Wilderness – Season 1 Episode 4 “Home Sweet Home” Recap & Review

Home Sweet Home

Episode 4 of Wilderness opens with Will and Liv’s relationship appearing to be in shambles. Liv presses Will for details about his affair with Cara. She then concludes that he never loved Cara, but Cara did love Will. Liv is then seen leaving the bar while in tears, having left Will behind in the process.

Liv’s conscience starts tormenting her following that, and she begins to see Cara everywhere. She drowns herself in booze, unable to deal with her guilt. When that doesn’t work, Liv turns to a priest, who helps her justify the incident as an accident because she had no intention of killing Cara. Soon after, Liv returns to the place where Will is drinking. Will is shocked to see her in her current state.

The next morning, Liv continues to be passive-aggressive towards Will. Will then forwards Bonnie’s invitation to Liv, inviting her to the office to toast Cara.

Bonnie toasts Cara when Liv and Will arrive at the office event. Liv is striving to suppress her overwhelming feelings regarding the matter at this point. Will soon discovers that the police are investigating Cara’s death as a murder. Following that, he notifies Liv and gets out with her.

When Liv and Will return home, they devise a strategy to erase any evidence of Will’s affair with Cara. Will admits to giving Cara the house key, and there are emails that could prove his connection to Cara. Following that, Will deletes all of Cara’s emails from her office laptop. Will and Cara also go to Garth’s to steal the key. Liv eventually gets into Cara’s closet and retrieves the key.

However, the problem is yet to be resolved. Liv and Will are approached by detectives Rawlins and Wiseman, who take them to the station for questioning. While questioning Will and Liv, the investigators zero in on the pair who narrate the occurrence in the exact same words. This raises some eyebrows.

Additionally, the detectives find footage of Liv visiting Cara’s gym. This increases their suspicions towards the couple as Liv previously told the detectives that she didn’t know Cara before the trip. Garth is arrested for the murder of Cara near the end of the episode. Meanwhile, Caryl knocks on Liv’s door, and the episode comes to a close.

The Episode Review

Given that Cara was murdered by Liv, episode 4 of Wilderness focuses on the couple’s attempts to erase any evidence linking Cara to them. The show’s narrative continues to be bland and fails to stir up tension or thrill. Additionally, the monologue is a reworded rip-off of Gone Girl’s chilling opening narration. This production, however, fails to live up to the monologue due to its weak storytelling and flat characters.

To make matters worse, the show’s characters aren’t well developed at all and they don’t seem to have a nuanced motivation. Will’s motivation for cheating basically is: he couldn’t perform certain sexual acts with his wife like he could with Cara and that Liv made him the center of her world. His justifications make little sense, and that’s because he’s a poorly written character.

We’re really rooting for the show’s plot to pick up steam. The show, however, has fallen to a disappointing level of mediocrity at this point.