"Seep" is a really cool episode of Harper's Island and should please slasher fans quite a bit. It has Prohibition tunnels and crawlspaces located underneath the Harper Island's resort leading to the sewers (a manhole under a paved road near the resort lends a nifty visual moment where the missing Madison's little hand is useful in a rescue that—contrived as it may be—catches the eyes of her mother, Shea, looking in the passenger side mirror, sees it while Trish drives around in Shane's truck looking for the girl), the revelation (thanks to Wakefield's heavily detailed journal) that Abby could be Wakefield's daughter (the reveal of an affair provides plenty of suspicion cast towards the sheriff, especially the "Did you like the game?" comment by Madison at the very end), and the pointed remarks from Shane indicating that Abby should be severed from the surviving members of those on the island due to how her presence has caused all the death and violence that has occurred around and to them. There's a great moment, to me, that just seems to spotlight poor Abby as all these faces look her direction when Shane accuses her of everything that has happened (like to Trish's father and Henry's brother). Abby must prove herself to them by trying to find Trish's buddy, Beth, locating blood in the kitchen floor that trails into a secret door that leads to the tunnels (and eventually her body stuffed in one of several crawlspaces), following Henry, Sully, Danny, and Jimmy into the darkness, packing shotguns and flashlights, not knowing exactly what lied in wait. The sheriff had suffered a nasty wound thanks to a trap set in the woods, which Cal is able to tend to with his training in "dead animals", and, due to his successful efforts, arouses (!) his girlfriend, Chloe. But after a sexual encounter, Cal gets up to check on his "patient" and the sheriff is gone! The episode has Shea rejecting her stepmom's attempt at consoling her due to Madison's vanishing. The "one" this episode that exits the show is Katherine, the stepmom having an affair with Shea's husband, discovered by Shane, bleeding from a pair of pliers stabbed in her back (resembling the ones Henry had in a previous scene; he'd prepared to break apart a gate that seemed to trap Abby in a crawlspace (that eventually led to another room where someone else seemed to be (making curious sounds that struck fear in Abby; she flees into a crawlspace that leads to the kidnap room holding Madison)). The show continues to cast a cloud of doubt towards Sheriff Charlie Mills; with the idea that mommy was having an affair with Wakefield, he's an obvious suspect. Still, with several characters still left and ripe for the pickings, plenty of suspects, besides Charlie, remain. That hook of "Who among them is the killer?" is what makes Harper's Island such a compelling show; I have to admit, though, that once the answer was finally revealed, how could the creators have kept the show on the air (if it had been commissioned for another season, that is). This was an underrated series, I believe. The concept, though, is probably not something that could have had legs after the first season, but I would have been interested in seeing an effort to attempt it anyway. Not to be, alas
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