To The Lake – Season 1 Episode 6 Recap & Review

The Abandoned House

Episode 6 of To The Lake begins with a crackling radio broadcast. Illegal military forces are mobilizing across the country. A coughing man in his office douses his dead family in petrol and looks to ignite them… until he doubles over and collapses.

This then cuts us back to the road as Anna continues to cough up blood. She decides to drive alone but as she sits in the car by herself, the rest of the group talk. Lyonya wants to take preventative measures and issue a quarantine which Pavel agrees is a good idea.

As they get driving, the group stop on the road as they find an inviting house with the lights on. Only… this house happens to be the same one we saw at the start of the episode. Marina finds the dead bodies inside and screams, prompting Pavel to shut the door tight.

With Anna on a stretcher, they carry her precariously into the house and quarantine her inside one of the rooms.

It turns out Pavel seems to have some sort of immunity to this disease. When he worked in the hospital, every doctor there died apart from him within 3 days. He’s never been sick. Is he the answer to this infection?

We then cut back a year and a half to see more of Anna’s past. While she smokes a cigarette outside, she listens to Sergey berate Ira on the phone and talk about couple therapy. It turns out Anna was actually his therapist in the past.

This therapy soon turned physical and saw the duo sleep together. Only, while Sergey is getting dressed she plants an empty condom wrapper inside his bag.

Back in the present, Sergey looks on glumly as he sees his Father start to drink again. As we see from the past, this is something that consumed him while Sergey was a child. He even went so far as to accidentally shoot his son in the leg.

The group have bigger problems now though as Lyonya teams up with Ira and decides to split the house in two halves. One for those who have been in contact with Anna and the other half for those who haven’t.

Sergey is not happy, sensing that they’re going to abandon him. Smashing a glass across the room, he heads back to the “infected” part with Misha and Pavel.

There’s a number of other flashbacks interspersed around this episode too, including a segment involving Marina and Boris hooking up. Another sees Polina berating her Father in the hospital as he discusses an urn for his Mother…while she’s still alive.

With Anna’s condition deteriorating, Misha heads into the office and grabs the gun he found earlier. Aiming it at his head, he prepares to fire… until Polina suddenly shows up and stops him from doing something silly. As they sit together, she admits that she loves him…but he doesn’t return the favor. Ouch.

Determined, Polina speaks to her Father and decides they should leave for the lake. The group ends up fractured, with Lyonya heading off with his family while Sergey and the others stay at the house.

Upstairs, he finds Boris kneeling down and praying. It’s the final straw for Sergey though, who berates him for what happened at the camping trip all those years ago.

He promises that the Lord won’t help and snatches up the vodka sitting on the bedside table. Pavel meanwhile continues to try and help Anna. Her immune system is strong and she’s holding on. Sergey though is struggling. Drunk, he collapses on the floor where Ira finds him face-down in the pool.

In his drunken state, Ira starts kissing him and the two wind up having sex. As they do, Pavel does his best to comfort Anna while Marina starts bleeding.

Lyonya loses control of the car and it capsizes on the side of the road. Back at the house, Misha finds Anna has somehow recovered. Could it be Pavel’s blood that did the trick?

The Episode Review

With the pacing slowing further, there’s a lovely use of colour here with the greens giving off a really uneasy feel and leaning into the sickness angle with Anna.

The entire infection is starting to become more prominent too but it’s also controlled enough to prevent it descending into full-on action or thriller territory. It’s a pretty decent attempt at showing how damaging this virus is and what effect it would have on everyone else.

In that respect, the episode perfectly encapsulates this and does a great job developing the different characters. The cracks within the group have well and truly split now.