The Lodge opens with one of those “out of time sequence” shots. Rose is taking a cake out of the oven before we cut to the next scene.
With the flash forward completed we see Rose, Anna and Mechanic entering the Elk Valley Lodge. Mechanic of course feels vindicated, as well happy that they found found it.
Amazingly, the place still has power. Rose at least tells Mechanic to stay close, but they still seem super casual about wandering around. I’d have my weapon at the ready and clear the rooms closest to me at the very least. Or more likely a full wing of the hotel. Then I’d barricade myself off in case there are still a few Zombies about.
After a quick check the group goes upstairs and take two rooms. This leads to Rose taking a long hot shower. I can only imagine how good that must have felt after being cold and on the trail for days/weeks. Rose does offer to let Anna go first, but Anna is still on high alert. She scans the room and then peers out the windows as Rose goes into the bathroom.
Sweet Dreams picks up with Rose finishing her shower before heading out into the room with Anna. Anna seems tense and wants to make sure they aren’t staying. She keeps looking to the door. I kept expecting to see a shadow move on the other side, but it never happened.
Mom and daughter have a few touching moments. Rose promises her daughter that they aren’t just going to find the plane, they are going to get on it. Rose again tells Anna to go first, this time to get some sleep, but Anna isn’t tired. She can’t stop staring at the door.
Rose climbs on the bed and shuts her eyes. This amazed me. I would have piled some things against the door just to be safe! How about plan an escape route? Check the room next door and then kick my way through a wall so I can escape into it? Something?
This is the part that made no sense to me. Anna has seen people get eaten alive. Then when she hears a distant noise she decides to go check it out. All while leaving her moms door unlocked from the outside. I was having flashbacks to some of the dumber things Carl did in The Walking Dead while watching these scenes.
Anna wanders downstairs to find one of the doors they’d walked by earlier banging in the wind. After shutting it we see just how much pain Anna is really in.
Footprints opens with Anna back in the room, staring at the door as her mother sleeps. This time someone does come to the door, and even tries to open it. Anna stands with her shotgun ready to fire if the newcomer tries to force their way in. Anna then does another amazingly stupid thing by going out into the hallway. Sure, she wanted to see if it was Boone. (I’ve been calling him Mechanic because I missed his name earlier.) But Boone is out like a light, meaning someone else is in The Lodge.
Anna’s silliness continue as she starts to investigate. She makes her way to a lower level that clearly has Zombies, and maybe someone fighting Zombies behind it?
When Rose finally wakes up it takes her a moment to realize that Anna is gone. Mom quickly goes to search for her daughter. It only takes a moment for Rose to find Anna who has found Spears somewhere along the way.
The Last Supper has the small group sitting around a table in the main dining hall. Boone is excited to have food, drink, and enough propane for what he thinks will power the place for at least a month, maybe more.
While Boone looks drunk and happy, everyone else looks pretty dour. Rose may be worried that Spears is angry she left him behind when he was shot, and Anna is just tense, seeing things that maybe her mom can’t or won’t?
Anna knows there are Zombies in the basement. She heard them, but when Boone claims the place is Zombie free she doesn’t say why she disagrees.
Anna keeps staring at Spears, not liking the way he looks or the fact that he keeps coughing.
Spears wants to stay. Boone wants to stay. Anna wants to get to the airstrip, she wants to get away. We then come to one of the critical moments of the episode.
Anna drops the bomb that Spears is dying. Spears doesn’t deny it, he just rambles about heaven and hell, and the fact that the outcome is already set.
We then get a flashback to Anna in the hall outside where the Zombie noises were coming from. Did she hear Spears inside? Was he bitten? Or is she convinced he’s dying because of his cough? None of it is clear.
Rose basically tells Spears that her daughter is her only concern, and the only reason to live. She doesn’t care about Spears or Boone, end of story. I think it was her way of apologizing to Spears for leaving him behind when he was shot – but it is also a declaration of future intent, which would worry me a little if I was with her and I wasn’t her daughter.
We now cut back to where we were at the beginning of the episode. Rose is in the kitchen, waiting for her cakes to finish when she hears a gunshot. When she rushes in, Anna is standing by the table and Spears is dead.
The last thing Anna says is, “We’re leaving.”
Apparently when Anna says its time to go, its time to go. Screw the fact that its cold and night time, they head out, leaving the lodge behind.
This was one of the parts I liked at first, because Boone makes a run for it as soon as he gets a chance. They could have shot him, but what purpose would it have served other than making noise and telling anyone and everything around them they were there?
The director loves time shifts, so of course we are jumping back to the dining hall to explain why Anna shot Spears.
He knows he dying, as well as giving in to fatigue and fear, but he doesn’t have the heart to pull the trigger on his own, so he asks Anna to do it for him. As a callback to the cult leader, he hands her that very same weapon, which she uses to give him mercy as tears roll down her face.
This part made no sense to me either. Boone is sitting there, so he would have heard all this right? But he acted like he was surprised at Spear’s death.
The episode ends with the screen fading to black.
The Lodge Scoring
The Lodge is a tough one to score. It was intense, but there were so many frustrating actions that didn’t make sense to me. On top of that, Boone acted shocked and puked after Spears was killed, but he had to have been at the table right?
In the end those issues cost The Lodge points, leaving it with a 75/100. Still Worth Your Time, but it could have been better.
| Season | Episode | Episode Name | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Human Flow | 85 |
| 1 | 2 | Drive | 80 |
| 1 | 3 | Summer School | 70 |
| 1 | 4 | Alone | 82 |
| 1 | 5 | Diner | 86 |
| 1 | 6 | Heist | 90 |
| 1 | 7 | The Tunnel | 83 |
| 1 | 8 | The Stadium | 91 |
| 2 | 1 | The Cold | 95 |
| 2 | 2 | Prelude | 80 |
| 2 | 3 | Card Game | 91 |
| 2 | 4 | Cold War | 83 |
| 2 | 5 | White Horse | 88 |
| 2 | 6 | Currency | 69 |
| 2 | 7 | The Lodge | 75 |
| 2 | 8 | The Plane | 99 |
If you are looking for a fix I’d suggest The Walking Dead!