Lake Diving
Episode 7 of Night Sky begins with Franklin showing Byron the spacesuits he has been designing. Despite working on them for years now, he hasn’t been able to pluck up the courage to actually use them. Byron is determined to right that wrong and get these suits up to scratch. Meanwhile, Irene, Jude and Denise head off on their road trip to Michigan together. They arrive at the address in question, where Jude hands over the polaroid of Gabriel to the owner of this house, a woman called Hannah. She knows who Gabriel is but he’s long gone. He left 15 years back. Gabe and Hannah were romantically linked together but she has no idea where he went. In fact, he just up and left one day without a trace. With the trip a bust, Irene thinks about heading home but Hannah suggests they stay for the night before moving on. Irene struggles to get through to Franklin but hears a strange bang coming from upstairs. Hannah chalks it off to nothing but there’s definitely something suspect going on. It doesn’t take long for us to find out what’s happening, as Hannah sneaks into a hidden room where a guy called Paul happens to be sitting at his monitor, watching everything. He plays Franklin’s voicemail, pointing out that he’s the same guy who asked about the coins. Hannah tells him they should make contact, before heading back to host the others. Back home, Byron blows off Jeanine’s barbecue, but refuses to tell her what’s going on with Franklin. It’s here Jeanine admits she doesn’t want to be uprooted or humiliated anymore, which makes Byron realize that she’s the one who called in the anonymous tip about the forged signatures. Jeanine admits she just wants him to be ordinary, but for Byron, he’s always had big plans to do more with his life. The truth is, Irene doesn’t believe Denise deserves her love. She’s wracked with guilt after what happened to Michael and believes she should have done more to help her father. “I’m sorry.” She says, tears stinging her eyes. The pair embrace, as more flashbacks involving Michael shed light on his crippling depression and spiraling condition. Back in the present, Toni notices a video of Jude doing karaoke and speaks to Stella, who confirms that this is the “Apostate” they’re after. While Stella begins tracing his steps, Toni rings Nick and asks for help. Meanwhile, Byron and Franklin finally finish the spacesuits. Heading up to the observation deck again, Franklin watches as Byron heads out into the alien landscape. As he trudges across the landscape, he chuckles and claims this is like heaven, communicating through a radio. He disappears out of view though, believing he’s found some furniture. “You won’t believe this Frank!” He excitedly chirps as he disappears out of view. He also stops communicating as well. Franklin suspects the worst and eventually hangs his head, listening to the static in the observatory deck on his own. It would appear that Byron is gone. Franklin tries to reconcile with what’s happened, struggling to compose himself when Jude and the others return later on in the day. Frank claims there’s nothing to report but he’s clearly wracked in guilt. Irene takes Denise down into the shelter and explains what’s been going on with her. She explains how it was hard for her to keep living after Michael’s suicide and believed that the portal was a way of helping her deal with the grief, scrambling to place some sort of meaning between the two events. Irene admits she just wanted to protect her from this portal but since Jude appeared, everything has been spiraling out of control. Denise is not happy about these lies and eventually walks away. Done on the shore, Toni and Stella show up to see Chandra. Alongside that shadowy villain from before, he hands over the gold doubloons worth way more than the $3000 Chandra is asking for in exchange for information. This shadowy figure finds out where Jude is staying, and breaks Chandra’s neck. Taking the gold coins back, he promises to make sure Stella doesn’t stay soft. And with that, he burns Chandra and her car, as Toni watches in shock from afar.
The Episode Review
The story continues to progress during the penultimate episode, although as I said before, this show could easily have been 4 episodes shorter and still told the same narrative. I do appreciate the slow pace is deliberate to build on character and atmosphere, but there’s a fine line between doing this and just playing for time. The whole Stella and Toni subplot has been a massive disappointment, despite some initial promise early on, and it’s unclear exactly how this is going to tie in with Irene and Franklin. That’s been one of the more frustrating elements of this show, given the parallel narratives and how different in tone and feel they both are. Themes of acceptance, death, grief and existentialism are pretty big deals in this show and Night Sky has, at least, remained thematically consistent throughout its run-time, helped along by some excellent acting to present these ideas center stage. The ending hints that we’ve got plenty more drama to come too, so hopefully this one rounds things out with a solid final chapter.
