[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Mare of Easttown, Season 1, Episode 3, “Enter Number Two.”]
The investigation continues on Mare of Easttown, and quite honestly did I think that in my lifetime I’d ever get to see Oscar winner Kate Winslet pull a perfect Columbo and ask “Just one last thing…”? The answer is no. Of course, Columbo would never have gotten caught for planting drugs on their daughter-in-law… Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself here.
The autopsy of Erin confirms not just her height and weight but also that she was killed between midnight and 2 AM, explaining why her bike was missing from the woods. Meanwhile, another attempted murder is very much not a mystery: the friends of Kenny track him down in the woods, where he’s lying after putting two bullets in Dylan at the end of last week’s episode, and doing a terrible job of covering it up. (I mean, he confesses directly and all.)
Good news, though, Dylan’s not dead! This is good news at least for Dylan as well as his family — in fact, he may walk again. (At least, that isn’t immediately ruled out this week, despite two bullets in the back.)
Really, this episode is, as befits its nature as an episode of a sad HBO murder show, pretty focused on the investigation with only a few major developments — and as a result is pretty simple to break down. First off, as teased by the end of last week’s episode Frank, Mare’s ex-husband, did in fact have a deeper connection to the deceased Erin than previously revealed. He does even admit to Mare that he lied to her about one time helping Erin out by buying her groceries and driving her home, though he of course makes it clear that he did not kill her… by saying “I never had sex with Erin and I certainly didn’t kill her,” which frankly is a line of dialogue heard way too often in sad murder shows, so sorry Frank, we’re still keeping our eyes on you.
Of course, who really deserves our attention is Deacon Mark, who last week revealed that he had a connection to Erin. This week, he not only talked to Mare and her partner Colin about it — even surrendering his cell phone, but, well, did something totally innocent and not at all suspicious when he drove out to a bridge and dumped Erin’s pink bike over into a river. Of course, only the omniscient eye of the show’s camera caught him (as far as we know anyway) but still, smooth move pastor!
It’s honestly not that deep an episode in terms of plot, though in the quest to find out what happened to Erin Mare does get Colin to use his pull with the state authorities to bring in the dogs. Specifically, they get clued into an area of the woods where Erin might have been killed — what with her severed fingertip being found there and all — and with the help of their own searching as well as some “firearm canines” are able to track down some key fragments.
Those are honestly the major plot points of the episode as they relate to the murder, but multiple characters are met with important moments. Siobhan, Mare’s daughter, gets a big opp with her band to play on a college radio station, one only slightly tarnished by her girlfriend overdoing it on edibles right beforehand — but that doesn’t keep the cute radio DJ from asking Siobhan out, which she eventually accepts.
Siobhan is also working on a documentary project about her brother for school that gives us a little additional insight into her brother and his life, specifically the mental issues which led him to die by suicide. But also potentially enlightening is Mare’s interactions with Carrie, her son’s former partner, who is going after custody of Drew because she feels that Kevin hated Mare as his mother, and wouldn’t want her serving as Drew’s primary custodian as a result.
Mare’s feelings regarding Carrie aren’t hard to sus out, but escalate to a whole new level when she makes the poor choice to plant some heroin purloined from the station evidence room in Carrie’s car. We never see her do any of this (though we do see her have the heroin packets on her person) but it’s also not hard to blame the chief for asking for her gun and badge over it. While Mare’s been officially taken off the case, let’s be clear — we’ve all seen murder shows before, and we know that even a slightly less moral version of Columbo wouldn’t be put off by such a thing.
Mare of Easttown airs Sundays at 10 PM on HBO.
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