Evil Doubles Down on the Insanity in Winter Premiere

Oh, so you thought Evil would ease you back into its quirky little horror show after the holiday hiatus? That’s so cute. No, instead, Evil doubles down on the insanity with its trippiest episode to date. How could anything be trippier than that ghost rave at the commune, you ask? Well, “Room 320” picks up soon after David Acosta’s (Mike Colter) brutal assault outside the church at the end of the winter finale, once he’s in the hospital, and friends, that dude is hella drugged up.

Speaking of hell, guess what hospital David is admitted to? Harbor Hospital. You may remember this particular hospital as “that place where the Maybe Angel appeared on security footage and helped David discover that the doctors were racist.” Yeah, that place hasn’t gotten any better. Like, not even a little bit. The first sign of problems occurs just as David wakes up and comes face-to-face with a Father Douglas (Michael Mulheren), who leaves a rosary for him and tells him that if he needs anything, to flip over the crucifix. Father Douglas then goes to visit David’s hospital roommate Harlan Zephyrs (Marcus Callender), an amputee, and the two share a laugh.

It’s fairly normal, but then things get really weird: Now alone, Harlan starts screaming out before warning David not to call the nurse, who he refers to as Nurse Plague (Tara Summers). Harlan warns David that black patients die in hospitals all the time from “accidents” because of people like Nurse Plague. She’ll kill them and take their medical bracelet as a trophy. Apparently, Nurse Plague likes to control her patient’s pain meds and will drug them to keep them quiet and for other fun medical-related activities. David will know her by her squeaky shoes. Sure enough, there are squeaks coming from down the hall and they’re getting closer. Has squeaking ever been so anxiety-inducing?

Mike Colter, EvilPhoto: Gail Schulman/CBS

And then there she is, Nurse Plague. Or, Linda, if you prefer. Honestly, I haven’t decided which name is more terrifying. She pumps him full of pain meds all with a smile on her face, and eventually David passes out again. Who should appear to David but Grace Ling (Li Jun Li), our deported Prophetess. She tells David that he doesn’t need to be afraid and oh yeah, to remember the Euler Triangle and also the scripture verse Matthew 13:25. It’s all very cryptic, even for a weird pain med-induced dream state and maybe next time Grace could be just like 8 percent more helpful. Then she goes and gets stabbed by a creature that in my notes I referred to as the “Meat Monster,” but if you have a better name for a dude with a face that looks like it was made out of melted lunchmeat covered in gaping wounds, please share. That fun little moment is followed up by David watching Nurse Plague suffocate Harlan to death with a pillow.

Oh, and then the opening credits play. So, yeah, this episode is a ride.

When David wakes up the next day, Harlan is alive and well and also has his legs because what is even happening here? David struggles to figure out what’s real and what’s a fever dream and honestly, we do too. Harlan advises David to start getting his pain medication orally instead of through the drip Plague controls, but when David rips out his IV, Plague just puts in a new one, tapes it up so it’s harder to remove, and continues to pump him full of drugs. This happens all day long — Plague makes sure to really knock him out with drugs when his friends come by with news of his attacker so he can’t talk to them — so that we’re all primed and ready to go for another night of horrors at Harbor Hospital.

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This evening, the Meat Monsters, with the help of Father Douglas, are roaming the halls and taking patients away as sacrifices — and that includes Harlan. Thankfully, Grace shows up again and tells David that he just needs to make it to noon and then another nurse will take over. Oh, and again she stresses the importance of Matthew 13:25. So, that’s definitely going to be a big deal at some point. When David asks her if this is all real or not, she tells him it is a dream, but that “not everything real is true and not every dream is false” which again is super unhelpful. It’s like, work on your drug-induced dream state appearances or get to steppin’, you know?

While David continues his hospital stay from — possibly literally — hell, his friends are trying to figure out who attacked him in the first place. Kristen (Katja Herbers) enlists the help of her friend Detective Mira Byrd (Kristen Connolly) and when Mira notes that David was calling out “Ghana” while with the paramedics, Ben (Aasif Mandvi) knows exactly what that means. They had a possible possession case involving a coder named Richard Ghana. He doesn’t have much intel, but knows someone who does — a woman named Judy James (Megan Ketch). She was the Kristen of their team before Kristen came along, Ben says. Well, that’s news to everyone, including Kristen, who looks, dare I say, hurt? Jealous?

Katja Herbers, Aasif Mandvi, EvilPhoto: ELIZABETH FISHER, CBS

Whatever it is, it definitely rubs her the wrong way. And when we meet Judy — who is so paranoid from all she saw on the job that she refuses to leave the house on Fridays, an excuse I will now adopt — that feeling doesn’t ebb in the least. Judy wants to help David, and so gets Kristen and Ben to Ghana’s old roommate, who informs them that Ghana is now hopped up on “flakka,” something described as “worse than bath salts,” which is totally what you want to hear about the guy you’re trying to take down. They also learn that Ghana was obsessed with an augmented reality game he was building about a… haunted girl. Do you know what his avatar name is? ROSE390. Richard Ghana is Rose390, guys. Evil with all these callbacks tonight! If this is how the end of the season is going to go, we are IN FOR IT.

Well, at least now Ben knows how they can find Ghana: He has to go back into the Haunted Girl game.

Because the fun just never stops: We head back to Harbor Hospital. The morning after the Meat Monster Parade through the hospital, David wakes up to find Harlan really gone and that Father Douglas has left him a bible. This is perfect because he can find out what the heck Grace Ling deems so important about the bible verse she repeatedly told him to remember. It reads “But while the man slept, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.” Dear lord, even the answers to Grace’s clues are confusing. David has some bigger problems at hand, so he tucks that page away in his bed frame and gets to ripping out his IV one more time.

The good news: The new nurse is there! And she is nice and helpful and doesn’t want to addle David’s brain with medication. She tells him she’ll get him the oral meds and keep him off the drip and yes, sure, she’ll grab his phone for him. The bad news: Plague is still around and she stops all of this just as David thinks he’s been saved. She, once again, shoves the IV in his arm and this time, wraps his hands up with medical mitts and turns up that dosage. BUT DAVID WILL NOT BE STOPPED.

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David uses his mouth to put pillows on the ground below him, turns up the volume on the television, then hurls his wounded body onto the ground, and crawls across the room to his phone, reopening his wounds and leaving a trail of blood. WITH HIS MITTS ON, he struggles but finally calls Kristen and is able to eke out “Kristen, help, help” before Plague arrives and shuts the whole thing down. You guys, I will never go to a hospital now and this is coming from someone who has watched all sixteen seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. I don’t care if this is real, a dream, true, or false; here is where I draw the line.

Thankfully, the call is enough to alarm Kristen. She leaves Ben and Judy in her office as they work on figuring out where Ghana is by getting Rose390 to show up in Haunted Girl. Which, by the way, they do, once they trick Rose390 into showing them where he lives. Mira arrests Ghana — definitely out of his mind — and finds the knife he used to stab David. We shall take our wins where we can!

Katja Herbers, Mike Colter, EvilPhoto: Gail Schulman, CBS

And we definitely need one, because once Kristen charges into the hospital — blowing past Plague, who is trying to stop her — she discovers a blood stain on the floor and finds David totally out of his mind on drugs. But Kristen is smart (duh). She goes to David’s bed and he hands her a note right in front of Plague. Kristen leaves, but Plague menacingly follows her to the elevators. She wants to know what was on her patient’s note. Finally, Kristen has her. The note was nothing but scribble, but the fact that Plague wanted it, tells Kristen everything she needs to know. She’s calling in the big guns here: She’s calling Dr. Boggs (Kurt Fuller).

I cannot express enthusiastically enough how much I love that Dr. Boggs always gets called in to save the day. He is a prince. He walks into this hospital, sees how over-medicated David is and gets things done. Mainly, he scares Plague off and then tells the doctor that people will be sued if this isn’t corrected. Plague is gone, but when Kristen and Boggs are taken to her locker, they find an entire collection of medical bracelets hanging there, including, sadly, Harlan’s. Her trophies, just like Harlan said there would be. You’ve got to assume Plague is one of Leland’s (Michael Emerson) demons, but still: What was real and what was fake? Will those Meat Monsters show up to ruin my dinner again? Regardless, at least, for now, David is safe. Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to last for long.

Evil airs Thursdays at 10/9c on CBS.