'Possum' is the wildest, best episode of Cape Fear since the premiere

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Spoilers below for Episode 6 of Cape Fear . New episodes stream every Friday on Apple TV.

“Possum” is the funniest, most unhinged episode of Cape Fear yet and the best episode since the show’s premiere. The sixth entry of the Apple TV series has, to paraphrase beloved SNL-cum-cultural icon Stefon, a bit of everything: shared family acid trips, rodents in the walls, a secret passage, pig ears, a burning toe, and a stolen cat named Peanut Butter. It all adds up to a completely bonkers hour of television that deftly blends camp and dread.

At its core, “Possum” is a series of bottle episodes rolled into one. In the aftermath of the revelation that Max Cady has moved into the house across the street from the Bowdens , we’re treated to an extended flashback of Max’s time in prison. Immediately after he was beaten senseless by a white supremecist gang – who he then, in turn, brutally murdered – Max is more-or-less adopted by a heretofore unseen elderly inmate (we’ll call him Padrino, the Spanish word for godfather, since that’s how Max refers to him later in the episode).

In a scene straight out of Darren Aronofsky's 1998 psychological thriller Pi, Max undergoes invasive brain surgery (complete with a drill!) before being inducted by Padrino into the “Sons of Changó”– a mysterious religious order that may or may not be the reason we keep seeing candles and altars pop up throughout the series.

Back in the present, the Bowdens are taking Max’s threats seriously. They upgrade their perpetually broken home security system. Tom and Anna tell the kids they’ll be tracked at all times, much to Natalie’s chagrin. Tom seeks the advice of a fellow lawyer about what can possibly be done about Max’s supposed harassment. There’s nothing to be done of course. Chalk it up to lack of evidence and political pressure.

Next, we get a series of quick scenes (Max gets a threatening phone call; Max helps Natalie confront the nosey podcaster who harassed her before; Anna intimates that she knows about Tom’s infidelity; Natalie has a dream where Zack puts his thumb in her mouth) before arriving at the best set piece of the entire series to date.

Lounging at home during a sultry evening after their air conditioning breaks, the Bowdens begin acting strangely. After confronting Tom about his “almost” affair, Anna sees the wallpaper move. Tom quickly realizes that the whole family’s beverages have been spiked with the acid he’d been microdosing “for stress.” What follows is a beautifully shot, superbly acted sequence that’s at once tense and hilarious.

After the acid kicks in, Tom and Anna hesitate to call the police because they are paranoid the kids might get taken away. Zack moans that he can’t come downstairs because “the stairs are too big for him.” Tom ponders if he should grab his shotgun for no reason at all. To top it all off, Anna’s anger management counselor (with whom she’d been having a video call) may have overheard the whole thing. Soon, a drone flies into the house and Tom and Anna ponder whether it’s real or a hallucination before Natalie pulls out Tom’s shotgun and blasts it to smithereens.

It’s an amazing scene, a one-act play within an episode laced (pun intended) with slapstick and paranoia. Every element, from the music to cinematography, coalesceces into a technicolor feast that unearths suspicions, builds drama, and reveals buried character traits.

The next morning, a now sober Anna and Tom barge across the street to confront Max. As he prepares and then eats a dinner of pig’s ears, Max disarms them, reveals he stole their cat, and kicks them out of his house. Max jokes (maybe not) that he had his dead wife’s eggs frozen and wants Anna to carry his child. He then demands that Tom and Anna both stop practicing law and offer a public apology as a way to repay him for everything they put him through.

Tom demands he leave the Bowdens alone only for Max to tell him, “You’ll have to kill me.” “I know,” Tom replies, setting up the inevitable final showdown in the season finale. The sequence is straight out of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a simmering, threatening bit of acting and scene construction.

Next, we’re plunged back into Max’s time in prison. It’s some time later and Max has fully immersed himself into his prison cult/religious order. Soon, he confronts Padrino and reveals he knows that Padrino let him be beaten by the gang so that he could collect Max as part of his order. As you can imagine, the realization doesn’t sit well with Max, who murders Padrino with a prison shank.

We then flash ahead to the present where Tom (finally) asks the question we’ve been screaming since the premiere: Did Anna sleep with Max back when she was his lawyer? She vehemently denies it, only to be interrupted by a blaring smoke alarm and fire in the family’s unfinished den. Tom puts it out quickly, only to discover Zack’s severed toe at the top of the burning pile.

Zack and Anna rush to Zack’s room to find him sitting in his closet next to the opening of a — wait for it — secret passage! They realize that Zack, not Max, was the one who spiked their tea and Tom rushes into the passage only to FALL THROUGH THE FLOOR and crash land into a hideout where someone has been living. Anna frantically smashes the drywall only to reveal a possum. But, this being Cape Fear, you know that can’t be the only thing hidden in the walls.

As the possum scurries away, Tom pushes out of the wall and is snatched back by a straight-out-of-a-horror-movie hand, which belongs to Neveah. She quickly attacks, only to be smashed upside the head with a paint can by Anna. The episode ends with the camera following a trail of Zack’s bloody footprints leading across the street to Max’s house.

It’s a truly wild end to an excellent episode after a somewhat sagging middle run. “Possum” pulls off the feat of answering many burning questions in an entertaining, surprising way and propelling the story forward. The story breathes in and out throughout the entire hour, with top-tier comedy leading into quiet drama followed by gonzo action.

Throughout the episode, I was never quite sure what would happen next and was constantly surprised that whatever DID happen was completely unexpected. While it’s not perfect (we’re still bogged down with weird side stories, like Max’s desire to open a restaurant, and often blocked from knowing too much about characters’ true intentions) “Possum” is a brilliantly acted, sometimes uproarious thrill ride that hopefully serves as an episodic template as the Cape Fear barrels toward its finale.