Monday, July 4, 2022

Take Three: The Old Man

The Old Man: Season 1, Episode 3 “III” (B+)

As soon as I saw Alia Shawkat’s name in the cast, I was sure that she was the one playing Emily, but then she showed up as a different character, so I thought I was wrong. But this episode confirmed in an intense way why it was that the reports showed Emily died nearly twenty years earlier, since she is both Harold’s go-to dependable agent and Dan’s daughter. It’s a fascinating dual role, one that she’s obviously been able to hide for a long time and which positions her perfectly to be able to help her father. Her plan to get a message to Faraz to get him the answers he’s looking for is a bold one, and I’m curious to see if it will work. When Dan asked Zoe why she had lied to the police to protect him, she got upset and wasn’t convinced by hearing Emily’s voice on the phone, but things took a very violent turn which made it hard for her to escape. Those dogs are quite reliable and helped to take down the cleaner sent by Harold, who appears to have survived but isn’t in great shape. The flashbacks to a younger Dan’s first meeting with Faraz’s wife helped to explain how he got into this mess, and it was powerful to hear him insist that he wasn’t a monster as he went to open his car trunk. The decision not to show whether Zoe was in there alive or dead added a lot of weight, especially since a new episode didn’t premiere for another week past this one’s airing.

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