Warning, spoilers ahead for Big Sky season 3, episode 11.
What in the world is going on in Big Sky country? In this week's episode, "Smart Foxes," there are numerous separate crime families operating within the orbit of Jenny, Beau, Cassie and the rest of the sheriff gang. There's the big baddie, of course, who's still out for Avery and his money, but also Buck/The Bleeding Heart Killer and his woeful wife Sunny (Reba McEntire) and some mysterious backwoods cult family with way too many weird kids and a terrifying matriarch. Is there something in the water up in Montana?
Regardless, this week's Big Sky delivered plenty of shocking moments, from the reappearance of Jenny's mom Gigi to some good old-fashioned child endangerment. Here are six gasp-worthy moments from this week's Big Sky.
Buck's dead! (Maybe)
Rex Linn's Buck went fully off the rails in this week's episode. After capturing Paige and locking her up in his attic, he did some ominous knife-waving near Cassie, then cracked open a bottle of booze for the first time in 20 years. He celebrated by knocking Paige around and then, after stuffing her in the bed of his truck, gaslit Sunny about whose fault it was that Paige was missing and whether or not he'd been drinking. The look on Reba McEntire's face should tell you Sunny knows what's up with Buck—or at least has some suspicions, particularly after she goes to the bar later in the episode to try and reason with Cormac and to tell him that Buck's been drinking again.
But that might be a moot point because—shock!—just as Buck was preparing a gross jar to put Paige's heart in, she popped up and stabbed him in the leg. A scrap ensued, and just as he was about to stab her, she clocked him with a mallet over and over and over. She escaped whatever murder hatch he had her in, destination unknown, but he's still down there and presumed dead. You'd have to be after taking that many blows, right? We suppose weirder things have happened on TV and he could still pop up alive, but in the meantime let's just assume Buck's disappearance is going to send Sunny into a sort of shock spiral that can only end with her in cuffs as an accessory.
Avery's in big trouble
The actual surprise in this episode wasn't that Avery was in trouble—we all saw that coming—but rather who he's in trouble with. After he was nabbed in his home by the big baddie's henchman, Beau stepped in and killed the guy, subsequently hauling Avery into the sheriff's department. Avery asked for a lawyer, and then the next time we saw him, he was tied up in Tonya and Donno's custody. Just as Donno's going to get to engage in a spirited round of "progressive amputation," Tonya tells him to ungag Avery so they can hear his garbage argument for how they can all outsmart the most ruthless criminal Big Sky has ever seen. Avery says they can split the money with him if they keep him safe, which is a very stupid idea that will never work, and they shouldn't even entertain, but it seems like that's where we're going in the weeks to come. Good luck to all three because they're going to need it.
Donno's favorite movie is The Fox And The Hound
We're just going to throw this one in here because we love learning more weird tidbits about Donno every week. This week, it's that he'd spend his portion of the $15 million breeding mean, smart super foxes, all with the aim of outsmarting the dogs that come to hunt them. He was inspired by his favorite movie, Disney's The Fox And The Hound, which he also views as a sort of metaphor for his and Tonya's relationship. What a guy.
What is going on with this weird cult family?
After Gigi swindled the wrong people, she seeks solace at Jenny's house. The bad guys burst in, knock Jenny out, and take Gigi back. Jenny tracks them down thanks to a plaintive request made to Donno and Tonya and ends up walking into some weird Lynchian nightmare with a weird nymph girl named Fanny, an Anne Ramsey-like matriarch named Ann Whitlow, and a couple of shotgun-wielding idiot sons. Jenny runs into the sons when she's poking around some outbuildings and finds the sons holding a sort of court to decide the fate of her mom and her accomplice, but the jury is all weird, brainwashed children of the corn. (Who are these kids?? Where are their parents?? Do we even want to know? Will we ever know more?) They decide the guy deserves to get got, so one of the brothers shoots him point black in front of the unflinching kids (again, shudder) and then drags him into a hog pen to get eaten. Woof.
Long story short, after that, the brothers get the upper hand on Jenny, and Ma Ann asks one of the kids, Joshua, to decide the fate of Gigi. He suggests they play a game for her life—shudder—and Jenny volunteers in her place. Ann turns it back around on her and tells her, great, she'll get to play against her mom, with the winner walking away alive...
There's such a thing as life or death cornhole?
My biggest gasp in this episode was elicited by the appearance of a cornhole board, of all things. Ma says that's the game the ladies will play to determine their fate, which is so weird and bizarre that it makes absolutely no sense. Wouldn't horseshoes have been more dramatic? Or, like...darts? There's just something inherently silly about a beanbag, in my opinion.
Either way, the ladies duke it out as much as a pair of people can playing a stupid backyard drinking game (I mean, it's called cornhole, for crying out loud...), and Gigi ends up throwing the game. Just as she's about to be shot, Cassie swoops in, having been tipped off by Fanny, who's apparently got a grudge against her whole family for some reason that is absolutely not explained. Cassie's called in the entire sheriff's department, and the family is raided and taken into custody. I'd like to think that won't be the last we'll see of them because they're too weird and too silly to just dip into, but also, their story seems pretty well wrapped up, so who really knows.
Who let Emily out alone?
Beau seems like a great dad and everything, but why would he think it was a good idea to just let his daughter roam around town alone while the terrible humans hunting her dad are still at large? One could argue that he thought she'd be safe at the detective agency, but it's not like Denise is a crack shot or anything should someone come in guns blazing, and beyond that, Emily just went out into the world to get coffee and god knows what else at the hands of the world's most ruthless gangster. He's apparently using his old pal Tex (Lyle Lovett) again, which makes me wonder if Darius Rucker's Possum can be far behind. We don't really get to see what happens with Emily and Tex, but it can't be anything good, no matter what. That poor sheriff's department. First, Jenny gets kidnapped and almost loses her (now arrested) mom, and now Beau's daughter is in hot water. Can't these two potential lovebirds catch a darn break?
READ MORE: 'Big Sky' Season 4: Everything Fans Need to Know About the ABC Crime Series
