Big Sky Review: Bitter Roots (Season 1 Episode 15)
It’s all over for the Kleinsasser men and Ronald finds true love on Big Sky Season 1 Episode 15, “Bitter Roots.”
This action-packed penultimate episode of the show’s action-packed first season ties up a lot of loose ends, but leaves us hanging on the fate of Ronald and his deranged girlfriend. It looks like the finale will solely focus on Ronald and those that want to bring him to justice, as it should.
It’s a smart move to wrap up the Kleinsasser arc here, leaving the final episode to contend with a storyline that we’ve followed from the very beginning.
Kleinsasser Chaos
The Kleinsasser family is quite a bit smaller since we were introduced to them on Big Sky Season 1 Episodes 10 and 11, “Catastrophic Thinking” and “All Kinds of Snakes.” All three brothers are killed—two out of the three being at the hand of one of their own.
Cheyenne: Don’t you want to be free of the men?
Cheyenne (Britt Robertson) mostly gets her wish—her contemptible father is still alive, but hopefully, he will live out the rest of his days in prison. I’m sure Mama Kleinsasser is hoping for that, too.
Or will she go down with him?
Margaret (Michelle Forbes) obviously hates Horst (Ted Levine); she’s tried to poison him in the past and told him outright that she would kill him. Knowing this, it is odd that she chooses to stand by him—literally, not figuratively as far as we’re aware—when the police arrive.
In my review of Season 1 Episode 14, “Nice Animals,” I stated that Margaret’s vengeful moments were the highlights for me. On this episode, the character is expanded on in some really interesting ways. Her dark visions or premonitions or whatever they are kind of give off a supernatural, horror film vibe. And I guess that explains her tributary artwork for Blake that she makes his brother (and murderer) hang on the wall in the middle of the wake.
The characters of Margaret and Cheyenne are pretty well-developed considering we’ve spent a short amount of time with them, but I would love to see them fleshed out once they are “free of the men.” However, I fear that will not be the case and they will, unfortunately, suffer the same fate as Merilee (Brooke Smith) where we never hear from them again.
Possibly in an effort to include more shock value, characters are introduced and then taken away (killed or otherwise) hastily. Do y’all even remember that Ryan Phillippe was on this show? I often have to remind myself of that.
Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss
Creepy Norman Bates knock-off, Ronald (Brian Geraghty), has found his soulmate, and she is just as creepy. Scarlet (Anja Savcic) reveals that she knows he is Ronald, not Arthur, and I would like to know how long she’s known this. It doesn’t bother her that he’s done bad things—it actually endears him more to her. She easily unburdens her own crime of killing her last boyfriend, Phoebe’s father, and having her sister hide him in her freezer.
Now that she knows the police are looking for Mary and she could be found out, she turns to fellow psycho-killer, Ronald—they can help each other. But, for Scarlet, it goes deeper than that. She truly believes that what they have is a once-in-a-lifetime connection.
Ronald: Is this what love is?
Scarlet: Love can end. What we have is even stronger than that.
They are a match made in hell, that’s for sure.
Scarlet speaks similarly to Ronald with a strange, kind of nursery rhyme language. They both have the emotional maturity of a child, perhaps stemming from abuse when they were younger—Ronald’s mother used to put him in “the bad boy box” in the basement, and Scarlet began dating Steve who she claims was abusive as well, but she was too young to know any better. These two operate on the same wavelength, and that might help them down the line.
I can’t wait to see what happens on the finale, and I hope that Phoebe never has to see her mom or Arthur/Ronald again. Maybe she can live with the nice lady who makes Dutch babies and has self-care days.
What did you think of this episode of Big Sky? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Big Sky airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on ABC.
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Erin Allen
Erin is a former script supervisor for film and television. She's an avid fan of middle aged actresses, dark dramas, and irreverent comedies. She loves to read actual books and X-Files fan fiction. Her other passions include pointing out feminist issues, shipping Mulder and Scully, and collecting pop culture mugs.