Reviewed: The Sound of Snow

Contributor: ZeusFaber

The great thing about this episode is that it does a grand job of cleaning up the mess left behind by the second season finale, taking up a few muddled pieces and making sense of them. In some ways though, it's an episode of two halves. The first half is a story of weirdness and white noise with the first two victims facing their fears and dying as a result. The teaser is certainly memorable for skilfully editing together the two perspectives of the normal road and the snow-covered ice sheet, and the audio tapes as a threat feels fresh and intriguing, but only lip-service is paid to the motivations of Alice Sevrin with the invocation of St Peter's Gate.

The second half is where things really get going though, where it becomes the story of Frank grieving for Catherine and re-living her final moments in order to finally come to terms with her death. The sequence where he returns to Ezekial Drive, to the tune of “The Dark End of the Street”, and sees his old house as forever yellow, is moving and beautiful. The decision to remind us of “The Time is Now” in quite so much detail is a brave and risky move, given that we've just about put all that to bed and got back on track, but in the end it pays off by putting things into a clearer and more satisfying context.

It's great to see Megan Gallagher back, even if it is for all too brief a time, and her scenes manage to do for us what they do for Frank ‐ restore our faith in her memory. Quite why the Millennium Group got themselves involved in all this and whether their agenda was altruistic or nefarious remains somewhat unclear, but that's not really the point. The tender scenes between Frank and Catherine and the trimming of the edges of the Marburg debacle are what you take away from this. Bonus points for a final appearance from Giebelhouse, too.