This show has dealt with the war against Moloch for so long that one forgets it can work as a simple, straightforward procedural. This is going to back to the show's roots somewhat, with the main thrust of the episode's plot concentrated on Abbie and Crane working a missing child case. It's a nice reminder that the characters can still deal with the basics without bringing the end of the world into the mix every time.




The case goes through the usual rhythms so there's little tension in getting the girl back and defeating the villain, but somehow that doesn't drag the quality of the episode down. The glory is in the details. The abducted child case involves a complicated curse on a family that dates back to Revolutionary times. The person responsible for the abduction is a Pied Piper. Suffice it to say, the Pied Piper is rather frightening despite the ease with which he is dispatched.

The power of the Pied Piper lies in that bone flute. It's a really powerful MacGuffin that Crane and Mills find in the woods and leads them to the precise location of the Lancaster girl who has been abducted. The flute also seemed to have a hallucinogenic effect on Abbie that doesn't quite fit logic. It may just be that Abbie was connected to the Lancaster family in such a way that made it so the flute only affects her in that way. Or that given the end revelation that Henry Parish wanted the flute in question to use as a possible weapon in the war, that would mean that the flute holds sway only on the Two Witnesses.





That does make the face-off between the Pied Piper and the Witnesses very interesting. They find temporary ways to combat the effects of the flute (the futuristic-looking noise-canceling ear buds look cool on Crane), but they ultimately prove ineffective. The speed of the Pied Piper is an especially nice touch that adds to his fearsome quality. It's such a shame then that Abbie gets lucky and takes one stab at the Pied Piper to kill him.



The Pied Piper is deployed as an effective terror on the Lancaster family, although the show chooses to focus more on Abbie and Crane's chemistry than fleshing out the incredibly cursed history of the Lancaster family. It's rather neat. Every ten years, the Pied Piper take a child of the Lancaster family. The current generation's matriarch tried to subvert this by adopting her kids, but ended up having a blood child of her own. If the child eludes the Pied Piper's grasp, all of the children in the family die. It's a dicey dilemma that could be further explored but that's not the show's speed. It has to move through a lot of plot within an hour so only the surface of this curse is covered through typical Crane historical exposition. The episode also adds Hawley into the mix so that he can act as a mercenary-type figure who hunts for the Pied Piper's flute same as Crane and Mills.




Unlike the mission that introduces Hawley in the prior episode, his reasons for coming along with our heroes are rather flimsy. He ultimately gets ahold of the bone flute in question, only to sell it to a proxy buyer for Henry Parish. It feels like Parish is once again pulling the strings without much foreknowledge by either Crane or Mills as to his true intentions. Like the Tyrian sheckels, the flute may show up again later in the season for some other purpose. The same can be said for Irving, who now figures out that he signed his binding contract to Parish in his own blood. Due to the main focus on rescuing the missing child, Irving has little to do in this episode. That will change in the future. Standalone episodes like this are a welcome and necessary break from the heavily-serialized storytelling the show often employs.