Midnight, Texas Review: Unearthed (Season 1 Episode 5)

The past comes back to haunt several Midnighters on Midnight, Texas Season 1 Episode 5 — both literally and figuratively.

“Unearthed,” the hour’s title, is a clear reference to all of the many secrets that are (you guessed it!) unearthed throughout this installment. Bobo’s past as well as Manfred’s are the focus. Unfortunately, one of the town’s ladies doesn’t take the revelation of her man’s past life all too well.

We left off on Midnight, Texas Season 1 Episode 4 with Fiji and Bobo finally hooking up. Sadly, it wasn’t to last — within mere moments of their episode-opening make out sesh, the Sons of Lucifer make their big move. The white supremacist biker gang torches Bobo’s pawn shop (with Olivia and Lem inside!), using that as a distraction to kidnap Fiji and hold her hostage.

Thanks to the witch’s talking cat, Bobo doesn’t have to spend long wondering where Fiji is. I can’t get over how corny and ridiculous that talking cat with the old Southern grandpa voice is — but at the same time, I sort of love it?

The episode is split pretty evenly into two plots.

In one, Bobo teams up with Lem to rescue Fiji. It’s kind of lame to see Fiji (a witch we know is powerful AF) be reduced to damsel in distress status.

I spent much of the episode waiting for her to break free and rescue herself. Unfortunately, fentanyl apparently inhibits a witch’s powers. Who knew?

And on a plot level, I understand why the focus needs to be on Bobo rescuing Fiji. The kidnapping plot serves to reveal important information about Bobo’s secret past. Namely, that he’s from a family of white supremacists.

As Bobo explains to Fiji post-rescue, he never agreed with his family’s life of hate and violence. He escaped and stole their money and arsenal as soon as possible. This also provides an explanation for why Lowry sent his wife Audrey to seduce Bobo — the Sons have been looking for Bobo’s “Holy Grail.”

What’s interesting about this is that, though Bobo triumphs in the end (saving Fiji and killing Lowry), we still don’t know who actually killed Audrey.

Lowry (pre-stabbing) is solidly under the impression that Bobo is the one who killed her. Bobo, on the flip side, insists he didn’t.

So who killed her? And why? It seems that this will be a mystery that carries on for the duration of the season.

And in other news — Lem continues to be a badass. I love the scene where Lem takes down the Sons of Lucifer, with their bullets having no effect on him whatsoever. Pretty cool.

On the other side of town — or, more accurately, down the street, since Midnight only seems to have the one block — Hightower finally catches up with Manfred.

I have to say that the resolution of this much-hyped confrontation is a serious letdown.

Manfred and Ghost Xylda have been talking about the menacing Hightower since almost the first second the series began. “Unearthed” reveals the truth about why the man has been stalking our “hero” (term used loosely). Unsurprisingly, Manfred initially left quite a few things out from his initial backstory.

This hour reveals that Manfred actively worked with his grandma on her cons. And in their greatest con of all, they agreed to marry off Manfred to Hightower’s daughter Violet for a sizable fee — and then took off before the wedding ever happened.

Manfred: a colossal jerk. What. A. Shock.

I don’t particularly care for this plot, since so much of it revolves around the Creek/Manfred relationship. “Will Creek be able to forgive Manfred and look past this?” is a major question in this episode, and I could care less about the answer to it.

For what it’s worth, the answer is yes: Creek does recognize he has changed as a person and tells her father about her relationship with Manfred. So maybe now that their painfully contrived relationship drama is over and done with, we can get some actual character development for Creek? Pretty please?

I enjoy Olivia’s character a lot, so her presence in the Hightower storyline (minimal as it is) is probably my favorite part of it. It also fits logically that Creek would go to Olivia to help Manfred, given that everybody knows Olivia is an assassin.

In the end, though, Olivia is relatively useless in this plot. Manfred defeats Hightower’s plot to avenge his daughter’s suicide — with kindness. Sort of.

The entire thing is hokey and unconvincing. I find it hard to reckon with the fact that Manfred won’t just let Olivia kill Hightower. Wronged by Xylda/Manfred or not, the man is clearly unhinged and not a good dude — what with selling his eye for black magic and all.

In the end, Hightower kills himself after Violet-Possessing-Manfred reveals that she took her own life not because of Manfred’s abandonment — as Hightower had always assumed — but because her father never truly valued her life and autonomy.

It’s sad, and it’s also an abrupt, strange conclusion to this Hightower arc. It lacks the necessary emotional punch necessary to make this satisfying. We don’t know Violet or Hightower, so why should we care about this at all?

On the bright side, now that this Hightower silliness is out of the way, perhaps now we can get on to the actual, major problem — the crumbling of Midnight’s veil.

Stray thoughts:

• I really like the visual of Fiji conjuring up their dwindling remaining air bubble. But not for a second am I convinced that either of the two are in actual, mortal danger.
• Manfred’s possession by Violet is so poorly acted and cringeworthy. I almost couldn’t handle watching that scene. So awkward.
• Once again, I am so very much here for Olivia and Lem’s supportive, loving relationship. You know a show is special when the most stable relationship by a landslide is the one between a vampire and an assassin.
• I love the makeup and effects the show uses on their ghosts, but Violet’s actual dead body is the most embarrassingly fake thing I’ve ever seen. It looks like a Party City Halloween decoration from the clearance section.

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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