Evil
“7 Swans a Singin'” (Episode 110)
December 12, 2019

Last week on EVIL, David was being sued by Caroline Hopkins, the Halloween episode exorcism lady, who claim the church botched the whole thing. David’s life became more complicated when Renée Harris showed up to represent him. Renée is the sister of Julia, David’s dead fiancee. When the episode ended, Renée was waiting for David in his apartment, refusing to leave until he touched her. At the Bouchard House, a mysterious tabby cat appeared and interrupted Andy and Kristen’s reunion. That cat is demonic fo’ sho’. And Leland brought Sebastian to the edge of killing David and his prayer group only to have Sebastian accidentally shoot his own brains out. Back to the drawing board, Leland. 

Catch up with all of last week’s action with our deep dive recap here. Now, buckle up for the Winter finale, Christmas done EVIL-style … BEWARE OF SPOILERS!!!

Archbishop Hundy High School. The God Squad, accompanied by Bishop Marx, head to an all girls Catholic high school to investigate … something. Ben asks Kristen if she’s noticed David being distracted as of late only to find Kristen, herself, very distracted. Ben is always on the outs of what is happening between his two partners.

Segue to why they’re at the school and neither Kristen nor Ben know why they are there. Kristen non sequiturs that she wonders why she is doing this job at all and puts Andy’s idea that she go climbing instead? Ben thinks that’s some stupid shit and tells Kristen his best reason for doing the Church gig.

“At least here, you’re keeping David sane.”

Bishop Marx explains to the God Squad that something is happening at the school and he wants them to assess the school’s (and therefore, the church’s) liability. This sounds juicy!

They step inside the principal’s office and Marx and Sister Elena (Alison Cimmet), the principal, talk in non-specifics about someone doing something for two hours uninterrupted. Sister Elena adds that they’ll stop when she tells them to but then they start right up again. Curiouser and curiouser.

Deeper inside the principal’s office, four teenage girls are vocalizing a catchy tune (no lyrics) with some lovely harmonizing. The principal tells them to stop singing and they do. She tells the girls that visitors from the rectory are here and want to talk to them.

They’re singing a song incessantly, barely able to stop singing long enough to answer Kristen’s questions. Their teacher hollers at the girls to stop. Kristen asks what song they were singing and is told they don’t know and they start singing it again. The principal tells them to stop again.

Alone, Kristen interviews the girls, asking why they are singing a song they don’t know the words to? And why they start back at it if they can stop? “It feels good,” is the very teenage answer. Kristen conducts an experiment and tries to have the girls sing “Jingle Bells.” The girl quartet starts singing “Jingle Bells” lyrics but to the tune of the song they were harmonizing previously. Kristen stops them and sings “Jingle Bells” proper and the girls join in. Kristen asks them to sing “Jingle Bells” on their own and they start their remix version of the song. Kristen’s face is priceless. 

[Ed. Note: I give those 4 actresses a lot of credit, that is a trippy melody to put “Jingle Bells” to and they nail it in sync, beautifully.]

Kristen steps out and tells the Bishop, David and Ben that the girls are experiencing “stuck song syndrome, an auditory form of OCD.” She explains it is like an ear worm where a song is stuck in your head and a common way to get over it is distraction. She gave the girls some gum and it ceased the singing as a temporary measure until they can talk to the girls’ parents. Kristen goes into discussing some more formal treatments, but those are above what she can offer. The Bishop is impressed and wants the team to work on a new possession case.

As they walk out of the room, Ben fake coughs into his hand and needles Kristen a bit.

“Teacher’s pet.”

The Bouchard House. Lexis, daughter number two, comes home from school, crying and slamming doors. Lexis tells Grandma Sheryl, who is bedecked in a fiery red dress, that a girl in school is bullying her. Lexis shows Grandma her scraped knee from the altercation. Grandma Sheryl gives Lexis very, very bad life advice.

“You take a brick and you hit her in the face.”

Lexis is mighty confused. Grandma Sheryl continues that the bridge of the nose is the sweet spot, delivering a lot of pain. She picks up a rock, tells Lexis to wrap her hand around it and hit the girl right on the nose, then stealthily drop the rock. Lexis is uncomfortable with this advice but Grandma Sheryl persists.

“You either make them your bitch, or they make you theirs.”

That’s got to be Leland’s demon seed talking, Grandma Sheryl!

The Church. David goes to confession. The organist in the church is practicing what sounds like new music and provides a very dramatic diegetic soundtrack. David kneels in the booth and tells the priest he slept with a woman, his fiancé’s sister to boot! He tells the priest, when asked, that his fiancé died some years ago.

This is the first time we get a clear delineation of Julia’s relationship to David. David tells the priest that he feels there are too many complications being involved with this woman. The priest asks if David has anything else to confess. David starts to tell the priest he is in seminary but stops, leaving his confession there. The priest requests that David reflect on his act of contrition and to not get himself into similar situations in the future.

David leaves, stopping to take in the scene of a large nativity outside the church. Ever get the feeling you’re being watched? David gets that feeling now and looks over his shoulder. A bearded, scraggly looking man is watching David from the church gate by the sidewalk. David asks what he wants and approaches the mystery man. As David nears the gate, the guy just vanishes.

David walks back to his car, unlocks it, and sees a heart has been drawn on the window of his car in the condensation. Not on the outside. From the inside. Oh, okay. Totes normal.

The Bouchard House.  Kristen is lying in bed that night. She starts to sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and descends into the “la la la laaa” song.

Deep breath, girl.

She launches into “Jingle Bells” but just like the girl quartet, she falls back into the “la la la laaa” song. It’s stuck in her head too! Andy comes in asking what she is singing, because the same song is stuck in his head as well? Then he starts singing it. They sing it together and know it perfectly.

Lynn yells from outside their bedroom that they’re singing Pudsy’s Christmas. Kristen gets up to ask Lynn what it is and Lynn tells her it’s an online cartoon. Lynn asks how Kristen knows it and Kristen explains she only knows the song. Kristen wants to know how to find it and Lynn responds with all the pre-teen snark she can muster.

“There’s this thing called the internet, Mom.”

Kristen goes downstairs with her laptop and looks up Pudsy’s Christmas. She misspells it at first and Google corrects her. Gee thanks for flagging every uncool parent, EVIL! The search comes up with the video, with lyrics, to the song we’ve been hearing for 10 minutes and should be well stuck in your head by now. It’s as simple and as catchy as Baby Shark. The video shows Santa eating a gummy edible and getting all fucked-up on an acid trip and seeing all kinds of funky things. Kristen seems amused by this. Here is the video, it’s really super catchy.

High School. The next day, The God Squad is back at the school and Kristen explains the ear worm song comes from the Pudsy’s video, calling it an edgier version of Charlie Brown’s Christmas.

I’m not sure that’s an apt comparison, I would call it FAR edgier than Charlie Brown, more on par with Bad Santa.

Ben adds to this and tells the Bishop that it’s a meme and will be gone in a week. Kristen thinks it’s harmless as he opens the door. More than half the choir is now vocalizing the song while the teacher is trying to practice “Silent Night.”

We pull out of the choir room, out of the school and head to the credits as the “la la la”-ing continues, ending with the block letters of EVIL.

Opening Credits.

Bishop’s Office. Bishop Marx is asking how this stuck song syndrome could spread from 4 girls to 50? Kristen explains that it could be a psychogenic illness, which is illness-like behavior that spreads to a whole group like mass hysteria. Kristen gives examples of a laughing epidemic in 1962 in Tanzania which started with 3 kids who couldn’t stop laughing and spread to three villages.

David asks if this is harmless and Kristen replies it usually is, but there was a dancing plague that took hold of 400 people in France in 1518 where several people died of starvation and heart attacks. Because they couldn’t stop dancing. Ben scoffs.

“Sorry, but half of the things you talk about sound made up.”

Never change, Ben. Never change.

Marx asks if there is a supernatural component to consider here? David wants to focus on the psychological and Ben pipes up that it could be a physical contribution, like asbestos. The Bishop is skeptical because the school was checked. Ben presses that asbestos often lurks in spots in older buildings. Bishop Marx would like them to focus on a psychological explanation for this. Kristen gets a text from Andy that Lexis hit a girl.

The Bouchard House. Andy and Kristen are in their room, strategizing Lexis’s punishment before they talk to her. Kristen suggests no TV for a month and Andy is indecisive. He says he hates this and Kristen asks what and Andy tells her ‘parenting.’ She gives him a kiss and goes to get Lexis.

Kristen opens her bedroom door and hears her girls singing the Pudsy’s song. Kristen asks why they’re singing it and she’s told that Lynn taught it to them. Kristen wants them to stop because she doesn’t like it. She starts up a chorus of “Away in a Manger” for them to continue. Andy asks for Lexis to come with them. Her sisters wish her good luck.

Lexis sits on in Andy and Kristen’s room. Andy asks why Lexis hit the girl and Lexis tells them she was being bullied. Andy explains that regardless, hitting is not the answer. Lexis counters that Grandma Sheryl disagrees and fills her parents in on the conversation she had with Devil Grandma.  Kristen is floored by this and Andy just stares at the ceiling in disbelief.

Lexis adds that it worked too because the girl bullying her apologized and the other girls who were being mean want to be her friend again. Andy stays to reinforce the no hitting policy as Kristen steps out of the room.

Down in the kitchen, Kristen tells Grandma Sheryl that she can’t tell her daughters to hit kids who are bothering them. Grandma Sheryl, not wearing red right now and who is also distractedly playing with her phone, has no idea what Kristen is talking about? She denies, pretty convincingly, that she told Lexis to hit anyone, adding she doesn’t want to get Lexis into trouble.

David’s Apartment. David calls Ben and tells him to check the school for asbestos. Distracted by something on his bed, he hangs up with Ben and finds a card on his pillow. The card has the same heart pierced with an arrow as was drawn on his car windshield. The card also has the words “Talk to me” written on it. He looks around and sees no one. He calls Renée and asks to meet.

David and Renée meet in a restaurant and the dynamic between them is strained. Renée thought they were trying to stay away from each other and is confused then, why he would call her? David slides the card across the table, asking her about the note she left on his pillow? Renée laughs at the idea of having  some kind of “high school crush” and denies leaving the card.

Renée tells David the handwriting isn’t hers, but David recognizes it as Julia’s. Renée is getting mad now, not liking the insinuation that she would have kept a note of Julia’s and put it on his pillow. David asks how else it would have gotten there?

Renée tells David she thinks he called because he is not over their thing. Otherwise, the situation is David called her to accuse her of some cray cray nonsense where she teases him with notes written by her dead sister. That would be some Fatal Attraction-level stuff that she’s not into. David gets up to leave, taking his note. Renée has some parting advice for him.

“Some people are not meant for the priesthood.”

Damn, that must have been a goooooood night of sexy times.

The High School. The next day, The God Squad and Bishop Marx are back at the school of ear worms. In the cafeteria. I’ll note that there is strains of “Pudsy’s Christmas” song all around them in this scene. Ben plops two plates of vegetables onto the table. He acknowledges to the Bishop that asbestos isn’t an issue, but he thinks the food is! The school’s food vendor, DFC Veggies, is involved in pesticide lawsuits and Ben found traces of pesticides on the food in front of them. David needs to interview the affected girls again to see if they ate the food. The Bishop gets up to arrange it.

Alone, Kristen asks David and Ben why she and her kids are signing the song – they don’t go to this school not do they eat this food? Ben is explaining this away as part of Kristen’s original ear worm theory but it’s interrupted an eruption of girls screaming. Several of the girls singing the Pudsy’s song a moment ago have now jammed pencils and scissors into their ears. Some girls are screaming in pain and other are screaming for the girls to stop the stabbing.

David, Kristen and Ben rush to help the impaled girls, horror on their faces. The sloshing sound the stabbing implements make as they remove them  from the girls’ ears is the grossest sound imaginable.

Commercials.

The Bouchard House. Lexis and Grandma Sheryl are talking. Lexis is annoyed that Grandma Sheryl told her to hit the girl bully and then hung her out to dry with her parents. Grandma Sheryl tells Lexis to prove that she told her to hit the girl. Lexis is confused why Grandma Sheryl is lying.

Grandma Sheryl sits down next to Lexis and very lovingly (which makes this whole scene almost menacing) explains that everybody lies but to snitch?

“Snitching is far worse.”

Grandma Sheryl advises Lexis the next time to tell whoever it is, whatever she needs to in order to keep them both out of trouble because she should never snitch. Then Grandma Sheryl turns all sweet with an “I love you” and a big hug.

Holy crap, Grandma Sheryl. She’s almost mobster-level menacing with these new life advice tips.

As she is wrapping up with Lexis, Grandma Sheryl gets a call from Leland. He’s finishing up with a patient and asks if he could see her tonight? Next to him, on his couch, is a writhing body zippered in a cloth body bag. Leland doesn’t seem the least bit put off by this. Leland asks how the conversation went with Lexis and Grandma Sheryl thanks him for the advice he gave. They end the call with ‘love you.’ Blech.

The Hospital. Ben and Kristen head to the hospital to visit the girls who popped their eardrums. Kristen asks why Emma put scissors in her ear and Emma tells Kristen that the noise just kept getting worse. Kristen asks if they’ve heard or seen Pudsy’s Christmas and blank faces from the girls. Kristen rules out Ben’s salad theory as well. Meanwhile, Ben is checking Emma’s browser history on her iPad and it’s basically all hits to this YouTuber-like channel called “Malindaz.”

Emma explains that Malindaz is an influencer who talks about clothes and makeup. Kristen asks if that is where they heard the song and again, blank faces from the girls.

David’s Office.  The God Squad is reunited and they’re watching the latest Malindaz video, the “Malindaz Challenge.” In the video, Malindaz (Taylor Louderman) explains her “Challenge” involves watching a 95-minute makeup video and then saying “Malindaz Challenge” three times. But don’t do it, she warns because if you do? You’ll go crazy! And wind up in Bellevue.

FYI, that’s a long fucking video for YouTube. Melindaz is doing this whole influencer thing wrong.

Kristen thinks Malindaz is trying to make the “Challenge” sound dangerous which will entice more people to view it. David turns up the volume as Malindaz starts her makeup tutorial and we hear the instrumental version of Pudsy’s song begin in the background. Ben volunteers to watch the whole thing and asks them to come look for him in Bellevue.

As they wrap up, Kristen gives Christmas presents to both Ben and David. Kristen leaves and Ben tells David they should have gotten her something.

Ben’s House. Ben is home watching the video and David is in his apartment, also watching Malindaz talk about using foundation sparingly on freckles (I have freckles and you want to cover that sh*t up already!) David opens up his gift from Kristen. It is a sweater and a scarf. Ben opens up with present and it is a framed drawing from the 4 L’s wishing Ben the Magnificent a Merry Christmas.

Malindaz continues speaking in the background.  

“A good concealer can literally cover all your sins.”

I feel ya, Malindaz. 

The Bouchard House. Kristen is home and the Bouchard house is settling in for the night. Andy marches the girls to their room, singing “Good King Wenceslas.” As the Bouchard parade heads to the bedroom, Kristen asks Lynn if she ever visits makeup sites? Lynn says she doesn’t because Kristen told her she was too young. Kristen starts to ask about the Malindaz site but stops before saying the name, knowing it would be too tempting for Lynn to go watch.

Kristen locks her bedroom door and starts watching the “Malindaz Challenge.” Andy knocks to be let in, asking what she is watching? Kristen tells him it is something for work, and Andy is hopeful.

“Porn?”

He’s disappointed it’s a makeup tutorial. Kristen fills him in in why she is watching it. This confirms for Andy his suspicion that her “work is insane.”  Kristen puts the laptop speaker close to her ear and hears nothing out of the ordinary. 

The sound of the video is traveling down the hall to the girls’ room. The Four L’s are awakened by a sound. They’re all disturbed by it as Kristen is in the other room watching the video, unaware that anything is happening with her daughters. They hear a man’s voice that is not their dad’s and it’s freaking them out. For the record, we’re just hearing like a spooky wind blowing in the track. Lila, daughter number three, clutches one ear. 

Kristen reaches the end of the video and Pudsy’s song is still going. Malindaz congratulates the viewer for making it to the end and reminds them of the last step, but also, they have been warned. Kristen is in the bathroom, closes the laptop lid and looks in the mirror and says, “Malindaz Challenge” three times. Very seriously.  

And …. nothing happens.

Kristen thinks this is insane and goes to bed. Wait, now the girls are laying in bed, face up to the wall and chanting “Malindaz Challenge” over and over in their bedz.

(Zee what I did there?)

David’s Apartment. David, wearing his new scarf, finishes watching the video and says “Malindaz Challenge” three times. Nothing happens to him except that he feels like an idiot.

David’s amusement is interrupted when he gets a Wi-Poke from a user within 50 feet of him, sending him an intimate picture of him and Renée from their tryst.

(Wi-Poke seems to be EVIL‘s version of Airdrop on iPhones).

David goes out to the vestibule and looks out the window. He sees a shadowy figure walking away. David gives chase. By the time David gets outside, the shadowy figure is gone.

David’s phone begins to blow up with Wi-Poke notifications, each a new picture from his sexy times with Renée. It plays out like an old fashioned flip book of him and Renée getting it on. He rejects message after message and after 11, is interrupted by a not-at-all-amused Renée.

She too is getting Wi-Poked with the same pictures and she thought it was David sending them. David, more than a little freaked out, tells her it’s not him doing it. She goes from mad to freaked out in a blink. They agree they need to meet. 

FYI, those pictures were taken from very close or with an excellent zoom camera lens. Either way, someone put some effort into catching their booty call.

The Bouchard House. It’s the middle of the night and Lynn screams for Kristen. Lynn is trying to help Lila in the bathroom. Lila has shoved a protractor in her ear making it bleed, screaming about the voices in her head. Lila is cry-singing the Pudsy’s song. Kristen and Andy fly down the hall to the bathroom where Kristen extracts the bloody protractor from her daughter’s ear. 

Commercials.

Kristen’s Office. Kristen has told David and Ben about the incident with her daughter. Kristen’s at a loss as to how this happened? Ben asks if the girls heard anything in the video and Kristen confirms they said they heard a man’s voice coming from the video. Kristen said she listened to all 95 minutes of the video and heard nothing like that. 

Ben examined the video and found a track in the audio at 17,000 Htz which is only audible to people under the age of 16.

**I’ve heard about this! See below in my Thoughts where I go off the rails in my own special way. It’s so interesting and I’ve got links!**

David is stunned by this nugget of information that there are sounds only teenagers can hear. Ben responds as only Ben can.

“Yeah, science is weird.”

Ben the Magnificent isolates the audio track from the “Malindaz Challenge” video and manipulates the Hertz frequency so us old people can hear it. It is a garbled man’s voice saying, “across for attention, down for results” over and over again. It is a “suicide instruction meme that only teenagers can hear.”

David is still in shock asking why? Ben, ever the realist, explains that some people just do bad things. Ben adds that sometimes this comes from being a good or a bad influence on the internet. Ben says he’ll investigate where the sound is coming from because it may not necessarily be Malindaz’s handiwork.

Changing topics, David tells Kristen that he and Ben got her a Christmas present and he hands her a small, wrapped box. She is grateful for the gift, saying they shouldn’t have. Ben tells her he knows, reaching for it and saying he’ll take it back. Kristen jerks her hand away. Cute.

Ben asks her to open it when they leave because there is too much emotion and he leaves, wishing Kristen a Merry Christmas. David lingers a moment and Kristen thanks him for the present and asks him if he’s is alright? She says Ben thought he was sad. David says he is okay (not in a convincing way) and he just has to figure out a few things in his life. Kristen wishes him a Merry Christmas. David returns the sentiment, complete with a jaunty swish of the scarf she bought him as he turns to leave. 

The Bouchard House. Kristen goes to the girls’ bedroom, where Lila and Andy are reading a book. Kristen asks if Lila is okay and she tells her mom the whole thing was weird.

Ya don’t say!

Lila explains to her parents that it was the same song over and over again and then a man asking if she wanted to join an army to fight other people. Kristen’s face goes very concerned as Andy clears this throat and changes the topic to something more light hearted.

Kristen leaves Lila and Andy to their thumb war and halfway down the hallway, decides to open her Christmas present from Ben and David. It’s a pair of earrings, the sight of which makes Kristen grin like a Cheshire cat.

I don’t know about you, but i’m wondering if you strip down further that audio track Ben isolated, whose actual voice that might be? Recruiting an army sounds like one person to me.

Malindaz’s Apartment. The God Squad visit Malindaz, the suicide message playing on Kristen’s phone as Malindaz opens her door. Cut to Malindaz explaining that she’s only an influencer and doesn’t handle production. David tells Malindaz this will ruin her because she is encouraging kids to kill themselves. Malindaz is in disbelief, saying she just shows people makeup. Kristen tells Malindaz about her daughter’s eardrum.

Malindaz claims this wasn’t her. She’s blames her producer, Mike, for the overlay of the track. Essentially, she is the talent and the producer adds stuff in. Malindaz, with the attention span of a stereotypical Millennial, compliments Kristen’s earrings. David tells Melindaz to take down the video because their next stop will be to the police. Again, girls are hurting themselves and it’s Malindaz’s fault.

Leland’s Office. Malindaz stomps down a hallway and enters Leland’s office.

Randomly, Leland has a white Christmas tree in the corner of his office.

Malindaz is upset as she relates her encounter with The God Squad and their threats about taking down her site. Leland confirms she used the Producer Mike story (as they obviously previously rehearsed) and tells her not to worry. Even if she has to take down her site, she’ll have it back up in months under a new name. Malindaz makes a fatal error when she refers to the track that Leland gave her as causing these problems. Leland leans forward in his seat, never a good sign.

He thinks maybe she is threatening him, maybe she’s practicing a defense. Leland reminds Malindaz that when she came to him, she only had 2,000 followers and today she has 2 million.  Leland tells her she will take down her site and issue an apology.

Malindaz is shocked that he would endorse The God Squad’s idea but Leland, as always, is a step ahead. Using a parable about a French King who reverse-psychologied his peasants into eating potatoes, Leland reveals his plan that if Malindaz’s site is banned, seen as dangerous, it’ll become even more popular. Malindaz is confused so Leland clarifies for her.

“The forbidden is always desirable.”

Commercials.

The Church War Room. We return from break and see Malindaz’s latest video where she is tearfully apologizing to her subscribers. She blames her producer for adding something dangerous to her Malindaz Challenge and promises she will take it down by the end of the day. Malindaz asks her followers not to download or share the video. David, Kristen and Ben are watching and know this video will be everywhere by this time tomorrow, just as Malindaz (and Leland) wanted. 

The Church. David returns to finish his confession from the other day. He tells the priest hearing penance that when he last confessed to boning the dead fiance’s sister, he left out the part about him being in Seminary. Whoopsies.

“I don’t want to hide anything anymore.”

The priest offers David forgiveness if he promises to not get into similar situations with women.

As David leaves the church, he walks to the nativity scene from earlier. He’s singing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and his mind looks lighter from relieving a burden. From behind, David is attacked by a man with a large knife. The two men struggle but the attacker eventually is able to drive the knife into David’s abdomen.

There is a look of fear on his face as he wrestles the attacker to the ground. David is able to injure the man but his own stab wound is sapping his energy.  The attacker is able to get up and, after a brief stumble into the nativity scene, runs away. David is left, bleeding and in pain on the cold ground. David’s eyes roll up into the sky and he (and we) sees the 3 stars from earlier in the season.

David’s phone starts to ring a few feet away and it’s Kristen calling. David is unable to reach the phone. He rolls to face the nativity scene and passes out.

End Scene.

***

Thoughts.

OMG. What is happening? I’m reeling. David. Stabbed and bleeding outside a church and no one knows where he is. Was the dude who stabbed him possibly the guy from Leland’s couch, wrapped up and writhing? Like some sort of weird pre-game ritual? There is no way I can be convinced that the guy who stabbed David isn’t in league with Leland. He appears to be the same guy who was watching David earlier in the episode who seemed to vanish as David approached him. I know for certain, in my gut, that Leland is behind the Wi-Poke nonsense. Not for anything but Renée is more mad that she thinks he’s sending her the pictures and not angry at their existence. Things that make you go hmmm.

Robert and Michelle King are so savage. And I love it. They mocked so accurately both the format of the videos in the makeup influencer genre and the turmoil in the YouTube makeup influencer community. They even got the bloopers right. There have been a parade of these beauty influencers in the last 18-months who have done in some way, shape or form what Malindaz did in this episode. When these influencers screw up either in their personal life with racist tweets or failed professional makeup launches with shoddy products, there is usually a tearful, mea culpa video. Which they nailed in this episode.

The hidden voice on the teenage frequency is real. There is an actual sound that exists and has been used to both repel teenagers and fool adults called the “mosquito sound.”

I’m sure it has a more scientific name.

It’s a high-pitched frequency that, as adults age, they lose the ability to hear. I first heard about this in 2006, in this article.  I check back every few years to see if i can still hear it and test it out on family, friends and coworkers. At my wizened age, I am happy to report i still have the hearing of a teenager and I can still hear that insidious sound, although it is much fainter than it used to be. Here is an alternate site with the sound.  I really need better hobbies, but also … SCIENCE!

The song featured so prominently in this episode, and adept at getting so stuck in your head it drove some people crazy, was written by Jonathan Coulton – a frequent songwriter collaborator with the Kings on their shows..

I don’t know if it is a continuity error or not, but the end of Kristen’s “Malindaz Challenge” video had Malindaz with a scary effect on her voice that was not present during David’s viewing. 

Not to be gross but my ear drum burst earlier this year from an ear infection and it was some of the worst pain I’ve experienced and it took months to fully heal. I had to be evaluated four months later to be cleared to fly for a vacation. So, I can’t imagine sticking something in my ear to actually make that happen. But to make that Pudsy’s song go away, I might consider it as the freaking thing has been stuck in my head for days now.

Being born and raised in Queens, it’s great to be able to pick out the locations this show is using. The school The God Squad visits to interview the incessantly singing adolescents is St. John’s Prep in Astoria (though they changed the name here) and the church David visits for confession and his attack looks like Queen of Martyrs in Forest Hills. It’s a huge church on Queens Boulevard. The hospital the girls are in looks like Montefiore in the Bronx to me (which we know the show films near, sometimes).

I appreciate the heavy use of Christian-based Christmas songs as opposed to just using secular ones. These songs get hardly any airplay with the ubiquitous nonstop Christmas music stations. 

Where is the cat?  Welcome to my brain. It’s pretty busy in here most of the time.

Bellevue is a hospital in the NYC public hospital system and was founded in 1736 as the first public hospital in the US. It gained notoriety for its psychiatric services which has been pervasive in its history. You hear it a lot in police shows about a suspect being sent to Bellevue for an evaluation. It’s a large and busy hospital in lower Midtown offering a wide variety of services. 

I’m sad that this is the Winter break. I look forward to this show. It is immensely intelligent and definitely keeps you guessing. We will be back to cover this when it returns in the New Year! Wishing you Happy Holidays!

***

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EVIL airs Thursday nights on CBS at 10pm (ET/PT).  We’ll be live tweeting from time to time so check us out on Twitter! 

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Thank you for reading along! Leave a comment below for discussion. Follow us on social media for up to the minute updates on EVIL, including recaps and lots of other pop culture news you need to know on Twitter @popcultureview and Instagram @pop_culture_review. You can follow me on Twitter @SheilsMcGangsta.