The River Recap: “Marbeley”

by Raven Kross:

The River: “Marbeley”
Original Air Date (ABC): Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Season 1 Episode 2

This second episode of The River begins with a combination of home movies and clips from “The Undiscovered Country”, giving the viewers a skewed picture of how the Coles spent their Christmas one year. You see Lincoln, cuddling with a teddy bear next to his dad; Russ Landry teasing Lena affectionately; even a sweet, romantic moment between Tess and Emmet. So sad that it had to end so soon.

Our Last One Was Taken By A Ghost, So Good Luck With That

With Sammy dead, the crew is one camera short. Clark tries his best to come up with another way to get those moving shots, but to no avail. In the wake of their triumph over the spirit terrorizing the ship, everyone is sort of moving in neutral mode. They’re trying to decipher the sequence of the tapes, but there are over 100 of them and no solid way to put them in order.

Lena reveals that about a month before his disappearance, Emmet had told her that he had a bug bite on his thumb that appeared to be infected, and he couldn’t get rid of it. She suggested that they watch the tapes and the more infected the bite appears in the footage, the more recent the tape. Gen-ius!

That night, a little blue dragonfly that has been flitting about the ship lands on Jahel’s cheek and crawls down her throat. Activate Paranormal Activity mode: she opens her eyes and, without blinking, stands and begins to walk through the ship. She ends up in Tess’s room, leaning in ever so closely.

When Tess first wakes, she talks to Jahel in Spanish, asking her why she’s there, and the girl replies in English in a deep, throaty voice. She takes one of Tess’s hands and puts it over her heart, then places her own hand on Tess’s heart, and suddenly we see a flickering image of Emmet Cole. In the same dead, throaty voice, Jahel/Emmet tells the older woman that “they” have him, and that the crew must leave the Amazon before it’s too late.

Naturally, she refuses.

It’s at that point that Jahel bursts into a fit of spasms on the bed and Tess calls for help.

Hold On… You’re Not Jungle

Jahel’s crazy spell has stirred up the crew; while she lies unconscious on the bed, Tess tries to convince the others of what she saw. The Captain suggests they do what the ghost said and leave immediately, but Tess isn’t about to give up on her husband just yet. Lena points out that in the most recent tapes, Emmet is alone but for one other crew member, and some show him speaking to mountain-dwelling locals.

The group sets out on a jungle trek in search of Emmet’s captors. Clark is manning the second camera; he trails behind Tess and talks to her as if they’re not on a search for her missing husband but a daytime gossip show. She reveals that yes, Emmet did leave her, and that she’s made her own share of mistakes. A little farther up, Lena confirms her suspicions that Lincoln is angry at her because Emmet called Lena, and not his med school graduate son, when he was in need of medical help.

Minutes later, AJ finds a stone cross half-hidden under the jungle floor. What’s a graveyard doing in the middle of the jungle?

They’re interrupted by what sounds like the high-pitched cries of a little girl. They follow the sound to a clearing of sorts, where they can see the back of a child’s head, a tiny body crouching behind a log. They approach with caution, but when they get within reach, the creature turns around- it’s not a little girl at all, but a chimp holding a doll’s head. The monkey shrieks and leaps up into the trees to join its primate brethren.

A little exploring brings them deeper into that part of the jungle, where ragged, soiled dolls of all sizes have been hung from a cluster of trees. Lena says that she’s heard about structures like that- they’re spirit trees, used to display offerings to spirits that might be living there.

Lincoln also happens to notice a seemingly recent addition to one of the spirit trees- his old teddy bear, Marbeley. Tess becomes hopeful that Emmet was the one who put it there and that he must be nearby.

Despite her insistence, however, Clark, AJ, and the Capt. decided to camp there for the night. As the group prepares to settle in, Lincoln climbs up a tree and retrieves Marbeley. (Dun dun DUNNNN.)

We Never Lose the Things That Matter

As darkness falls and the jungle fills with the sound of crickets chirping, Lincoln lies on his makeshift bed and examines his old childhood toy.

Camera-happy Clark, always the showman, begins to pester her for an opinion. She takes the camera from him and asks why he’s come along. Does he even care whether or not they find Emmet? He says that he knows people have always said he and Emmet hated each other (mainly friction over control of the show). What Emmet didn’t know, he explained, was that the show wasn’t about the happy message he sent his viewers; it was about generating income.

Back to Lincoln, who is contemplating life in his cabin on the Magus. There’s a cut scene that shows a much younger Lincoln with a MUCH younger Emmet in a cozy-looking tent. Emmet tells him a story about a time when he went into the mountains and met a shaman. He said the shaman was very, very old and would never die, and the shaman told him that life and death were the same, like a weight on a clock forever ticking back and forth, and he was just waiting for someone strong enough to cut the weight and let him go. While he said this, his wife, who was also very, very old, was making an amulet, which Emmet took out of his pocket. He said that it was his job to find a child strong enough. It wasn’t Emmet’s job to know for what; all he needed to do was find the child and give him the amulet. He put the amulet around his son’s neck.

“But what if I lose it?”

Now in the present. Lincoln apologizes to Lena for being jealous. In those last few months before Emmet disappeared, Tess and Lincoln barely spoke to him, but he seemed to confide a lot in Lena. They spend a few minutes reminiscing, and then Lincoln addresses the heart of his struggles with his father- when he was young, he seemed to be the apple of his father’s eye, the most important thing in the world. But then one day, that simply ended, and it seemed there was no pleasing him anymore.

Lena suggests that he was just trying to protect them. He could spare them pain by distancing himself, but Lena he had fewer emotional ties to.

Please… For Uncle AJ?

In the darkness at the edges of their camp, AJ aims his camera at one of the dolls and starts to talk to it, trying to get the spirits to open its eyes. As he coaxes the doll, he doesn’t notice that behind him, another doll’s eyes are closing.

Fast forward (literally) to 11:42 pm. What’s that?… Is Lincoln moving? Fast forward another ten minutes. Yes, I believe he is moving…. WHOOSH. In a Paranormal Activity-esque move, he is tugged right out of his tent into the jungle.

The group stirs in a panic. Lincoln is in the undergrowth, unharmed but freaked out. Tess and Lena make sure he’s okay, and the three of them run into the center of the camp. Lincoln is in full panic mode. He grabs his backpack and demands they leave, but the Captain says that survival in the jungle at night is futile. They leave the camp anyway, resolving to stick together.

They haven’t gone far when Tess begins to cry out frantically. Something has grabbed her and is pulling her into the muck. The others try to help her, but she is quickly waist-deep in mud. Flashback to Lincoln as a child: he is drawing an amulet similar to his own on Marbeley’s shirt. In the present, the group finally succeed in pulling Tess to safety.

Meanwhile, on the Magus, Jahel is tossing and turning in bed. Emilio sits by her side and tries to get her to drink some water, but she refuses. She begins to mumble fragmented sentences. Her father tells her that she must let go of the spirit inside of her soon or she will not recover when it leaves. She replies with “They won’t find him.”

He shrugs her off and starts to leave, but she suddenly sits up and grabs his sleeve and, in an ominous double-toned voice, insists, “They won’t.”

It’s Mad That We Took Its Toys

In the jungle, the trekkers are trying to make sense of what has just happened. Tess insists that someone was pulling her down, and AJ says he saw a hand reaching out to grab her. But Clark points out that that’s physically impossible, since the water is less than half a foot deep.

Lincoln, Tess, and Lena hunker down to talk privately. Lena recalls a story Emmet used to tell called “The Abandoned One”. It’s about a girl who, ignored by her mother, plays with her doll by the river, all alone. One day the doll falls into the river, and when she tries to get it, she falls in and drowns. Her body was never recovered; the story says that her spirit is still in the river, luring people in to drown because she is lonely. When the locals bring her gifts, she leaves them alone.

Is the tree for her?

The Capt. sees that Lincoln has taken Marbeley and tells him to put it back. They go back to the tree and he puts the bear back with a reluctant apology. They turn to leave, but a noise from behind stops them; the bear has fallen to the ground. Puzzled, Lincoln ties it to the tree again, firmer this time, and steps back. They wait. It falls again.

The pissed-off Captain takes the bear and binds it to the tree with thick cords. They wait in silence. When the bear doesn’t move, he starts to turn, satisfied.

Suddenly, all the dolls drop from the trees, swinging just above their heads. Tess screeches at them frantically, and a decayed-looking baby doll swinging nearby opens its eyes, letting out a strangled gurgle.

It’s A F***ing Nightmare

They make a break for it. They struggle half-blind through the jungle, heading toward the Magus and safety. But they soon find themselves back at the tree, as if they’d run full circle. What the-? Then, to put the icing on the cake, they realize that Tess is missing.

Reduced to pure panic, they begin to search for her. They follow her screams to the edge of the river, where it looks as if something is trying to pull her into the water. Everyone but AJ, who stays on shore to film, immediately jumps in to try and save her. After thrashing about for a bit, a strange, ambient voice much like his mother’s begins to call Lincoln’s name. Then they hear the sound of a little girl weeping.

They realize that the girl’s spirit must be looking for her mother. They rush out of the water and go back to the cemetery AJ discovered earlier, searching for the mother’s remains. They find a stone that must have been a marker for the girl, and minutes later, they find what must be her mother’s grave. They set to digging immediately.

The corpse, by now, is little more than a dirt-encrusted skeleton in tattered clothing. Lincoln carries it back to the river and lets it sink to the bottom. (I’m sure I’m not the only one who was reminded of The Ring during that scene.) He asks the spirit to give his mother back, but there is no response. Dismayed by the loss of his mother, he begins to cry. Lena consoles him.

In the darkness, apparently unbeknownst to the others, a muddy hand reaches out and grasps the river’s edge, and Tess pulls herself up, filthy and gasping but alive. She begins to cry out for her son, and he sprints through jungle to take her in his arms.

Now It’s My Turn To Protect You

The crew returns at last to the ship, shaken but unharmed. The Capt. tells Lincoln that he needs to talk to Tess about his father. Lincoln shrugs him off and goes to visit Jahel. She is unresponsive when he speaks to her. He addresses his father, whose spirit he somewhat hopes is still inside her, to let him know that he understands the danger of all the things out in the jungle that he did not know about.

Jahel begins to gag and heave, and then the bug that had first invaded her body flies out of her mouth and out the window. The girl apologizes for not hanging on to him, but she says she can feel that he is alive somewhere.

Lincoln leaves and goes to another part of the ship. He opens a hidden compartment and withdraws a box; inside is the amulet his father gave him. He puts it on and goes onto the main deck, where Lena is standing in the rain at the bow. The two laugh together, and for a moment it’s just like old times…

It goes to a cut scene, where the young Lincoln and Lena are giggling together as they lean against the edge of the ship. Emmet is filming them. He complains to Russ about the camera’s auto focus. He chuckles at the sight of the two children playing together and says that they’re going to get married someday.

Sudden focus on the back of Lena’s neck. There is a mark exactly like the symbol on the amulet.

“Lena…”

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