This review of HBO’s The Third Day Episode 4, titled “Monday – The Mother,” contains full spoilers. To remind yourself where we left off, read our review of The Third Day episode 3.
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With this week’s installment, HBO’s The Third Day enters its next chapter. Up to now, we’ve followed Jude Law’s Sam, from his arrival to the island enclave Osea through his discovery of the strange history and rituals therein, but his story came to some kind of conclusion in last week’s episode (and was further expanded upon in the “Autumn” live event, which can still be watched here). That conclusion was frustrating for its opacity. Yes, answers were given, but those answers weren’t particularly satisfying.
In that sense, the problem besetting The Third Day’s fourth hour, “Winter – The Mother,” is the same one that vexed the first three: It’s a lot of mood and build-up in anticipation of a payoff that remains just out of reach. This time we come in on new lead Helen (Naomie Harris), who has taken her daughters Ellie (Nico Parker) and Tallulah (Charlotte Gairdner-Mihell) out of school for a vacation to Osea – or so she tells them.
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As should be apparent by now, there’s always more going on than meets the eye. And with respect to her reasons for either leaving the mainland or coming to the island, Helen is clearly driven by more than wanderlust, with the added question of whether what we’re seeing now ties in (if at all) with what we’ve seen before. After she finds the room she reserved (via Airbnb, lest we think this enclave exists to one side of the modern world) unavailable, her difficulty at trying to find shelter on Osea reveals a palpable panic.
Like Sam before her, there’s something deeper troubling Helen than the immediate situation, and as with Sam, her frustration in trying to navigate this circumstance makes her more relatable rather than less. As she encounters familiar faces like the Martins (Emily Watson, Patty Considine) and Larry (John Dagleigh) we’re left to wonder what Helen’s role is in the larger story, and what – if any – connection she has to what we’ve seen already, especially given what we know about the strange history of the place.
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As our central focus, Harris is a strong presence (American audiences will likely know her best as Miss Moneypenny in the recent James Bond films) who ably commands the center of this portion of the story while also bringing an entirely different energy than Law. She has a good rapport with the girls, and it’s also nice to see her interacting with the old Osea familiars as she tries desperately to make heads or tails of what’s going on.
The problem then is the way the “Winter” segment of The Third Day feels a bit like watching James Franciscus in the first half of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, going through a sped-up version of what Charlton Heston went through in the original film. We’ve seen this before, and now we’re waiting for the new character to catch up. In this case, while we were always on the same page as Sam, as confused and weirded out as he was, now we’re a few steps ahead of Helen as we watch her go through the same steps we’ve already seen.
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That said, there’s no denying that the creatives (director Philippa Lowthorpe takes over for these final three episodes) make good use of our familiarity with the setting and scenario to maximize the mood and portent. The opening scene, as Helen and the kids arrive at the infamous causeway (that damned causeway!) and begin the dreaded drive to Osea has an air of both allure and ominousness. It’s a nice bit of filmcraft that makes the hour feel a bit less redundant than it otherwise might.
Without spoiling anything, yes, by hour’s end there is clearly a connection established between Helen’s journey and Sam’s, but the nature of that connection and how deep it goes is something it falls to future episodes to elucidate. Finally, credit must be given once again for the show leaving us with a cliffhanger that makes it pretty hard not to come back next time, even if the rest of the episode leading up to it didn’t deliver a terrific reward for the previous one.