Episode 4:
The Black Cat
Directed by: Michael Fimognari
Written by: Mike Flanagan
For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not — and very surely do I not dream.
- First three sentences in The Black Cat
Leo adopts a black cat who soon brings evil—and a mysterious woman—into his home, while Roderick struggles with terrifying hallucinations.
This episode incorporates elements from The Black Cat.
Currently under construction.
Tropes that are present in this episode:
- Ambiguous Situation: Did Leo ever actually kill Pluto in the first place? The cat that visits his body after his death is wearing the Gucci collar that Leo claims went missing when Pluto "ran away," implying that the answer is no.
- All of Leo's interactions with the replacement cat are revealed to be hallucinations. Were those hallucinations caused by the amount and intensity of drugs Leo had taken, grief and stress following his sister's death and the family's callous dismissal of it, pure rage, early-onset CADASIL symptoms inherited from his father, or Verna? A mix of all possibilities?
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Word of God confirmed that Leo did not actually harm the real Pluto and the appearance of his dead body was a hallucination. - What exactly prompted Roderick to hallucinate, or otherwise see, Prospero in this episode? Just CADASIL? Refusing to let Juno go off Ligadone? Something else?
- Berserk Button: Dupin gets pissed when Roderick shouts at him, and threatens to knock his lights out if he does it again.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: While not cruel like Perry and Camille's deaths, Leo still suffers a lot of pain from the cat's violent scratching, with his suffering only ending after he trips off the balcony and falls onto the pavement below. One could say his mercy was that the fall instantly killed him.
- Dramatic Drop: When Roderick sees Prospero's ghost looming behind/embracing Juno, he drops the glass of whiskey he was holding.
- Eye Scream: A two-for-one deal:
- When retrieving the drugs for Freddie, Leo sees the cat hiding on the shelf, clawing at one of his eyes. Not only is the eye red but there is a pretty noticeable gash on his eyeball.
- After digging its claws into his chest, Leo forces the cat off and jams his thumbs into the cat's eye sockets. He succeeds in popping one eye out of its socket, but it doesn't faze the cat.
- Verna then appears in the cat's place with all of the injuries the cat sustained, including an eyeball drooping down her face.
- Face-Revealing Turn: A variant, as it's someone laying on the floor and turning their head to look up. Roderick hallucinates (or does he) Leo's corpse falling to the floor in front of him, then turning its head his way.
- Facial Horror: The left side of Leo's face after he dies is absolutely covered in blood. Also, Prospero's corpse still doesn't have eyes, and we are reminded of this face in a close-up.
- Fanservice: Juno looks quite nice in a bright red nightgown this episode.
- Fan Disservice:
- Leo is very well built and handsome, and there are a lot of scenes here with his shirt off. Too bad he's covered in bleeding cat scratches and stuck in a blind rage smashing his high-rise loft to kingdom come.
- Juno starts coming onto Roderick in a red nightgown and they prepare to get intimate, only for the scene to become horrifying when Roderick hallucinates Perry's horrifically scarred corpse. Which leans in to kiss him.
- Freak Out: Roderick understandably does not take it well when he sees Prospero's corpse. Juno has her own just off-screen, frantically asking him what's wrong.
- Jump Scare: Roderick is chatting about coping mechanisms with Dupin when it cuts to a wide shot and something - which turns out to be Leo's corpse - crashes down in front of him.
- Meaningful Name: The cat that started all the trouble for Leo is named "Pluto". A name for a Roman deity associated with death and wealth.
- Only Sane Man: Leo refuses to participate in the family's clumsy attempts at damage control after Camille's death, saying that they can take him out of the will if they want but he won't put business before the fact that his brother and sister are dead.
- Pet the Dog: Sure, Leo trying to replace Pluto instead of telling Julius that the cat is dead is ...very poor behavior, but his behavior in the moment is actually not terrible. When he finds a Pluto-lookalike in the shelter Verna is working at, he offers to have the place renovated into a non-kill shelter, find homes for the cats who need them, and even buy Verna a set of high-end clothes if she lets him take the cat. It's implied that he even followed through.
- Rage Breaking Point: As the cat causes more and more grief towards Leo, he grows angrier and angrier, hitting his boiling point when the cat hides in the walls.
- Sanity Slippage:
- While not "insane", Napoleon's manifesting anger could qualify for him having a mental breakdown as he tries to look for the cat. For Verna, all it took was pressing the right buttons, and letting his rage take hold.
- Frederick, who up to this point had mostly just been ineffective but pitiable, is clearly losing it after Pym uncovers Morella's burner phone. He steals some cocaine from Leo and becomes so desperate to find out what's on the thing that he rips off her bandages to try and unlock it with facial recognition.
- Scare Chord: Roderick and Juno are about to go at it when the camera zooms in on the shoulder of Juno's nightgown, revealing Perry's ghost's burnt flesh.
- Sherlock Scan: Young Dupin effortlessly assesses Roderick's financial situation while analyzing their unwillingness to inform him.
- Shout-Out: Leo smashes up his apartment with a Mjolnir hammer, implied to be an original prop from one of the Marvel movies, as he can easily get "Hemsworth to send [him] another hammer."
- Trash the Set: The once pristine and organized loft has been reduced to a smashed, hole-ridden living space due to Leo's rage.
- Suddenly Shouting: After the something that crashes down turns out to be Leo's ghost, which turns to look at Roderick, the latter stands up and starts yelling.Roderick: I was talking! I was fucking talking!Dupin: (stands up) Jesus! The hell is wrong with you?
- Through the Eyes of Madness: The ending heavily implies that Leo merely hallucinated all the dead animals he found around the apartment.
- Wham Shot: A one-two-three punch:
- 1) The camera panning over the bathtub to reveal, nothing. The dead animals and blood are all gone, revealing that Leo's entire encounter with the cat was all a hallucination.
- 2) At numerous close shots, Leo's entire body does not have scratches all over, revealing that the cat's interactions were also hallucinated.
- 3) A black cat approaches Leo's body, but is more friendly, while also having the Gucci collar, revealing this cat to be the actual Pluto. Not only did Pluto actually survive, but Leo went out of his way to replace Pluto, and dying as a result, for nothing.
- Worthy Opponent: In the present, Frederick tells Dupin that he's always respected him; Dupin is skeptical, to say the least.
- "Mm. Heads up."
