REVIEW: Dead of Summer , Episode 104
Dead of Summer is once again back, this time with episode 4 entitled “Modern Love”, an episode that focused on Drew.
Back in the pilot we learned that Drew was having secret showers away from everyone because he wanted to hide the fact that he is a girl, so in this episode it was time for us to find out more about him. We saw that ever since he was little, Andrea wanted to be a boy. His mother found it cute at first, but after a while, she realized that Andrea actually meant it. Maybe a few months after taking him to a therapist, Andrea told her mom that his name was going to start being Drew, but the mother definitely didn’t take this lightly. I think it is understandable this mother’s position. Even in today’s society it can’t be easy to accept something like this, now imagine in the 80s. When this happens with a friend, maybe it would be easier, but this is this woman’s child we are talking about, the person who knows him from moment 1 and this isn’t really something parents wonder along the way. But unlike most parents, Beth grew to accept Drew and that was when she snuck into a party and saw him laughing and dancing, realizing that he was so much happier when not wearing a skirt. But even though she accepted Drew’s birth that doesn’t mean she accepted Andrea’s death. I am not sure what happened in the end of the flashback scenes, but Beth left a note in the back of a picture of Andrea saying that she doesn’t accept her daughter never existed and seeing Drew every day was a reminder of her lost. I don’t think she killed herself because they would have probably showed her body, so maybe she left. But if that is the case she is a terrible mom, just abandoning her son like that.
In present day, Camp Stillwater knows exactly what Drew has been through, and so it haunts him through Andrea, or more specifically, with the exact same girl who was on the photo in the back of which his mother wrote her goodbye letter. With Drew started to act in a strange way because of this, everyone starts to admit that they have been seeing things ever since they arrived. It doesn’t take long for them to start pointing fingers at Deb, because Joel found a mask at her cabin that was similar to the in Cricket saw in her dream. Looking through Joel’s videos, Alex, Amy and Cricket find out about a box she holds a lot of times, so they decide to break into her cabin to see what is inside it. But ultimately Joel was a lot more lucky than they did, because Deb showed him the thing that was inside the box: a book entitled, “Dharma Bums” (which is the title of episode 6), and it was given to her by someone she loves very much. She said all this right before they kissed.
While Drew’s secret showers continued, in this episode they started not being so much of a secret anymore, because Jessie found out that he was actually Andrea. Trying to get the upper hand, Drew dug into a letter Jessie had received and found out she has a court day coming up. If she says he is Andrea, Drew will tell Deb about it. But Jessie doesn’t give up so easily and afraid to be exposed, Drew left camp. Fortunately, for once, Jessie did the right thing and tried to make up for what she did and talked to Drew, not only convincing him to stay, but also to tell Blair who he used to be. Taking her advice, and Blair’s too actually, since he said Drew could trust him, he came clean, which made Blair run away. A lot of people really hated this, but I think that it can be understandable. Blair thought he knew what Drew was going to tell him, he thought he was going to say he is gay, but that was not at all what he heard. Afraid he was going to say the wrong thing, Blair preferred to run and measure his words before saying them out loud and risk hurting Drew. At least this is how I see it.
This was a good episode, and I felt like it was a rise compared to the previous one. It didn’t really develop the main plot (the camp’s secret I mean), but I found Drew’s struggle throughout his life really enjoyable to watch. I am giving this episode a 7.2/10.
Next episode is entitled “How to Stay Alive in the Woods”, it will explain a few things about Joel, so don’t miss my review.