Room 104 - The Third Season

I finally got around to HBO’s third season of “Room 104”. For the most part, I wasn’t all that blown away by what I watched. Good moments here and there. If you like a lot of weird, though, this third season doesn’t disappoint. It certainly follows the first two seasons in that regard. But I noticed that this series isn't a ratings bonanza for HBO, so I would be surprised if a fourth would be commissioned.

I guess as I watched the third season, VHS or The ABCs of Death came to mind. Each episode feels like its own little mini-movie with Room 104 just a setting for various visitors’ stories to play out, some more fantastic and extraordinary than others. This season even features in its opening episode the plot for which the hotel would be built, a brother and sister reuniting at the site (“The Plot” | **/****) for a night picnic, eventually featuring the arrival of a type of identity-taking creature in the guise of a grinning but quite intruding hobo. This had Luke Wilson in white coat and hat looking like a wannabe gangster in the Roaring 20s while Christine Woods is his vengeful sister, wanting to get even with him for ditching her to look after her dying father alone. But the interloper ruins things…he tastes their blood and somehow “envelopes” them. So the hotel was born out of pure evil.

As the third season continues, you get a story about a down-on-his-luck divorcee (Robert Longstreet), trying to free himself of a gorilla named Elmer (supposedly a “pet” of Michael Jackson!), hoping that Dale Dickey is a fit potential owner for him, not realizing she’s “animal police” (“Animal for Sale” | **/****). A mishap with a taser gun, a certain flashing, and eventual escape give us an ending that leaves us wondering what will become of Elmer. Longstreet’s waffling back and forth on whether to let Elmer go or not, Dickey realizing he’s been driving the gorilla on the road and providing Xanax for keeping him calm, and such unpredictability in how Elmer will react to tensions in the room serve as developments. There is this poor skin rash victim (Arturo Castro) confiding in a Dr. Blake (François Chau,”Lost”) via recording messages sent to his phone as he worsens, not knowing bleach in water in the tub would only make matters worse. He doesn’t realize the doctor that was supposed to help him actually doesn’t have his best interests at heart. This tale (“Itchy” | **/****) features an extremely bad case of skin “disease” and a body explosion. Included is a possible camping trip alien abduction and the removal of species from an open dead body. Not for the faint of heart.

The forth episode (“Rogue” | ***/****) is perhaps the best of the season, featuring a teenager (Iyana Halley), who runs away from her strict, seemingly abusive, perhaps psychotic father (James Babson) to Room 104, where a pregnant clairvoyant (Catalina Sandino Moreno) forages for supplies to create an incubator for her baby. The planet’s orbit was “thrown off” by a rogue planet and Moreno’s association with a billionaire to creature an underground is brought up to Halley. Halley is quite good as this kid clueless until Moreno explains to her how dire the planet’s situation is. The two form a friendship/bond and prepare to leave the room together. This episode is cool if just because of how it paints a grim portrait, with only a glimpse of what happens barely outside (a building is on fire after a bomb goes off and hints of how bad the city has gotten is communicated through Moreno), no power inside Room 104 with the bed and inside a disheveled mess. Of course, Babson arrives just as the two girls about to leave (they put together an incubator and Moreno was fitting Halley for a suit). A narrator explains the most unusual “friendship” between a sleepwalking, irresponsible, seemingly sweet-natured but dimwitted Steve Little and extremely patient, considerate, and altogether “good guy” Sam Richardson, both drywall workers (“Drywall Guys” | **½/****) staying at Room 104 while working an out-of-towner. Richardson’s patience is wearing thin with each sleepwalking episode of Little’s, including a punch to the face, walking over Richardson’s bed, standing upright against a lamp protruding from a wall, and the most unexpected (and bizarre) return from outside the room covered in blood and cuts (carrying a bag with a severed woman’s foot!). Little’s complete inability to take care of himself and Richardson’s lack of sleep and having to decide whether or not he can stomach his roomie any longer—and to turn in the foot to determine what Little did while in his sleepwalking trance—are narrated throughout. The voice sort of speaks for Richardson while Little continues to apologize for what he can’t remember. How Richardson eventually responds to the foot crisis is quite a surprise…he’s such a softie.

A singer-songwriter who uses ambient sound to provide “soul” to her music tries to hunker down in Room 104 (“A New Song” | ***/****) in the hopes of developing a song, struggling to build it to the right crescendo or find the right inspiration to finish it. While Julianna Barwick works on the sound, the piano and a computer program that sets up animated sequences on the wall of the room serving as the raw basis of emotions she feels, grappling with the dissolution of her relationship to Atsuko Okatsuka (she is the dark figure with no human form always confronting the highly emotional drawn version of Barwick), she will need to rectify the anguish of the past and current feels in order to complete the song. The eventual sitdown between Barwick and Okatsuka is dramatically potent and the music/animation involved is quite impactful. Well acted and what Barwick is going through is communicated to us creatively. LA father and son artists (Jimmy Ray Flynn and Gianni Arone) arrive at Room 104 and decide to use mattress box springs as canvas for painted portraits, inspired by whatever is available in the room and what little is brought along with them (“Jimmy & Gianni” | **½/****). This is set up like a documentary, as the two give us interviews on their difficult past dealing with alcoholism, meth use, and mental health issues. This is raw and honest, very different than anything else the season has produced, and for artistic types (and those who underwent hellish misadventures in drug use and overcoming it) who draw from their mad genius and the spontaneity of what reveals itself in the moment this episode will be more interesting. I think this will resonate for those of that world, particularly the LA or NY art scenes.

Tony Plana portrays a dying man with a telepathic ability to inflict pain through mental will, wanting his estranged daughter (Angie Cepeda) to embrace her hidden and inherited power…and kill him, as an act of mercy considering his health is slowly deteriorating. Julian Acosta is the rejected son who abused Cepeda and has used his power criminally, always committing his sins out of spite due to his upbringing. Plana was a neglectful, punishing, insufferable father with a lot of regrets, trying to reconnect with his daughter, leaving her with an inheritance while wanting Acosta completely out of the way. Timm Sharp is an attorney trying to get as much as he can out of the career criminal Plana, suffering a closed throat as a result. The intensity of Acosta’s scenes with Plana and Cepeda, the “return” of the mother at the end in quite an enigmatic conclusion, and a too-little-too-late reaching-out of Plana to his daughter, clearly showing the signs and effects of trauma growing up really give this episode (“No Hospital” | ***/****) some palpable dramatic punch. Mary Mouser’s teenage troublemaker (“Prank Call” | **/****) is left behind by her neglectful parents who are off hoping to secure financial help in Room 104. She decides to call this guy (Macon Blair) for the hell of it, attempting to use seductive and manipulative banter and dialogue as a prank to develop a rapport then hang up. When Blair arrives at the hotel, claiming to be a pastor, Man of God, husband and father of two teenage girls, Mouser seizes on his reluctance to leave, opportunistic and confrontational, antagonistically provoking him by threatening to flash him her cleavage. Mouser’s face in closeup is constant and the direction really relies on her range of emotion to tell the story of her seemingly alienated youth, miserable in her family of oblivious parents who seem to forget she’s even there. Her fear as Blair approaches her transitioning to bully, going from timid to forceful, and the most unexpected results as he realizes she’s right about his own lusts for her, I’m sure will be viewed by some as polarizing and shocking. This made my skin crawl and everyone involved proved unsympathetic, including Mouser who seems desperate for whatever attention she can get, purposely delinquent seemingly because she's bored.