Big Sky – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review

The Big Rick

Episode 3 of Big Sky begins with Ronald making himself some breakfast while his Mother remains suspicious over exactly what he’s doing in his free time. Down in the basement meanwhile, the kids manage to break free from their restraints and start working on prying open the doors to escape.

Back at the sheriff’s office, the officers are unwilling to put resources on this Missing Person case given the three women in question haven’t been missing for more than 48 hours. Because of that, they’ll put resources in when that time expires.

With the clock ticking, Cassie instead turns her attention to Rick, who’s none too happy that she spoke to his ex-wife about the case. As she antagonizes him, he threatens to arrest her no matter what. Eventually she tells him a war is coming and it’s enough for Rick to ease up a little and lie, telling her he’s doing his best to try and find the girls. As Cassie leaves, she knows Rick is hiding something but drives off empty-handed nonetheless.

Down in the basement, Grace manages to break free and uses a shovel and then a crowbar to pry open a drain leading down into the waste pipes to crawl to safety. Wait… what? Why not open the doors with the crowbar? Why not pass some tools through the gap to the girls so they can blindside Ronald when he returns? Anyway, that’s obviously not what they do as Grace works to try and find a way through.

Jenny meanwhile, heads off to see William Edwards up at the church. Despite some initial hostility at the main gates, she’s eventually allowed in to talk to him.

Jenny interviews William, allowing exposition to flow as he discusses the church business and what happened to the girls and Cody. Specifically, the conversation turns to that of Rick and what connection he has to the place. William is open to her investigation though, exhibiting no real suspicions as he allows her to check the CCTV footage and recent records of the place.

In doing so, this proves that Cody didn’t show up there and Jenny feeds this back to Cassie when she drives off later in the day. As they talk, the pair agree to meet up later on to exchange notes.

Back in the basement Grace freezes, blinded by fear as Ronald returns. However, she falls down the drain and begins crawling to safety. Ronald falls down too though and grabs his flashlight, taking chase and crawling after her. With Grace gone and Ronald unable to follow, he instead heads back up and finds Rick outside, believing Grace has been killed in the collapse.

Given how important these girls are to their plan, Rick tasks him with digging the tunnel from above using his digger while Rick goes searching on the other side to see if she broke free and got out.

Well, Rick starts excavating and finds a shoe but no body. That body, which of course belongs to Grace, scrambles free from the pipes and begins charging through the trees

Back in captivity, Danielle and Jerrie discuss the latter’s big reveal last episode. As they talk, Daniele commentates on the state of the world regarding equality and accepting others.

Not long after though, Ronald heads in and tasers Danielle into submission, telling them both that they just don’t learn.

With plenty of clues to go on (footprints, a solitary boot by the side of the road etc.) Grace runs for dear life while leaving a breadcrumb trail for Rick to follow.

Down by the river, Grace finds a man fishing and asks for his help. First though, she’s told to head across the river but just as they’re about to leave, Rick shows up with a bow and arrow. He shoots the fisherman square in the chest and confronts Grace.

Grace obviously doesn’t buy his “good-guy=Trooper” façade and tries to run away, taking an arrow in the back of the leg for her troubles. Eventually he heads over, snapping the arrow heads and taking Grace back to the basement whence she came. Well, so much for that daring escape.

Jenny and Cassie exchange notes that evening and come to the conclusion that the Sherriff’s department are definitely involved, along with Rick. For now though they don’t have enough to put everything together but it’s obvious they’re getting close.

Wish Grace back in captivity and the fishing man dealt with, the girls are antagonized by Ronald as the episode comes to a close.

The Episode Review

Big Sky reminds me of those old slashers and mystery series back in the 80’s and 90’s. There’s so many illogical character actions that it completely detracts from the show. From Grace’s breadcrumb trail of clues for Rick to follow through to her narrow-minded escape in the basement, the entire episode betrays the idea that these girls are actually smart.

That’s particularly problematic given we’ve seen both Danielle and Grace working with Jerrie in episodes prior to try and outsmart Ronald. So why undo all of that for a contrived chase through the sewers that really doesn’t go anywhere? In fact, if you took out all the scenes with the two girls we wouldn’t even have an episode, given the lack of plot development.

This really is a pretty poor showing and if this season continues the way it has, it could be on course to be the first big TV disappointment of 2021.