(S06E09) At first, I thought this season was going to be heading somewhere, but it seems that it's getting stuck in the muck. The episodes continue to cover territory that they have already covered. Tonight, it was about Johnny's struggles with the fact that he doesn't have much religious faith, despite his relationship with the now-absent Reverend Purdy, and his mother's own generous donations to the Heritage Foundation. We have been over this before in previous seasons-- like last season, as a matter of fact.

If you take the show completely out of context, it was interesting enough*. I don't remember knowing that Sarah was Catholic before, but she certainly needed to be for this episode to work. What I don't understand, though, is why the priest lied to Johnny about the church's belief in exorcism? Maybe it isn't common practice to have to perform one, but there have certainly been enough movies based on priests and possessed parishioners.

It was kind of an unhappy stab, though, to have a good-looking priest who was also adulterous and who ultimately left the church. I am not Catholic, but it seems to me that priests get enough of a bad rap without having to have one who is obviously sinning. Especially because if the guy was going to leave the priesthood, he damn well should have done it before his lover got killed. And would a priest in a parish really go to confession to the other priest in his parish? Wouldn't that constitute an automatic suspension of that priest's responsibilities?

Whether Father Brendan was worried about Father Tony's reputation and faith or not in the case of murder versus possession, he should have gone to the police about murder. (*I said interesting-- not good).

This episode also shows us that now Johnny's visions are not as trustworthy as has originally been believed. Interpretation is an important thing, and Johnny is the only one who sees the visions, and the only one who can add up the facts. So, when he gets it wrong, innocent, adulterous priests go to jail. It would be so lovely if this phenomena were not random, and if I were not desperately plucking at straws here, and if this would all be building toward something.

Maybe I don't have enough faith.

I didn't really buy that Sarah was going to throw away an entire relationship with Johnny and an entire future based on one lie. She has known him long enough to know why he would have lied about that. Sure, she's mad because he told Sheriff Turner-- but I don't think that would be a deal breaker for her. Though, as other people have noted, her kid hasn't even been baptised yet, and she is already making new plans with Johnny, even in her head? She and Walt were married for a long time. It's a little soon to be rushing that romance forward.

Ooh, somebody wanted to collect a debt from Walt. That is so ominous. If it were a *bad* thing, don't you think the guy would try to collect from the widow? And do you think he really would have told a SHERIFF he was there to collect a debt? Which would make him an employee of a bookie? And putting all of that aside, maybe he would be smart enough to ask a few questions about what happened to Walt's estate? Ooh, Walt had a cabin he didn't tell Sarah about. Big deal. This show is spinning its wheels.