In Falling Water “Castles Made of Sand” the dreams continue to merge with not only the three protagonists but with the real world. Green, for example, appears in the dreams and real life. Taka notes that all the suicides wore green trainers (sneakers) as does Alice when the detective chases her in the woods.
Green is the colour of the tennis ball that Woody is bouncing to the boy (Tess’s son.) and later in the episode when Burton opens the suitcase on the bed, it is full of green tennis balls. He bounces one as he talks to Olivia.
Like last week’s episode, had a common theme of the Belgian businessman, who was the Belgian Ambassador in the dreams. This week it is the colour green and those tennis shoes. There are other things the dreams have in common however. Like “The Boy” who randomly appears in the various dreams.
The dreams in “Castles Made of Sand” have altered from the previous dreams. Tess dreams of dancing with Javier Mendoza who is dying. Taka has a dream that literally comes true and Burton learns he can affect his dreams, although it does take him a while.
At the start of the episode, Andy is quickly shaving off his beard when Anna Marie shows up. They talk for a moment and Anna drops her bomb, the boy, Tess’ son, is missing.
Tess goes to visit Javier Mendoza and shares a dream with him. In the dream she gives him the drachma referenced in their conversation. They embrace and start dancing slowly.
A faceless man comes up behind Tess and drags her away from Javier. She fights with the thing and plunges a pick axe into its chest. Later in the episode the missing Andy is found in a dumpster with a bloody wound in his chest. He is wearing the same outfit as the faceless man in Tess’ dream.
In another dream, Tess runs into Levon who is selling forget-me-nots in the restroom. He grabs her and gets really quite vicious with her. She manages to get away.
Taka speaks with Alice, the girl with the green sneakers, and her psychiatrist. He learns very little but what she does pass on is disturbing. Some unsettling things emerge during the Q&A.
The detective mentions a detail from another dream, where the Belgian ambassador is suffocated with a bag over his head. Alice’s eyes widen in recognition. Later she mentions overweight politicians eating ice cream, which is what the man was doing in Taka’s dream.
After the session, which Sabine sat in on, Taka dreams of psychiatrist.
He is watching Sabine in some sort of peep show set up. She is on the other side of a window and takes her clothes off, except for her high heels and underwear. She also leaves her blouse on, but unbuttoned.
She moves to the bed, which puts her almost out of Taka’s site line, removes her panties and, taking out a vibrator, begins to masturbate. She asks if he can see her and not to move.
After Taka wakes up, he stops in a cafe to have some cake and a cup of coffee. He looks up and sees Sabine ordering some parties from the coffee house. The two talk and Taka winds up having a date with her.
At the conclusion of their night out, Sabine invites Taka in. She has him stop at the stairs leading to her bedroom and stop. He can see her through the bannister.
She has chair placed in front to a peep show in her bedroom. She removes her knickers and asks if he can see, mirroring what happened in his dream. Then, just as she did in the dream, Sabine turns on a vibrator and begins to masturbate to orgasm.
Disturbingly, as Sabine climaxes, Taka’s mother screams out.
Burton has now realized that he is dreaming and that he can control it to a degree. The woman in red, Olivia also appears to realize that he is dreaming. Burton dreams the same dream three separate times and each one ends differently.
After acknowledging that it is indeed a dream Burton turns and opens the suitcase on the bed. It is full of green tennis balls. He begins bouncing a ball and the rhythmic sound confuses Olivia. She then disappears.
He then spies a blond woman watching everything. Burton chases her down through steam filled corridors and eventually catches up to the woman.
The merging of the dreams are becoming more frequent. So too are the “leaking” of each person’s dream into real life. Taka and Sabine’s masturbating while he watches. Burton mentioning the restaurant Marcello’s and Woody’s apparent recognition of the place and his tossing a green tennis ball to Burton as he leaves.
There is Eddie in that dumpster bleeding from a chest wound. Clearly he was the faceless man in Tess’s dream. And finally, there is the blonde woman who was watching Burton and Olivia in his dream. In real life, she turns up as a prospective buyer of whatever the Belgian is selling.
As usual, this episode keeps switching so quickly and effortlessly between the dream sequences and reality that it is hard to distinguish the two. The character who orchestrates the experiments that Tess takes part in was a background presence this week.
Bill Boerg appears in the sequence where Tess dreams of the faceless man the first time. He is also there when she wakes up, hours after the rest of the test subjects awakened and left.
Show creators Blake Masters and Henry Bromell have managed to come up with a formula that is oddly addictive. Despite, or perhaps because of, the difficulty in keeping what is real and a dream separated, Falling Water is nigh on impossible to stop watching.
So many questions are waiting to be answered and more keep appearing with each new episode.
Falling Water airs Thursdays on USA. Tune in and get caught up in this world of merged dreams, mass suicide and Topeka.
Cast:
- David Ajala – Burton
- Lizzie Brocheré – Tess
- Will Yun Lee – Taka
- Zak Orth – Bill Boerg
- Shiloh Fernandez – Levon
- Kai Lennox – Woody Hammond
- Anna Wood – Olivia / The Woman in Red
- Lucy Walters – Isla / blonde woman
- Brooke Bloom – Sabine
- Lizzy DeClement – Alice
- Lou Taylor Pucci – Andy
- Melanie Nicholls-King – Ann Marie Bowen
