Mr. Mercedes Season 3 Review

That was interesting. Not necessarily great, but when you have talent like Brendan Gleeson, Holland Taylor, and Justine Lupe, it's hard to be bad. I'm also not sure that I would describe the first two seasons of Mr. Mercedes as "great". If you're a fan of creator and executive producer Stephen King, you're not going to dislike the TV series, but be prepared for a lot of changes.

One is that season 3 of Mr. Mercedes is based on the second novel in King's "End of Watch Trilogy". That novel has almost nothing to do with the saga of Mr. Mercedes, aka Brady Hartfield. The TV show focuses on Brady a bit more. Which is a neat trick given that he was shot dead at the end of the second season. We apparently haven't seen the end of the Hartfield saga. If that doesn't make sense... well, I'll have to explain a few things as I review.

The second season ended with Lou (Breeda Wool) shooting Brady in the head after he came out of his coma thanks to a revolutionary drug procedure after Brady displayed what is basically a long-range psychic possession ability. The third season starts with Lou on trial for Brady's murder. Her lawyer, Roland Finkelstein (Brett Gelman), is trying to convince the jury that Lou should be found not guilty because she did the community a favor. There's an eccentric judge (Glynn Turman) who isn't interested in the games that either Roland or the opposing DA are playing to get Lou freed or convicted.

During this, Lou is hallucinating "Brady', i.e., an extra dressed in an ice cream driver's uniform (since that's what Brady wore), of Harry Treadaway's approximate build. She also hallucinates a toy ice cream truck, and starts channeling Brady, who gives her legal advice which she passes on to Roland.

Against all of this, Morris Bellamy (Gabriel Ebert) breaks into the home of local author, John Rothstein (Bruce Dern). He shoots the author dead and takes his manuscripts, but then Morris' SUV hits a deer and goes off the road. By the time Morris returns to the SUV, teenager Peter Saubers (Rarmian Newton), has found Rothstein's manuscripts along with the money that Morris stole. He hides the stolen goods in his bedroom, sends the money to his parents anonymously, and looks for a way to sell the manuscripts on the black market.

Morris is connected with Alma Lane. Who is played by Kate Mulgrew, who starts at one corner of the scenery and chews her way to the other side. If you only remember Mulgrew from Star Trek: Voyager, or Mrs. Columbo *heh*, you'll be surprised at her here. She plays Rothstein's 64-year-old scorned lover, and she raped Morris as a teenager. They're still lovers, but we're spared any Mulgrew nudity. Alma cheerfully kills anyone who gets in her way, including cutting off the fingers of a bookstore dealer who Peter is trying to sell the manuscripts too, and then sticking one severed finger up the corpse's rectum. Ain't cable shows grand? Alma rants about being descended from Indians and that makes her a great torturer, tries to run down Peter while making sarcastic quips, and is furious when Morris confuses her with a character in Rothstein's novels that she claims was based on her , but then breaks into tears when Morris calls her by the character's name. It's a bravura performance by Mulgrew.

Almost incidental to this is Bill, Jerome (Jharrel Jerome), and Holly. Bill has a fascination with Rothstein's novels, similar to Morris. Nothing is really made of this connection until the final episode. Dern drops in from time to time even though he died in the first episode, appearing as a figment of Bill's imagination.

Holly ends up dating Roland, and Jerome does most of the heavy lifting in solving the case of the missing manuscripts. Remember his family life and aborted college career last season? If you do, too bad, because the creative team doesn't. Bill asks Jerome about what happened at Harvard once or twice, but they drop the matter and move on.

There are lots of little story arcs that start up, go nowhere, and quietly end or never resolve. Lou moves in with Holly. Lou tries to get a job. OCD sufferer, Holly, dates Roland. Holly inherits Mr. Mercedes' Mercedes, which he "borrowed" from Holly's mother to conduct his job fair slaughter in season 1. Bill's daughter Allie arrives and tells her father she's pregnant. Ida and Bill talk a lot about things because Ida was Morris' high school teacher, and turned him onto Rothstein. But there's none of the attempted romance between Bill and Ida that we had in the last two seasons. Presumably Bill finished building his gazebo, because there's no reference to it.

Season 3 can basically be divided into during-trial and after-trial. The stolen manuscript plot simmers in the background as Lou stands trial. There's a lot of legal wrangling, and it's all somewhat murky. Lou is eventually found guilty of second-degree murder, but during sentencing gives a speech in Brady's favor and apparently the judge gives her a commuted sentence because of it.

Once the trial is over, the search for Rothstein's killer kicks into high gear. Alma kills Morris' girlfriend, runs her body through her wood chipper, and hides the body parts in her freezer. Later, Alma and Morris kidnap Peter's mother, Marjorie, and try to use her as leverage to make Peter give up the manuscripts. Peter is a Rothstein fan, too, and doesn't want to give up the books. Meanwhile, Morris discovers that Alma killed his girlfriend, kills Alma, and stashes her in the freezer.

In the final showdown, Peter lures Morris to the abandoned jazz club that he's holed up at. He threatens to burn the manuscripts, Bill arrives and shoots Morris, and Peter accidentally sets the manuscripts on fire. Morris tries to read them and is burned to death, and Bill, Peter, and Marjorie get out.

Lou gets Brady's old job as an ice cream truck driver and channels him a lot more.

The biggest downside to season 3 is that Treadaway isn't in it. I don't know if the actor wasn't available, or wasn't asked back. I can understand why the creative team wouldn't want to pay Treadaway's salary. While Brady is ever-present, there's nothing that requires Treadaway to play him. Brady is an ominous figure that only reveals himself in Lou's hallucinations, lurking ominously in crowds and shadows. Based on what we see in season 3, the development of Brady's mental powers in season 2, and the novels, it's a safe bet that Brady projected his mind into Lou's brain as she shot him. So season 4 can have Lou take up the Mr. Mercedes title, go on a serial-killing rage, and get vengeance on Bill and his friends.

The biggest upside of season 3 is Mulgrew. If you know her as the strait-laced, coffee-drinking Captain Janeway, prepare to be shocked. Alma struts, curses, severs, and chews her way across the set, providing all the overacting and twisted sexual quotient that Brady did in the first two season. Impressively, Ebert manages to hold his own against her, slowly unravelling as none of his plans work and he has to deal with Alma's increasingly blatant insanity. Morris is Wiley Coyote: he gets banged up in a car crash, hit over the head with a crowbar, shot in the leg, loses his nose to a gunshot, and eventually burns to death.

The downside to this upside is that Mulgrew and Ebert overshadow everyone else. Their characters have a relatively straight role in the season: goofy villains who are homicidally serious when the need arises. Bill, Jerome, and Holly have no such single-minded goal, and the creative team throws subplot after subplot at them in the hopes that something will stick.

The Lou/Brady-channeling thing is probably the closest thing to a subplot not involving the bad guys that runs through the season. It's easy to see how they can transform Lou into Brady and avoid bringing Treadaway back. But Wool is no Treadaway or Mulgrew or Ebert. If they're all three gone, either Wool is going to have to step up to the plate or Mr. Mercedes will need another Big Bad. It doesn't help that Lou is a likable character: turning her into the season 4 Big Bad is going to ruin the expectations of many viewers. I don't think the creative team has it in them to turn Lou the Lesbian into lesbian serial killer. Even a second-hand proxy one.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?