Recap: “A Better Man” (2/21/12)

We have now been through 4 episodes of “The River” and it appears as though we are getting closer to finding Emmet Cole. If we do find him this season it won’t be until the very last episode, but at least now we have the promise of a member of his crew that was aboard the boat with him. This episode got going pretty quickly. Again, the crew goes back to the tapes and Emmet’s journal to determine where they should search next and again we are hit with some weird folklore that leads to the crew being in danger, but this time it involves a new cameraman, Jonas, that Emmet hired for this trip.

As the group is scour the river on their way to the next “location of interest”, Jahel begins to have premonitions and bad thoughts again. She clearly has some sort of power or ability that we haven’t been made fully aware of yet, but sure enough, “the hanging man” is found, and it’s Jonas. Jonas is found hanging from the same vines that we see throughout the episode, as well as the same vines we saw Lincoln clearing out of the boats propeller in the first episode. The whole crew thinks he hung himself and is dead, but then suddenly he gasps for air and the crew scrambles to get him down.

Once he’s on the boat Lincoln determines that he has malaria and they need to get him back to a hospital for treatment, but Tess isn’t having any of it and wants to continue on their search for Emmet. She doesn’t want to lose time by back tracking to get him to safety. Lincoln makes a good point though, Jonas is the best chance they have of finding Emmet and he’s of no use to them if he’s dead. Tess decides he’s right and tells them to turn the boat around, but as soon as she does it’s brought to her attention that there is a massive storm coming right at them and they are never going to outrun it. The River is generating this storm as a way to keep them from letting Jonas leave.

We later found out, from old tapes, that Jonas didn’t listen to Emmet and filmed the natives during a funeral and essentially captured the dying man’s soul with his camera phone. It’s because of this that the jungle will not let him leave and he must pay for what he did. The jungle will kill anyone or anything in it’s way in order to make sure that Jonas pays for what he did. At one point a noose appears from one of the vines, indicating that the jungle wants Jonas to hang himself again in order to make things right. This leads to a pretty heated argument between the group as Lincoln is very against killing one of the only people that may be able help them find Emmet, where Tess just wants to save the boat and the crew in order to continue the search. Eventually Jonas just gives himself up to save the rest of the crew, which turns out to be a good move because the vine only wanted to hold onto him for a couple more seconds I guess. Or it could have been because Tess charged up Jonas’ dead cell phone, which held the video of the spirit escaping the man from earlier, which then allowed the soul to leave the phone… I guess.

I thought the episode was pretty good, better than last week’s, but still not as good as the first two. There was a lot going on this week that I liked, it kept the pacing up and left less slow parts. I still don’t get how Jahel knows everything about everything when it comes to this magical place, but hopefully we’ll find out eventually. I’m going to continue with the show through the first season, but honestly the ratings aren’t looking good, so I’m not sure if we’ll get a 2nd season or not. I don’t dislike the show and will continue to watch, but I don’t know if the rest of the world feels the same way…

What do you guys think so far? Do you like the show? Will you be upset if there’s no 2nd season at this point?