I Am the Night (1.5) - "Sometimes you catch a bad one, huh?"

An episode from the finale, the mystery becomes eminently personal. The first four episodes of I Am the Night, we are chasing the mystery alongside Jay and Fauna. Every step feels just slightly detached from the viewer. There’s no surrogate for the audience. Perhaps one could argue Jay on this behalf, but as this episode punctuates, he comes with demons all his own. All the danger, mystery, and darkness come crashing down this week. Previous to “Aloha” most of the darkness lurked in the shadows, only hinted at. The audience knows that there is a sinister nature to George Hodel, that Jay struggles with returning from military combat, that much of the LAPD is not on the side of justice. All of these were givens but I Am the Night never had the audience reckon with the impact of each until “Aloha.” The episode morphs from a buddy-cop adventure of Fauna and Jay in Hawaii trying to find Tamar, Fauna’s birth mother into an identity-shattering revelation. (I’d also like to note that one of my very favorite shots this episode was as Jay’s bright red car drive through the lush green trees of Hawaii – it was a beautiful contrast of color.) Whenever they finally do find Tamar, the sound cuts out and the trauma of the past comes the forefront of the present.

As has come to be expected with Chris Pine in his performance as Jay Singletary, he excels once again. In fact, he has not been better this series than in “Aloha.” He carries the emotional weight of various monologues and hits the characters beats such as the occasional frenetic response to strangers catching him off guard. Even when India Eisley is finally called upon to deliver the emotional weight of having Fauna’s identity obliterated in front of her, she still plays it quite restrained. She breaks but never totally. Whether or not that’s “good” might not matter given the fact that Eisley has consistently characterized Fauna this way and for her not to change it now makes you feel as though you are truly seeing Fauna reacting.

Entirely new personnel work behind the scenes in “Aloha” too. Carl Franklin (Out of Time, Devil in a Blue Dress) takes the seat as the director this episode and does so exceptionally. Beyond the aforementioned shot of the car against the wooded backdrop (also credit to cinematographer Michael McDonough), Franklin brings the episode to a close in a dire state with the help of editor, Dody Dorn (Memento, Fury). The ending cuts between many of our main characters summarizing their places and placing question marks on many of their fates as Peggy Lee’s “Street of Dreams” plays and George Hodel drives on into the night. “Aloha” is also the first episode without Sam Sheridan’s pen. Monica Beletsky (Friday Night Lights, Fargo, The Leftovers) wrote this episode, and gave us one of the most striking lines about Jay I Am the Night has offered thus far. As Jay is explaining his guilt over killing Sepp, Fauna interrupts his monologue:

“I’m only breathing right now because of what you did. I don’t care how it made you feel.”

The words hang over the entire rest of the episode, even after she screams “I hate you!” at Jay for not telling her the truth about her family. As a whole, “Aloha” touches the emotions of each major character far more than any of the previous episodes in the series. This is even true of George Hodel whose rage the audience gets up close and personal with at the end. In numerous ways, honing in on those emotions broke this show open in “Aloha.” Where for so long it did not know what it wanted to be, I Am the Night seems to have finally figured it out. Rather than just a show about atmosphere, conspiracy, and a bygone era, with “Aloha,” I Am the Night decided that it cared about its characters, their journey, and what the mystery means to each of them instead of just to us.