Spike’s The Mist
Season 1, Episode 5: “The Waiting Room”
Directed by Richard Laxton
Written by Amanda Segel & Christian Torpe

* For a recap & review of the previous episode, “Pequod” – click here
* For a recap & review of the next episode, “The Devil You Know” – click here
With Bryan (Okezi Morro) wounded from the gunshot, Kevin (Morgan Spector), Adrian (Russell Posner), and Mia (Danica Curcic) rush trying to get him to a hospital, driving through the mist. They get him there, but like everywhere else people are stuck together, stuck inside, there’s no telling what the situation is like amongst the staff, patients, and anyone who’s ended up in that building as a result of the encroaching mist. As well as the fact Mia blames Kevin for Bryan getting shot, treating it the same as if he shot the bullet himself.
Luckily, the guy’s going to recover. Just a good deal of blood loss. Meanwhile the hospital’s on an emergency generator, only a few days left. Food and medicine are depleted. Mist has taken over a whole wing of the hospital.
We get a flashback to Kevin and Eve Copeland (Alyssa Sutherland) as they move into their home for the first time. A happy, excited couple. Far cry from where they are now, and that’s not just including the town’s latest situation. Their marriage is rocky after Alex (Gus Birney) was raped. Mom blames dad in a way, for being too lenient. Because of her own past I’m sure Eve has troubles with trust, particularly concerning the trust in men.
Kevin doesn’t stop looking for his family, though nobody’s seen them anywhere around the hospital. One of the worst places to be trapped is the hospital. There’s death around almost every corner. Moreover, Kevin finds his brother Mike (Peter Murnik) in a bed, a brutal wound in his gut. His brother said “they knew me” – whatever’s in the mist – that they knew things about his past. “I don‘t even know what‘s real anymore,” Mike says. The two brothers clearly have NEVER seen eye to eye, yet there’s a comfort in the older of the two with his younger brother there. Perhaps that’s because he’s on the edge of death. Or maybe he just hides his affections.
Either way they’re stuck, for a while, in that hospital together. At the same time Bryan’s recovering, his connection with Mia deepening. She’s got demons, very dark ones. She tells him: “I‘m not ready for you to be nice to me.”
More flashback. Eve and Kevin talk about the nature of women. She says that “all women are two people.” You can see he desperately wants to understand and know his wife completely, and there’s a resistance in her, even if she obviously loves him. Their connection is clear and strong, but she’s mysterious in ways.
Then later, Mike asks his brother the unthinkable: put him out of his misery, to send him on from the pain. Only Kevin can’t bring himself to do that, even if it’s meant as mercy. They go from anger to nostalgia to laughter in a matter of moments. It’s touching, and also eerie in a way. Because no matter what happens Mike’s going to die, one way or another.
Another flashback shows a brief moment with Mike and Eve, as they’re all together in the new house. The older brother’s comment puts a momentarily sour look on her face. Afterwards, she and Mike have sex, she asks him for it harder. I worry there are dark secrets, darker things about the town, what happened to Eve all those years that we don’t yet know. I’m not sure exactly if I have any theories yet, I do know there’s something else there yet to be revealed.
Now, Mike needs to be taken to the OR. But it goes through the mist. They’ve got to get through it with a hospital bed. However, the doctors won’t go, so it’s up to Kevin: go and his brother may die, or stay and his brother will die anyways.
Adrian’s run into a guy from school in the bathroom, Tyler (Christopher Gray). He approaches him and then goes in for a kiss. Tyler responds with “faggot” and beats him brutally, kicking him, punching him. Instead of just, ‘yknow, saying: I’m not gay. And Adrian gets right back up, goes in for another kiss, finally accepted with little reluctance as they make out.
More flashback shows us that the thing with Mike and Eve is that the older brother talks about her as the “town whore” and speaks ill about her to the parents of children at the school, all sorts of other nasty shit. While Kevin wanted to rush out and “beat the fuck” out of his brother, his wife makes clear: “I just don‘t need you to save me.” Now we can see all the conflicted feelings further between Kevin and Mike.
Lost souls Adrian and Mia bond over being single children in their respective families, over trouble with her mother, his father. The junkie, and more experienced sleazeball, snags the keys from the kid without his knowing. After that she makes a swift exit, driving away from the hospital in a hurry. And this not long after her discover of a Bryan Hunt in another hospital bed, who says he was attacked by a man at the military base. Ohhhhh, shit.
Kevin rushes through the misty wing of the hospital transporting his brother to the OR. They barely make it there before Mike’s fingernails start bleeding, his nose and his mouth, too. Now it’s left to the younger brother, to take orders over a headset and do surgery on the older one. Before they start Mike mentions he and his friends were “all in love” with Eve; part of his hatred for Kevin stems from jealousy, that his younger brother was the one who wound up with such a wonderful, beautiful woman instead of him. Petty masculine bullshit.
Kevin manages to get the rebar out of his brother’s stomach, then he has to stop the bleeding, close the wound with stitches. He finishes up before having to head back through the mist to the other wing.
One more flashback reveals Kevin is not actually Alex’s father. They also make a promise not to tell her, so as not to break the little girl’s heart. So, is the birth of their girl a result of what happened to Eve? Wow, that adds a whole other layer to their family and relationship if so. Jesus. Heavy stuff.
When Kevin takes Mike back through the hall, he slips on some blood and his brother topples to the floor, more blood coming from all over his body. The mist drops leaches onto him, they cover his skin and start sucking the life from him. When it’s too much, Kevin has to put his brother out of his misery finally, and get out of the mist.
What a fucking episode! I’ve seen people rating this low, and I have no idea why. Crazy. Such history, character development, as we figure out more of the Copelands’ inner lives, what drives them, what’s brought them to here. There’s so much to unpack. The writers are doing a great jog so far. “The Devil You Know” is next week.