What I liked about this episode about Locke & Key was that it was very focused. Modern TV is almost always built around an ensemble, and it has this disease where it can’t help but check in with every major character in every episode, even if that character has nothing to do. Locke & Key did that last episode in fact. But “Dissection” managed to get everyone on the same page, united around one antagonist, the troubled murderer Sam Lesser. It was good, until it wasn’t. Let’s begin.
1. Parental guidance
We’ve seen Hot Rendell Locke at work before, but was it clear that he was a guidance counselor? Mostly what we saw him do is repeatedly have no boundaries between work and home, making life hell for Tyler. Here though we see that… Rendell actually seems to be pretty good at his job? Committed in the very least. He was warm with Sam Lesser, a little tough, but fair. His ultimate “betrayal” was that he was worried about Sam’s mental health and hey, turns out he was right to be. I got nothing bad to say about Hot Rendell working with anyone who he is not related to.
I mean, I guess we could talk about his 90s-tastic “Dare to be different!” poster. I like it! Strong sense of style. That’ll be an A+ from me.
2. Fortunate failures
The rest of the episode is a hostage situation, and all of our heroes have a moment to be incredibly weird and/or stupid. I mean, it starts strongly enough. “Maybe it’s not Well Lady,” Bode says, when he and Kinsey first hear the sounds of their mom being taken hostage. Nice self awareness kid! You’ve figured out you’re building a whole Rogues Gallery.
That’s where the plan starts to go off the rails. Bode is immediately, really sure he needs to turn into a ghost, but he doesn’t really have a plan beyond that. In fact, if his yelling and flying had worked a little better, he would have gotten his mom killed. So good thing he failed I guess? Also, if his plan was, “scream mom at the top of my lungs,” why did he have to transform into the one form that would make it impossible? Couldn’t he have just run up the stairs doing that? Where did the ghost form fit into the equation?
Then Bode is so certain that he knows what’s up. He just knows that Sam can’t take the key from him. But whoops, he gets that wrong too! Not a great batting average this episode for the little guy.
You know, I am fundamentally convinced that all these actors are at least pretty good. So the problems with this scene have got to be in the direction, right? Why is everyone so understated? Why aren’t they expressing real fear? I mean, Kinsey I get. But Nina seems so detached. And Bode too. Nina is almost smiling for most of her scenes. I can tell that Darby Stanchfield, a fantastic actor, is going for something, but it just doesn’t come together. The performances (and I suspect, the direction) completely undermine the tension of the whole damn episode.
3. The Lesser family
In the comics, we never get a secret origin to Sam Lesser. He’s a disturbed kid caught up with malevolent forces who exploit his weaknesses. What’s weird is that in the comic we spend so much more time with him, but without getting too deep into his history with his abusive dad, his terrorized little sister, and all the rest. I don’t know what those scenes really added, but I was kind of intrigued. But then they went nowhere. It spelled out a bunch of stuff that could have been made clear much more simply, and the tense moment between Tyler and Sam’s dad just sort of happened. I guess if I had faith, I’d assume the show is going to follow it up with later flashbacks? But it seemed a clumsy way to make Sam seem pathetic. You didn’t need to do so much work for little payoff!
4. I’d like to say he dodged a bullet, but…
Continued below
It’s weird that Tyler is boning down with Dodge. For a lot of reasons. Part of it is a comics difference. You see, in the comics, Dodge hooks up with a number of other characters, most notably Kinsey. There are a lot of shapeshifting Key shenanigans involved. And I feel like putting Tyler in this position is a gender statement? Like, “Boys, always thinking with their downstairs, amiright?” And that part seems so shallow to me compared to the drawn out, complicated Dodge and Kinsey relationship of the comics. I suppose it could still happen, but pulling the same trick twice would make the characters look even more stupid. They should be on the look out for manipulative evil forces! I should start keeping track of how many times per episode a scene boils down to, “I guess kids aren’t that smart.” I think it’s every scene.
So then Tyler figures out that Dodge is the Well Lady. And Dodge has no chill, she goes from, “Give back my key,” to just shrieking like a witch in maybe two seconds. I guess she figured Tyler wasn’t a dummy but she’s wrong, he really really is. And then Tyler runs for his life, but why? Dodge can’t take the Keys and he knows that. Can she kill him? That’s sort of weird, can she then not take the Keys from his prone corpse? He could of vaguely sauntered away.
5. The master plan as it were
Oh man, and then there’s the final act where the Locke family needs to bravely scramble out of this situation and it’s bananas. Let’s try to walk through it. So Kinsey tells Sam that the Head Key is burried out in the woods. Sam leaves Nina and Tyler tied to chairs and heads out with Bode and Kinsey. We of course know that the Head Key is inside a stuffed whale. So does Tyler. So far, so good.
But then Kinsey is really digging up her Fear, which she killed and buried in the woods. Did she… did she know it was going to resurrect? Was she just hoping that seeing another weirder Kinsey in a grave would be enough to freak Sam out and give her an opening? What’s the goal here? There’s a knife, was she just going for the knife? If so, bad plan, Sam took it and then said, “Looks like I’m going to have to kill you now,” like the world’s worst Bond villain.
Then Tyler pulls the old, “smash a wooden chair to pieces to escape,” move. I guess Sam was really counting on his prisoners to be really helpless. Stupid move Sam. Tyler gets his hands on the Head Key but they still take a moment for Nina to confront Sam, who points his gun at her, says, “Looks like I’m going to have to kill you now,” again and then chokes her a bit. And like, again, why? This gives Tyler a chance to dive in with the Head Key and get the upper hand. Right on!
Except, a weird yelling conversation where Tyler is weirdly glib about magic leads Nina to lunge towards the door containing Sam’s memories. I don’t know why that’s more of a disaster than leaving your only weapon unattended, but Tyler is real worried, so he does. And Sam gets the goddamn Head Key. Of all the stupid things anyone has done on the show, this is the least acceptable to me. It’s a huge mistake, one that leads to their downfall, and it is only the result of the Lockes being idiots. Nina had to be written in such a way that she ignored her son and senselessly dove for a magic item in a hostage situation and Tyler had to give up his only leverage to stop her from chasing after the shiny object. I’m furious.
And then the end goes down real quick. Dodge gets the keys and murders Sam. A pop song plays as Sam stumbles for the Ghost Door. He seems delighted about being a ghost for a second, but is horrified when the cops take his bleeding body away so, mixed signals I guess. And we end with Nina drinking again, which is definitely the kind of cliffhanger that makes me want to watch the next episode but I need a break. I can’t handle all this stupid.
