Pain & Grief
After last week’s shocking end, In The Dark returns this week with Murphy being told the news that the police have found Tyson. He’s dead. Angry and consumed with grief, Murphy visits the alleyway only to find the police have now taped it up as a crime scene. Antagonizing the police, Murphy’s outburst leads to her being taken into custody. However, the charges are dropped shortly after thanks to the detective. Depressed and angry, Murphy takes it out on everyone around her including Max who she tries to have sex with to get her mind off the pain. Rejecting her offer, she lashes out and breaks up with Max. Heading to the local bar, determined to drown her sorrows in alcohol, Murphy gets a call from the detective who tells her what’s going on mid-drink. Tyson was shot and it was definitely him who she felt in the alleyway that night. Murphy tells them he definitely wasn’t shot when she found him, leaving the police to question quite what happened that night as she leaves. Back at the bar, Murphy tries to get her mind off things by having sex with a stranger. Or, at least she tries to but spaces out, leading the man to have second thoughts. With a hasty sorry, he leaves her on the sink staring into the abyss. Between various flashbacks showing how close Tyson and Murphy were, we head to Tyson’s funeral. Max and Darnell talk but their conversation is stopped short by Murphy showing up drunk. After calling Tyson’s dad a liar, she’s taken outside where Darnell talks to her. He tells Murphy it’s his fault for putting Tyson on that corner before offering his condolences. After the funeral, Jess and Murphy have a heart to heart at their apartment. Jess tells Murphy she’s difficult to get along with but her lack of judging made her the first person she came out to. Still hurting, Murphy heads back to the alleyway to mourn. There, she runs into Tyson’s mum who tells her about his videotapes and how she didn’t realize how close her son was to him before. She then gives Murphy a vial full of Tyson’s ashes and with Jess, head into the water for one final goodbye. The episode then ends with Murphy apologizing to Max before he heads outside to deal with something work-related. When he heads back inside, Murphy tells him the man’s voice is identical to the one she heard in the flower shop last episode where she felt an actual dead body. With a more character-driven focus this time around, In The Dark does well to flesh Murphy out into a more likable anti-hero. The grief and pain she experiences throughout the episode are pretty believable and In The Dark’s general indifference to Murphy’s blindness as a disability is some of the reason this CW show works as well as it does. It’s not perfect, and it never quite reaches the dramatic peaks it perhaps could but there’s enough here to keep you watching to find out what will happen next.
