Sharpening The Knife
Three Sick Brothers, or episode 2 of Bloodride, sees us return to the same bus as before but this time we look at a young man called Erik with blood behind his ear. We then see him in his flat with his mother who helps him settle back in after 3 years in a psychiatric hospital. She also mentions that she is selling their cabin before leaving him. His brothers Otto and George arrive soon after and as they are excited to see him, they suggest going out for a drink. Erik tells him he has been advised to avoid loud places, so they decide to drive to their cabin instead. As they stop at a petrol station, Erik hits the shop sign, which represent a woman. After getting food, the brothers decide to take a hitchhiker called Monika with them. They arrive in the cabin and as they start drinking, they explain that they used to come here all the time when they were little and when their dad was still alive. They recall that their dad used to get them to sharpen their knifes as soon as they arrived in the cabin. Things later get a little awkward when Monika jokingly mentions that Otto is crazy while dancing and drinking. Monika decides to turn her attention to Erik and as she questions if him being in a psychiatric ward was because of their dad, George tells her that many thought their dad wasn’t worth living but Erik was the only one who did anything about it. As tensions grow in the room, Monika tries leaving with Erik, but is soon stopped by the two brothers. Meanwhile, the mother arrives in her son’s flat and worries when she doesn’t see him. She decides to rush over to the cabin where we see that the two brothers have tied Monika up and hit Erik with a glass bottle. George then assumes that Erik may have taken the fall for him killing their dad. Erik gets up and tries to free her but George stops him and gets Otto to repeatedly stab Monika in the chest just as their mother pulls up. Erik opens the door and when she asks him what happened, he tells her that Otto and George have killed Monika like they did with their dad. As she heads inside, we see that he has tied up the petrol station sign whom he believed to be a real woman. His mother reassures him as she tells him that his father didn’t die but left him , as we come to the realization that his brothers don’t exist. She drives back to the station to give the sign back and while she heads into the shop, Erik sees his brothers again, who egg him on to burn a girl in her car where the episode ends. While Three Sick Brothers might not be quite as strong as Ultimate Sacrifice, it is still a decent episode nonetheless, delivering another dark twist at the end. Erik has some serious psychological illness, which could be seen as either multiple personalities or schizophrenia. The brothers he has invented are clearly a coping mechanism for when his dad left him. There are quite a few foreshadowed moments in the episode too, especially when the brothers talk about sharpening their knives or when he hits the shop sign. The story is well written too and the twist did remind me of a recent episode of Inside Number 9 “Thinking out Loud”. While Three Sick Brothers might not ascend to the heights of its BBC counterpart, it remains a decent enough episode nonetheless.
