Midnight, Texas Season 1, Episode 5 Recap: The One With The White Supremacists

What would you do if you found a dirty old Jack in the box sitting on your front porch one morning? Would you pick it up, wind it up, and see what comes out? Would you still do that if you lived in a town full of supernatural beings, just had to have your home cleansed of ghosts, and were psychic? Because that’s what Manfred (François Arnaud) does and any idiot can see this is going to be a problem. In it, he finds a note from Hightower (Christopher Heyerdahl) requesting a showdown at the O.K. Corral (er, um fine, at the old train station, whatever that is) at 10 a.m. What kind of villain is about that 10 a.m. life? Aren’t these things always done under the cover of darkness?

Good news for Bobo (Dylan Bruce) and Fiji (Parisa Fitz-Henley) shippers (Boji, anyone?): They hooked up. Bad news: her talking cat isn’t into him. Worse news: the Sons of Lucifer just dropped a molotov cocktail on Bobo’s pawn shop — and Lemuel (Peter Mensah) and Olivia (Arielle Kebbel) are still in their apartment above it. Thanks to a well-placed fire hydrant, they put it out, and Olivia walks coughing (Lem doesn’t need to breathe). When Bobo begins assessing his shop for damage, Fiji’s talking cat Mr. Snuggles is already in there to let him know that during the distraction they created, Sons of Lucifer also kidnapped Fiji. Yes, seriously: they gave the talking cat a substantial piece of expositional dialog. For the record: the cat does not have a Texas accent, that’s Georgian.

Thanks to the magic of TV, that conversation is cut short by Peter Lowry (Evan Jones), husband of Bobo’s now deceased fiancé Aubrey (Shannon Lorance) and white supremacist biker, calling to talk ransom. There seems to be some misunderstanding about Aubrey and who killed her — based on what he’s saying, it wasn’t Lowry and he has kidnapped Fiji at least partly as retribution for Aubrey's death. So…who killed Aubrey?

These two heroes, Manfred and Bobo, have decided to handle their respective problems alone. Their plans go straight to hell thanks to Creek (Sarah Ramos) and Lem, respectively. Creek hires Olivia* to help Manfred take care of Hightower. Bobo tells Lem that he's from a family of rich white supremacists whose insane weapons cache he stole and it became legendary among white supremacists. This is just a Nazi story, right?

Let’s talk about the unexpected relevance of white supremacists as villains in this show. You know that when NBC gave the green light to this adaptation, they were more of an abstract bad guy that we could all agree on, not that different from vampires or weretigers, frankly, because they’re not in the day to day life of the average person. Recent events in Charlottesville, VA, made this storyline a lot more real, but it is layered on top of the over-the-top style of the Sons of Lucifer, who are nothing like the polo-wearing white supremacists we see in the news. It turns out, average Joes who just want to fit in and normalize white supremacist ideas are way scarier than a biker gang.

Manfred heads to the old train station to meet Hightower at 10 a.m. which looks like dusk to me, but maybe it was just the eclipse. With Olivia’s help, they discover that Hightower has developed his black magic/gypsy powers and brought the corpse of his daughter Violet (Sarah Minnich) to visit Manfred...like you do. It turns out, Manfred was in on the scheme that Xylda (Joanne Camp) pulled on these folks and left poor Violet at the altar in the course of things.

Later that night (or like, a few minutes later based on the exposition — starting to seriously feel like I need an explainer on how time works in Midnight), Hightower kidnaps Olivia as part of a honeypot scheme the Scooby gang concocted that ends with Hightower chained up. He and Manfred have some “let’s make this right” dialoguing that ends with Hightower taking Manfred to Violet’s body so he can hear her final words. Given a chance to voice her opinions, we find out that Violet is pissed at her dad for marrying her off “like chattel” to get magic back into the Hightower bloodline. Then she hops into Manfred’s body and tries to kill him. His anger at Manfred resolved, Hightower turns his powers on himself and opts to end his own life in a rather triggering sequence of events. Guys, we can imply suicide without showing it on TV. Can someone get all of Hollywood a pamphlet on that?

Lem goes with Bobo to collect Fiji, and Bobo has to go through a beatdown from that guy whose face he stomped in jail. After running a lot of gamut, Lowry takes him to Fiji, who is in an underground bunker covered with cement and has been drugged so she can’t use magic to help herself get out. That’s where they plan to leave Bobo to die with her, not knowing that a vampire is about to take ‘em all out. Hey, did you know a shoulder rocket can’t kill a vampire? Neither did I, but these guys decide to try regular guns after that so I’d imagine Lem feels no guilt about draining them dry. Lem frees Bobo and Fiji from the bunker. Things end in a fight to the death between Lowry and Bobo over who killed Aubrey — spoiler alert, it was neither of them.

What’s more evil than white supremacists? I'm guessing whatever killed Aubrey.

* This recap contains no other details about Creek and Manfred’s relationship because zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.