Intruders, Season 1, Episode 8: It Never Ends

Flashback opener – New York, 1931 with Bix and Rose in a club, enjoying the music, playing music – and Bix drinking heavily. Cut to later with him dying and Rose grabbing the mouth piece to his trumpet and having the dying Bix focus on it – creating a trigger to bring him back in a future life.

To the present and Jack, having watched Gary jump of the roof and now called the emergency services, now enters the Reverti building, gun drawn. Inside he finds Todd, bleeding to death after Madison/Marcus slashed open his leg. He ties up Todd’s leg and Todd tells him where the secret passage is into the basement.

That’s two people who need emergency help Jack has just left behind.

He walks through the dark, underground corridors and rooms, stalked by Marcus/Madison. It’s the kind of horror scene we’ve seen a lot before – but rarely with a 10 year old girl as the menacing stalker. Jack overhears two men (Shepherds?) planning to kill Richard at Rose’s orders.

Detective Ron is still trying to help Madison’s parents find Madison – but instead has found Todd’s daughter, Meadow. She’s terrified of Madison, but the parents are far too distraught to notice. The emergency services call Jack made, though, is connected by Ron to the address where Meadow said her dad was stabbed.

In the tunnels, Madison/Marcus has flashbacks to Marcus’s last life – when Rose (wait, Rose who looks like Amy? Would Rose have been in Amy’s body then?) had Marcus walled up, alive; apparently part of the process of ensuring he’ll never come back. After being walled up, Richard Shepherd pulls out of a brick and shows him the cracker (way back at the beginning of the series, this is the Trigger he used to bring Marcus back) before re-bricking him up and agreeing to see him in 18 years.

Jack finds a library full of the journal books the Reverti seem to use to return to life or get their bearings or just to record their lives (it hasn’t been clearly explained). Several of them have the names of famous people attached. He also finds a huge archive of Triggers and starts destroying them. He only stops when he hears Madison/Marcus hammering on the brick wall where he was entombed.

Jack sneaks up behind her and takes the hammer and almost gets slashed in the leg for it. Marcus/Madison decides to try and recruit Jack since they both hate Rose. Lots of exposition of who Madison is (Marcus says Madison is gone) and how Marcus was buried alive by Rose. Madison/Marcus points to where Marcus’s old body is and challenges Jack to check – to confirm that it’s all true. And when it’s confirmed, she expects Jack to help her kill Rose.

Jack breaks down the wall – behind which is Marcus’s body. Marcus/Madison wants to set off to murder but Jack insists she’s a 9 year old girl and needs to stay put. Oh Jack, you kind of deserved getting your arm slashed there. Having cut Jack, Madison/Marcus runs off

Intruders, Season 1, Episode 7: The Crossing Place

A rather distraught and broken Jack goes to church to ask an unsuspecting priest about coming back from the dead and whether Amy has left him and his child died because god is punishing him for the people he killed way back when (the back story used for random angst). He leaves ominously declaring that he knows what he has to do

Well probably not the priest’s best day.

Jack charges off to Amy/Roses’s hotel room only to find someone else in the room and hotel security there to ask him to leave.

Gary’s having his own melt down in his hotel room.

Jack goes rampaging after Todd, Amy’s boss who is in on the big secret (Madison/Marcus is also watching the flat and being creepy) Much beating follows and Todd protests his innocence (and bleeds) while bleeding he manages to tell Jack where Amy will be while security drags Jack away.

He gets thrown in prison where there’s a man who is supposed to be insane apparently having a conversation with Jack’s dead son; the fetus ghost says he’ll wait for Amy – but not Rose. Just in case we didn’t have enough vague ominous woo-woo.

Madison, meanwhile, has followed Todd’s daughters to school no doubt to do bad things – this begins with encouraging her to skip school.

Madison’s parents are talking to the police, Detective Ron in question is focused on Marcus since he worked his cases before – before Marcus was reincarnated into a little girl. He also hears the Richard Shepherd was interested in Madison and pretending to be FBI

Jack gets an interview with Detective Ron and he tells Ron all sorts about Qui Riverti which Ron naturally doesn’t believe – until Jack brings up the man Richard Shepherd killed, including info he shouldn’t have known and that Marcus Fox was involved with them.

Ron decides to show Jack a video of Marcus when Ron questioned him and how Marcus happily talked about historical serial killings (presumably all his past crimes through the ages of reincarnations). He shows pictures of Marcus’s murders and the most recent Madison murder to Jack (I’m not quite sure why Jack is due all this show and tell). Jack also identifies a sketch of Richard Shepherd as Anderson’s killer.

Intruders, Season 1, Episode 6: Bound

Richard Shepherd meets with Rose – who is wearing Amy’s body (that would be Jack’s wife) – to report Frank is dead (but not that he killed him) and the other Shepherds are looking for the killer (except him, obviously). Richard wants to continue Frank’s task, whatever that was, because of the history he shared with Amy (he did?) though not, apparently with Rose (wait, is Amy the reincarnator? Or Rose? Or Both?). Richard also apologises for taking so long to “trigger” Rose.

This job involves bringing someone back from the dead which is forbidden by a group called Reverti and if she’s caught they’ll be killed and not resurrected; especially tricky since Amy/Rose is due to become one of the 9 (whoever they are – bosses of the organisation I infer – I think they are the Reverti). She gives Richard the name and he goes to confirm whoever this guy is – and then he’ll need the trigger which Amy/Rose has. And no, we don’t get to see the name

Over to Jack (damn it, he’s the only one with no answers) who calls Amy (who he just saw in Roses’s room) to say how much he misses her and to check where she is – she lies of course. Jack goes and grabs his gun – having a flashback to his ill-defined past as a policeman in which he killed someone; expanded now to show one of them was completely helpless when Jack finished him off. He charges through the house ransacking the place to find lots of medication (which I’m guessing is fertility medication because it also comes with a flashback to Amy bloodstained that we’ve seen before which we can pretty much confirm is a miscarriage). After tearing throw her mail he finds that she’s preparing to divorce him.

He then breaks into his wife’s safe and pulls out a Que Reverti book – one of those books all the returned get with a number 9 on the cover (we’ve seen Marcus/Madison with the same book). The book is written in several languages; he also finds a box inside which is a pen, a funnel, a coin and nail polish. Because RANDOM.

He stops when he hears someone creeping outside. We then have a ridiculous amount of time with him pulling his gun, having flashbacks and being all tense and dramatic for ages before we see it’s the neighbours checking up on what they thought was an empty house. The neighbours are concerned and a little creepy. They want to tell Jack how Amy has moved on (looking ultra creepy while doing so). Yes they’re part of the creepy Reverti club and because she really liked Jack they’re going to point a gun at him and make him leave with whatever he can carry. Yeah, feel the love.

Over to Richard Shepherd at a Chinese restaurant who keeps trying to trigger one of the waiters, Peter (jazz is involved, because jazz is a thing, it seems). He then calls Amy/Rose to confirm “it’s him” which makes Amy very happy.

Intruders, Season 1, Episode 5: The Shepherds and the Fox

This show clearly isn’t confusing enough- time for a 9 year old flashback, to when the police caught up with Marcus (in his own body – or the body he was using then anyway) and the bodies of his many many victims.

In the present the police question Jack about Anderson being murdered in front of him last episode. The police aren’t accusatory but are kind of arseholish when there’s zero indication Jack did anything wrong

Madison/Marcus continues doing whatever it is she’s actually doing – and we continue to have almost cartoonishly awful things being said by a 10 year old. She eventually finds her way to a house, barges in and tries to call her parents; the man whose house she barged in manages to give Madison’s mother his address and we see that the house she’s found is Marcus’s old house – where all the bodies were. Marcus takes over and the creepiness emerges – and the knife wielding 10 year old.

Richard Shepherd, who has just killed Armstrong, gets a visit from Frank Shepherd who is not all that impressed by the noise Richard’s making in order to preserve the silence, which is a nice way of putting it. While Frank and Richard have a rapport, Frank isn’t keen on Richard’s doubts of their bosses and he reaffirms their current task: find Marcus, kill him and find out who it was – which on of them it was – who helped Marcus return. Which is a problem for Richard because it was probably him. After asking Richard if it was him (and lots of shiftiness in response) Frank tells him to find the guy and kill him too.

Jack angsts and drinks in a hotel, talks to Amy on the phone for more angst and gets another menacing call from Rose wanting to set up a meeting – she even does a “I know where you are” speech and there’s a half-seen shadowy figure at his door. Seriously, they need to stop doing this random poking of Jack every episode, what’s it supposed to achieve?

The next day Jack tries to call Gary who isn’t answering his phone – and when he calls Gary’s firm he learns Gary hasn’t worked for them for months.  Gary does contact him – cryptically asking to speak to him at his room.  Jack agrees but first he has a meeting Rose set up with Frank. Crypticness follows and Frank tries to kill Jack – sadly Frank is a terrible amateur and waits until he’s said “you’ll see her in your next lifetime” before putting gloves on – so he announces he’s going to kill Jack just as his hands are entangled with gloves. Frank still gets the upper hand until Richard shoots him. Yes, Richard just saved Jack. Richard leaves – warning Jack that if they meet a third time he’ll kill him

I think the whole goal of this show and the organisation is actually just to mess with Jack’s head. Jack goes from there to Gary’s hotel room which is scattered with papers – both of them look like hell. Gary tries to explain things – about hearing Anderson’s machine and it causing lots of fear until it turned off – and afterwards sickness and insomnia. When looking at his baby girl he saw a strange darkening of her eyes which he decided was another soul (really?), Donna the girl from their high school who killed herself (remember the first episode, that bit that was never explained?) Gary decides Donna was possessed and is now back to warn Gary.

Intruders, Season 1, Episode 4: Ave Verum Corpus

Madison flashback to when her parents first bought the beach house and Madison, possessed by Marcus, can play the piano despite never being taught. This is a dream along with some unpleasant flickers of Marcus’s death before she wakes up in the back of a car. And she’s Madison again, confused and lost. She doesn’t even remember where her home is because of Marcus; the confusion only a little time before Marcus is back in charge. She goes to a library, seems to remember the name “Allison Crane” (which may be Amy )before getting frustrated and reading from her book again – which talks about areas of the world where it’s easier to come back from the dead.

She continues to try and prompt her memory – and remembers Alison is her mother, and her phone number. She begs her mother for help to get home but “the man” (Marcus) wants her to find someone called Crane. She passes out by the pay phone.

Meanwhile, Gary is telling Jack about the shadowy organisation. He tells Jack about a client of his firm called Joe Cranfield (very rich man who became that way by, we can infer, being resurrected, meaning he already had practice at life). Gary worked for him for 15 years (being apparently creeped out by the guy but never being asked to do anything dubious) but last year he randomly decided to start dispersing his money in  preparation for death despite being quite healthy. In addition to leaving his family very very comfortable he also left the bulk of his fortune to an obscure charity and $10 million to the illusive Bill Anderson – who keeps sending he cheque back to Gary. He also put a building in trust – a building Amy visited when she disappeared. For extra connections, the building has been owned by Todd Crane (Amy’s boss – and the person Madison/Marcus is looking for) for over a century and the Crane family has also been running the obscure charity for a century or so. The trustees for the building are Todd Crane, Marcus Fox (the guy possessing Madison) and the now deceased Jo Cranfield – his trusteeship has passed on to Amy, Jack’s wife Amy. The building’s also eerily empty. Jack makes excuses and Gary finds the whole thing very suspicious and decides this is all behind the attempted murder of Bill Anderson and the actual murder of his family.

Jack agrees to look at all the evidence Gary has – and then Gary needs to do nothing and leave Jack alone. Jack leaves planning to visit Bill Anderson’s house (I’m assuming by the police tape) –and gets an ominous distorted call basically saying “stop it or we kill you”. Honestly if they didn’t do this on a regular basis Jack would probably get bored and wander off. Inside he finds some burned out electronics (Richard Shepherd burned the building down) and a guy who holds him at gun point

Said guy is the police and takes him back to the police station for some snarking and convenient info-dumping about Tim Truth and the conspiracy people on the radio. Also a bit more hinting at the nefarious past that made Jack quit the police in LA.

Intruders, Season 1, Episode 3: Time Has Come Today

Tim the replacement conspiracy theoriest is still on the radio (and can he get new material? Armstrong’s family was killed and so was Oz – you need a bit more than murders for a conspiracy) being listened to by creepy Madison (or Marcus) and the woman she paid to drive her to Seattle (she looks very disturbed and, frankly, should be wearing a red shirt), Karen. She’s starting to have doubts over the whole driving off with a 10 year old girl thing while Madison continues to be the creepiest kiddy ever with extra knowledge of classical music which she also makes creepy by throwing in some child murders that she remembered way before she was born- because she’s Madison and everything she does is creepy.

To Jack who is drinking while driving and playing with his phone as well. Naughty policeman. He’s having lots of sad memories of his wife Annie and how she became all creepy and odd before her disappearance.

On the same stretch of road, Richard Shepherd (the ominous one) is having his own angsty memories of being sent to kill Marcus – who says (for more crypticness) “Granfield convinced the 9 to finally kill me off.” We have added references to knowing people for thousands of years. Marcus has  another plan – pay Richard a load of money to pretend he’s dead and when he finally does die, Richard will “Shepherd him off the books” (I’m calling him Richard from now on since Shepherd seems to be a job description as much as a name) which seems to be how these people come back from the dead. When he comes back he will then kill off the 9 since they won’t be expecting him. He also gives Richard the cracker/wafer which he gave to Madison in an earlier episode.

He does accept the deal so we’re back to the present with Richard looking kind of troubled.

Jack returns home and returns his neighbour’s car – and she briefly pulls a gun on him because Madison isn’t the only one who can pull out the creepy.

Amy is waiting for him… yes that phone call last week was genuine. Rather than talk about her random disappearance she’s concerned about the bruises on him – and him still drinking (the impression being that Jack used to have a problem). She does have a fairly good idea for why she didn’t call him to say she’d lost her phone (she couldn’t remember his mobile number. Landlines apparently don’t exist). She actually has a really good explanation for everything (she was interviewing with a rival firm and didn’t want her boss to know about it) and is actually pretty angry about him not remembering them discussing it (him being so self-absorbed with his book). She also pours away the bottle of booze she finds.

They reconcile and it doesn’t cover everything but Amy tells Jack that she will never leave him – because he’s her Shepherd. She then turns into the cryptic about how he couldn’t understand – before running out and playing jazz, music she’s supposed to hate.

He goes to her to find her on the phone with someone. She tries to get him to back off but he keeps pressing, she’s supposed to have quit smoking and now she’s lighting up again and who is she calling in the middle of the night. She has another plausible explanation and asks for her phone – which he gives her, but not before cloning it. Yeah, this level of suspicion is not the recipe for a happy marriage. On that note, Jack makes a plea for them to return to how they were – and she says they have to split up.

Intruders, Season 1, Episode 2: Time Has Come Today

After Madison, apparently possessed by an adult man called Marcus, went wandering her mother is obviously distraught. Madison returns to herself in the middle of a Portland bus station, checking her pockets as memories of what she did while possessed come back – her reaching Portland, meeting a woman who welcomed her back and gave her a book (which has the cryptic forward “in the beginning there was death), a wadge of cash, a key and a ticket to Seattle.

She reads the book and it talks about living other lives, of her getting used to odd memories and the Cuiera Verde (very likely spelt wrong) and very cryptic and awesomely ominous lines about death –a and there being no such thing. Ominous crypticness interrupted by the attendant telling her she can’t get on the train without an accompanying adult. Marcus rises to the surface and snarls and threatens

Naturally Madison’s mother calls the police and her husband, Simon Madison’s father (the police, naturally, suspect him but she collapses in his arms). Their crying in each other’s arms is interrupted by the Nefarious Shepherd’s arrival, assuring them he will find their daughter. He asks lots of questions that make sense if you know she’s been possessed but otherwise sound deeply creepy and Madison’s parents quickly become suspicious. Rather than be kicked out he tells Simon about Alison cheating on him – for some bizarre reason he decides to believe Shepherd, a complete stranger he met seconds ago and storms out the house and she runs out after him. This didn’t actually further his investigation at all, I think Shepherd just likes being a bastard.

Alone in the house he searches it and finds a notebook with pages torn out, when he does a pencil rub on the indents he sees Marcus’s ominous warning “what goes around comes around.”

Shepherd goes to an address in Chinatown he asked the parents about – and which Madison visited. He breaks in and knocks aside a guy in his way to ask a woman where Madison went. Complete with violent threat – while she wants to know what Shepherd he’s done (9 year olds are unprecedented apparently) in and that the book was not prepared for Marcus Fox. She says “they” will kill them and Shepherd threatens to kill her anyway – and we have a fight scene with some random Asian man (martial arts, of course). Shepherd wins and kills the man – then the woman as she begs him not to.

He goes to the station to try and find Madison, but she runs out when he appears and hides from him (managing to look very ominous). Madison pays a bystander to take her to Seattle and reads the book – which talks about dying and returning

In Seattle, Jack is still looking for his wife, Amy, has gone to the office of Kerry, Crane and Hardy, the name of the company he found in her phone. He’s taken to see Todd Crane who clearly knows Jack but it looks like Jack doesn’t remember him (obviously pretending he does in one of those horrible awkward social moments); Todd claims that Amy hasn’t actually been in the office all week and more awkward with-each-seeming-to-suspect-the-other follows.

Cut to – flashback, flashforward? I’m not even sure. Anyway Jack wakes up next to Amy who has an odd dream that involves lots of fondling her own arms before waking up and speaking another language - Russian? She wakes up – but refers to herself in the third person and says that line that keeps coming up “in the beginning there was death.”

Intruders, Season 1, Episode 1: She Was Provisional

This brand new show starts in California in 1990 – so I’m going with opening flashback prologue. It’s a birthday party and the director has pulled out the most ominous music he could find. Either the director really hates birthdays or she’s just blown typhoid-leprosy all over the cake.

Ominous music continues after the party when the birthday girl is going to bed, so I’m assuming it’s not just the director’s terror over grey hairs. Ominous men approach the house. They enter the house (ominously). They enter her room and grab her –one of the men tells her they’re returning a secret to her, one she gave to them years ago (no I’ve written that sentence 4 times and it still doesn’t make sense). He holds up an odd looking medallion of some kind. We then seem to have an exorcism – she’s sick, she writhes and seizes on the bed and she chants in a language I don’t recognise. The two men leave, leaving behind a bus ticket to Seattle and a black card with number 9 on it (or an upside down 6 I guess).

The next day she wakes up lying on the lawn of her front garden. This doesn’t seem to upset her. She calmly goes inside and studies the card and ticket until her pupils expand massively (ominous music is still going so I guess they expand ominously) and she drops both pieces of paper. Moving robotically, she writes an ominous note (and this isn’t me snarking the over the top music since it includes lines like “in the beginning there was death” and “I am not Donna”). She gets in the bath, fully clothed, and slits her wrists (I assume by the bloody water), her suicide note left by the tub.

After that ominous beginning we have the opening credits that are pretty damn awesomely ominous.

After which it’s to the present day and Seattle where it is raining (I’ve given to understand this isn’t a surprising state of affairs). It’s the middle of the night and FBI Agent Shepherd knocks on a woman’s door looking for (he could also sell her some decent doors, because they’re not even raising their voices to be heard through the door in the middle of a thunder storm). He’s looking for a William Anderson. She opens the door – and the Agent (one of the two men from 10 years ago) throws her to the floor by her neck; she panics and he shoots her apparently for being noisy – and the teenaged boy in the house as well. He sets the place on fire as he leaves. He’s not a good house guest.

Move over to Birch Crossings, a town in Washington and Ominous music is replaced with sad, introspective music playing while we meet Jack an author (and ex-cop) and his partner Amy whose birthday it is. I suspect birthdays may be significant. She gets kind of odd about Jazz music for some reason. Off jazzness aside, we have a birthday cake, blowing out of the candles (in ominous close up) and apparent plans to go to Paris. They seem a nice couple but they also have sex on the kitchen cabinet and there’s just not enough bleach in the WORLD guys. And do any guys really have sex by just unzipping their flies? Because… no. While they have sex, Amy’s pupils expand just like Donna’s did back in the prologue.