Review: Widow's Bay, "Seasickness" | Season 1, Episode 7

I feel like I missed an episode. I know I didn’t–I suspect one of would’ve mentioned something–but watching “Seasickness” made feel like I had. Coming off of “Our History,” it’s an interesting episode, one which has the show’s heroes trying to come to terms with the island’s “curse” at considerable risk to themselves. But for me at least, the narrative makes too many jumps to get to its conclusion, in ways that undermine the cohesion of Widow's Bay as a whole.

A big reason why I praised “Our History” as much as I did was its focus. Ending aside, it tells a single, direct story; and while that story may not have given as many answers about the island’s past as it could (or perhaps should) have, it still benefited from its relative simplicity. It never demanded much of our suspension of disbelief, and Sarah, the protagonist, behaved in ways that made sense with the information she had at hand. Part of the story seemed to be about the challenges of doing the right thing when the world seems to have gone insane around you, but Sarah’s choices still fit into basic logic. She was afraid of Robert, so she joined forces with the town against him. She sought to protect the children because they were, y’know, children. And she hit a woman covered in blood with an oar because the woman was covered in blood, and that blood did not appear to be her own.

Contrast that with “Seasickness.” We start with Tom, waking up from his drug trip. Apparently he was out for an entire day, although it’s unclear exactly what that means; does the day include the few out of context scenes we saw last week, or was it an entirely new day, starting from the moment Tom seemed to be on the verge of making a deal with the devil? But put that aside for the moment. It was a drug trip episode, and those tend to get wild just by the nature of their subject.