The Missing Season 1, Episode 5 review: “Molly”

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After last weeks episode I was certain that Ian Garrett had been killed by Tony and/or Emily, so I was perplexed at the opening of ‘Molly’. We witness Ian and his wife Mary on a boat in the middle of the Ocean. Ian may have a lot of money but how could he have pulled off the vanishing act that has lasted this long? Why is he bothering when he is not a person of interest in the present day investigation of Oliver’s disappearance? How could his wife run away with him knowing about his horrifying deeds without attempting to shove him off the boat? Clearly she shows signs of guilt but she takes her wedding vows a little too seriously, I think the man upstairs would forgive you if you left the creep. The bulk of this episode is set in the past and shows how the couple got to where they are, how Ian escaped his justice.

Last week’s episode showed Tony in 2006 discovering that Ian and Vincent had a connection as they both told him exactly the same anecdote. With Julien away in Paris he tries to convince the higher ups that Ian had something to do with Olivers disappearance but of course Ian is a respected member of the community so they were hesitant to pursue the rantings of a grieving father. Tony decides to take things into his own hands when he is ignored and once again confront Vincent Bourgh, beating him to a pulp until he reveals his relationship to Ian, that they share ‘materials’. I understand that the show wants the audience to understand that Tony is violent but does it really need to be shoved down our throats every episode? It’s getting tiring, the picture of the man he assaulted in the first episode would’ve been enough but it feels like it is getting repetitive.

Armed with knowledge of Ian’s perversion Tony decides to go ahead with a pre-planned meet with him, attempting to be sensible by meeting in a public place and not attacking him. He sends Emily to inform the police of what they have discovered while he attempts to coax the truth out of Garrett and find out what happened to Oliver. Ian is a slippery sod and is warned before hand by Vincent, so instead of the police coming to pick Ian up they arrest Tony for assaulting Vincent. At the police station Tony receives a visit from Ian because he has connections (conspiracy I tell you) and what proceeds is a scene that has got to be one of my highlights of the series. Ian attempts to calm Tony down but reveals his sickening nature when pressed, I expected Tony to lunge at him as he always seems to do but he doesn’t, he sits down next to him and converses until they begin to talk about Molly, Ian’s daughter. Tony assumes that Ian took harmed her, the assumption is reinforced by Ian’s reaction as he abruptly ends the conversation and leaves. Mary didn’t help putting doubts about Ian at ease, when Emily visited her at Tony’s request and asked her if Ian was questioned about Molly’s disappearance she was almost thrown out of the house. Emily is now certain that something is not right with the Garrett’s and they are involved in the disappearance of Molly and Oliver, but there is no evidence. Emily does discover that Ian and Mary haven’t seen much of each other as Ian spends most of his time working or at their holiday home, information that she relays back to Tony who heads straight there after being released.

Upon entering the home he discovers a boat by the lake and investigates, discovering some damning evidence of wrong doing. The audience doesn’t have to see the pictures, the look on Tony’s face and the implication of them really is enough. He is interrupted by Ian who attempts to reason with him and provides him with a story about him being abused when he was younger. There is a massive difference between him and Vincent, they share the same vices but react to them differently. Vincent is disgusted by himself because of his thoughts and does whatever he can to keep them at bay, and feels a mass amount of guilt about it which makes him very sympathetic. Ian just attempts to make excuses for himself to get out of the situation, he feels no remorse for it which makes him vile. In all honestly this last confrontation made my skin crawl purely because of Ian’s reaction after Tony found the videos, he truly is a sickening human being. Also quite a stupid one. Tony had decided to go to the police with the evidence, to have some justice for Ian’s victim and I honesty think Tony believed Ian when he said that he hadn’t taken Oliver but Ian had to push it. Ian had to say Oliver was a beautiful boy and laugh, and that just made me sick to my stomach so I can’t say I felt bad about Tony literally smashing Ian’s head in, I felt it was deserved. The only thing that did get to me about Tony’s vicious attack was that he is no longer just the sympathetic father who lost his son, he is also a murderer. His actions could end up being worse than the people that abducted Oliver, and how could this not be addressed by him in the present? Hopefully there is a conversation between him and Emily in the upcoming episodes because it would be a major error on the writers part to have the murder committed without some sort of follow up or consequence.

We’d just seen Ian getting his head bashed in multiple times, I doubt many people could be ok after that so how is he sailing the seas with his wife? That’s revealed in the closing of the episode when Vincent visits Mary to let her know of her husbands proclivities and the audience sees that she is living in a nursing home, the scenes of her sailing with her husband are figments of her imagination. I’ve enjoyed every minute of The Missing up until that point, and it felt like a waste of half the episode. The writers clearly wanted to shock but it wasn’t needed, it felt like filler and the time wasted on Mary’s distorted reality could have been spent on the present day investigation.

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So clearly Ian has been ruled out of the investigation so now the main lead we have is the Romanian traffickers, with Rini helping Julien and Tony to find answers. In 2006 we see that Julien has succeeded in his attempt to sober Rini up and make her co operate, and they set up a meeting between her and her brother to find out the information that he was going to give to Leo (her deceased boyfriend) regarding Olivers whereabouts. Before they gain any answers Rini’s throat is slashed by her brothers aid, and her brother is taken into custody and questioned. Rini’s brother is questioned and reveals he knows nothing about the child, it was a lie to flesh out the mole so it seems like the polices’ time has been wasted on him. In present day Rini braves another confrontation with her brother, hoping to achieve more success than the first time and with a knife to his throat she does, they manage to get the name Karl Sieg out of him. Now we’ve gotten Ian out of the way, we now get to discover all about Karl Sieg in the upcoming episodes and find out his connection to Oliver. The whole storyline of the Romanian traffickers felt rushed this episode because most of the screen time was devoted to Ian and I really wish that they had spent more time on it because it was hard to keep up, I had to go back and watch the Julien and Rini scenes again and I haven’t really had to do that before now

‘Molly’ had two of the best scenes in the whole series so far, Tony and Ian’s meeting in the prison cell and their bloody confrontation at the end, but as a whole it was by far the weakest episode. It’s predecessors asked and answered questions in a timely fashion but looking back on ‘Molly’ it felt like most of it was filler, in the whole hour the only real bit of information we got was the name Karl Sieg. It wasn’t a terrible episode, still better than a lot of dramas currently airing, but I hope that the action picks up next week now that we have a new lead.

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3 Comments

    1. I think thats a little far fetched, I think if Vincent was originally a girl it would have come out by now. The police did background checks on him and the Hughes were given his information by Malik. That and we’ve seen him with the doctor and there’d be some sort of mention of it. If that was what was going to happen it would feel too forced, I think Monique is more likely to end up being Molly.

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