Shut Eye: The Magician – Burned (Review)

In Shut Eye “The Magician” it is Eduardo who manages to make something disappear. In this case it is a relative of Fonzo’s; Fabiana.  This is after Linda and Gina make Emma’s body disappear, in an unmarked grave, in the woods.

In “The Tower” Nick’s high school friend snorts the scopolamine that Linda hid and overdoses. The girl dies on the kitchen floor foaming at the mouth.  Linda puts the body in the new car that Eduardo gives Charlie and she and Gina dispose of the girl’s body.

After the chore is done, Linda tells Gina to leave and drives off stranding her former lover in the middle of the forest. Linda tells Gina to call Lyft.

She gets home to find Charlie talking to Gina as he makes coffee. He convinces his wife that Nadine is ready for a seance.

Charlie and Fonzo help Fabiana, a medium who is also a relative of Fonzo’s, to get her parlor set up in Van Nuys. The woman is overweight, pushy and annoying. She keeps pushing Charlie to fix the place up and put in a cat door amongst other things.

After the Gina seance, Charlie tells his wife’s ex lover to leave and not come back. He knows that she and Linda had a fling and later he confronts his wife about it. He is still having the visions of fire and when Nadine is talking with Linda in the kitchen he sees the flames and hears screaming.

Fabiana catches sight of Nadine leaving Charlie’s place and threatens to tell Fonzo if she is not cut in on the deal. He decides to ask Eduardo to get rid of the woman.

At a party thrown by Eduardo, he gets the vision again, this time as he watches a pig that his benefactor is roasting. He sees the dead animal’s feet and ears twitch and throws a bowl of punch over the animal.

Eduardo knows that Charlie is having visions and he believes that he “is the man.” Charlie asks Eduardo to smooth things over with Fabiana and he agrees.

At the meeting between Eduardo and Fabiana he explains that she needs to leave Charlie alone. The medium reacts angrily and throws a lit candle at Eduardo. Her place catches on fire and she attacks Eduardo, he pushes her back and her trouser leg catches on fire.

Fabiana begins to scream as the fire spreads.

Later, Charlie is visited by Eduardo who brings the medium’s cat, he rescued the animal. He gives the cat to Charlie and tells him that she is in the burns unit at hospital.

Fonzo apparently knows about the accident but believes that someone else is responsible. Charlie speaks with the doctor again and tells her that he is still having the visions. She gives him an MRI scan and while he is in the machine, he has a vision of himself drowning in deep water.

Shut Eye continues to be evocative and damned interesting. It is ironic that a man who makes his living lying to “marks” now has the capacity to see the immediate future.  The visions shake him and he has no real idea how to translate what he sees.

It is a further irony that Eduardo, a gangster who want to go legit, actually  has a better idea than Charlie about how to use the visions.

Each of the characters in Shut Eye are multi-layered. Linda and Charlie have a complex marriage and Eduardo is much more than a cardboard cut-out villain.  These three characters are the deepest of the lot with Fonzo being more two dimensional overall.

The scam that is being played out with Nadine looks sure to end in tears instead of the new beginning that Charlie and Linda so desperately want. It also seems pretty clear that Emma may rise metaphorically from the grave to implicate either Nick or Linda.

Shut Eye is streaming on Hulu and all the episodes are available to watch now. Head on over and check this one out. Jeffrey Donovan is killing it as Charlie and KaDee Strickland is matching him scene for scene. David Zayas is spot on as the bad guy who want out of the business. This is excellent stuff and should not be missed.

Cast:

• Jeffrey Donovan  –  Charlie Haverford
• KaDee Strickland  –  Linda Haverford
• Angus Sampson  –  Fonzo 
• Isabella Rossellini  –  Rita
• Emmanuelle Chriqui  –  Gina
• David Zayas  –  Eduardo Bernal
• Mel Harris  –  Nadine Davies
• Leah Gibson  –  Sylvia Haverford
• Susan Misner  –  Dr. Nora White
• Dylan Schmid  –  Nick Haverford

Guest starring Tara Karsian as Fabiana and Roan Curtis as Emma.