s mental instability. Henry retaliated by using his public relations friend Laurel to blackmail the political consultant with his own dirty dealings – $200,000 in unpaid taxes. To make a boring story short, Henry is still in the race for the seat.
During Jane’s visits with Maris, she discovers that she didn’t travel to a different place when she descended the spiral staircase … but rather to a different time! Maris puts Jane under hypnosis and she remembers attending a party at The Drake in 1927. Her murderous great-grandfather Peter Kramer was there with his young daughter Jocelyn (her grandmother). But Jane wasn’t attending as herself. She was in the body of a young girl named Libby Griffiths. She overheard Peter whispering with another man, voicing his fears about something they are about to do. Then she watched him hide a diary behind a brick in his fireplace.
Gavin suspects that Jane has been chatting with Maris and pays the psychic an unexpected visit. There’s clearly a lot of unspoken history between them. They are two powerful beings at odds with each other – if not personally then on a fundamental level. Maris quips, “I’d invite you in, but I get the feeling that would be a problem,” and motions to the symbol on her door. Whatever the mysterious symbol is, it’s something that keeps Gavin in check. Gavin wants to know where Jane went when she walked down the stairs. Maris agrees to share the information if he lets her walk out of The Drake in one piece. Maris told Jane that she hadn’t left her apartment in 26 years because she felt safer inside, but she’s actually been trapped somehow. Later, there’s a scene where one of the starlings is starting through Maris’ window. I wonder if the birds are instructed to peck her to death if she sets foot outside her room. Ick. Maris is willing to trade her integrity for her freedom. So I’m guessing she’s not quite a symbol of pure good.
With the help of handsome helpful cop, Jane breaks down the wall in Peter Kramer’s old apartment and finds his diary hidden exactly where Jane/Libby watched him stash it. On a side note: handsome helpful cop explains that he’s so eager to help Jane because he’s received a suspicious number of distress calls from The Drake over the years. But he also says he enjoys her company. So my theory about him wanting to get into her crazy pants is at least partially correct.
Jane takes the diary back to Maris and reads aloud from a disturbing section. “We called forth something terrible tonight. Something I fear we will regret until the grave.” Maris puts Jane back under hypnosis and she returns to the same night in 1927. Peter Kramer begs her to take Jocelyn and run far away from The Drake. Jane grabs her little girl grandmother and runs down to the lobby but the doors are locked and they’re forced to hide behind a desk. Peter’s insistent associates arrive and they demand that he produce his daughter. You don’t have to read too far between the lines to figure out that he agreed to sacrifice his little girl for some evil ritual … and he’s having second thoughts. Jane-as-Libby jumps up from behind the desk and the associates quickly decide she’ll do nicely as a second choice. They pull her down into the basement, restrain her to a chair, brandish a knife, chloroform her … and presumably kill her. One of the men is wearing a strange shining ring. I assume that will have some significance later on. Is it Gavin and will Jane recognize the ring? If it IS Gavin he is certainly not aging at a regular pace.
After fulfilling her end of the bargain Maris cautiously steps out of her apartment and walks out of The Drake. She stares happily up at the sky and dissolves into a flock of doves. So … bird symbolism is definitely still a thing.
Olivia has taken Victor Shaw to an abandoned building, enlisting Tony the bellhop to keep him in line. Victor claims that he helped Sasha fake her suicide because she wanted to escape from Gavin. Olivia gives him 1 hour to produce her daughter or she’ll drag him back to The Drake to face Gavin’s justice. Victor leaves Sasha a message, but Olivia grows tired of waiting and demands to be taken straight to her.
Meanwhile Gavin is using Kandinsky to track down his rogue wife and her prisoner. His instructions are to kill Victor on site and bring Olivia back to The Drake.
Victor brings Olivia to an apartment building and tells her Sasha is in 4B. Olivia leaves Tony in charge and promises Victor she’ll let him go if Sasha is really inside. But Kandinsky is watching menacingly from a parked car, clutching his sniper rifle. Olivia rushes into the apartment, but finds it empty … nothing but a dead plant in the windowsill. She hears a gunshot and runs outside to find Victor bleeding out in the street. She begs him to tell her where Sasha is, but he dies before he can say anything.
… but wait, there’s more! So, an evil bald dude walks into a bar …What’s the punchline, you ask? He walks over to a young woman and says, “Hi Sasha.” And he does not look surprised. Dayum. The young woman swivels around in her bar stool and we recognize her as Henry’s persistent public relations friend Laurel. Double punchline.
I honestly did not see that twist coming AT ALL and I was delightfully shocked by it! So how long has Gavin known Sasha was alive? He seemed genuinely frazzled when Victor claimed his daughter’s death was a suicide. Did that accusation cause him to start investigating whether she could have faked her death? Also why didn’t Olivia or Gavin cross paths with Sasha when she was running all over The Drake with Henry on Halloween night? If she’s really so terrified of her father, why risk entering that building? And shouldn’t Gavin’s evil uber-connectedness have alerted him to her presence?
But I have to say Well Played 666 Park Avenue. Well Played.
Photo Courtesy of ABC