Witches of East End 2.08 “Sex, Lies, and Birthday Cake” Recap

Out in the woods, Frederick digs his knife into the third innocent person he’s captured in hopes of finding a host for the king. Unfortunately, this person isn’t a suitable vessel and Tarkoff slits their throat rather than risk having them cause additional collateral damage. He then suggests that maybe the next choice should be someone closer, someone that whole-heartedly trusts Frederick and would be willing to let themselves go as a result. The following day turns out to be Freya’s first 30th birthday, so Joanna surprises her with pancakes and talk of a party meant to make the occasion one to remember. However, Freya is too busy having a delayed quarter-life crisis, worrying about losing her soul mate and not really having a direction in her life; Frederick also isn’t too keen on the idea of the party, though he chalks that up to exhaustion rather than being forced to comply with Tarkoff’s wishes. He does remind Joanna that he and Freya don’t even have the same birthday anymore after the number of regenerations she’s had over the past four centuries, but that doesn’t get him out of the party, not when he’s not been around to celebrate his birthday in such a long time.

While Ingrid heads over to Dash’s in order to talk, only to see that he had a one-night stand that was still there, Eva’s grandmother Alma shoves food at her son-in-law, telling him that he’s a big boy and that he should continue to eat up. He reads her thoughts, though, and hears that she doesn’t like cooking for him; he also gets a not great response when he tells Eva that he’s bar tending at Freya’s birthday party. When he leaves, Alma chastises Eva for not being pregnant yet, even though Eva tries to explain that Killian has built up a tolerance to the potion she’s been forcing on him for quite a while. Back at the Beauchamps, Wendy comes in from getting some morning sun while in her cat form and inadvertently outs herself as a witch to Tommy, who was standing in the living room with flowers after having been left in by one of the girls. Wendy is forced into telling him the truth about being a witch and scares him away when she begins talking about how there are more than just her in East End.

She goes to Joanna about the issue and gets lectured with information from the witches code the Beauchamps all abide by. If a mortal finds out about their powers, they’re to do a memory wipe on them so that the person will forget they ever existed, but since Wendy likes Tommy a lot and doesn’t know how much time she has left, she wants to keep him in the fold. That can’t be, though, because of the history the witches have of being persecuted by mortals and the danger he puts himself in by keeping this knowledge; even if he doesn’t blab all over town about there being Witches in East End, if another witch finds out that their cover has been blown, Tommy will have a gigantic target on himself and his young daughter. Before Freya’s birthday festivities are to begin, she goes to the bar and orders a drink from Killian, who proceeds to flirt with her by attempting to read her mind and complimenting the peach dress that she’s wearing. However, she removes herself from the situation before things get too hot, taking her drink with her for the long road ahead.

When Frederick and Tarkoff head back into the woods, the former plays possum long enough to get a clear shot at the latter, which he uses to stab the telepath in the chest and leave him for dead. Frederick then heads to the party where he encounters Killian for the first time and it seems that one of Killian’s many lives took place in Asgard, as Frederick vaguely intimates that there was a betrayal from the bar tender and warns that he should stay away from Freya. Also at the party, Freya confides in Ingrid about Killian’s flirting, while Wendy bumps into Tommy while playing pool. Killian approaches Freya while she’s with her group of friends and gets her to come to the store room with him, where he confesses that he still loves her, that he doesn’t know why he married Eva, and that he thinks about her every single day. She rebuffs his advance, though, by informing him of their star-crossed status – that they’ve had multiple lifetimes to try and get it right, to no avail. At the bar, Caroline presents Frederick with a gift of Danish liquor, only for the moment to be ruined by the presence of Tarkoff. When he gets Frederick alone, the telepath reminds the boy of the power he’s up against and implies that Caroline might be the person to use for the king’s host body.

Dash arrives at the party looking to apologize in person to Ingrid for what she saw that morning. He has an ulterior motive, though, in that he wants a chance to be with her romantically – a chance he’s afraid to have blown due to her seeing the other woman. Outside, Killian finds Freya and learns more details about the tragedy that their love life has endured over multiple lifetimes. Though she tells him she loves him for the first time, she ultimately walks away from the possibility of being with him due to the inevitability of their demise. That is, until she turns around and runs into his arms. Back in the store room, Wendy takes Tommy to Bali by using her powers of illusion and as the two make love on a hammock that she conjured up, Frederick, Ingrid, and Freya do the same with Caroline, Dash, and Killian, respectively, with Frederick in his bedroom, Ingrid at the Gardiner estate, and Freya on a bed outside. Freya gets Killian to agree to talk to Eva, as he claims to want to do their relationship right, while Frederick spikes Caroline’s drink with the same drug that he saved his mother from.

At the bar, Tarkoff makes a move on Joanna, telling her that he’s envious of her life – the marriage, the children. He always wanted to be with her, but where she was the daughter of the king and he was low in the Asgard caste system, he didn’t have the courage to make a move, though he was happy that she ended up with a man like Victor. She confesses to still not feeling the brunt of Victor’s absence and Tarkoff assures her that the man will love on through the people he knew and the people he loved. After Ingrid and Dash gather their wits following their first time together, she gets up to e-mail Freya thanks to a dead cell phone battery and stumbles upon every article about Kyle Hutton’s death and photos of the marina encounter with Killian on Dash’s computer. She quickly puts together that Dash murdered Kyle and William and when he tries to rationalize that their deaths will help him save innumerable lives, she tells him that he means nothing to her and leaves. Wendy and Tommy return to the Beauchamp residence and she admits that she was supposed to spell herself out of his memory banks in order to protect him. However, she doesn’t want to do that and he doesn’t want to not have a say-so in something as big as that; he refuses to leave her behind, even if it goes against the code, and she seems relieved to have someone accept her way of thinking.

As Eva tends to Alma, who’s been staying with her due to an illness, the latter mentions that she’s going to hang on as long as she can, hopefully until the former can get pregnant by her new husband. Eva then comforts Alma and reassures her daughter that she loves her. While Killian, who drank some more of Eva’s potion, goes to the bar and lets Freya down gently, saying that their night together was a mistake, Frederick ties Caroline up to the bed frame and uses a tie as a blindfold. He gets her to admit that she trusts him, breaking out the knife and applying numbing Mandragora venom to her sides. Before he begins carving into her torso, he tells her that he loves her.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-“You can’t end every discussion by turning into a cat.”
-“I suggest you rot in hell.”
-“Alright, show me what you got, Glinda.”
-So, Dash is this brilliant doctor, but he leaves evidence of Kyle’s murder and the altercation with Killian on his computer’s desk top? Not even still on his hard drive – just out in the open, giving anybody who comes into his house the opportunity to learn his secret. I mean, I understand that the show had to spill the beans to Ingrid, but that felt a little clumsy and convenient.
-On the other hand, the Eva/Alma twist was kind of brilliant. There’s an air of meta commentary there (Bianca Lawson looks younger now than she did on Buffy) that tickled me, in addition to being genuinely surprised at this being the direction that Eva’s storyline is going. I figured that a Killian baby either related to his past in Asgard (e.g. his bloodline being particularly noble/powerful) or her own megalomaniac tendencies (e.g. wanting to have a super powerful child), but this was more interesting than either and could become quite poignant depending on the choices made from here on out. I was tentatively into the Eva/Killian dynamic before this episode, but now I’m completely sold.
-I’m glad that the show didn’t allow Tarkoff to go down that easily. I buy that Frederick was desperate enough to think that stabbing him would end things once and for all, but that would have been such an underwhelming way to end this storyline. Not only would it have been a waste of James Marsters, it would have been the second storyline that felt prematurely cut off (the other being the Mandragora), calling into question the season’s structure and pacing. However, keeping Tarkoff around put some pressure on Frederick that manifested itself in interesting ways and I’m curious just how far he’s willing to go in his bid to manipulate Joanna and whether the mind games he’s playing with Frederick could eventually endanger her.
-This is my semi-regular reminder – what happened to Leo? Was Freddie Prinze, Jr. a nightmare to work with? Or is this just the biggest dropped storyline/character in the show’s brief history? At least Barb (finally) got a mention tonight – Wendy hasn’t uttered a peep about Leo this entire season and that’s so strange to me.
-One thing about Eva and Alma that I found interesting: they were speaking to each other in different languages (e.g. Alma was speaking Spanish after hearing Eva speak in English). It’s not the first time I’ve seen this particular device (spoiler alert: it happens in the version of Jane the Virgin‘s pilot that I saw), but it’s something that
-Next week on Witches of East End: Tarkoff takes revenge against Frederick, while Freya confronts Killian, Ingrid gives Dash an ultimatum, and Wendy’s relationship with Tommy proves to be dangerous for both parties.