The First Door
Episode 3 of Behind Her Eyes begins with Adele repeating Rob’s mantra about controlling her dreams. Staying calm and focused, as well as thinking of a door, her dream of the woods suddenly sees her awaken with David looking down on her. Night turns to day and both David and Louise do their best to put the events of the previous evening out of their minds. This, inevitably, leads to a whole series of awkward encounters at work. That’s exacerbated by Adele ringing David and wanting to know where he was the previous night. He can’t answer, nor can he say “I love you too” until he’s prompted by Adele herself. After what happened, Rob heads over to Louse’s house and tells her he wants to be her friend. Despite regretting what they did, he can’t shake the feeling that there’s a connection between the two. David tells Louise that she’s shining while Adele has lost her spark. This time though, Louise tells him to leave. During another flashback, Rob and Adele smoke together while discussing their secrets. Specifically, how Adele wants a relationship with David where they’re completely open and don’t leave any secrets. As we know from the present, this definitely hasn’t come to fruition. Adele cooks dinner for David but when he returns home, mentions how he’s not hungry. As they talk, David asks whether “it’s happening again,” but she dances around his question and tells him he’s scary when he shouts. At work the next day, tensions continue to simmer as Adele rings David at work and tells her what she plans to do. Louise happens to be listening though, and deliberates over what Adele has told David. Eventually Louise agrees to head out with Adele. Louise finds herself drowning in guilt though as Adele mentions how David is staying in the spare room and may well be drinking again. The attention soon turns to Louise’ dreams though, as she promises to keep trying to break through her subconscious mind. At work that night, things take a tense turn when Anthony shows up at David’s office demanding to talk. David is calm, managing to unwind Anthony’s temper, and book him in for an hour session the next day. With things settled down, David and Louise hook up again. And again. And again, as we skip forward through time. After hooking up on the sofa, David finally opens up and talks about his past. Near where his parents’ house was, he pulled a girl out from the fire and claims that he doesn’t know what happened to her afterwards. As many may have pieced together by now, this girl is actually Adele. This gets Louise thinking, who falls asleep and experiences another night terror, this one involving David and Adele both burning. These dreams continue, as Louise falls asleep thinking of a door. Rob’s mantra echoes through her mind, as she walks around the strange, distorted house in her subconscious mind. Suddenly realizing she’s dreaming, Louise spots a yellow door and walks through. This leads back into her apartment where she takes in the sights and sounds, seemingly at peace. Meanwhile, David returns home to find Adele sitting in the dark, sporting a black eye. Adele head out on her own and broke David’s instructions. What will the ramifications be for this?
The Episode Review
After a couple of episodes building things up, episode 3 slows the pace right down and almost grinds to a halt. There’s clearly a supernatural element in this show but quite how that plays into the main conflict – in particular that fire from the past – is still left unanswered. Despite that, the show continues to deliver compelling drama and there’s a consistent sense of uneasiness clinging to large parts of this one. In that respect, Behind Her Eyes has a lot going for it but quite how this supernatural element blends into the main storyline remains to be seen. In the meantime though, Behind Her Eyes bows out with an okay episode, but also one that feels like a deep breath before plunging into more dramatic episodes to come.
