It seems The Mist peaked at episode 4. After losing a week of momentum on half of the characters by spending an underwhelming episode 5 focused on one group (Kevin, Adrian, Mia, and Bryan/Jonah), there was a complete lack of urgency in episode 6.

On paper it almost seems impossible for this episode to feel boring when all but two of the main cast nearly die, but it’s almost as if the cast decided to tackle it from a desensitized angle. Granted almost dying three times a day could causes you to not get as worked up about It, but as an audience that’s not what we want to see– we want a little more adrenaline with the survival.

Let’s run through the episode and see where the disconnects lost us.

The Church

Once again the most interesting storyline with the most potential was given the least amount of screentime.

The Mist – Spike


This episode mainly focuses on the overgrown-altar-boy and perceived Zelda fanboy, Link. Our first scene involves him tattling to Father Romanov that Nathalie Raven is corrupting the congregation and has them entranced in her wicked stories of the Mist being related to the local folklore of Black Spring [we LOVED the comparison of mother nature to a mother bear that kills its sick cubs go stop it from spreading]. Unable to comprehend their coping mechanisms, Father Romanov tries to both distract the group and drown out Nathalie jamming out on the organ. No one seemed impressed by the priests mediocre DJ skills and they all just follow Nathalie to relocate away from his mediocre organ playing

The Mist – Spike

Obviously unsatisfied with the results, and seeing Father Romanov losing his spark, Link decides to take matters into his own hands, but like any good villain he outlines his master plan to anyone obligated to listen –in this case the Father. He decides to lead Nathalie yo the Church’s attic and torture her until she renounces her blasphemous beliefs and behaves like a proper Christian in a crisis, and he fully believes that god will forgive him because he’s doing it to save her soul and those of the people she was leading. He strikes her once before getting too caught up in his own monologue, which gives her an opening to break a window and let the Mist in, and also escape the attic while locking him in.

The congregation flocks to her when she returns injured and no one seems shocked by her story of Link jumping her or her laand the major question left is “did Father Romanov know he was planning on doing this?”

With only two major scenes, our favorite storyline left us wanting more, and we hope we get it in the next few episodes and the potential isn’t squandered.


The Mall

The Mall group was hard to watch this episode, it was almost a test in making bad choices and not learning as we go, and it was all rooted in an overarching theme of distraction.

It starts with Eve trying to distract Alex from the horrid events of last week [or every episode at this point]. And nothing says distraction like shopping and there’s no better normalcy than arguing over your daughter’s horrible taste in fashion (except her taste in men, but don’t worry they manage to jam that trope in later). Unfortunately, this isn’t a normal situation, and the mother of the girl that died in the bookstore with Alex isn’t amused by their way of distracting themselves and is still pretty volatile only a few hours after watching the life get sucked out of her daughter.

The Mist – Spike

Learning nothing from letting her daughterr go alone or her penchant for not listening to her mother and also making horrible choices, Eve sends Alex to go back to their group at the loading dock alone with the horribly unclear instructions “go straight there.”

To everyone’s shock and utter disbelief, Alex stops at the camping supply store, supposedly to scavenge for supplies even though there is no prior indication that rations are low.

The Mist – Spike

She makes her way back to the office/break room/lockers and then *gasp* the door closes and she is locked in. Who could have foreseen venturing alone in this mall could be bad? Not Alex. So she is very shocked when some gas splashes in under the door and engulfs it in flames.  Lucky for her, Jay was there to play hero. Alex escapes the room and is not only ungrateful, but thoroughly flat faced at almost burning or suffocating to death and with no flight or fight response. 

“Aah!” – Alex; The Mist – Spike

Instead of running to her group, or mother, or screaming for general help when confronted with her accused rapists she thinks just risked burnimg her to death just to improve his image bhy saving her at the last minute she is very calm in accusing him. Guess almost dying every few hours starts to desensitize a girl? She comes aroujnd too that crazy logic and helps patch up his minor burns while he reveals the reason he came across her was that he was on his way to join the loading dock group, which seems odd to her, until he tells her how Gus and the others went mob mentality and tossed Vic into the Mist. She seems to buy it and they go back together.

The Mist – Spike

Eve is thrilled with this courtship and gives Jay the typical “I’ll shoot any body part you touch her with speech,” before accepting the truth of his story, but her and the rest of the group are watching him like hawks…but who is watching Eve? [Besides us, who give Alyssa Sutherland credit for bringing the most realistic energy to a character this episode].

The Mist – Spike

While Alex wandered off alone, Gus happened upon her and her noisy secret mission — making flyers that pretend to be from the Maine Territorial Guard telling everyone help is on its way and to stay safe until then.  After some tense dialpgue where Gus asks how they got to this point of hostility she delivers our favorite line, “if people call you a bitch long enough, one day you decide to act accordingly,” then Gus picks up on her idea and helps her finish and [somehow] shower them in front of the doors and really sell it.  Both the lobby and loading deck groups fall for the posters…but for how long? What if people realize it was Eve and ahe gave them false hope? And even if it subdues the mob mentality, we doubt Alex is safe from another attempt on her life, or her own stupidity.

The Mist – Spike


The Hospital

In theory, this should have been the most exciting storyline. With the most action and unexpected twists, it almost feels like there’s too much going on and it’s too fast paced to fully sync into any characters emotions fully — though maybe that’s the point of this arc?

The Mist – Spike

Bryan/Jonah kicks it off by finishing last week’s cliffhanger when meeting the real Bryan. He recognizes him, but his memory is still clouded, and the real Bryan uses this to hs advantage. After telling him they’re friends and relaxing him, the real Bryan grabs medical instrument off a nearby tray and attacks (why these are being kept non-sterile out in the open and in a patient room where the patient was just bruised and knocked around is beyond us, but it had to be convenient).  Bryan/Jonah ends up getting the better of him, presumably for the second time, and ends it by strangling the real Bryan with a blood pressure cuff while (poorly) asking for the truth. How no one, nurse or otherwise, heard that curfuffle or noticed a dead patient truly bothered us as just lazy writing, but maybe everyone’s distracted by the patients they’ve realized are missing.

Kevin is just now getting back from failing to  save his brother and telling Dr. Bailey the bare bones when a nurse takes the doctor and does a deal job of keeping the disappearing patients hush hush, so Adrian starts to do some digging.

But never one to just follow a storyline naturally Kevin decides it’s a good time to check on the car and they realize Mia stole it/the keys. Kevin is furious and leaves Adrian with Bryan.  Alone (now we know where Alex gets it,el wxcept the whole him not being her biological father part) , Kevin is lead by screams to find Dr. Bailey restraining a woman on a gurney and presumably torturing her. Kevin engages and their is more hospital struggle that feels unimportant and involves more stabbing with medical instruments until the doctor hits Kevin with an injection and knocks him out. Classic.

The Mist – Spike

When Kevin wakes up bound to a gurney himself he knows he done goofed. Luckily for him, Adrian listens as much as Alex does and convinces Bryan to go look for him after an hour passes. In the meantime the doctor reveals his Kevorkianesque plan to Kevin; the writers really liked putting tropey villain monologue plan reveals this episode, we are sure it was to highlight different motivations, but we have faith the audience would’ve been smart enough to get that without the wasted screentime.

The Mist – Spike

So the doctor wants to stick Kevin in the Mist to study how it reacts, just as hd’s done with the others. But the B-list Bill Nye hasn’t learned anything we don’t already know: the Mist gets into your mind manifests differently for it’s victims. To keep the excitement up Kevin does get put outside and the Mist thickens into the owl that said what and an evil Kevin, before Bryan and Adrian bum Bryan the doctor and pull Kevin back in to safety.

The Mist – Spike

The doctor is dead and the three rush to the main hall where Mia reunites with them. Shed been preocuopied earlier stealing the car asnd going back to her mother’s house to find the cash shed been looking for and also confronts her demons in the Mist that filled her mother’s house. You’ll remember we saw the older woman that called her baby doll when they fled the police station, but things got even more personal ab close to fatal before Mia showed character development we barely knew we needed and became the first person to beat the Mist in a physical assault.

The Mist – Spike

They don’t have long to be mad at her after reuniting because moments later the hospitals generators finally go out, and when the generators go out the doors open automatically spilling the Mist into their safe haven.  Kevin votes for rushing into the Mist and heading for the car, but apparently Mia parked “too far away” for them to reach it but not far enougg away that she couldn’t get in — that’s perfectly logical,and also serves as a twist for her to recommend they hide in the oonly place the doors won’t open just because dog an outage – the psych ward. It honestly feels like an unnecessary “edgy” twist, but we  are just along for the ride with this trainwreck of a group at this point. That being said if one of the storylines doesn’t feel more inpactful soon, this show will run the risk of fading away into the Mist itself.