Mikes Film Talk

In “The Path: Breaking and Entering ” Eddie’s doubts come roaring back. These are driving a rift between Sarah and Eddie as he begins to also doubt Cal’s motivations.  Lane is losing his faith in the movement.

As Jason Kemp’s widow tells him:

“Once you see the first crack, you begin to realize it’s cracked all over. It’s like my grandpa used to say, “Once you’ve seen the freak show, you can’t unsee it.”

This is Eddie’s problem.  At the start of the episode, he is seeing cracks, inconsistencies and hypocrisies.  On the car ride to the compound, Sarah says it is a disgrace to separate families.  This is exactly what the Meyerist Movement does, repeatedly, when it recruits new members.

Eddie goes with Cal on a mission.  Roberts is still bruised from his beating but he insists it was the right thing to do. Hawk’s IS girlfriend and her family are evicted from their house. He brings them to the movement for shelter and Sarah reluctantly agrees.

The mission that Cal takes Lane on is about retrieving $40K from Alison Kemp (Sarah Jones). Roberts rents a key to her hotel room and begins searching for the money. He tells Eddie to check no-one is hiding in the room and Lane finds Alison out on the balcony. Lane tells Cal that no-one is there.

Ashley’s mother is uneasy staying with the cult and Sarah Lane (Michelle Monaghan) does not make it easy for the outsider because she is not of the movement.  Roberts goes to see Mary and finds Sean (Paul James) in her room. Cal tells Sean he needs him at Milton,  in Delaware, to start a office there.  

Eddie and Sarah argue about Hawk and his IS friends.  Later he tells her about  Cal’s breaking and entering to retrieve the missing  money and  suggests that since Roberts is now leading the movement that people are getting hurt.  She disagrees.

Sarah does go to see Cal and tells him to forget about getting the money from Jason Kemp’s widow.  She then goes to pull Alison’s file. Sarah also pulls her sister’s file, the one who left the movement,  after talking to her mother.

Alison meets with Eddie in a bar and they talk missing money, Jason’s “non-suicide” and the problems with the cult. She tells Lane, when he asks, that the movement does good acts, but  that the system is broken and that Jason was going to leave.

At the Gaines house, Abe’s wife accuses him of using their youngest child as part of  the cult investigation.  Later Abe questions Jason Kemp’s parents. He learns that the cult call outsiders “Ignorant Systemites” and  he also learns that Jason rang his father to get the number of  a Dr. Rothstein.

Sarah does some breaking and entering of her own by going into her sister’s house.  She takes a sand dollar and after trying some lip gloss looks in the medicine cabinet. Sarah finds a lot of prescriptive medication, including diazepam.

Eddie lays down some ground rules for Cal, telling him that it is not okay to break into rooms to steal money. Roberts agrees. The tension mounts in the Lane household  as the presence of the IS family continues to drive a wedge between Sarah and Eddie.

Sean recognizes that there is something going on with Cal and Mary and Abe learns that Kemp wanted to buy a very expensive  pancreatic cancer treatment from Rothstein.

At the Lane home, the movement members gang up on Ashley’s mother giving equal parts support and “in your face” truths. Eddie, and Hawk, are uncomfortable about it but for different reasons. The teen is embarrassed by all the trappings of the movement and Eddie’s doubts are making him see things differently.

The next day, the IS family attend a “service” and Ashley (Amy Forsyth) leaves the hall upset. Hawk follows and Eddie stops Sarah from going after them. The two teens comfort one another and end by having rushed sex in the back of a car.

Abe speaks to Eddie about the movement and asks how long Meyer has been writing the final rungs.  Lane has another vision, in this one Sarah and Cal are embracing and the song being sung sounds hollow. Lane leaves Abe and the gathering.

Roberts and the rest of the hierarchy have not told anyone that Meyer has pancreatic cancer and is dying. Abe believes the cult is trafficking drugs but it seems more likely that Kemp was moving cancer treatment medications in a bid to save Meyer’s life.

Presumably, Kemp was killed to keep him from telling anyone about Meyer dying. Alternatively  he could have  committed  suicide out of despair. This latter explanation  seems less likely as Alison told Eddie her husband said he was getting out of the movement.

“The Path” is getting darker as each episode airs.  Cal Roberts comes across as an extremely repressed individual and one that harbors secret desires.  Abe Gaines (Rockmond Dunbar) still seems like he could be swayed into the movement and Hawk may be well on the path to becoming a “Denier.”

Sarah’s displeasure with Eddie (Aaron Paul) seems to be driving her to Cal Roberts (Hugh Dancy) and feeding her inner paranoia.

By the end of the episode, Roberts has, yet again, acted impulsively and brought the “illegal” immigrants into the movements fold, driven Sean away from Mary and is becoming too aware of Sarah, just as she is with him.

Eddie Lane still wants to do good things for people but his doubt is crippling him and causing him real anxiety.  Could he join his son in leaving the movement? This episode is all about doubts; Eddie’s, Hawk’s, Sarah’s and even Cal’s.

“The Path” airs Wednesdays on Hulu.