Shining Girls — Episode 3, Overnight Review

Blast From The Past

By Mark

Dan Velazquez, Wagner Moura (“Narcos (TV)”, “Sergio”), is on a train, he’s bleeding, bits of glass in his arm. He seems not to remember much but has to go back to the Koki Bar to retrieve his keys…and his car. The seat of the car has been adjusted and there’s a cassette in the player he doesn’t recognise.

When he eventually gets home he asks his son Freddy, Julian Obradors (“Station Eleven (TV)”, “7th & Union”), about the tape, he doesn’t know anything about it. The books have also been rearranged on his bookshelf.

Abi, Erika Alexander (“Black Lightning (TV)”, “Wu-Tang: An American Saga (TV)”), the editor of the paper asks Kirby Mazrachi, Elisabeth Moss (“ The Invisible Man”, “ The Square “), if Dan is keeping sober, she says he’s had some problems in the past.

When Kirby presents Dan with a large file of women she’s pulled from the archives, all murdered in the last 25 years with similar MO’s, he says there’s not enough info in the cuttings, she says she needs to see the police records. She asks him outright about his leave of absence.

Dan pulls some favours and gains access to the records of the women and the pair spend all day sifting through them, finding some eight women in total who have been cut like Kirby and had something left in them.

It’s late and they both head back to Dan’s place to continue working. Dan comes across Kirby’s notebook and questions why she has basic, everyday facts written down, even their conversations are in it. She says it’s since the accident, gives her a focus.

Dan has been to Abi to tell her about what they’ve found, he also lets out that Kirby was the original source. He now has the task of trying to convince Kirby to be the main point of the article, the survivor hunting the serial killer, exactly what she didn’t want.

Harper, Jamie Bell (“ 6 Days”, “ Rocketman “), is still popping in places, knowing what’s going to happen before it’s happened and generally being very, very creepy. We see him in Dan’s place, going through his stuff.

From the women they find Kirby manages to see a photo of what was left inside one of the women, a murder from 1972 and it’s a key to the planetarium. She heads there and finds Jin-Sook, Phillipa Soo (“ Dopesick (TV) “, “The Bite (TV)”), is the owner of the key.

So…the woman we’ve already seen be murdered says she lost her key a few weeks ago and yet Kirby has a photo of it next to a dead body in 1972…at the end, we see how Dan injures his hand.

Time travel is always a real doozy to try and get our head around and when, as is the case here with Shining Girls, it’s being revealed to you bit-by-bit it’s even more so.

Obviously Bell is involved in a major way but why? What’s his reasoning? Is he trying to stop something? Start something? Questions and more questions abound and Shining Girls is teasing the answers for us.

Originally published at https://www.ocmoviereviews.com.