Midnight Mass “Book III: Proverbs”

OK, so, on the one hand, cool twist.  On the other…how stupid is Father Paul?

So far, Midnight Mass has played more like a slow burn sort of show.  There’s some general weirdness, corpses are piling up though so far most of them aren’t human, and the story has done a good job of looking at the characters and what their lives are like in this small, dying island town.  There is, for example, a great scene in this episode where Sheriff Hassan is at a PTA meeting, and he basically is objecting to the use of the Bible at the school.  Bev Keane, in her self-righteous way, first assume Hassan objects because he is a Muslim.  But then Hassan very patiently explains he has no issue with the Bible for that reason.  Muslims honor Jesus in a different way, and he himself has studied the Christian holy book.  His objection is more due to the fact it’s a public school, and Bev is using the Bible to teach the Catholic faith.

And then Bev makes some long speech that ends with the suggestion that Hassan’s reasonable point could somehow lead to book burning.

You know, for a person who is perhaps the most hated woman on that island, she sure does get her way quite a bit.

Worth noting that Hassan later forbids his son Ali from attended the Catholic services, now more popular than ever thanks to the miracle of Leeza’s walking again.

There’s also a nice scene where Leeza, now able to walk, goes off on town drunk Joe since he was the one who paralyzed her.  But she offers him forgiveness, prompting him to go to AA with Father Paul and Riley.  This is the sort of stuff I can get behind.

But then there’s the revelation about where Father Paul came from, what happened to Monseigneur Pruitt, and what’s (probably) responsible for most of the corpses that keep popping up.  For the most part, this explanation works.  Essentially, Father Paul is Monseigneur Pruitt.  He was suffering from really bad dementia when he took a trip to the Holy Land to try and recover somewhat.  Instead, he kept wandering off, at one point getting stuck in a sandstorm near Jerusalem.  He found shelter in a cave, and that’s where he found…the Angel.

At least, that’s what Father Paul calls it.  And I…just don’t see how.

I can chalk much of it up to his addled mind.  That would work up to a point.  And he could just be insane.  That wouldn’t be too far outside the realm of possibility.  Now, if the Angel was beautiful, again, I could go along with that.  But this thing…well, it’s shaped more or less like a man, but its wings are, well…batlike.

And then it drinks Pruitt’s blood.

And then it feeds Pruitt some of its own.

And then he wakes up the next day, young and strong again, only to see the Angel won’t come out into the sun.

Dude…that’s a vampire.

Now, it would not be the first time someone has made a connection between Christianity, particularly ideas like the Blood of Christ and the Resurrection, and then connected that to popular vampire lore, and that’s not even getting into how crosses and holy symbols can repel the undead under the right circumstances.  But did Pruitt/Paul seriously think this thing was an Angel?  Had he never heard of Dracula?  What kind of angel drinks blood and avoids the sun?  Sure, Pruitt could be just the victim of a shattering mind at the hands of an impossible creature, but that doesn’t change the fact he must have brought that thing back with him in that large trunk from the first episode.  I mean, this thing looks more like the devil than any angel I’ve ever seen, and I would think Pruitt, in his guise as Father Paul, should know that.

Besides, in the present, Father Paul died and came back to life in front of Bev and Leeza’s parents.  That…is going to be read as the wrong kind of miracle again.