Behind Her Eyes – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

The Second Door

Episode 5 of Behind Her Eyes begins with an ironic rendition of Mr Sandman, as our character continue to tackle their bizarre dreams. During this montage, Adele slips further into the addictive grip of heroin, sloppily painting her nails. David meanwhile, struggles to concentrate at work.

Back home, Louise greets Adam who has returned from his trip to France. Ian thanks her for being mature about the whole thing, as the two finally start talking properly. Louise tells him she’s happy for him, as that initial hostility they felt earlier in the season disappears.

Sophie heads over to see Louise, where the truth about her job is unveiled. Sophie tries to lecture Louise but our protagonist hits back, telling her she doesn’t need to hear it right now. Despite being out the affair, Louise can’t shake the feeling of worrying about Adele. Having heard enough, Sophie decides to leave.

That evening, Louise organizes a babysitter for Adam while heading back to the office after-hours. There, she siphons through David’s documents and finds numerous strange notes and scattered thoughts within Adele’s file. This is 10 years worth of material, something that certainly raises some concerns for Louise as she flits through what’s there.

Adele looks at Louise with admiration when she sees this, commenting how she’s acting just like Rob used to. Apparently everything here stemmed from Rob originally, as Adele leads Louise upstairs to show her the painting of the well up on the wall. Adele solemnly declares that she thinks David killed Rob there.

That evening, Louise begins reading more journal entries from Rob, with the attention turning to his time back on the estate after rehab. Rob was immediately drawn back to drugs, exhibiting nervousness as he decides to pack his things up and head off to see Adele at her country estate. “Fuck off old life, hello new,” he hopefully proclaims while sitting on a train.

As Louise reads the words, she’s back inside the Teletubbies-esque world again. Only this time a door materializes in the middle of this area, leading through to the same dreamy, ethereal state that Adele experienced last episode.

Suddenly bursting upright, Louise breathes heavily before deciding to do some research online. That research leads her to a Glaswegian number for Rob’s family… but she’s interrupted by David arriving at her door.

He wants the keys and file she took, promoting Louise to head out and hand back the keys. David promises things will get ugly if she continues, especially given the security footage he’s obtained of her lurking outside. Louise admits that Adele has the file but she doesn’t know what to believe anymore.

Back home, David confronts Adele about how she “knew” who Louise was all this time. As she sits down to eat, David struggles to control himself. In fact, he outright asks her for a divorce. Adele remains stern, telling him not to ask for things he doesn’t mean, before spitting her food out as David heads upstairs.

In the past, Rob and Adele both work on their astral projections, somehow projecting their consciousnesses out of their body and swirling down in a neon-lit wisp through the mansion to the well outside.

In the morning, Rob reads more about this online, mentioning outright that she doesn’t want to know how or why, and was actually doing her astral projections the night of the fire. She mentions how it’s like a muscle, managing to project this far away from her own body.

This seems to explain (I use that term lightly) why she was able to project all the way to David’s office. It still, however, doesn’t explain why their orbs were neon-lit and everything else isn’t. Anyway, we continue.

Back in the present, Louise phones Ailsa Hoyle and begins asking questions about her brother, Rob. It turns out she hasn’t heard from Rob in over 10 years and there’s certainly no love lost here. Ailsa calls him a shite and how he’s not worth her time. After this conversation, Louise begins to suspect that Adele was telling the truth this whole time and that David really did kill Rob.

Speaking of astral projections, Louise once again channels her projection and swirls right in front of her neighbour’s face. The orb suddenly swirls back in and straight to Louise as a sobbing and frightened Adam kneels over her.

It’s here Louise realizes that what she’s experiencing is exactly the same as Adele. Thinking back over everything they’ve done together, she realizes that bumping into Adele wasn’t a chance encounter after all.

The Episode Review

Behind Her Eyes goes deep behind those sleeping eyes to deliver an utterly bizarre turn of events that begins to spill more information about the astral projections that she and Adele are sharing. As Adele says herself, she doesn’t question how or why any of this is happening and I guess that much is true for us as the audience too, given we’re unlikely to get an explanation for this bizarre twist.

More information about the fire is drip-fed out though which is welcome, while the history involving Rob is intriguing but ultimately seems to swirl around this astral projection stuff which, to be honest, doesn’t work with the more grounded melodramatic elements.

In fact, the show would work a lot better without it. The astral projection element is messy at best, and the show feels tonally jarring like it can’t quite decide what sort of show it wants to be.

Still, the ending leaves the door open for this sixth and final episode as Louise learns the truth about Adele and seems hell bent on going after her. How will this one end? We’ll have to wait and see!