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Damien: Episode 6 ‘Temptress’ Lures Us In Then Collapses

By John Gustafson

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Episode 6 of Damien was full of excitement, but it may have been all for nothing.

WARNING! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!

For being a show that’s about someone who may or may not be the anti-Christ, Damien had been relatively tame in the first five episodes of its debut season. There had been a few gruesome deaths and exciting sequences but for the most part you weren’t thrown into a consistent whirlwind.

Now we arrive at episode 6 of Damien titled “Temptress” where we’re locked into 60 straight minutes of nonstop action and twists. But did the episode gives us what we wanted?

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Episode 6 begins with an ambulance driving across a bridge and then Damien waking up in a hospital. With Ann already at the hospital and Detective Shay on the way, Damien sneaks out and meets up with Amani at a club. At the club, there’s a tattoo artist who also works at the VA hospital where he saw Damien in the previous episode. Damien meets with the guy who tells him that a few months ago, two men brought an unconscious Damien to him and he was forced to tattoo “666” into his head.

With Damien starting to unravel the conspiracy that he believes Ann has laid out, he meets with John at his office to try and get more information on her. The two go back to the hospital where Damien’s doctor tells him she found a drug in his system that causes hallucinations. Damien puts together that she’s been drugging him and getting him to believe in the false idea that he’s the anti-Christ. John admits that he played a role in allowing Ann to get so close to Damien at a young age but vows to “take care of Ann Rutledge personally.”

“I thought I told you last week to stop calling me ‘Hershel’.”

The following day, Damien meets with Ann where he confronts her about the fake birthmark on his head and all of her lies. Damien retreats home where he has Simone come over. The two share an intimate moment and kiss before Amani shows up and interrupts. Damien had Amani follow Ann after she left their meeting and he shows him pictures of her talking with John shortly after. Now Damien begins to fear that he’s being double-crossed by both of them.

Damien goes back to John’s office and steals a file with his name on it. Inside the file, he finds a phone number and address to his original mom from The Omen. That’s right, Katherine Horne is alive and well. I beg readers to stay with me here as you’ll get an explanation.

Still at her house, Damien’s mom explains to him that people told her Damien had died and that Ann had purposely kept the two apart. As the two are catching up, Ann arrives at the house. She attacks Damien’s mom which leads to him trying to break it up but in doing so, he pushes his mom down the stairs.

This staircase scene is just as painful to watch as the infamous one from The Untouchables. Ann, in her icy tone, tells Damien she won’t tell anyone he killed his own mom which prompts him to go after her. As he attempts to choke the life out of Ann, her two henchmen show up try to sedate Damien but he fights them off and escapes.

Which one will blink first?

Unsure of where to hide, Damien races to Simone’s apartment and tells her his mom died. She doesn’t provide the comfort he’s looking for though. Instead she tries spinning this as a good thing and compares it to when Kelly died telling him, “Now, I’m getting all the things I really want in life,” as she touches his chest and moves in closer.

Feeling uncomfortable, he leaves and sees Amani meeting with Ann at a restaurant. As he spies on the two, Shay picks him up after hearing about Damien’s mom dying. Trying to prove his innocence, he takes Shay to meet the tattoo artist but he’s lying dead, having been stabbed by the daggers.

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Shay places him under arrest and drives Damien to a remote street where he calls John. John gets into the car and reveals his true involvement in the plot. Shay and John step out of the car to game plan but they’re attacked by the old woman Damien first saw in Syria way back in episode one.

The woman turns her attention to Damien as she goes after him (I have to say that this scene was horrifying, check it out below). Shots of Damien trying to fend off the woman are intercut with shots of him fighting off two doctors as it’s slowly revealed that this was all a dream. The same shot used to open the episode of the ambulance is shown again here and the two paramedics with him are Ann’s lackeys who “attacked him” earlier in the episode.

Damien, now waking up in the real world hospital (or what we’re supposed to believe is reality) is greeted by Ann. He basically tells her to go f%&* off and wishes he had killed her.

So let’s circle back to what I had mentioned before: what did we learn from this episode? Anything at all? You may have thought you were getting a lot of new information in the first 55 minutes but that all came tumbling down in a classic “Gotcha!” twist that I don’t care much for. The whole “it was all just a dream” turnaround is so played out and has lost its surprise.

I usually don’t talk about the preview for the following week’s episode but since we don’t have much to discuss let’s look ahead. Although everything we saw from episode 6 was a ruse, it looks like Damien believes there’s some truth in his hallucination.

The preview for episode 7 shows him calling out John on lying to him about his involvement with Ann. Two images though are really popping out at me from the preview. First, there’s a shot of Damien wielding and crucifix-looking axe. Second, a man falling out of a shower with his back completely blooded. Maybe next week we’ll get some real life, rather than fake, action.

Next: The Walking Dead: Top Ten Heroes

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