CJ (Elijah M Cooper) has been the glue holding the series together. He’s a food delivery driver whose moped is always ready, whose attitude is always right and who has big plans for the future. He’s a happy, lucky guy. He’s going to need that second one most of all.

Cooper has been a delight every time he’s shown up this year and this episode does some smart structural stuff reminding us how everyone ties together, through him. CJ is the delivery driver for his mom’s restaurant so he knows everyone else in the area, and everyone knows and likes him. But he’s also an endlessly jokey, slightly informal young man whose perception gets in the way of his reputation. The episode explores that deftly as CJ sees something impossible and no one buys it but him. Cooper joins Jayden Bartels from last episode in getting some great, multi-faceted scenes that he straight up aces. CJ could, easily, have been generic comic relief. Instead, we see him for what he is: a deeply kind, cheerful young man readier than his parents know for the next stage of his life.

That’s the core, now the goo. Cooper shares several scenes with David Schwimmer who is let off the hook this episode in the best of ways. Schwimmer’s gentle, measured demeanour is a clever contrast to the increasingly frantic nature of his character and the script pulls no punches with him. A major breakthrough at the fort is followed by a moment of shocking gore as he realises he’s made a mistake. That’s then topped by comedy and a great pseudo fight scene. Schwimmer plays Anthony and the thing wearing Anthony in subtly different ways and the Bodysnatchers air of these scenes is wonderfully old school and frightening. The show has never felt more pleasingly scary than it does here.

This episode also feels like the show shifting up a gear. Trey, Alex, Frankie, CJ, Devin and CeCe are all finally on the same page and the vines are very much out of the bag about the terrible events at the fort. That gear shift is helped by a reveal from Jen that looks set to crack the case open and the mysterious woman, glimpsed at the hospital briefly last episode by CJ, coming to the fore. There’s a growing sense of this being a story we’re only getting one side of and the other side is galloping towards us. I can’t wait to see it.

The humour, with one slightly clunky exception, works, the cast works and there’s a lovely, off-hand confirmation that CeCe and Alex are an almost-thing which hits all the harder in these dark times.

Verdict: Another good episode of a show finding its feet. Or possibly, root bulbs… 9/10

Alasdair Stuart