'1923' Episode 6 Recap: A Heart-Racing Showdown and Quests for Vengeance

This week's episode of 1923 was all about tension, from the surly exchange between Harrison Ford's Jacob and Helen Mirren's Cara to the pulse-pounding pressure Spencer and Alex faced as they sat perched on a tugboat somewhere in the Indian Ocean (or Red Sea? The timeline's not really clear here, considering it's only been a couple days since they left Kenya.) Our hearts were racing almost every moment we were watching "One Ocean Closer To Destiny," and we've got to assume we're not alone. Here are 5 showdowns from this week's episode that we found particularly gripping.

Spencer and Alex vs. death

Let me be clear here: I never doubt that Spencer and Alex are going to make it out of whatever hair-raising situation that they're in, because they're stars of the show and, beyond that, they're also romantic endgame so I can't imagine either of them dying any time soon. That being said, these two paramours sure do face a lot of peril, huh? 

When last we saw the couple, they were getting pushed around by a ghost ship and apparently upended, left to drown with their tugboat. This week's episode finds a burly Spencer rocketing out of the water to begin his search for Alex, who he hears banging inside the boat. She's somehow managed to find and air pocket in the bedroom, where she's hanging out trying to figure out her next move. He swims down to get her and the pair make it to the top of the tug's hull, where Spencer tells her that, if they don't get water and shelter, they'll die. He dives back down to get supplies and tells her to stay on top of the ship. She doesn't, of course, and he has to rescue her as she is taken away from the ship in a current. He lets her cover up with his shirt, meaning he gets very burned, and they're left to sort of sit there and either wait for the ship he called pre-incident to show up or to die of eventual exposure or whenever the tug decides to sink back into the water. 

As it turns out, there's also another option, which comes about when an enormous shark starts banging into their boat, either in an attempt to eat the little fish that have come in search of food or knock them off, because it's smart and wants a big meal. Spencer fires at it with his shotgun, which somehow scares it away, and they go on waiting to either die or be rescued. 

Late at night, though, Alex hears a foghorn. It's pitch black, but somehow through a series of shotgun blasts they manage to flag down the ship. It's a British Naval vessel, and they're given aid, clothes, and supplies by some sharply-dressed sailors. They also get to hang out with the captain on board, who says he'll take them to Marseille. Ever impatient, Spencer asks the captain to marry them, which he does after hooking them up with some dead sailor rings. The couple have steamy shower sex and them goof off around the boat, because, again, they are endgame. They're also the most peril-prone people I've seen on TV in a while, and that's saying something. 

One quick sidenote: All of these scenes with the tug and the water and the whole thing seem expensive. Surely some of it, like the expansiveness of the ocean, is CGI, but you've got to think that anything where there's water filled sets or even a fairly large expanse of water in which the boat can sink would add up real quick. Shoutout to 1923 for using its budget with flair!

Cara vs. Jacob vs. the law

While Jacob's getting better every single day, that doesn't mean the Yellowstone ranch isn't still in peril. The evil miner guy has bought up the ranches to the North and South and is trying to squeeze them out. Jacob's quietly been rounding up a posse to go after Banner, but who knows how long that will take. Plus he might be moving around the ranch, but he still can't ride and he would be absolutely no use in a fight.

That's why you can't really blame Cara for telling the town Sheriff about what happened with Jacob and the rest of the family. He rolls into camp and gives Jacob a what-for, telling him that his revenge quest is an issue for the law now and that the whole family will have to give statements. Jacob is furious, because as Cara says, he's more concerned with revenge or vengeance than justice. She rips into him, telling him that he's not the only one who's known loss and pain, something he apparently doesn't really need to hear. He roars at her and stalks off, ultimately saddling up his horse in what we believe is an effort to ride off and finish the job before the law can get to it. 

Eventually the two come to terms, with Jacob finding Cara on the porch and telling her that his anger isn't about vengeance but preservation. He goes on a thoughtful tirade against cities like New York and Boston, telling her to imagine the land there without all that concrete. There would be salmon swimming up the river to spawn and whole forests. He believes that if the bank and mine gets their hands on the Yellowstone, they'll "dam the rivers, flood the valleys, and cut every tree that stands" to build cities, saying that when that happens, "this paradise becomes another concrete desert." I'm not sure that's inherently true, because a) I think some good things have come out of big cities, b) even Indigenous people created big cities at times, like Teotihuacan in Mexico, and c) just because the bank or a corporation owns something, it doesn't mean that they'll strip out all the joy. Just look at what's happening with the big horrible business people in Yellowstone: Sure, they want to install an airport and make everything up there a tourist destination, but they also know that tourists will come to see the land and views. 

Anyway, that's what Jacob thinks and you can't really blame him. He fears progress and he fears big business, and he is somewhat justified. Cara seems a little more open to at least some progress, though, telling Jacob that now that she's in charge at the house, they're getting a generator, a washing machine, and a motor car. She does make one concession, though: He gets to pick which one they get first. Now that's true love. 

Jack vs. science

We don't see much of Jack and Elizabeth this episode save a spicy scene they have up in their bedroom, where simple cowboy Jack tells his soon-to-be bride that he's surprised she's not showing mere days or weeks after realizing she's pregnant. He also asks her how she knows she's pregnant, which... I'm sure that sexuality wasn't really taught or discussed when he was in school in 1905 or whatever, but you'd like to think he'd have figured it out from being around farm animals and his own mother. Elizabeth jokes, "Men sure know how to make babies but boy is that where the knowledge stops," which I think is meant to be lighthearted but, personally, I also found to be pretty sad. Here's hoping that at least a few more men know how the whole thing happens now, 100 years later.

Cara vs. snippy job applicants

Cara and Sheriff McDowell have to interview a bunch of young dudes who want to be livestock agents, all with the goal of hiring 20 people to do a dangerous job for a reasonably small amount of pay. It's rough going, especially since Cara seems to be running the show and some of the men are jackasses who don't respect a woman. Jack slaps one of them across the head, so he doesn't make the cut, but then we get to meet what I assume will be a new character. He's a very nice man who moved from Chicago and came to interview for the job from his ranch a three day ride east of town. He worked as a cop in the Chicago stockyards, which he said smelled awful. ("I don't know what hell is, but it ain't worse than Chicago.") He left the area because he's "trying to limit the amount of time [his] feet spend on concrete," and he seems like a genuinely good guy. Of course, he could always be a double agent, but McDowell seems to like him well enough, hiring him for $220 a month, which he says is still more than he got paid in Chicago. 

Teonna vs. evil

Pretty much every single thing that Teonna Rainwater has gone through so far on 1923 has been pure hell, save her time spent with Hank last week. He's taken her back to his camp, outfitted her with his son's clothes, and is helping her get rid of all evidence that she was ever in the American Indian school. They burn her clothes, but elect not to burn the Bibles she took, with Hank telling her that when he was in prison, the guards would read the prisoners passages from the Bible and that, from those, he learned that when the Christian God is mad, he gets vengeful, doing things like turning cities and men to salt. They elect to bury the Bibles deep in the earth instead, where hopefully they won't be found by the people sent out to capture Teonna. 

Speaking of those lawmen/bounty hunters/horrible individuals, they went looking for Teonna at her grandmother's house. They didn't find her and only served to confuse her grandmother, who both had no idea she wasn't at school and was shocked by the allegation that her granddaughter could commit murder. When one of the guards went to check the barn, another set about trashing the house, leading the grandma to shove him in an effort to get him to leave. He shoved her back even harder, and the old woman ended up banging her head on the stove. When next we see her, she's lying on the floor slack jawed and with eyes open, but immobile. The men talk about how she's dead, and then they just up and leave her there to either rot or be found. They are monsters, just like every other white person who's interacted with Teonna, and that girl and her whole family deserve so, so much better. 

 

One last random thought: I thought Alex's speech to Spencer was really beautiful, so I'll throw it down here, just in case anyone wants to use it as wedding vows someday or something: "There is no putting me back. We are one now. When the sun hits your face, I'm your shadow. When it finds my back, you are mine. I go where you go, even if it's the death of me."

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