Recap of Episode 8 of ‘Before’: Unveiling Black Homes and Surprising Revelations

Well, I’ve got to hand it to Before, and possibly kick myself in the ass: I did not see this coming!

It could be a distraction, and Eli might mean that the death of his wife was his fault because he drove her to suicide. If his confession is true, the signs are all there to see. Lynn’s appearances in his visions have been consistently ominous since meeting his patient Noah, often accusing him directly by mentioning “what you did.” The case has been filled with projections and transference, with Eli likely projecting his repressed memories onto his patient. It’s even been shown that he was strangling Lynn in the tub in one of the shots.

There have been many shots depicting various things in the show, echoing the idea from Galadriel about things that were, are, and may yet be. The notion that nothing can be trusted on the show is a recurring theme, with Eli carving into a child’s forehead to extract an invisible worm being a prime example. Considering Eli’s savior complex, the failure to prevent his wife’s suicide could emotionally feel like killing her. The shot of him strangling Lynn shouldn’t be taken literally.

Moreover, the shot had been forgotten amidst the other mysteries in the narrative that had captured attention. The focus had shifted to understanding why Noah briefly spoke in Dutch, why he appeared at Eli’s house, the significance of Lynn’s book, her boyfriend, and nearly everything except the circumstances surrounding Lynn’s death, a detail that had been overlooked.

Maybe you’re a more perceptive viewer than I am, and if so, te salute. As a person who gets paid to watch a punishing amount of television, though, I have to come clean and say it got me good. So I have to give it up to creator Sarah Thorp for this extremely effective sleight-of-hand. (In this specific episode, it falls to writer Joseph Sousa drops the hammer down on our guy Eli.) She had me looking everywhere but the place I was supposed to.

But before we get to that moment, we have to get from Point A to Point B. Literally! In this ep, Eli — now officially pulled off Noah’s case by his colleague Jane, but still obsessively pursuing it — finally makes his way to the menacing farmhouse at the center of the story’s imagery. It’s the place he’s come to believe is the site of the trauma that drove Benjamin Walker to psychosis and death, and may be driving Noah, via some still mysterious connection in their past, to the same destination. 

Simple enough, right? But Sousa, aided by Jet Wilkinson’s capable direction, turns nearly the whole episode into a sort of big dreamy/nightmarish montage. Eli drifts from moment to moment, place to place, person to person, reality to surreality, with an almost metronomic rhythm established by cuts to black, eerie thrums on the soundtrack, and the show’s trademark drip-drop sound effect. By the time he shows up at Noah’s foster mom Denise’s place in the middle of the night, laughing and refusing to let her shut the door while dressed like Randall Patrick McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, this strange effect has made him seem genuinely deranged. (Not that they don’t still give him the occasional good joke: I guffawed when his assistant, Cleo, told him to see a doctor, prompting him to look in a mirror and say “done.”)

His telekinetic connection to Noah, who breaks Eli’s nose by breaking his own all the way in the hospital, is very real, though. And by the time he reaches that farmhouse, tracked down by the dogged but increasingly concerned Cleo, the show is, for the first time, actually scary. Kudos to whatever location scout found that place, but after hearing about it all this time, seeing it there in the distance like some dark version of “Christina’s World” is like seeing that house at the end of The Blair Witch Project. It feels like a dream snapping into focus.

There’s nothing quite that terrifying inside of it — more strange visions, this time revealing that Eli can’t swim despite his fixation on that pool, and explicitly connecting young, doomed Benjamin Walker (Will Hochman) to the briefly glimpsed Dutch girl from the previous episode. But eventually, the dream/vision Eli sees worms crawling around in his wounded hand…and the next thing you know he’s been hospitalized for tearing his hand open with a pen (the missing Mets pen?) to dig them out. That’s when he drops the bombshell on Cleo, who can only react with a dumbfounded “…what?” (I may have reacted similarly.)

It may have taken eight episodes, a shocking confession, an imaginative method of storytelling, a surfeit of eerie old photos (featuring a vanishing young Eli, notably), and a scary dream-farmhouse to get it there, but Before has some real dark energy to it now. Let’s hope that energy keeps building.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.