The Midnight Club Recap: You Write What You Know

It’s Amesh’s Deathday, so everyone is celebrating by taking edibles on the beach. Amesh tells a time-travel sci-fi story. A recap of season one, episode five of Mike Flanagan’s Netflix horror series ‘The Midnight Club,’ “See You Later.”

Season 1 Episode 5 Editor’s Rating4 stars ****

Photo: Eike Schroter/Netflix

Happy Deathday to Amesh! It has been a year since our class clown’s doctor told him he had a year to live, and he’s still kicking. What better way to celebrate than taking edibles on the beach?

It makes for pretty good vibes in the first half of “See You Later.” Everyone is celebrating good ol’ Amesh, including Cheri, who hooked him up with a PlayStation through her dad’s Sony connections in Japan. In fact, it’s a standout episode for Cheri, who also gives a present to Ilonka: a wig made by a famous wigmaker working with her mom. Both acts of generosity get great reactions: explosive exuberance from Amesh and stunned gratitude from Ilonka. Cheri may be frustrated with her parents’ flakiness and extravagant lifestyle, but at least she uses her privilege for good.

“See You Later” is generally a strong episode for The Midnight Club’s supporting characters — showcasing Cheri’s generosity and ping deeper into Amesh and Natsuki’s flirtation. It turns out that Natsuki has clinical depression, which sometimes keeps her from feeling things. The recent incident with Anya — more on that later, but she’s alive — triggered a low point for her, which explains her lateness to the party. There’s a real intimacy and honesty visible in her relatively new friendship with Amesh, even as both tiptoe around their true feelings. “I’m so fucking scared I’m gonna die before I see my parents again,” Amesh admits — a simple but devastating truth.

Amesh says that all he ever wanted was to get the girl and save the world. His story at the Midnight Club that night represents his way of imagining that for himself, even if in the story, he’s only able to truly accomplish one of those goals. It’s the longest story yet in this series, clocking in at around 22 minutes, and once again, it doesn’t quite feel like the appropriate medium to tell such a complicated saga. But it works fine enough as a pastiche of James Cameron movies with some WarGames thrown in.

Let’s pe into this one, because it’s … involved. Luke, who has a bad heart like Amesh has a bad brain, is a high schooler who designs strategy games and has a crush on a video-game-store clerk named Becky (played by Natsuki, obviously). Unfortunately, Becky is dating Ray, the son of a politician, but Luke makes an unexpected connection with his game-genius hero, Vincent Beggs (Rahul Kohli: good as always even with the spotty American accent). Hearing about Luke’s programming experience, Vince invites him to check out his new near-future battle-strategy game, Decision, or “Risk on steroids.” It begins with the crucial choice of how many weapon systems you want to deploy.

Luke agrees to Vince’s offer to split the advance if he helps him crack the game. The biggest problem is that it’s too much like a real simulation, and it’s impossible to beat. Then everything starts spiraling: Becky breaks up with Ray for cheating on her with Vince’s friendly girlfriend, Kara (Emily Piggford). But Ray didn’t do it, and he knows from someone named Frederick that Kara is setting him up.

She explains the truth to Luke in a head-spinning story within a story. Long story short: She’s the future Becky, Frederick is the future Ray, and Vince is the future Luke. Long story long: In their timeline, Becky and Ray got married and Ray got Luke a job at the Department of Defense, where they ended up developing a global-defense system based in space. Shortly after Luke died, Ray abused his powers as president and got carried away with those weapons. Because of his actions, human civilization was wiped out — apart from the few people on the Space Station. They were visited by bright lights calling themselves the Alumini, who sent them back in time to prevent extinction. Vince (future Luke) reached out to Luke using the pseudonym that he knew would earn Luke’s trust; with his help, they can stop the war. Kara (future Becky) has a more direct approach: Kill Frederick (future Ray).

Frederick/Ray ends up killing Vincent/Luke, and young Luke agrees to never write the code, averting apocalypse. But Kara/Becky’s obsession with killing Ray ends with her accidentally killing her younger self, immediately erasing her from existence. After that, Ray goes on to become a better, wiser president (but what about the other Ray?), and Luke eventually realizes the Alumini may have been angels, not aliens. The day after original-timeline Luke’s deathday, current-timeline Luke is still alive, grateful for every day he never thought he’d see.

On a character level, the tempered, bittersweet ending to Amesh’s bombastic fantasy is indicative of his general attitude toward life now: hopeful but realistic about tragedy. But Natsuki wanted Luke and Becky to end up together, and she kisses Amesh to prove it. It’s easy to understand why the two were so hesitant; how do you throw yourself into a relationship knowing one of you will lose the other before long? On the other hand, fuck it! Spend your final days loving the people you love as hard as you can.

It’s still tempting to feel impatient with such an elaborate side story right when the central story may be kicking into gear. Throughout “See You Later,” Ilonka comes upon some good intel, and we get a nice little info dump early on clarifying some of the specifics of Brightcliffe. The diary she’d found in the last episode belonged to a 16-year-old named Athena, who was the daughter of Regina Ballard, founder of the Paragon. Ballard, a.k.a. Aceso (named after the Greek goddess of the healing process), had started the group as a naturopathic alternative to the medical establishment. But its rituals became more radical, crossing into blood sacrifice, and Aceso designated other members as the remaining Five Sisters, picking an hourglass as their symbol. Despite Athena’s efforts to get through to her mother, Aceso went through with the large-scale blood sacrifice she was planning, poisoning all the adults to let her live longer.

In the end, Aceso and Athena both dropped off the radar, but Julia found the diary and left symbols and numbers everywhere for people to locate it again. Ilonka thinks Julia must’ve cured herself using some of the same rituals Athena had documented. And she may be right; clearly, some entity wants to communicate with her — judging by her second strange glimpse into the old-timey sepia world that night.

The highlight of Ilonka’s story line in “See You Later,” though, is how it intersects with her roommate’s. At the beginning of the episode, Ilonka resuscitates Anya following what turns out to be an overdose. Ilonka later realizes Anya has a DNR, leading to a crisis of conscience, but Dr. Stanton assures her that she did the right thing by saving Anya.

Later on, Ilonka finds Anya crying after wetting the bed. Anya confesses that she “killed her parents”; they went looking for her one night when she’d snuck out to party, and they hit black ice while driving, leading to a fatal accident. Anya had spiraled and turned to heroin. (So her story about Dana moving to America for ballet school, as expected, was based on her, including the best friend she threw the dancer statuette at.)

It’s heartbreaking to see Anya break down, saying again and again that she doesn’t want to die, knowing that it’ll probably happen soon anyway. Then again … will it? In the closing moments of the episode, Ilonka eyes the Paragon diary, which might hold the secrets to curing Anya and maybe even more of them. It’s a tantalizing note to end on — a suggestion that we’ll finally get to see some spooky rituals. It’s about time! I was starting to wonder if we should’ve gotten a Paragon series instead.

Scary Stories

• The game Luke is designing in Amesh’s story is called Starlight Crystal, which was previously named in Julia’s patient record. I’m guessing that’s just a fun, ultimately meaningless little connection, because I doubt Amesh is going to be the Big Bad.

• Funny beat with angel-obsessed Sandra missing the big reveal at the end of Amesh’s story.

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