All You See is the Dark Recap: The Family

The second episode of “The Family” was called “All You See is the Dark.” We can’t say we made much progress in determining whether Adam is Adam or whether Hank is really innocent. In the opening sequence, a voiceover has Adam lamenting how he came back but he didn’t come home while he memorizes where everything in the kitchen is and stares at his sleeping parents. Hank got up and went to the kitchen too. He located a tool that would help him open up a ceiling panel so he could retrieve something from the attic.

A flashback returns us to the family breakfast on the day of Adam’s disappearance. Claire Warren is drawing faces on bananas and Adam is playing with one of his ships in a bottle. Adam is warned about missing the school bus again and scoots off. Willa wonders how he manages to miss the bus when it stops right outside. She finds out when she sees him running out of Hank’s garage to get on the bus. Hank was helping Adam hoist his ship’s mast in the bottle. Adam wanted to know if Hank was going to the rally. “They’re gonna have cotton candy.”

Back in the present day, Adam encounters Hank outside when Danny is getting ready to take him to the mall and a movie. “Remember me?” Hank asks, “I’m the guy who killed you.” There’s not a flicker of recognition on Adam’s part before John whisks him away. After taking a look at his lump sum $300,000 settlement check from the State, Hank goes back inside and opens up that can he took out of the attic. It contains a pair of mittens with the name Adam embroidered on it.

Why did Hank keep Adam’s mittens?

Other flashbacks that point to Hank being guilty of something to do with Adam show him at the rally that day walking towards the boy. His mother covers for his whereabouts by lying to Officer Meyers that he was home watching a classic film she declined to name. Hank cleans his garage out like a real murderer to remove any evidence that Adam was ever in there. It doesn’t look good at all but perhaps he was terrified that his sex offender status would seal his fate no matter what. That’s what happened, after all, and John Warren is not happy about it either. He pays Hank a visit and point blank tells him that because of his false confession they stopped looking for Adam, and it is Hank’s fault that Adam spent the next 10 years as a prisoner. Not really, John. As Nina Meyer said, it’s more her fault for putting the screws to Hank, unless of course, Hank really did it.

Why didn’t the pock faced man burn everything after Adam escaped?

Now what about Pock Face? This guy was shown lurking around at the end of the pilot and he was shown in several scenes in this episode. After her superior, Len, shut down her “red dragon” investigation in the woods, Nina went off on her own and finds a metal door to an underground bunker. Pock face is watching her through binoculars. Suddenly, a blazing fire breaks out. Nina puts in a desperate call for backup while the “evidence” goes up in flames. She is still able to get inside this metal bunker and assume the position that she believes Adam was in (based on John’s description of the kid sleeping in the closet so he can touch both walls). She sees the “red dragon” in the distance. No matter how much Nina wants to redeem herself, Len ain’t having it. Nina can’t head up the case anymore because she screwed it up and that resulted in an overturned conviction. Looks like the only thing that can redeem Nina is if Hank did it. Oy!

On his outing with Danny, Adam appears to have some memories, asking Danny about fixing his car’s broken tail light and if he quit playing football because of a broken arm. He claims to recognize a pair of running shoes he had when he was taken. He doesn’t remember his school or his best friend Alex. He doesn’t even remember that Alex was a girl. Later, Danny looks at old photos and realizes that Adam could have picked up these little details that way. He goes off to the pediatric dental office to get Adam’s old dental records, with some flimsy story about a scrapbook, only to find out his sister, Willa, beat him to it.

What did Danny and Willa really want them for? And since when do they hand over a kid’s dental records to a sibling just because they asked? We don’t know but we do know that Willa is a calculating sneaky wench. To get her daddy on board with Claire’s gubernatorial campaign, she blackmails him over his affair with Nina. John is just floored.

Bridey Cruz, the reporter, is just as ruthless as Willa in getting what she wants– inside information from Danny. She’s stalks him at his favorite watering hole. Danny gets pretty drunk but when he wants to leave, Bridey surreptitiously orders him a double and seduces him. Bridey also found out (not from Danny) that the DNA test doctor did exist, but two days after he did the test, he threw himself in front of a train.

Stray Observations:

• Hank went off and plunked down $10,000 for a new mattress. The salesman was ecstatic.
• Adam also got a brand new bed through Claire’s efforts to get him to stop sleeping in the closet. She locked the closet but John had to get up in the middle of the night and unlock it. Claire ended up sleeping in there with the kid and heard him moaning “my name is Adam” in his sleep.
• The FBI is now on the case. That’s who Len had to call in for the good of the case.
• In the last episode, we thought they said Adam was 9 when he was taken. In this one, they said he was 8. So he is supposed to be 18 now.
• Whether he is Adam or not, it’s a good thing they have him in therapy. This is one messed up kid!