Midnight, Texas Review: Blinded by the Light (Season 1 Episode 6)

Well, ladies and gents, there you have it: the show’s very first bonafide major plot twist, courtesy of Midnight, Texas Season 1 Episode 6.

“Blinded by the Light” opens on the cringeworthy and cliche image of a group of meddlesome teens vandalizing Midnight, for no other reason than that they’re trying to be contentious little troublemakers. Weirdly, these kids aren’t at all taken aback by Fiji’s ability to do magic (“Sabrina the Middle-Aged Bitch,” indeed) but practically poop their pants at the first sighting of Lem’s glowing blue eyes.

One of the kids, the sole girl, seems to be the only non-jerk in the bunch — so naturally, she’s the one who gets abducted by the masked murderer who’s been going around and killing young women.

When the police become involved, it’s up to the Midnighters to solve the mystery to avoid the unnecessary outside scrutiny in their small town lives.

As hokey as it is, I do love the gang all getting together to solve these “Monster of the Week” situations. It’s not terribly inventive or creative, but it is reliably entertaining — which is why I think I’m liking this show so much more than I expected to.

(Except in this scene. The group all makes sure to stay so perfectly lined up during Joe’s big angel reveal that it’s just laughable and distracting. They even step forward at the exact same time! So silly.)

Of course, this particular “Monster of the Week” resolution is far more pivotal than any of the others that have come before it this season.

That’s because the monster is actually Connor, Creek’s younger brother. This reveal comes after a brief red herring, where it appears that Creek’s temperamental father is the killer. In reality, Creek’s jerk dad is actually protecting Creek’s jerk homicidal brother — and apparently has been, for many years.

While I definitely watch enough TV to have seen this coming pretty early on in the episode, it’s still a satisfying twist that manages to resolve several things I didn’t love about Creek and her storyline.

For starters, the reveal of Connor as the “Big Bad” of the murder mystery arc serves to explain why Creek’s dad is such a jerk to Manfred all season long. It’s not explicitly explained, but my best guess is that he knew Manfred is a psychic and didn’t want Connor’s evil deeds to be revealed courtesy of his victims’ ghosts.

Similarly, Connor being an absolute idiot re: the Succubus on Midnight, Texas Season 1 Episode 4 also makes more sense, knowing what we now know about him.

Creek’s dad obviously handled his son’s Dahmer-esque predilections very, very poorly, but I do feel at least a bit bad for the dude. He lost his wife, his son was a loon, and now, said loon son is dead.

That said, I don’t at all blame Creek for cutting him out of her life.

In all, Sarah Ramos gives a stunning, understated performance throughout this installment. She plays a wide range of emotions and reacts to the twists and turns realistically. Creek first thinking her dad is the murderer, then reacting to the news that it’s Connor, then Lem killing Connor, then cutting ties with her dad, then sobbin to Manfred — it’s a lot, and Ramos manages to make Creek extremely sympathetic all the way through.

In fact, Creek has officially grown on me. I hope that we get to see her struggle with the fallout of this big mess throughout the rest of the season. Lord knows there’s plenty to unpack there.

Now that the murder subplot has been wrapped up, we are set to move on to the larger story with higher stakes: the destruction of the veil. This issue is causing all kinds of problems, from making it harder for the Reverend to control his were-side, to creating a major uptick in the number of ghosts Manfred has to deal with, to allowing a demon to molest Fiji on a regular basis.

Stupidly, Joe is still insistent on keeping both his identity and the whole veil issue a secret from the others. Thankfully, the Reverend switches out his religious garb for a rancher look and tells everybody the truth anyway. Amen to that!

Understandably, everyone is miffed and alarmed — and also curious about who the Rev’s source is. The Reverend doesn’t intend to name Joe as his source, but Joe outs himself as an angel when it comes time to save Fiji. This, as it turns out, means that someone (or a group of someones) is about to descend on Midnight, now that they know there is a fallen angel there.

But hey — at least we’re seeing plenty of actual plot progression!

Stray thoughts:

• Fiji’s response to the teens calling her “Sabrina the Middle-Aged Bitch” (“I’m not middle aged!”) is just classic.
• Now taking bets for what supernatural creature Chuy will turn out to be. As of now, I’m guessing he’s some kind of demon.
• It’s a brief moment, but I do so appreciate Olivia giving Bobo a pep talk to assure him that Fiji will come around and forgive him for his deceit in time.
• Anybody else think Lem killing Connor is kind of abrupt and not necessarily the right way to handle things? Why not just throw the kid in jail?
• What the hell does this demon want with Fiji? Pun very much intended.

What did you think of this episode of Midnight, Texas? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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Midnight, Texas airs Mondays at 10/9c on NBC.

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