monttrac

This episode is truly haunting. Not only is the opening jaw-dropping, as described by the other reviewers, but the hospital scenes were poignant. The actor playing the perpetrator was very effective, and, as one afraid of fire, I found the scenes of it truly horrifying. The whole episode seemed to play with ideas of hot and cold, hence the Enya music as the oxymoronic background music for the introduction. This episode reminds me of the one about the man who uses his son to entrap women at malls, whom he then brings home to torture and kill. They're both exceptional because they focus to some extent, but not too much, on the ordeal of the victims. The woman most recently trapped has to pull herself together to serve the son breakfast. She can't shake her motherliness. Another example is the last Frank episode, when he (Keith Carradine) impersonates Gideon and the victim-to-be realizes she's been deceived -- while we don't see her actual death, we see the doomed expression on her face, another well-acted part.

Amazingly to me, this film appeared on cable very often when my child was an infant with congenital heart defects. The makeup giving Mare Winningham the look of oxygen deprivation was very realistic and gives the viewer a picture of the "dusky" skin tone of some heart patients. The restraint of the Vrain/Carol relationship was right on, and the peripheral but agonized part of the parent was poignantly depicted by Carol's father. The film is almost a relief from the typical "dramatized" film about illness. Heart difficulties are inherently dramatic to the lay person (perhaps not to doctors, though) and need no melodramatic treatment. The understatement, the lack of statement all serve the subject well. The cold, orderly world of the (urban, state-of-the-art)hospital that contains so much extraordinary work comes across beautifully in this film. I'm glad others appreciate it.