What in the children of the corn just happened?
With only three episodes left this season, Big Sky Season 3 Episode 11 leads us into the home stretch and delivers an hour that is nuts but so enjoyable that I don’t even know where to start.
Do we start with Beau turning a hotel hallway into the O.K. Corral in all his cowboy glory? Or do we go with the cornhole game from hell? Both are solid starting points for the insanity that was this hour.
All jokes aside, to discuss this hour, you really have to start with all the Buck stuff because he may be the Bleeding Heart Killer, and he may be dead, and there’s just a lot to unpack there.
Buck always presented as a decent guy in the beginning, but as time went on, his sinister side showed more and more to the point where he’s now a supervillain with exactly zero redeeming qualities. It always seemed like he was doing everything to protect his family, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
Getting rid of Paige is just a way to eliminate another problem, but is he also getting back into his serial killer bag?
After taking his first sip of alcohol in years, Buck drags an unconscious Paige to yet another underground bunker, where he seems to be preparing her for death. And the containers with various names would tell you that he’s about to take something from Paige to put up on his shelf of horrors.
Buck as the Bleeding Heart Killer has been floated around for some time, and while it’s always been a plausible conjecture, it felt a little too neat. It was starting to become so obvious and red-herring-like that surely the series was going to throw us for a loop and come back around to Walter or Sunny or something!
But right now, it’s hard to deny that it’s Buck.
So, now what? Buck has to be dead, though I’m afraid to state that as a fact because I’ve been burned by Big Sky before! But he was hit in the head multiple times with a mallet. How is he getting up and continuing to terrorize the community after that?
He’s not Michael Myers!
If everything is as it seems, and Buck is now dead and also the killer, that was a pretty anti-climatic ending for a season-long mystery. There was no solving the case, so much as they would eventually just stumble upon it.
Cassie and Jenny took a week off from all things Barnes family when Gigi found herself in a ton of trouble. And this was one of the weirdest mysteries Big Sky has done, which is honestly saying something.
We haven’t had enough Gigi and Jenny interactions to feel super invested in their relationship, but they do a lot through Jenny during this hour to drive home the fact that even though their relationship is fractured, Gigi is still her mother.
Gigi has lied to her and betrayed her, but you’re always going to want to protect your mom. That’s the first person you ever know in life, and even Jenny, who should probably spend the next few days in bed, isn’t going to rest until she finds her.
I liked that they finally brought us back to why Gigi was with Tonya and Donno a few episodes ago. And for all their disdain for Jenny, they helped her when she needed it, which makes me believe that they may wind up looking for a favor from the cop before the season ends.
If you guessed where Jenny and Cassie were going to find Gigi eventually, no, you didn’t.
There is no way you thought Gigi would be kidnapped by the insane family of a man that Gigi grifted. There was no way of knowing that the crazy matriarch of said family would make them play a life-or-death game of cornhole in front of a sea of children.
This family was like a mixture of the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Children of the Corn.
These children watch a man be shot to death and don’t even flinch. Then Anne shows up and is right at home, asking them again whether or not people should die, and the whole thing is insanely disturbing.
One thing about Big Sky, even when it was deep in the Ronald story that would never die, is that they always thought outside the box. This has never been a standard crime drama. You knew they would never play by the rules from the second they killed off Ryan Phillippe in the premiere.
And this season, in particular, with the increased cases of the week, has allowed them to push the envelope. And this is a prime example of that.
Even if you could reasonably guess that neither Jenny nor Gigi would die, there was still a tense atmosphere in that barn. And it was a way for mother and daughter to work against each other while still trying to protect each other, revealing that they actually make a pretty decent team in the end.
Jenny Hoyt is a lot of things, and we’ve seen her bend the rules when it suits her. So much of her relationship with Travis involved her looking the other way, but her unwillingness to let Gigi get away with stealing felt like her way of protecting Gigi from herself.
Gigi’s left a lot of damage in her wake. Maybe this will get her on a different path.
Elsewhere this hour, we’ve got everything going on with Beau, Avery, and the imaginary money.
As the hours pass, you can tell Avery is a shady man, but he’s not necessarily a terrible man. He’s put himself and his family into an awful situation, one from which he may never come back, but everything he’s doing now is to try and minimize the damage. He doesn’t want anything to happen to his wife or stepdaughter.
He and Beau are locked in this feud because they’re in love with the same woman, but if they looked closely, they could see that more important than that is how badly they both want Carla and Emily to be alright.
Beau: Avery! Who’s your friend?
Winston: His friend is none of your concern.
Beau: Well, actually, it is, seeing as I’m the sheriff and all.
Winston: Ah, I never shot a sheriff before.
Beau: Well, we’re not gonna do that, gunslinger.
Beau gets to Avery, and things go to crap almost immediately, but not before Beau shoots Tex dead in the middle of a swanky Montana hotel and makes it looks so effortless. The whole thing is absurd, from how Beau turns his back on a man with a gun to how he turns around with a clean shot to the center of Tex’s chest.
Not many people can make that look non-cartoonish, but not everyone is Mr. Ackles.
Avery understands the gravity of the situation now more than Beau, but what’s frustrating with the way this storyline plays out throughout the rest of the hour is how nothing changes. Avery explicitly warns Beau that things will be bad, yet he doesn’t have Emily hidden away somewhere.
She’s just out and about in the streets like Avery hasn’t gotten himself involved with men who were just holding him at gunpoint the day before.
And how does Avery go from being in jail to being kidnapped by Tonya and Donno? We missed a lot of steps here.
But that doesn’t take away from another solid hour getting us ready for the final two hours. And I’m predicting we’re in for a lot more bloodshed and perhaps another surprise or two.
I’m not ready for this ride to be over, but I’m excited to see where it ends.
Odds and Ends
- For two people who at one point genuinely did seem very in love, Sunny and Buck don’t know one another at all.
- Cormac is still a mystery because I’m just not convinced he’s everything we think he is. I will gladly eat those words if we come upon the end of the season and he winds up being a hero, but I’m still too scared to buy into what he’s selling.
- Where does Paige go next? She’s gotten away from a murderer, but there are still other murderers after her. She must be scared of Sunny now, so does she go to the police?
- We dug a little deeper into Beau’s past, and it feels like this may set us up for a reunion with Carla now that apologies have been issued and the two are understanding one another more than they have in a while. I’m not a fan.
- It was a little moment, but my four favorites were in the same place, and how could you not smile? Cassie, POPPERNAK, and Beau ready to help Jenny find her mother. So sweet!
- I’m still not over Emily walking around by herself with all the chaos going on. It’s going to annoy me forever.
Two more episodes, folks! Can you believe we’ve already reached the end of the season? And what a season it’s been!
I’m sure you all have lots of thoughts about this bonkers hour and what’s to come, so drop a line in the comment section and watch Big Sky online first so you’re all caught up!
Whitney Evans is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.
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