‘Lisey’s Story’ Recap: ‘The Good Brother’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode Five of ‘Lisey’s Story’.

Over the course of the past few weeks, the AppleTV+ series, Lisey's Story, has done a phenomenal job of offering its fans a supremely unique exploration of the power of grief and loss, the resulting trauma that comes from it, and how we handle it all. And what's made this particular exploration so compelling and so different is that it isn't offering up any easy answers on how we conquer the pain that surges through our hearts when we lose someone we love. Instead, it's presenting that ache in the raw, all so the audience understands that there's no easy fix or blueprint to healing from such a devastating moment in our lives. There's just a long road back, one filled with tears and longing and at times… a reminder of the horror that goes into watching life slip away from us.

If anything, that chilling reminder is paramount to today's discussion because the next episode in this harrowing series focuses heavily on the moments when we realize that someone we love is fading away and how that makes us feel— and how it stays with us and how we resolve it. The episode, ‘The Good Brother’ accomplished that particular feat, by dropping us into the middle of those exact moments for two key characters. We came to learn that shortly after Paul Landon had a rough run-in with The Long Boy down Boo'ya Moon way, he simply wasn't the same loving brother that Scott had always known. Instead, he transformed into someone that was despondent, different, and downright terrifying when all is said and done.

Because one fine day, Paul simply went after his brother with an angry madness that had no rhyme or reason, and that prompted Scott's father to chain the boy up and feed him from afar. And while this was quite horrific, as this twisted sequence continued along it became clear that this whole situation served as an allegory for watching a loved one waste away courtesy of mental illness. Which, to a child of Scott's age, made his brother appear as though he was transforming into a monster— one that was eager to feed upon humanity and who was unrecognizable. This twist teaches us that sometimes we look back on moments where our loved ones begin to fade away from our lives in a unique manner— the kind of manner that can be exaggerated in a terrifying fashion because they represent our worst fears come to life, and the nightmare doesn't end until our loved ones' suffering does. This lesson truly made for some uncomfortable and horrifying sequences, the kind that were further enhanced by Lisey's journey in this tale.

---

​Eventually, Scott himself was beginning to show signs of mental illness in his later adult years, to the point where Lisey felt that she had no recourse but to risk everything to rescue Scott from his own mind whilst it was trapped within the confines of Boo'ya Moon.. In essence, Lisey's battle with Scott's potentially crippling mental illness is designed to juxtapose Scott's experience with his brother and shows us that people handle the diminishing of a mind and a life differently at various stages of our lives. So, while the younger version of us might see mental illness or ‘the end’ as monstrous, our older selves might see it as a desperate challenge; one that requires us to step in and conquer it by way of the connection that we share with the person we love.

This a supremely unique episode largely because this kind of complex thinking regarding the grieving process isn't present in the horror genre very often, but perhaps it should be. Because the nuances of these two storylines make it clear that like it or not, at some point we need to face our trauma head on and process it or else we can never move forward. We need to reconcile the fact that when it is time for someone we love to go, no amount of effort can stop the inevitable, which makes for some powerful commentary in this tale. This kind of commentary also deserves a round of applause for using mental illness as the primary allegory; watching a loved one ‘lose their mind’ is a difficult challenge that can be traumatizing as we see our loved ones begin to lose the essence of who they are, right before our eyes.
​
Yet, while all of these elements made for a powerful and thoughtful episode, make no mistake about it… it was also downright terrifying. This story really does tap into some incredibly primal fears, and it does a fine job of uncovering old skeletons that we thought were buried deep— allowing the viewer to squirm as these various nightmares play out on the screen. This is what the best horror stories out there do, and the show should be commended for finding a different way to scare us. However, now that this particular exploration of grief has come to an end, the time has come to start looking at how we begin to bounce back. Lisey is finally ready to do something about her situation and her pain, and it seems that her healing journey will begin beneath the twilight sky of the mysterious Boo'ya Moon. Until next time, Dear Reader.

---