2x20 A Room With No View
Millennium (1996)
2x20 A Room With No View, written by Ken Horton, Michael R. Perry and Erin Maher, directed by Thomas J. Wright.
We open at a farm house with missing high-schoolers locked in cells in the basement. At first we see only an outline of who is doing this, but then hear her voice: Lucy Butler, shape shifting emissary of the devil, the one who killed Bob Bletcher in Frank's basement.
She plays "Love is Blue" on a loop for the inmates, which is maddening, although I suppose you don't hear it after a while. Landon, the newest prisoner, says "Oh my god. At least Noriega got Van Halen".
Lucy's project, to the extent we can understand it, is to suppress the special heart and soul of her victims and make them ordinary mediocrities. Is that what Evil wants? She is assisted by a high school guidance councilor, which is cruel or funny depending on your own experience.
We have no reason to think this is a lure for Frank, except that the devil can play a deep game. Frank can't reach Jordan by phone, which makes us nervous.
The Group has been monitoring Lucy who seems to have been quiet, but when they track down the agent they find his rotting body tied to a chair. Lucy has been filing her own reports for six months.
quote
Lucy: You just don't have the ability, practically or within you, to escape me. No-one does. I'm the only one who understands you. I'm the only one who has ever loved you.
[...]
You are nothing! Nothing lies ahead for you. You lie awake in the middle of the night, or you look around at others, and you feel inside, in your heart, that maybe, no, definitely that you are different? that you are special? that you can make a difference? You are nothing. The sooner you realize that mediocrity is all you are, the sooner your love will be blue. I love you so much. I'm working to free you. When you choose to be ordinary, then, then you will be special. Because you will be working to be ordinary unlike most others who just are.
Notes:
Sarah-Jane Redmond returns as Lucy Butler, not for the last time.
Of course she is going to use sexual domination of teenaged boys. She approaches dominatrix powers.
A totally broken prisoner tells new arrival Landon: "Hey, don't do that. There's no way out. She'll only come in here and love you. And you don't want that".
The bitter guidance councilor delivers an indictment of school as a sorting machine, assigning winners and losers. She's a cog in that machine.
When Peter finds the "Love is Blue" recording he breaks the CD, as if the disc itself were cursed.
They find a newspaper clipping of a missing person from 1911: it's Lucy Butler. Clearly she left it for them.
quote
Frank: She's not here.
Peter: So where do we start to look for her?
Frank: (raising his hands helplessly) Everywhere.
