Just how moody can one hour of television be?
Cora Tannetti (Jessica Biel) works with her husband, Mason (Christopher Abbotthey, Charlie fromGirls!
And did I mention they live next door?
Credit: Brownie Harris/USA
Cora goes in for a dip, swimming beyond the buoys toward the lake’s opposite shore.
She abruptly plunges below the surface.
Is Cora trying to drown herself?
After spending an alarming amount of time underwater, she hears Mason call out to her from the shore.
She pops back up to the surface, sputtering for air.
(Your guess is as good as mine!)
Cora watches them with interest.
“Stop it, get off her,” Cora suddenly shouts.
The beach is awash with screams.
Mason wrestles his wife to the sand until she releases her grip on the knife.
“Get the f away,” the woman screams.
It isn’t long before Cora is quietly led away in handcuffs.
This doesn’t seem like official police business.
There’s blue blood pooled under two of his bruised fingernails, which he presses into his thumb.
We learn that her victim was a 29-year-old doctor named Frankie Belmont.
“An ecosystem out of balance,” he says.
With her mugshot taken and Belmont’s blood swabbed from her body, Cora showers under police supervision.
At home, Mason and his parents are shell-shocked.
Cora calls him from the station, but he lets it go to voicemail.
Ambrose and his partner come to question her.
She’s been married for three years; both her parents are dead.
She has no history of mental illness and takes only the occasional sleeping pill.
Cora tells them she doesn’t want a lawyer, not even a public defender.
“Because they were playing that music and they kept turning it up,” she says.
(I mean…people have killed for less.)
When women kill, the victim is normally someone they’re intimately involved with.
What really happened here?
song blaring in her cell.
Ambrose has things to do, too.
He appears on that waitress' doorstep, explaining that he couldn’t sleep.
“So did it work?
Did your wife take you back?”
she asks, letting him in.
This woman, it turns out, is a server by day and a dominatrix by night.
(I feel like we’re playing Prestige TV bingo.)
She tells him to get down on his knees, and he obliges, gladly.
She steps on his hands, digging her shoes into the blue tips of his fingers.
Mason still hasn’t been to see his wife.
His statement didn’t mention anything she said.
He’s gone now."
Apparently, on some level, Cora thought she was rescuing her.
In her cell, Cora seems even more zonked out.
To say their mother is weird would be a vast understatement.
“Enough for three children.
So when Phoebe came, there wasn’t any left for her.
That’s why she’s so sick.
In that hospital I prayed like I never prayed before, and it worked, you see?”
Mason finally goes to see Cora.
She immediately asks about their son, who Mason says is confused.
He apologizes for not coming.
He tries to reassure her but proves to be very bad at it.
“You were such a good husband to me.
I never thought I would have a normal life, and I did, I really did.
And that’s because of you,” she says.
Choked up with emotion, he leaves.
Ambrose calls his partner to tell him he’s heading to see Leah Belmont.
But Ambrose only has two hours before her hearing.
He finds Leah sedated at the hospital, with her friend Patricka bystander to the murderat her bedside.
(So we’re gonna keep this plant thing up all season, then, huh?)
Mason ran 15 feet to tackle her Patrick was four feet away while his friend was stabbed seven times.
Patrick reveals that right after Cora stabbed Frankie the first time, he could see Frankie grab her arm.
“And the thing is, Frankie’s a strong guy,” he says.
He could have forced her off, but he didn’t.
“It looked like he recognized her,” Patrick explains.
“When he saw who it was, he let her go.”
