Anna Pigeon Season 1 Episode 2 Finds Its Footing and Puts Down Roots

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

4

It’s worth sticking around! Of course this sentiment applies to both Anna Pigeon the series and the character.

Anna Pigeon Season 1 Episode 2 has Anna immersing herself into the community whether she realizes it or not and being the voice of reason in a tragic familial dispute.

And with the second installment, the series starts to settle into itself as it figures out what it wants to be.

Anna Pigeon is striking an interesting balance right now.

It’s both appealing to people who want the type of procedural comfort and escapism that comes with weekly cases and those who crave long-arching plots and intrigue.

There’s a larger arc at play that’s simmering in the background and that’s the one where we figure out what happened to her husband.

It’s probably the plot point with the most allure. We know she’s been grieving his loss for a while and his murder has gone unsolved.

That Anna is plagued with nightmares where she’s potentially recollection what happened that night suggests that she likely won’t get closure until she has the full story.

It seems like she and her husband were having a lovely night at a gathering, wherein she maybe had too much to drink, and somewhere amid this black tie event, she found him stabbed.

These fragments of memory are interesting because it speaks to why she seems to have this unspoken guilt and heaviness that she carries.

There’s also a matter of trying to make sense of who killed her husband and the larger plan.

The series has already hinted at the idea that there could be an unfinished component to her husband’s death.

And the premise is ripe for the taking that just as she actively chooses to plant roots and she’s making genuine efforts to move forward, the past will catch up to her.

I suppose that means that you can mark me down as a viewer who is reeled in with the serialized season-long mystery.

Every flash of her past from that night has me trying to piece things together and pull out any significant clues.

It’s clear that maybe if Anna can figure out that night, she’ll find the type of peace that Molly has been trying to push her towards.

Speaking of Molly, I love the dynamic between the sisters, but I suspect it’s one that would be more impactful if they actually spend time together in the same room.

There’s almost a clumsiness to these phone conversations.

Part of it is likely the fact that they tend to just talk via phone and don’t FaceTime as much.

You can sense that Molly is the well-meaning and protective older sister.

But structurally, their conversations feel more like Molly penciled in a conversation with a client whom she speaks to when she’s on her way to another patient.

It makes their conversations feel forced and obligatory rather than organic.

However, it was nice to learn more background on the Pigeon sisters.

Anna is amusing in that, when she shares anything at all, she does so with such a casual affect that it makes people double take.

It’s peak millennial.

She casually talked about her parents abandoning them for days and Molly having to be the parent to her since then with the casualness of someone describing the weather.

And only then was that revelatory piece of lore shared because she was using her own experience to make sense of the case.

It’s an improvement on the expository dialogue from the Anna Pigeon series premiere.

It’s not as choppy, and it flows easier.

But truthfully a lot flows easier when it comes to Anna interacting with Stanton. They have my favorite chemistry thus far.

His being a Fed with resources comes in handy, and you can sense that he genuinely cares about Anna.

I am curious how the series will find ways to incorporate him even when some of the cases and situations Anna is solving or in doesn’t exactly call for him.

Not that I care whether they have to for creative or not. Any Stanton is great Stanton for me.

In this case, we had Anna fully invested in a complex family matter that didn’t have the happiest of endings.

When she happend across Mandy, her father, and her brother in the forest, things were “off.”

Finding Mandy near the water when they thought she was missing led Anna down a path of digging into her father’s past and learning that he had a record and the kids’ grandmother was searching for them.

The entire situation was sad and came down to a man trying to honor his sick wife’s wishes and a mother trying to keep her daughter alive as best as possible.

Cervical cancer is horrific.

At some point, Mandy’s mother didn’t want to keep attempting all the scientific options, and instead opted for medicinal herbs, the healing aspects of nature, and a desire to spend her final days with her family.

I felt awful for the kids. Their mother died at their camp, their father was reverting to some of his troubled behavior to desperately keep his kids and keep the grandmother and law away.

And grandma wanted what was best for her grandkids but let her emotions get the better of her.

The standoff between a father and his mother-in-law, bow versus gun, with the kids watching was heartbreaking.

The entire situation was.

What’s been interesting about the Anna Pigeon so far is that it has this lovely escapist quality to it, and the scenery and overall lends itself to a lightness.

But it actually isn’t a light series. We’re two deaths in already. There’s a lot of darkness, grief, trauma, and more.

Not to mention the pervasive, creeping darkness that comes with Jeremiah.

Listening to him stronghold Miller into giving up his land was nauseating.

The greed and entitlement… all of it is vile, sickening.

He told Miller that he could either allow him to buy his land for $600K, or he could find another avenue to get it.

But basically, he’ll have it regardless. He gave him the illusion of a choice.

He’s certainly a virus in the community, isn’t he? Gives me the creeps.

Campfire Confessions:

• Anna and Jesse are growing on me.
• She’s actively taking steps toward letting her guard down for him, and he’s creating a space for her to do it without sacrificing his needs.
• Anna and her sexy underwear… I loved her making the mailman blush.
• Shirtless Jesse? Really nice to look at.
• The obsession with the Eagle camera feed was amusing. Are people really locked into footage like that?

Over to you, Anna Pigeon Fanatics!

Are you enjoying the series thus far? Are you more into the weekly cases or the mystery of Anna’s past? Sounds off below!