We pick up where the previous episode left off, with Billy, Jay and Colin hiding in the cabin. My prediction of it not being Sabre who bursts through the door was right; it’s actually their counsellor, Larry, who demands to know why these little shits are out of their tents. They try to tell him what happened to Roger, but Larry doesn’t believe them and can’t wait to dob them in to Uncle Al for going into the Forbidden Bunk, which he scampers off to do right now [What a krej!].
The next morning, the boys head to the lodge to find Al, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Larry is as obnoxious as ever, acting like Roger doesn’t exist and claiming he’s in charge now because Al’s not around, “Now get your bathing suits on, losers, you’re going to the lake” [I love a man on a power trip!].
Larry’s hair kills me hahahahaAs the boys head to the lake later, Billy breaks off from the group to call his parents on the camp phone, but is quickly caught by Uncle Al, who tells him the phone is just a practical joke and isn’t real [Good one??]. Billy asks if Larry spoke to him about Roger, but Uncle Al insists that he checked the records and there was no-one by the name of Roger at the camp before ordering Billy to the lake [Is this a child-trafficking camp?].
BIlly scampers to the lake where Jay and Colin are having fun in a canoe, and yells out to them about his conversation with Uncle Al. Larry appears and demands the boating boys get back to land for some life jackets, at which point the idiots fall out of the boat. Colin isn’t a good swimmer and struggles to keep afloat while Jay tries to help him, but Larry reckons he’s just faking it and prevents Billy from jumping in to help [Larry’s a savage lol]. Billy eventually falls in and Larry scurries off, claiming he’ll pretend he was never there.
By this point, Colin and Jay are nowhere to be found underwater, so Billy leaves the lake and heads back to the camp, where he finds it empty. Arming himself with a baseball bat, Billy heads to the Forbidden Bunk, finding campers’ letters to home scattered around on the way.
Inside the Forbidden Bunk he finds Dawn, who’s also trying to escape the camp [She seems suss]. Her friend, Dory, apparently got mauled by a bear before disappearing from her cabin later [Just like Mike! Why couldn’t Mike have been mauled by a bear? It would have made the lack of medical attention more scary]. Billy and Dawn find more of the campers’ letters to home, some from years ago, before the sound of a whistle alerts them to the Uncle Al and the counsellors dressed in camouflage outside, herding the male campers [Again, is this a child trafficking ring?!].
Dawn is super scared, not wanting to get caught and sent back to camp, so our brave hero Billy decides to investigate, promising to meet up with her again later. As Billy watches from behind a tree, he’s quickly found by Larry and brought to Uncle Al, where our hero confronts the camp leader for doing nothing about his friends’ disappearances [That takes a lot of nerve, especially because we have no idea what Uncle Al is capable of].
Uncle Al orders Billy in line with the others before each camper is given a small crossbow and informed of a runaway from the girls’ camp and instructed to “search everywhere, aim carefully”. Billy is the only one who protests, but Uncle Al claims they’re just tranquilliser darts. Billy aims his crossbow at Uncle Al, refusing to allow any more murders, listing off his missing friends. Once again, Uncle Al insists there’s no campers here by those names, backed up by Larry, and tries to convince Billy he’s just imagining things because he’s homesick [Let’s gaslight the kid, shall we?].
Billy doesn’t accept this and shoots Uncle Al in the chest. Instead of falling unconscious, Uncle Al congratulates him for passing the test! The campers and counsellors start cheering and clapping as Billy’s parents appear from the woods for an exposition dump and Uncle Al explains they’re at a government testing site rather than a summer camp. Dawn, Colin and Jay emerge from the woods next, with the latter two explaining they were in an air pocket in the upturned canoe the whole time [Billy would have seen them hiding while he was underwater though?]. Mike also appears, confessing it was a rubber snake on the bed [More believable since we only saw the snake’s body, but I’m pretty sure it moved at one point….], followed by Roger, all in one piece.
Billy’s parents reveal they’ve been recruited for an important expedition to a dangerous place. Not wanting to be away from their son for so long, “government rules” said Billy would have to pass certain tests in order to join them. Among the tests were quick-thinking, which he showed by discarding of the snake, and courage, which he displayed many times while trying to protect and save his friends [My hero!].
Everyone there is really an actor, working for the government. Sabre then emerges from the woods behind Billy, and even the actors are terrified of it. It’s quickly revealed to be a very obvious animatronic [Which all the actors would have known, so I’m not sure why they’re scared now??] being operated by George, the creepy guy from episode one [Finally a name for him too!].
[I guess this looked 90s real, but definitely not by today’s standards] Anyway, we get one final twist as the episode ends when Billy asks where they’ll be going for the expedition – they’re headed for Earth, where research has shown “the aliens there are pretty dangerous and unpredictable” [Oof. Dare I say even more dangerous and unpredictable now, 25 years after this episode came out?].
Final Thoughts
Not a bad episode but the central mystery failed to really keep my interest, which I found weird because I remembered nothing about this one, so was looking forward to it. There’s a few things that don’t add up with the big exposition dump at the end that I’ve already mentioned, also hindering the episode.
The whole gender segregation thing had no real point and if the purpose of Dawn’s character was to kick off the climax, it would have had more impact if she’d had a bigger part in the story as a whole rather than making an appearance in just the first and last few minutes of the story. Like, as an audience, why do we care if she’s hunted down by the counsellors when we haven’t had time to invest in her character? It was super weird that we didn’t really know any of the characters’ names until well into the episodes, too. What’s up with that?!
Billy was a great protagonist though – he genuinely cared about the people around him and was more focused on their welfare than his own, which was nice to see after the more self-preserving heroes we’ve followed in previous episodes.
It was an interesting twist at the end with the Earth thing, but it doesn’t really work here because it literally came out of nowhere, so it really should have had some subtle hints throughout the episode to tie it all together. I get that it’s hard to do something like that through a visual medium without giving it away too early, but even something as simple as making the trees look unusual or having the characters in less common clothing would have been enough. I mean, Billy wears Converse One Stars – are we really supposed to believe these alien beings have the exact same fauna, fashion and resources as Earth?
Oh well, 5 sunglasses-and-bandanna-wearing cool dudes out of 15.
