Big Sky S03 E06 Recap: The Bag and the Box

Air Date:  Wednesday October 26/22

On October 26/22, Big Sky’s episode 6 “The Bag and the Box” aired on ABC, and before we recap the details, just let me say… Buck, Buck, Buck!  What have you done?  Cassie is getting too close to the Barnes family.  Buck and Sunny’s lies are swirling.  Sunny doesn’t like it.  That puts Cassie in a dangerous spot.  Walt’s back story is coming to light and his dedication to Paige could prove to be her salvation, but at a cost.  Walt will not be okay with her discarding him when she’s done getting what she wants.  And Avery!  I still don’t trust him.  He told Carla and Emily when he finally admitted to snooping in Paige’s tent that he didn’t find anything.  We know he found her bag, her journal, and her gun.  And what about Beau and Jenny?  Are things heating up there?  I’m thinking cop or no cop, something is going to happen.

Episode Recap

ABC Big Sky Burned Out Suburban

At the opening scene of this episode, we see a woman who is frightened by a noise and wakes her husband.  He goes downstairs to investigate and is murdered.  His wife finds him dead in the garage, while his assailant speeds off in his car.  When Beau gets the call about the homicide, he is in a field examining the burned-out remains of the blue-and-while Suburban with Jenny and Cassie.  Jenny helps Cassie lift the VIN # from the motor block by taking a picture of it with her phone.

When Beau and Jenny arrive at the murder scene, they discover the car that was stolen is a 1979 Trans Am.  At first, they assume this is a straight up theft, gone wrong.  Beau thinks perhaps the car has a tracking device on it.  Meanwhile, after Beau, Jenny and Cassie separate, Cassie shows up at Sunny Day camp.  Denise ran the VIN and discovered that the Suburban belonged to Buck Barnes.  Cassie wants to question him about it, so after a brief visit with Cormac, he takes her to Buck and Sunny’s tent.

Buck’s claims he sold the truck over 10 years ago to a logger, but he can’t remember the man’s name.  Sunny said they will see if they have any information about it in their attic.  They will check it when they get home and let Cassie know.

Local law enforcement was alerted about the stolen Trans Am in case the thief decided to go for a joy ride, and the car is found.  Beau and Jenny investigate and while the uniformed officer does his best to sweet-talk Jenny into a coffee date, Beau does an inspection of the car and discovers the damage done in the trunk.  He teases Jenny about getting hit on, but she claims it makes no difference, she no longer dates cops.  Beau pulls the LoJack off the car and puts it in his pocket.  One thing they know now, is that the thief was looking for something.  Something important enough to kill for.

ABC Big Sky Oh You Wish

At the office of Dewell and Hoyt, Cassie shares with Denise, the details about Buck’s claim that he sold the old Suburban.  In order to find the man who was driving it, Cassie decides to get a composite sketch done.  As they talk more about the case, Denise mentally links up the red hearts carved in trees, the red heart on the foot of the figurine found in Mark Woodman’s shirt pocket, along with the old Bleeding-Heart murder case that happened 20 years ago.  She wants to surf some of the message boards of wannabe detectives who thrive on trying to solve old murder cases.  Cassie tells her to go for it.

With the crime-of-the-week all wrapped up, Beau and Jenny are at the bar having a drink with Cassie.  She shows them the composite sketch she has of the Suburban driver and Jenny suggests Poppernak compare the picture with any outstanding warrants in the area.  Cormac walks into the bar and Cassie excuses herself.  Alone for a few minutes, Beau asks Jenny if she really would never date a cop again.  She asks if that would break his heart.  “You wish” is all he has to say.

Cormac seems a little rattled that Cassie is questioning his parents.  She says she has to go where the leads take her.  She is just doing her job.  She wants to believe that Buck and Sunny are good people the same way Cormac does.  His only request is that she be straight with him.

Case of the Week

ABC Big Sky Case-of-the-Week

Now that Beau and Jenny know they aren’t just investigating a stolen car, they discover from Poppernak that there are three 1979 Trans Am cars registered in the state.  One they already know about, another one from Billings was abandoned by the side of the road, also torn up, and a third one resides in town.  Pop also discovered that it used to belong to Mickey Prescott, who just got out of prison after being incarcerated for theft.  Beau and Jenny split up.  He goes to see the current owner of the Trans Am, while Jenny goes to see the ex-con.

Jenny questions Prescott.  He nicknamed his Trans Am Delilah when he had her but claims that was 20 years ago.  When Jenny asks where he was between midnight and 2 am, he said he was at home and the manager of the building has all the camera footage to prove it.  Jenny said she would check his alibi when she gets a call from Beau.

ABC Big Sky The Trans Am Won

Beau’s investigation of the current owner was a little more exciting.  The man who offered him coffee and agreed to answer his questions, turned out to be an imposter.  Beau found the actual owner tied up and gagged.  Beau tries to chase the thief as he flees, by jumping on the hood of the Trans Am.  The thief doesn’t stop, but Beau manages to attach the LoJack to the side of the car before he is thrown off and rolls to a stop on the asphalt.

When he returns to the station, a little worse for wear, he tells Jenny they can find out where the Trans Am is going.  They see the tracking drop off and assume the car has pulled into something that blocks the signal.  They end up at a parking garage and when they both come up beside the car on either side, they discover that the driver has been shot and killed.  They find the driver’s wallet and ID.  His name is Cecil Ezterhaus.  Poppernak digs a little

ABC Big Sky Mickey Jenny Beau

more and discovers that Cecil was in prison at the same time as Mickey Prescott.

This time when they visit Prescott, he is sitting at this desk, with a gun inches away from his hand.  Beau and Jenny warn him not to reach for it or he will be dead.  Beau and Jenny discover that the dead Cecil was Prescott’s old cell mate.  Cecil was supposed to find the car with the treasure in it, but he made a mess of things, so Mickey had to get rid of him.  When they ask him about the treasure, they discover it is a Mickey Mantle rookie card worth millions.  With the promise to look upon his treasure one more time, Mickey Prescott relinquishes his gun and is arrested.

Deadly Trails Saga

Almost immediately in this episode, Walt’s back story begins to emerg.  As Paige is desperate to retrieve the leopard bag that contains her journal, Walt has obviously searched Luke’s tent and can’t find it.  You can see Walt’s devotion to Paige is deepening.  He tells her that if she finds it important, then it’s important to him also.  He has made it clear that he sees himself as her protector.  I

ABC Big Sky We’re a Team

think it’s obvious that Paige is just using Walt to get what she needs.  Once she does, she will have a whole new problem; what is she going to do about Walt?

We learn that Emily is still watching Luke very closely and has noticed that he’s spending a lot of time “with that freaky new couple, Tonya and Donno.”  Emily let it slip to Carla, that Avery went tent snooping when Luke and Paige went missing.  He finally comes clean and admits that he was snooping.  His reason for doing so was because he was a lot more worried then he was letting on and didn’t want to scare Emily.  He was afraid that if Emily knew how worried he was, she would be calling her dad Beau into the picture, and he didn’t want to appear weak.  He’s still hiding.  He told Emily and Carla that he didn’t find anything when he went snooping but we know he did.  He saw Paige’s bag, her journal, and her gun.  He also recognized that the words in Paige’s journal were a seed phrase.

Tonya and Donno take Luke out into the woods, presumably to jog his memory about the night that Paige went missing.  Donno doesn’t miss any opportunity to threaten him.  Luke tells them about the seed phrase that is written down in Paige’s journal that opens an account, but he still doesn’t know how Paige went missing.  All he knows is that once he woke up in the forest, she was gone, and her bag was no longer in the tent when he got back to camp.  He thinks she made her way back to camp and took her bag, but we know different.  It was Sunny who took her bag and buried it in the forest, but not before taking her gun.

ABC Big Sky Walt and Donno

Donno has seen the red heart carvings in the forest trees and suspects that Paige didn’t leave, but in fact was taken by someone.  His hunch isn’t far off when he comes across a man in the woods, who is watching the camp.  They both size each other up as being dangerous men but seem to have an affinity with one another as off-beat characters.  Donno asks Walt if he has seen the woman Paige and he says he has not.

Cassie’s work on the missing backpacker and the crazy things that are happening at the camp, are definitely starting to overlap.  Cassie believes that the backpacker and the burnt-out Suburban are linked.  Cormac heard the conversation that Cassie had with his parents regarding the truck, and it’s obvious that he feels a little suspicious about the fact that his dad owned it.  They tell him that’s its nothing to worry over.

Walt tells Paige that he has encountered someone in the forest who is looking for her.  Someone who is dangerous.  She becomes frantic and tells Walter about the stolen money.  He swears to protect her.  His back story continues to unfold as he explains to Paige that she need not worry.  That he will fix things.  When she doubts him, he confides in her about how he killed his adoptive parents.  They sound like evil people.  They hurt Walt’s friend Meredith and made him watch.  He fixed that problem, by burning their house down while they slept, and he will fix Paige’s problem too.

While some of the campers enjoy archery target shooting, we discover that Avery is an accomplished marksman in archery.  I wonder how that skill will feature in the story later on down the road?

ABC Big Sky Buck stabs Mary

Mary jogs along one of the forest trails.  It may be her way of dealing with Luke’s rejection, but she soon discovers she has bigger problems.  She sees Paige’s bag in the woods and when she goes for help, she finds Sunny and Buck on the trail walking two of the horses.  Sunny goes to investigate with her.  As they go in search of the bag, Mary begins to ask questions.  It was Sunny who claimed that Paige’s bag was not in her tent.  It was also Sunny who said that she heard from Paige after she made it safely back to New York.

Mary begins to see the holes in Sunny’s story, and it dawns on her that Sunny is involved in Paige’s disappearance.  She is immediately frightened and feels threatened enough to begin screaming for help.  Sunny tries to calm her down, and then Buck steps in.  He comes up behind Mary and stabs her in the back to silence her.  She slumps into Sunny’s arms.

Both Sunny and Buck are visibly shaken.  What are they going to do now?

Cast

Questions

1. Heart shaped carvings in forest trees.  Heart shape on Walt’s carving found with Mark Woodman.  The old Bleeding-heart murder case from 20 years ago.  What will Denise dig up now that she’s linking all these together.
2. Walt’s back-story paints him more of a victim of abuse, but his actions haunt him still.  What will happen with this?
3. Who is the crime boss who has hired Tonya and Donno to capture and deliver Paige and Luke?
4. What does Avery want with Luke?  Why the secrecy if he knows about the seed phrase?
5. Emily keeps pushing the foul-play agenda regarding Luke and Paige. Will her suspicion of Luke land her between him, Tonya, Donno and the crime-boss hunting for them?
6. What will Sunny do when she finds out that Walt has Paige?
7. What are they going to do with Mary?
8. We still don’t know who sent the old selfie pic from Mark’s phone to his parents?
9. Still no word on Gigi or the 30K she stole. Where is this story arc going?
10. Cormac and Cassie?
11. Beau and Jenny?

Each week look for the following:

• This week’s episode recap.
• The case of the week.
• The Deadly Trails saga.
• Cast Grid
• Questions

Watch ABC for the next episode of Big Sky Deadly Trails, this Wednesday November 2nd at 10 pm.