SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Anna Pigeon Season 1, Episode 4.
Anna Pigeon Season 1, Episode 4 is hard to put one’s finger on. It’s a murder mystery crammed into the middle of a disaster movie. Both parts of “Hell Is Other People” have very different tones, and the USA series doesn’t always juggle them well. Yet it pulls the whole thing off, while sneaking in some very good character development besides.
In terms of the season so far, this episode is definitely the most chaotic, both in the sense of what happens on-screen and in terms of it’s just not as tightly plotted as its predecessors. The main storyline, in which Anna finds herself lost in the woods with two couples who are harboring some kind of secret, feels like the TV version of a murder mystery party game. Shoutout to Rookie Blue alum Rachael Ancheril in the central role of Romy, who has no idea that her new husband Tom is actually plotting to kill her. She delivers a memorable performance throughout.
Yet the audience is left to guess along with Anna as she tries to figure out which one of the four is the potential murderer. Since this requires there to be a certain amount of mystery around all of the guest characters, they don’t get fleshed out completely until the fourth act—in stark contrast to the previous three episodes. Tracy Spiridakos continues to charge ahead, with multiple great action sequences. Her work in this episode brings back memories of the Chicago PD installment “Still Water,” because once again she’s playing a character who’s thrust into a disaster situation and that ends up revealing something new about her.
The other half of the story concerns the rest of the ranger squad, who are stuck at the station dealing with everything else that occurs during a major storm, and this is largely played for comic relief again. Instead of Frieda having to handle complaints about the missing eagle cam, now it’s Geoff smoking his “one emergency cigarette” and generally (but politely) losing it. Ryan Northcott is responsible for most of the humor in the hour, even while Anna Pigeon doesn’t do a great job camouflaging that the overly worried boyfriend is actually a private investigator.
That’s where “Hell Is Other People” stumbles. The two dissonant stories can work if they come together properly, and this one doesn’t quite line it all up exactly. The audience knows the broad strokes of what’s going on with the investigator before Geoff and Zoey catch on, the other guest characters don’t gain steam until the “aha” moment happens, and having the real bad guy caught by Zoey and Geoff off-screen feels awfully convenient. This is one of those TV episodes where it feels like the plot is getting wrapped up as quickly as possible because a little too much time was spent on the mystery.
But that being said, the real value of Anna Pigeon Season 1, Episode 4 has nothing to do with the storm or the attempted murder. It’s in the subplot as the series keeps fleshing out the people around Anna. Viewers learn a lot about Zoey, both her individual backstory and her dynamic with Anna, and Paulina Alexis has one of her best episodes so far. Bethany and Jesse are paired together, which doesn’t serve much purpose plot-wise but it’s a chance to see a different matchup of characters. Christina gets to do a bit more, even if it comes with a bittersweet mention of Sheila. By the end of this episode, viewers have a broader perspective on the protagonists of Anna Pigeon (save Stanton, as Ronnie Rowe Jr. understandably gets the week off). And they learn that Anna is claustrophobic, which looks like it will immediately come into play based on the preview for Episode 5.
Compared to the first block of episodes, “Hell Is Other People” has a lot going on, and it doesn’t all mesh together beautifully in the end. But this is still a great episode to watch for Tracy Spiridakos fans or fans of Rookie Blue. And it’s a constructive episode because of that mixing and matching of characters, adding more detail to people who still need it, and showing that Anna isn’t the only hero in the park. The cabin fire may be one huge setpiece, yet what the audience will remember most are the performances by Spiridakos, Alexis and Ancheril in particular.
Anna Pigeon airs Fridays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on USA. Photo Credit: Michelle Faye/Courtesy of Versant Media.
Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.
