There’s an alien baby on the loose and a dead body in the woods. Can Harry, Asta and Darcy hide the truth not just from Mike and Liv, but from a new law enforcer from Jessup?

Returning from a summer break with the first of eight new episodes, we pick up right where we left off. Asta is clearly traumatized by what she’s done, even if her victim got what was coming to him. Harry of course being almost entirely devoid of empathy barely notices what she’s going through, so obviously Darcy is whom she turns to for consolation. Harry’s get out of jail card is the standing offer to resume duties as the town’s doctor, thereby allowing him to fake the autopsy results, along with a false narrative regarding the murder.

There’s a spanner in the works though. The first half of the season made great play over the rivalry between the neighbouring towns of Patience and Jessup, and it transpires that the fake location of the body just falls into Jessup territory (rather unbelievably, I’m not sure that’s how zoning works). Enter Detective Lena Torres, played by Nicola Correia-Damude (Elena in The Boys), who quickly takes over the investigation, inadvertently putting Harry’s plan in jeopardy.

This is a fun episode, written by co-executive producer Cherry Chevapravatdumrong (Family Guy/The Orville) which gives almost everyone a little moment to shine. As always Mike and Liv are a superb double act, here joined by the previously underutilised Judy who it transpires makes homemade audiobooks (a little in-joke, Jenna Lamia who plays her is an award-winning audiobook narrator). There’s not many shows that could make a Malcolm X joke fly but this one manages it, with Liv’s “Oh, Judy” under her breath selling it perfectly. I hope to see much more of Judy in the weeks to come.

One little oddity I noticed. My understanding has always been that Harry’s human disguise is a technological illusion, one that works on 99% of humans, with Max of course being one of the inconvenient remaining 1%. It seems like that’s been retconned, and now he physically transmogrifies into human form, as suggested by Harry and Asta’s discussion about his bullet wound. It does make more sense, 1% is a lot of people even in a small town and he’d surely have been clocked more often by now (and let’s not forget his recent trip to the Big Apple), but it does seem odd. Unless I’ve missed something of course.

There’s more this week that I can’t discuss without spoilers so that’ll have to wait until next time. I was a little critical of much of the first half of this season for treading water, albeit entertainingly, until the later episodes, and am happy that no such accusation can be levelled this time. Hopefully the pace keeps up for the rest of the season.

Verdict: It’s always a pleasure to visit Patience and it was good to see old friends again. With a third season now confirmed I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes. 8/10

Andy Smith