Loveday Writing

We then go to Maggie and Mel attempting to make Chibom, a Ghanaian omelette, to bond more with Kaela, as they are afraid she will run off now that she knows that they’re not related. Mel also expresses her frustration over the Tallyman’s propaganda turning the magical community against them. When Kaela comes into the kitchen and sees them trying to make Chibom, she thanks them for the sweet gesture. Mel tells Kaela that she has another way to find her biological parents by using a spell and a keepsake from before she was adopted, Kaela says she’ll talk to her mother and see if she can find something. They then hear the doorbell ring and find a package with a spider on it, immediately identifying the Tallyman as the sender.

They put a containment spell on the package and Mel asks Maggie if she can get a vision from it to see what’s inside. She tries, but she can’t, revealing she hasn’t had a vision since Macy died. An alarm goes off on her phone, reminding her to attend her court-ordered anger management therapy session. Meanwhile, two men who work for Roxie approach Jordan at SafeSpace, telling him that she wants to see him. When the two men take Jordan to Roxie’s office, he finds Harry barely alive on the floor with a rotting hand and heals him.

When Maggie arrives at her therapist’s office she finds her father, Ray, there instead. He explains that he’s had his old friend, Choochi, keep an eye on them since Macy’s death and pulled strings so he can give her an intervention. Maggie tries to leave but Ray stops her and seemingly has a heart attack in front of her, although he reveals he was diagnosed with angina a few months earlier. When he asks her to get his pills out of his bag, she finds an old plush elephant toy of hers, Trunksie. Ray explains that he brought Trunksie with him for Maggie to use to vent, like she used to when she was a child.

Meanwhile, Harry reveals to Jordan that he and Roxie found and interrogated Sunny to get a lead on the Tallyman, but she escaped, and that Donnie has been harder to crack. Jordan offers to help them as he felt he bonded with Donnie when he held everyone at the Blue Camelia hostage in the previous episode, and he had a soft spot for his wife, Loretta. Harry and Jordan manage to track her down as Roxie still had Donnie’s wallet.

Meanwhile, at the Command Centre, Mel uses an x-ray like spell on the package to see whether it’s dangerous. When it appears not to be, Mel reverses the containment spell and they open it. They find a wooden box with a riddle on the top telling them they have one more chance to save lives if they hurry. When they open the box, they find another riddle on the inside of the lid, telling them that hundreds of innocents’ lives are under threat but the way to save them is in another layer inside the box, but they have to sing the box’s unknown tune back to it when it plays.

After Kaela sings the Tallyman nursery rhyme to the box and it doesn’t work, she suggests to Mel that they go to Dev for help, due to his magical power of singing at different frequencies. When they find him at the Blue Camelia and open the box in front from him, a loud noise comes out that causes him pain. Afterwards, Dev refuses to help them as he has been brainwashed by the Tallyman’s propaganda.

Meanwhile, Harry and Jordan go to the Command Centre to find Loretta. When Jordan asks Harry to talk about the fact that he disappeared for two weeks (seems inconsistent with Kaela saying he had been missing for a week in the previous episode, and he returned), he reveals that he and Maggie broke up (offscreen) as he couldn’t keep enabling Maggie’s unhealthy demon fighting. Harry and Jordan manage to track Loretta down to Indiana and use the portal to go there. Loretta tells them that her and Donnie had a loving marriage but his mental health deteriorated after he lost his job at Ripples and started listening to the GemCasts. Jordan tells her that he thinks Donnie is lost and wants to help him, she shows him and Harry a bunch of protest signs with the words ‘The Unseen’ on them. Harry asks who they are.

Back at the Command Centre, Kaela keeps opening and closing the box as she keeps hearing a low-pitch tone. When Kaela remembers that Dev’s power enables him to sing and hear at different frequencies, she realises that the box is sending out a signal and they just need to find the right frequency to sing the correct tune back to it. Mel uses a translation spell she knows on the box and it works. When they realise the tune ‘He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ is playing, they sing it back to the box and the inner layer opens. They find tickets to ‘The Tallyman Cometh’ event in Albuquerque and go there.

Back in therapy, Ray eventually gets Maggie to open up about why she was angry at the man she assaulted, as she was already angry before he catcalled her. When she admits to not being mad at Jordan despite breaking up with him, she admits that she has been fighting with demons to avoid dealing with her own, and eventually admits that she feels guilty over Macy’s death because she should have known it was coming, due to her visions. Ray tells her that she needs to forgive herself, just like the numerous times she forgave him for letting her down.

Meanwhile, when Mel and Kaela (armed with a bow and arrow she drew and projected offscreen) arrive in Albuquerque, they find a dining table set up for them and Maggie. The Tallyman then appears on screen and tells them the magical world needs chaos, destruction and rebirth, but doesn’t give them any real information on what he’s up to, before disappearing. One of his surveillance spiders bites Mel, Kaela grabs it and they go back to the Command Centre, Maggie goes back there after seeing Mel’s many texts for help.

When Maggie hears ticking coming from the surveillance spider, they quickly run before it blows up, which makes them realise that the spiders are also being used as bombs. Maggie tries and manages to get a vision from the box where there are lots of people at what looks like a convention. She asks Mel and Kaela to help her via the Power of Three and this time manages to get a clearer vision which gives them a location, the Gnome is Where the Heart Is hotel in New York.

When they get there, they see that it’s a one-year anniversary memorial service to honour the victims of the Faction. Unbeknownst to them, the Tallyman has surveillance spiders flooding the room. Kaela finds Dev on stage preparing for a performance and tries to convince him to help to no avail. When he questions if she’s a real witch, she admits that she doesn’t feel like one and is still figuring out to deal with being a witch, and she also admits to liking him. Meanwhile, Mel and Maggie see the Tallyman and when he spots them he runs away, dropping his pocket watch, which Maggie picks up during the chase.

Mel and Maggie chase after the Tallyman whilst Dev uses his powers to disable the spiders. When the Tallyman presses his detonator and he discovers that his spider bombs don’t work, he blows himself up.

Meanwhile, Harry and Jordan return from Loretta’s and Harry has a meeting with Roxie that Jordan is excluded from by Roxie’s henchmen. When Jordan sees Harry collapsing, he discovers Donnie’s corpse nearby and Roxie informs him that Harry is trying to talk to the dead. She also reveals that Sunny killed Donnie before she escaped. When Jordan heals Harry and he comes to, Harry tells him that he gave up his powers in exchange to talk to the dead, he’s now a necrolighter. He’s been travelling to the Veil, a place where the dead linger when they have unfinished business. When Jordan points out that he’s doing this to find Macy, he tells Harry that he has to let her go, Harry says that he’s tried, and breaks down.

Back at the Manor, Mel, Maggie and Kaela talk about the Tallyman and Maggie opens up about her feelings. This leads to Kaela admitting that she avoids her feelings by trying to stay positive all the time.

Towards the end of the episode, Kaela goes back to her bus and calls her mother, asking her for the baby blanket she was wrapped up in when she was found at the fire station. Dev comes to see her and reveals that he lost his entire family when the temple where they sang was bombed, 18 years ago, and the Tallyman’s plan took him back to that day. He admits to liking her too and they kiss. Meanwhile, Sunny goes to the dining table the Tallyman set up for Mel and Kaela, grabbing a hair that fell off Kaela’s head and Mel’s blood from the spider bite, saying that she needs one more piece, presumably some kind of DNA from Maggie.

The episode ends with Jordan meeting Ray at the bar in SafeSpace, telling him to give Maggie another chance but Jordan tells him it’s none of his business. Just as Jordan is about to leave, Ray opens his shirt and reveals that his angina is the result of some kind of curse and asks for Jordan’s help in how to get rid of it.

I said at the beginning of my review that this was a disappointing episode. I felt it was disappointing for many reasons, first and foremost, the Tallyman blowing himself up when his only plan didn’t work out. For someone who was established early in the season as a big threat only to kill himself when his plan didn’t work out was anti-climactic and a real let down, and frankly I didn’t see the point of establishing him as a threat, especially when most of his antics were offscreen.

The second reason for my disappointment in this episode was Harry and Jordan revealing major character development for themselves that happened offscreen. While Maggie and Jordan’s relationship was shown to be under strain, considering how much the writers have asked the audience to invest in their relationship over the last season or so, it’s a letdown and a disservice to their characters to have their breakup happen offscreen. Harry becoming a necrolighter, as well as most of his character development this season, happening offscreen has been a disservice to his character as well.  My third reason for my disappointment was the slow pacing of the episode, I felt it dragged on, especially for such an anti-climactic ending.

Despite my disappointment, there were a few positive things. I appreciated the reappearance of Ray, especially when he came back for a selfless reason. It’s easy for Maggie to not listen to Mel, Kaela or Jordan, it was far more beneficial for her healing to be called out and helped by an outsider who hasn’t been around to witness everything she’s gone through, to view the situation through fresh eyes. The twist of him somehow being cursed was well executed and I’m looking forward to seeing how this new story arc is played out. I also appreciated the reappearance of Dev and the developing romance between him and Kaela.

So the Tallyman is gone, but considering he invited them to a dinner party where Sunny ended up collecting Mel’s and Kaela’s DNA, I did wonder whether he was working with her or a pawn in a larger scheme. It will be interesting to find out as the season progresses and whether her scheme is connected with The Unseen.

While this was a disappointing episode, a new threat and new story arcs were established that could lead to stronger future episodes, which is especially important now that we’ve reached the halfway point of the season.

Stray Observations:

-Kaela calls Maggie ‘boo’.

-Apparently Mel hooked up with some female magical beings that didn’t speak English or any human language.

-A year has passed since the events caused by the Faction, who were the big threat of season 2 and early season 3.

-The Tallyman mentions the Source of All Evil, who was the major threat of season 1.

-Sunny says that she has the blood of the eldest and the hair of the youngest, the latter referring to Kaela. However it’s been established that Kaela is older than Maggie.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “The vegetables are supposed to be chopped, not abused.” (Maggie to Mel)
• “That’s the melodious thirst trap.” (Kaela to Mel on Dev)