'The Mist' Recap: 'The Devil You Know'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

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It would seem that the sudden push to deliver more terrifying moments and general character development that we witnessed in last week’s episode of The Mist has brought forth a sense of urgency when it comes to storytelling on this series. After all, there was more tension to be found this week, and there were more questions that the show tried to answer and while this episode wasn’t exactly as successful as its predecessor (more on that in a moment) it certainly gets an ‘A’ for effort since it did work to unravel more of the mystery surrounding The Mist and break the characters all in the course of a single hour.

But before we get too deep into The Mysteries of the Mist, let’s get into the characters and their journey this week because the show did work incredibly hard to accomplish something I think the audience has been waiting for patiently…the mental collapse of everyone when it comes to dealing with this stressful situation and well, it certainly delivered on the genesis of that in two key ways, with a surprise at the hospital and by way of a stunning turn of events at the church. Because Mrs. Raven’s newfound belief in ‘Gaia’ if you will, forced young Link to believe that she was turning people against God and their faith and well…that fear translated into stunning violence wherein Link tried to have his own little Spanish Inquisition with Mrs. Raven, and it was a move that cost him his life when she used The Mist as a weapon and well…it’s clear now that fear and a desperate need to hold onto something that provides mental safety are forcing people’s hands and Link wasn’t the only one who lost his life because of this.

Because at the hospital, we learned that the dear Doctor we met in last week’s episode, who seemed genuinely dedicated to saving lives, is taking that quest to the next level…by experimenting on terminally ill patients with The Mist to see if there’s a way he can protect people from it and well, if a floating cloud of moisture can turn a good doctor into a mad scientist, who knows what other horrors will come about from humanity as the series rolls on. Thankfully Jonah/Bryan & Adrian put an end to the Doctor and his off brand of science and this episode did perhaps give us a taste of things to come, since young Alex had a brush with death since someone, likely the late Lila’s mother, trapped her in a breakroom and set fire to it and if it wasn’t for Jay, there’s a fair chance she would have either run out of oxygen, or burned to death and truly, these little vignettes are demonstrating the steady collapse of civil order in this town and I’m glad the series finally decided to address this.

However, we do need to get back to The Mist itself, because last week, the series posed an interesting idea…that this strange phenomenon finds a way to connect to you on some personal level and this episode proved that was the case, by way of Mia. Her return to her mother’s house to get the bag of cash she left behind turned out to be quite the wild experience since The Mist manifested itself to resemble her mother, and even tried to make peace with Mia’s storied past with her mom in an effort to bait her into dying and now that it’s obvious that The Mist will entice you to your death if necessary in the most personal way possible, and it was also implied that those that are good of heart seem to be left alone by its machinations since it did spare Alex and it also spared Kevin last night, merely displaying strange imagery when it came in contact with him, rather than tearing him to pieces. 

I did make mention though, that this episode wasn’t quite as successful as last week’s and I stand by that because this one…well it was simply overwhelming. This particular tale really packed in way too much for one hour to handle and in doing so, we didn’t properly get time to develop or digest the ideas that were coming our way. It doesn’t make the episode terrible, just rushed and cluttered and that’s a shame because this one had the potential to be a truly gripping hour of television. Either way, the danger coming is real, people are beginning to break down and it is only a matter of time before humanity accomplishes what The Mist has been trying to do, all along. Until next time.    

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