Big Sky S03 E03 Recap: A Brief History of Crime

Big Sky S03 E03 Recap “A Brief History of Crime”

 Air Date:  Wednesday October 5/22

On October 5/22, Big Sky’s episode 3 “A Brief History of Crime” aired on ABC.  Before we delve into this Big Sky S03 E03 Recap, I think it’s safe to say that this season is aptly named.  Deadly Trails is right!  Is there anyone at Sunny Day Excursions that isn’t suspicious?  Well, besides Beau’s daughter Emily?  Sunny is clearly evil.  She’s protecting Walt, but so far, we don’t have much detail as to why.  Avery is not a good man, and if Beau finds out he left Emily alone in the woods… well, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.  And what does Avery have to do with Paige and Luke?  Luke is overcome with grief about losing his love Paige.  No, wait!  Paige is just gone, and perhaps dead.  The two girls Mary and Pat don’t feature much in the episodes so far, but clearly Mary set her cap for Luke, and you know that isn’t going to end well for her.  Doug, the lone dude among the guests seems shifty to me.  Even Cormac seems a bit shifty, but I haven’t worked out why yet.  So far, the only shining beacon of decency and kindness is Buck.  For now.

Episode Recap

ABC Big Sky S03 E03-Cormac Emily Luke

As this episode begins, it picks up immediately where episode two left off.  Emily sees Luke at the stream, covered in blood and as he turns and finds Emily watching him, she pulls out the knife her dad gave her and warns Luke not to come any closer.  He doesn’t listen and Emily runs.  Luke keeps trying to talk to her, but she’s in a panic and when she falls, she loses her knife.  We see a hand grip her shoulder and she screams but it turns out to be Cormac.  Luke catches up to them.  When Cormac demands to know where Paige is, we get the first telling of Luke’s story, that he fell and cut his head.  When he woke up, Paige was gone.  Cormac suggests they get back to camp so Luke can have his injuries tended to.  Cormac picks up the rear as the group heads back to camp and he finds Emily’s knife on the ground.  It seems odd that he says nothing about it and just puts it in his back pocket.

Back at the camp, Sunny, Buck, and Avery are at the fire pit and Avery wants to go searching for Emily while Sunny says it has to wait for morning.  Emily, Luke and Cormac return and Avery runs over to hug her (Odd, when it was him who left her alone in the woods to begin with).  More of Luke’s story comes out regarding Paige and he explains that they were lost, she broke up with him and said she wanted to go home.  Paige ran towards a light in the woods, but when he chased her, he fell.  When he woke up, he discovered she was gone.

ABC Big Sky-Cormac and Sunny

They check the tent, and Sunny reports that Paige’s things are gone.  Sunny thinks she must have sneaked back to camp, grabbed her belongings, and hiked back to town.  No one really seems to believe this version of events.  It seems unlikely that Paige would leave that way.  Buck said he’d call the Ranger Station and have them look for Paige.  It’s clear that he doubts Luke’s story.  So does Doug, Cormac and Emily.  Cormac attends to Luke’s cuts with the first-aid kit.  Cormac confides in his mom that Emily was very shook up and he wants to take another look in the woods where Luke was.  Buck tells Sunny that he thinks Luke may have done something to Paige.

ABC Big Sky S03 E03-Avery Emily

Friction seems to be building between Avery and Beau’s daughter Emily.  At first, they seemed fine together.  Now we see that Emily is suspicious of him and his connection to Luke and Paige since she found him in their tent just after Paige went missing.  Avery and Emily also seem to be in a disagreement about Luke’s story.  Avery seems quick to dismiss the whole drama, where Emily is convinced that Luke has played a role in Paige’s disappearance.  Emily is also upset that she lost the knife her dad gave her and wants to go find it, but Avery told her she is not to wander off on her own.

Later in the episode Avery interrupts a conversation Emily is having with the other camper Doug, who seems to share her feelings about Luke and the missing Paige.  Avery seems to come around and is willing to help Emily find her knife and dig for the truth about Paige.  His sincerity remains in question, but we shall see what happens next with these two.  I’m curious as to how all this is going to develop if and when Emily’s mom shows up.

ABC Big Sky S03 E03-Beau Jenny Gil

ABC Big Sky-Beau Jenny Take Cover

Away from camp, the business of policing marches on.  We learn that Jenny and Beau have arrived at the property of the Mooney brothers to investigate a neighbor’s report that they’ve seen a body.  As Jenny and Beau hop the fence to have a look around, they quickly find the dead body and it looks like the victim’s head was bashed in.  Someone begins to fire shots at them, and both Jenny and Beau are forced to take cover behind a pickup truck.  It turns out the man shooting at them is Ivan Mooney, and the dead man on the ground is his brother Gil.  Jenny covers Beau and he puts his weapon away and stands off with Ivan, insisting that they put the guns away and talk about what has happened to his brother.  Ivan said that Gil was just trying to save the ranch.

When they get Ivan back at the station and interview him, he tells them that they were swindled by some people who claimed they were looking for investors to build a refinery so they could process unrefined gold.  They were going to lose the ranch after a flood, so Gil invested with these people and lost it all.  These people have now disappeared.  Gil wanted to lure them to the ranch to confront them, but Ivan thinks they got to Gil first and now he’s dead.  Jenny asked about the name of the company, and Ivan said they were called Starlight Mining.  This tweaks something in Jenny but at this point she’s playing that close.

Beau checks out Ivan’s alibi and releases him while Jenny and Poppernak investigate these grifters.  You can tell that Jenny knows something she’s not talking about.  When her and Poppernak discover that a man named Harold Gardiner was implicated in a similar crime in Idaho, they connect the dots and figure he’s also the man who swindled, and possibly murdered Gil Mooney.  As the case begins to take shape, Jenny comes clean with Beau that this gold refinery is a scam she is very familiar with.  Turns out that her mother Gigi, is a career criminal linked with Harold Gardiner.

ABC Big Sky-Gigi’s Rap Sheet

Jenny confides in Beau regarding her complicated past with her mother.  Jenny doesn’t believe her mother is capable of murder, but she has some strong suspicions that she is involved somehow.  When they catch up to Gigi at a local motel, she tells them that she is in town looking for Harold because he has stolen all her money.  Gigi believes its Harold behind the scam perpetrated on the Mooney brothers.  Motivated by revenge, she agrees to help Beau and her daughter catch Harold.  The beginnings of a sting operation take shape and it looks like Beau and Jenny will need to go under cover.

A little family drama plays out when Jenny gets an evening visit from her mother Gigi who insists on baking her a “dump cake” while they drink some wine.  There are some soft moments being shared between mother and daughter, but it seems that Gigi’s primary visit to Montana has more to do money and revenge than maternal stirrings.

ABC Big Sky-S03 E03 Mark’s Itinerary

Cassie is still concentrating on the case of the missing backpacker Mark Woodman.  Denise has joined ranks to help her.  They found his car, his travel itinerary and worked to retrace his steps.  Mark had a resupply package at the trading post, that was never picked up.  In the meantime, his family were sent an email that contained a selfie and a message that he was in Logan’s Pass, which puts him miles off course.  Both Cassie and Denise are skeptical and determined to keep digging.

ABC Big Sky-Call Me if Emily is in Danger

Beau drops by the Dewell & Hoyt offices, to return another casserole dish to Denise, and Beau thanks her for “another home-cooked home run” with her pumpkin enchiladas.  Cassie can’t believe that Denise is still cooking for Beau, but it’s obvious she is sweet on him.  She invites Beau to join them when they hit the trails in the morning, but he can’t leave the Mooney murder case.

Beau is very worried about Emily.  The unsolved missing backpacker case keeps pointing to something evil in the woods around the Sunny Day Excursions camp.  Cassie promises to keep him informed and to call immediately if she discovers anything that might put Emily in danger.

Case of the Week

ABC Big Sky-Undercover Couple

This week’s case kicks off some family drama for Jenny, but it boils down to a sting operation designed to catch a thief.  Beau and Jenny must go undercover as a married couple looking for a quick payout to build their nest egg.  Gigi knows Harold will be looking for his next mark and convinces Beau and Jenny they need to show up with cash in hand.  Armed with $30,000.00 dollars, the plan is to get Harold talking, trick him into a confession and then take him down.  Sounds easy enough.  Deputy Madge Crowder signs $30K of the county’s money over to Beau and Jenny and reminds them this money represents a lot of paychecks.  The money is a big deal, and the stakes are high.  What could possibly go wrong?

Beau and Jenny show up looking excited to participate in the refinery investment.  Once they relinquish their guns to Harold’s sidekick Keith, they get to sit with Harold to hammer out all the details.  Agreements are made, contracts are signed and the money changes hands.  Just as the takedown begins to arrest Harold, Beau must first address the threat that Keith poses.  No sooner does Beau have things under control with Keith, everything goes sideways when Ivan shows up and begins shooting up the place.  Keith takes a bullet and goes down.  Beau makes a run for Ivan and Harold escapes to the roof of the building with Jenny in hot pursuit.

ABC Big Sky-Gigi Goes to see Tonya

ABC Big Sky S03 E03-Poppernak Names

Harold declares he has no intention of going back to prison and jumps from the roof to a lower level of the building and injures himself in the process.  Jenny follows and cuffs him.  It’s then that Harold is able to place Jenny and recognizes her as Gigi’s daughter.  He laughs out his frustration that Gigi has come out on top again, which needles Jenny who finally puts it all together.  She runs back to Harold’s office only to find that the red bag containing the $30K dollars is gone.

Beau has tackled Ivan to the ground and managed to talk some sense into him.  His actions are clearly going to either land him in jail or get him killed and Beau convinces Ivan that Gil would not want this for his brother.  When Beau rejoins Jenny and learns the money is gone, they immediately head to Gigi’s motel.  By the time they get there, she is long gone.  She played them both and Jenny takes it hard.  Not only did her mother get away with the money, but she also clearly holds no regard for what this does to Jenny’s reputation.  Beau tries to reassure Jenny that they will catch up to Gigi eventually, but that does little to help with Jenny’s feelings of betrayal.

The audience gets to bare witness to Gigi’s deepening corruption.  In the final scene, we see her approach a door with the red bag of money in tow.  When the door opens, we see Jenny’s mortal enemy Tonya and her faithful sidekick Donno.

Deadly Trails Saga

The Deadly Trails saga is playing out on two fronts.  First, we have all the evil-doings that involve Sunny Day Excursions folk and second, we have the ongoing missing backpacker case being investigated by Cassie.  These events are beginning to converge.

We know something that Cassie doesn’t, that Mark Woodman is dead.  Sunny thinks that her son Walt will be implicated in Mark’s death but Walt claims that Mark fell from the edge of Deadman’s drop on his own.  We know Walt was there, but did he drive Mark to the edge?  Did he push him?  Still a mystery.

Now that Luke is back at the camp, the whereabouts of Paige is on everyone’s mind.  Sunny is pushing the theory that Paige simply left the camp after breaking up with Luke.  We know Sunny does not believe this to be true because she pays Walt a visit asking about the missing girl.  We find out a little later in the episode that Sunny knows full well that Paige didn’t leave.  She’s the one who collected her belongings and hid them.  Walt claims no knowledge of a missing girl and Sunny is clearly afraid.  This raises an interesting point.  Either Walt has Paige captive and hidden, or he has killed her and stashed the body, or he is not involved at all, which means we have a completely unknown killer in the shadows.  To make matters even more complicated, tensions seem to be escalating between Sunny and Walt.

Paige’s disappearance spells trouble for both of them and if the authorities start poking around, the dead backpacker will surely be found.  Sunny tells Walt he has to move the body.

ABC Big Sky S03 E03-Walt’s Carving in Mark’s Pocket

The next morning, Emily asks Sunny if she can use her SAT phone so she can call her dad.  Sunny knows that Emily’s dad is the Sheriff in town.  When Sunny asks why she wants to call him, Emily shares her concern regarding Paige and hopes her dad can do some checking to make sure she made it back to town okay.  Sunny convinces Emily that a call to her dad isn’t necessary as she has the Rangers looking into it.  Emily is pacified for the moment, but it is very clear that her insistence of foul-play where Paige is concerned is starting to annoy Sunny, which likely puts Emily in danger.

Out in the woods, we see that Walt is doing as he is told and has dug up the body of Mark Woodman.  Walt calls Mark “old friend” and seems almost happy to see him.  He gives the dead boy a present, which is a hand-carved wooden figurine of a backpacker and puts it in Mark’s shirt pocket.  Walt seems completely nonplussed about handling a dead body.  In fact, when he loads the body in his truck, covers it with a blue tarp and proceeds to drive to a new burial destination, he keeps looking at Mark’s protruding hand and smiling, like they were buddies going on an adventure.

ABC Big Sky-Walt Car Trouble

That adventure takes a chilling turn when Walt’s truck breaks down at the side of the road, and the next passerby happens to be Cassie and Denise.  While Walt seems to not mind sharing a ride with a dead boy, he does know on some level that this is bad.  When Cassie offers her help to fix Walt’s truck, he insists he has it all under control.

Cassie notices that Walt is covered in mud and glances inside the truck at the blue tarp.  Walt cannot let her see what is under the tarp.  Cassie insists on helping him, and we can see that he is prepared to do her harm if she doesn’t back off.  Lucky for Cassie, Denise chooses this moment to call out to her for them to be on their way.  Cassie backs off of Walt, but this isn’t over.  Walt knows that he has been seen.  This spells trouble.

ABC Big Sky-Sunny buries Paige’s Bag

Cassie and Denise continue on in their quest to retrace Mark’s movements and arrive at the exact spot where the emailed selfie was taken.  They discover that the photo shows snow on the mountain peaks, where there is none now.  This throws a wrench into the timeline and further fuels Cassie and Denise’s skepticism about the legitimacy of the selfie pic sent to his parents.  Someone else clearly sent an old photo from Mark’s phone, to throw them off the scent.  Cassie and Denise both want to know who would do this and why.

Before the episode finishes, we are treated to a new twist as Luke and Mary are about to consummate their newfound friendship, when we see a “peeping Tom” peering through a hole in the tent wall.  Is this Walt?  And finally, to add to the list of things Sunny is keeping secret, we see her dig a hole in the ground to bury Paige’s bag full of belongings.  Before she puts it in the ground, we see her rummage about and take out the gun that was hidden in Paige’s bag.

Cast

Questions

1. Beau says that Jenny and Carla would not get along.  Why?
2. Cassie and Cormac exchange another meaningful glance in this episode.  Attraction?
3. In episode one, Sunny and Buck talk about a shed-hunter that was mauled by a grizzly bear.  Was it a grizzly?  We still don’t know anything about this.
4. There is still no word on who is carving heart-shapes into forest trees and painting them red. Is this linked with the old mutilation case?
5. Does Buck know about Walt?
6. Paige and Luke obviously perpetrated some crime that involved hiding out and money they need to get back too. What is all this about?
7. What does Avery have to do with Paige and Luke?  Why was he searching their tent?
8. Paige has disappeared. Is she dead?  Captive?  In hiding?  Who is responsible?
9. There seems to be some friction between Cormac and his mom Sunny.  Does he know about Walter?
10. Emily’s mom still hasn’t joined them. What will this mean for the escalating tension between her new husband and her daughter?
11. Emily keeps pushing the foul-play agenda and Sunny clearly doesn’t like it. Is Emily in danger?
12. What will Sunny do to Cassie to thwart her inevitable digging where Walt is concerned?
13. Who sent the old selfie pic from Mark’s phone to his parents?
14. We have a peeping Tom in the camp. Who is it?
15. During the takedown of Harold Gardiner, his sidekick Keith is shot. Is he injured or dead?
16. Clearly Gigi is in league with Tonya. What is this about?

Each week look for the following:

• This week’s episode recap.
• The case of the week.
• The Deadly Trails saga.
• New Questions.
• Cast Grid
• Poppernak’s running list of nicknames.

Watch ABC for the next episode of Big Sky Deadly Trails, this Wednesday October 5 at 10 pm.