‘Big Sky’ Recap: ‘Wakey Wakey’

Written by Emily Auskaps

Caution: This article contains spoilers for the season two premiere of ‘Big Sky’.
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This may be a new season of Big Sky, but it took mere moments to bring back that delicious curl-your-toes, discover a crick in your neck tension that is part of the joy that is this wild ride of a show. For we begin by being swept immediately back into the last moments of the season one finale; Jenny is severely wounded and on stretcher, and Cassie, knowing there is nothing more she can do for anyone at the scene of the ambush, grabs a satisfyingly large gun and jumps into a waiting law enforcement vehicle to burn rubber after Ronald.
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Jenny is sped through the hallways of a hospital, rushed towards surgery with her survival hanging in the balance. Cassie races on, fueled by the vivid memory of Ronald strangling her, until she final settles upon the fact that Ronald is long gone at the Helena city limits.

Six weeks on, Jenny is alive and healing but by no means well, as evidenced by the bloody bandages and wincing pain, but the fire in her eyes is impossible to ignore. She pays a visit to Sheriff Tubbs, who is also still healing, to let him know that she will finally take him up on his offer to join him in the Sheriff’s office, lured by the power she associates with the badge. Tubbs doesn’t hesitate to present her with the shiny object of her affection to seal the deal that she will become Under Sheriff. She then returns to Dewell and Hoyt, where it becomes apparent that the women of the PI firm haven’t seen much of Jenny during her healing hiatus. There is still a large board dedicated to the hunt for Ronald Pergman. Jenny suggests, much to Denise’s joy, that Cassie ought to consider paying investigations while still pursuing Ronald. Through palpable tension, Cassie and Jenny agree to meet later.

We are introduced to Max as she rushes out of the house that she shares with her mother to meet her waiting friend Harper. As she tries to speed through the house, she is accosted by her mother’s boyfriend Tracy. After grabbing the smoothie from her hands, he nauseatingly demands that Max call him “T-Lock” and reminds her ominously of their “agreement”. She escapes to her waiting best friend Harper, and as they ride off on their bikes, T-Lock is seen leering at them as he works out in the window. Harper makes a joke about him and laughs it off, and though Max laughs as well, her eyes betray real concern.

Not long after Jenny’s visit, Mark Lindor, still apparently on suspension, shows up at Dewell and Hoyt to tempt Cassie with some new video from one of Scarlet’s neighbors’ bird cams. State Trooper Cormac Dewey is seen in the video escorting Scarlet to a minivan in her driveway. Lindor and Cassie head to Dewey’s house to see what they may learn by observing. Much to Cassie’s frustration, all they discover is that Dewey enjoys raising flowers, causing her to go confront him directly, against Lindor’s urging and better judgment. Trooper Dewey, holding his pruning shears ominously, fixes his soulless dead-eyed stare on Cassie and warns her to concern herself with her family because “they” are watching him and are watching her. He offers her one of his roses which she scorns and turns on her heels to leave.

Jenny is already seated at the bar nursing a beer when Cassie arrives. Cassie apologizes for being late, explaining they were following a lead, but broaches the subject no further. Jenny then announces that she is leaving Dewell and Hoyt, which comes as a shock to Cassie, but she doesn’t try to talk her out of her decision. Jenny clarifies that she will still be involved financially, but that she feels she needs the power that comes with a sheriff’s badge, again mentioning it specifically as though she almost views it as a talisman of some kind. Not alone in the bar, Jenny and Cassie observe a group of men is playing pool, one of whom approaches and is met with immediate rejection. However, after Cassie leaves to go home to her son, Jenny seems to recognize one of the other men of the group. She offers a greeting to this gentleman as he and his friends exit the bar, but he returns a blank stare and informs her they’ve never met. He drops a sleazy line and leaves laughing with the guys.

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Back at home, Jenny, startled by a noise outside, grabs her gun, flings open the door, and demands whoever it is put their hands up. There is the man from the bar, hands in the air with a sheepish look on his face imploring her not to shoot. It becomes apparent that the two share a long past together, and some undeniable chemistry. Travis apologizes for the encounter in the bar, explaining that he is working undercover to expose a drug ring.

Somewhere outside of town, two individuals meet to conduct some shady business. The second man to arrive is visibly uncomfortable and trying to keep the encounter brief, he implores the man waiting for him with wild eyes to just do their exchange of bags the way they typically have. The first man, Big Sam, chides him for his tardiness to the meeting, and demands the that the bag be brought to the backseat of his truck. The nervous man complies only to find the backseat lined with plastic, realizing immediately, but still too late, that he has driven to his own execution.

As he is wrapping his victim in the plastic, a mobile phone on the corpse begins to ring. Big Sam cuts a slit in the plastic to retrieve it, the screen shows an incoming call from a woman called Ren. Sam ends the call, slips the phone into his pocket, and continues about his business unaware of the mistake he’s made.

Cassie returns home where Max is watching her son Kai. Max tries to turn down Cassie’s offer of a ride home, but Cassie isn’t having any of that and Max seems relieved that Cassie insists. As they drive, Cassie asks Max about school and life. Max discloses that her mom has a new boyfriend, a creepy jobless loser. Cassie tries to reassure her that things will work out. Max tries to sneak into her bedroom in peace through an outside staircase, but somehow T-Lock appears to collect on what we now understand to be his “agreement” with Max is: he gets first dibs on any money she makes.

Later, Max gets a text invitation from Harper to meet at “The Ridge.” There the two are met by a brother and sister from school. When Madison warns her brother Bridger against ogling her friends or saying anything stupid before they get out of her jeep, he wonders why he’s even come along. She tells him he’s there as her bodyguard and to keep an eye out for “creepers in vans” which he finds satisfactory. As the teens hang around in the woods, we see that they aren’t alone: a scruffy man in a hoodie and stocking cap watches them from among the trees. Max tattoos a small heart onto Harper’s wrist, pressing a rock against the finished product to soak up the extra ink. She then hands the rock to Harper, telling her to make a wish and toss it away, which Harper does. “I wish something would happen,” she tells Max. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

As the group stands at the edge of a rise over the highway, we see Big Sam cruising along in his big truck. He turns up the music and drives on through the night, unfazed by the plastic wrapped body lying in his backseat. That is, until the man in the plastic sits upright and begins to struggle with him. The truck lurches and swerves all over the highway before flying off the road and rolling, landing on its roof. Big Sam’s victim is now actually dead, but Sam lays outside the truck wounded but still alive. The crash ends at the base of the hill that the teens were just on. They rush down the slope to the accident to see if they can render aid. Outside of cellphone range they debate about what to do when Bridger is grabbed around the ankle by Sam. He falls and the teens scramble back in fear. Sam warns them that they will be killed and to grab the bags and run. For some reason Bridger complies, grabs the bags and they duck out of sight. While the teens are hiding, a man with very large boots, whistling “The Farmer in the Dell” in a most unsettling manner, approaches the vulnerable man lying at the wreck of the truck. Thankfully, they refrain from crying out as they witness the whistling man put a bullet into Sam’s head.

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Properly terrified, the teens race back to the Jeep and finally leave the scene. Max once again returns home to her mother and the useless boyfriend fighting in the kitchen. She hides the bags under a shed on the property, by no means burying it, as she merely plies up a few boards and dumps the bags under the shed but not underground.

Jerrie and Cassie return to continue to surveil Dewey’s place until Jerrie observes a broken window. In a case of de ja vu, Cassie tears out of the vehicle much to her partner’s protest. However, this time her instincts prove sound: Dewey is dead in his recliner with his pruning shears jammed in his neck. Outside, Cassie and Jerrie make sure that Lindor receives a manila envelope in confidence. He protests, but Cassie prevails, and the photograph inside reveals a recent snap of Cassie walking with her son Kai.

Once again at the Ridge the next day, Max, Harper, Madison and Bridger reconvene at the Ridge again under the gaze of the man in the lurking in the shadows observing them. Max assures them that the bags, which we know to contain copious amounts of drugs and cash, are hidden. They debate back and forth vigorously about telling the police. Max tells them that she counted the cash and it’s $500,000. They decide to just hold on to it for the time being.

Despite being enamored by the badge, Jenny flat out refuses to wear the uniform. Tubbs acquiesces and sends her on to the site of a car wreck, with which we are already familiar. Jenny arrives at the crash site, picks up a stack of evidence markers and promptly discovers the rock with the ink imprint.

Finally, we view an idyllic rural property with comfy setups for various animals. As “Happy Together” plays we watch a bouncy man with a long gray balding ponytail plate bacon and eggs and head past his menagerie towards a particularly well partitioned holding pen. Out of the shadows emerges Ronald, with weeks of unshaven scruff on his face and a thick metal collar chained to his neck. “Wakey wakey eggs and bakey,” he greets a glaring Ronald. Then it is revealed that our jolly breakfast distributer looks… exactly like Rick Legarski. But surely, it’s not. For we watched his wife bludgeon him to death. But nonetheless, we leave this episode with a haunting and familiar face and so… many…  questions.

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