Panic – Season 1 Episode 4 Recap & Review

Escape

Episode 4 of Panic Season 1 begins back at the farm as farmer Spurlock sporadically blasts his shotgun wildly across the cornfields. Getting nowhere, he settles on enacting “Phase 2”.

Elsewhere, Heather finds herself with only one way to go; descending deep into this underground bunker. There, she finds a whole stack of gear, including crushed up weed and pills. Heather finds a book down there too, including a point tally for each of the contestants.

Now it seems like Spurlock may actually be one of the judges. Anyway, each of the kids manage to grab a treasure from inside the house and hurry back to the car to take off.

Back in town, a beaten Tyler gets back in the truck with Ray. It turns out these are drug dealers behind his injuries. Tyler is behind on his payments. He had a deal going down in Galveston and ended up falling behind.

Tyler needs to enter the game again because of this, but it turns out Ray actually covered for him with a picture of the treasure. On a personal note, this seems a bit sus to me, especially as anyone could have taken this picture. Anyway, it’s enough for Tyler to remain in the game for now.

At the police station, John feeds back to the others about a kid called Hunt Kenny. He’s been skulking around at the church a lot and he seems pretty shady. It turns out they’ve picked him up a few times for minor misdemeanors including DUIs.

Heather speaks to Natalie about the list of names she’s found and contemplates whether this could link back to Ray. They’re puzzled over who it could be (Farmer Spurlock maybe kids?) but for now it’s left unanswered.

Heather does receive $400 back from her Mum, who’s a bit more level-headed and encourages Heather to go after what she wants. Well, that includes telling Bishop how she feels but there’s a problem. Over at Bishops, love interest Leela is there which leads to some jealous angst .

Sergeant Langley continues his hunt, specifically for Hunt Kenny. She visits the senior and asks him about the game, learning about the point system and how the football team had a bet against the girl’s dance team last year.

This all links back to Panic of course, and the boys were convinced Jimmy was keeping the score low on purpose, which would have allowed Abby a shot at making the finals. This all links back to the death threats too, although Hunt is adamant he doesn’t know who else made the finals.

Anyway, day turns to night and the kids all convene together and start partying. There’s tension in the air, especially when rumours about Dodge start to spread. Heather eventually runs into bad boy Ray, who throws up some pretty cringey pick-up lines.

Eventually, after some teen angst and jealousy, he opens up to Heather and admits he too is worried and concerned. In fact, he’s caught in a whirlwind of despair, convinced that everything is going wrong, likening himself to “trash”. Ray eventually manages to get through to her and the two kiss.

A crash suddenly distracts everyone as they notice more graffiti and a note. “Friday. From Dusk till Dawn. Graybill House.” This means the judges – or one of them – is actually at the party. But who could it be? Well, Bishop leaves the party and happens to have paint up his rear-view mirror. Could he be one of the judges?

The Episode Review

The fourth episode slows things down as we see more teen drama seep into this show. With no games this time around (save for the early shenanigans at the farm) the show instead turns its attention toward the different candidates and their stakes in this game.

How no one has seemed to figure out the correlation between these games and that an adult could be involved is beyond me. Of course, I’m writing these recaps (as always) “in the moment” and this could be way off from what happens in the future episodes so take these words with a grain of salt. Given what was in Farmer Spurlock’s basement, it’s not too much of a stretch to believe he’s involved.

Then again, the show seems to be hinting that this falls to Bishop instead, who obviously leaves the party with red paint over his hands. Now, this could be a red herring or he could be heavily involved. We’ll have to wait and see.

Either way, this show has enough intrigue to keep things interesting, even if you do have to suspend your disbelief with this one.