The Hunting Party Season 1, Episode 6 ‘Arlo Brandt‘ was a rollercoaster of emotions. To begin, Bex and Oliver have taken a large step toward rebuilding their relationship. In a shocking but not that shocking turn of events, he confessed a large bulk of information about the night of the blast to Bex. Originally, we believed that he would’ve waited until things were about to implode with his military officer and Hassani. But we were wrong and we’re kind of glad about that. We saw him open up more to Bex about Silo 12. Sure, we don’t know why he gave the lady the drive and that’s something to be suspicious of still. At the very least, Oliver finally wants to work with Bex on finding out what happened to the prisoners in Silo 12.
We felt some empathy for the escaped serial killers and the doctors in the prison. Which we didn’t really expect. Even if we felt it once before with Doctor Henry Dulles in The Hunting Party Season 1, Episode 4 ‘Doctor Ezekiel Malak‘. He was the doctor who resurrected Malak from death and fueled his savior complex. Dulles is now elderly and struggling with Alzheimer’s. He’s unable to recognize his own son. In this episode, we saw him experience hostile moments of disorientation where he acted out due to past trauma as a doctor in prison.
The Pit was a place that left accountability and consequence at the door. The military’s reasonings to build it were excuses to learn about the killers. The Pit had given everyone involved in running and living in the prison physical and emotional scars they can’t heal or hide from. Like Dulles, Arlo Brandt (David Ramsey) shares a similar strong response to trauma from his time in The Pit.
MORE: Read our review of The Hunting Party Season 1 Episode 5 ‘Roy Barber‘ if you missed it!
The Pit Did More Harm Than Good
“Unclutter Your Life, Unclutter Your Mind” is the mantra that taunted Arlo Brandt every single day in The Pit. Brandt was put into therapy to combat the obsessive hoarder tendencies that motivated him to kill with items he accumulated. Although, therapy isn’t necessarily the word we’d use to describe what happened to him.
The process of severe detachment therapy conditioned Brandt to change his way of thinking. He had to give up materialistic possessions from the outside world in exchange for food. Furthermore, The Pit gained power over Brandt to leave him unable to refuse their command. The doctors believed he would lose his passion for killing if he lost attachment to his possessions. At first, it looked like the conditioning had worked. Brandt had gone from angry and cluttered to feeling peace over his change of environment.
However, their total detachment from possessions made him evolve into wanting that sense of peace for his victims. A peace they’d only feel if they, like him, experienced the psychological torture of being told how to behave and please authority. What they did to Brandt in The Pit made him want to recreate the prison in the real world. He believed what happened in The Pit is what’s acceptable to do to people outside of it. And we weren’t expecting to feel empathy for killers that harm innocent people.
They’re not good moral people if they kill or torture people with no remorse. Sketchy and awful things would happen to them in a prison that shouldn’t exist. We saw Brandt put people in cages and condition them to follow his word with no chance to argue back because he felt that the same happened to him. That stung a little only because we have a heart.
MORE: Read our interview with Melissa Roxburgh and Patrick Sabongui on what makes Bex and Hassani work so well together!
Henry Dulles
Shane had met with his father twice in The Hunting Party Season 1, Episode 6 ‘Arlo Brandt’. It was bittersweet to watch as Dulles’s caretakers informed Shane that his Alzheimer’s was progressing and getting worse. As someone who loved Shane’s ability to uplift a scene with his jokes and wide smile, it was hard to watch the tears form in his eyes as he looked over his father.
The secret of Henry Dulles being his father is something Shane has kept close to his chest. And whether it happens willingly or not, Shane will have to confront this soon. Especially if he’s looking for answers to the questions he has. We don’t know what he’s talking about just yet. Therefore, we’ve tried to give him the benefit of the doubt because Hassani, Bex, and Oliver haven’t told him about Silo 12. He’s on the outs of that conversation. But, his secret, just like Oliver’s, is getting too big to keep to himself.
Why? Because Shane could be lying about Doctor Henry Dulles being his father.
After leaving Henry’s hospital room at the end of the episode, a young woman stops the nurse from leaving and asks if she knew who the stranger was who was just in the room. The woman told the nurse that her name was Sarah Dulles, and she hadn’t known Shane at all. If she’s telling the truth and is Dulles’s only child, then what the hell is Shane getting himself into? Why does he want to get close to Dulles? Why spend so much time learning the hospital staff if he doesn’t truly care about Dulles?
If the woman claiming to be Sarah Dulles is lying, then who is she really and what does she want? If Shane is lying, what is he hiding?
MORE: Read our review of The Hunting Party Season 1 Episode 2 ‘Clayton Jessup‘
Oliver’s Protectiveness Over Bex
This episode was Oliver’s breaking point in giving answers to Bex’s questions about the night of the blast and Silo 12. We’ve known since the beginning that he’s incredibly protective of Bex. He doesn’t want anything bad to happen to her. He almost never hides his emotions when it comes to her. And when she’s in trouble on the field, Oliver doesn’t hold back from letting everyone know that her safety is at the top of his list of priorities.
Oliver will tell her the truth if he truly cares about her, he’s shown. That’s what Bex tells herself because she wants him to act on his words. She had learned her lesson at the moment that broke them apart in The Hunting Party Season 1, Episode 1 ‘Richard Harris‘. Bex isn’t walking into things blindly with Oliver anymore.
Bex had given Oliver multiple chances to redeem himself and confide in her when she asked him to. She wants to trust him like he’s asking her to, but he isn’t making it easy. Specifically, Bex wants to work with Oliver but only if he’s honest with her. It’s something that Oliver realizes in the final stand-off between Brandt and Bex.
Previously, he had believed his feelings of care and protection had only been one-sided. Oliver didn’t want to bring her into the mess of knowing dangerous information about The Pit. He wanted to protect her from the military’s secrets. As long as she’s safe, he wouldn’t mind her believing the worst. He isn’t cold-hearted when thinking about her. Bex knows this and it’s left her reeling because, at her core, she knows he wants to let her in. Being distant is how he’s tried to get Bex to back off but it’s not working anymore.
What Comes Next?
Neither of them can fight the pull of wanting to lean on the other anymore. Bex heard Oliver when he was pressing Hassani to back her up once she found Brandt in the water facility. She heard the urgency in his voice. If anything happened to her, it would hurt Oliver deeply. That’s why it hurt us to see Oliver close to tears as Bex confessed to Brandt that she’s afraid of trusting someone she shouldn’t. The person is Oliver. He’s turned her away repeatedly when she has questions about The Pit.
It’s something he doesn’t want to do anymore because Bex was right. If they were to trust each other, he had to be the one to act first. This is how we end up with the two of them sharing lunch as he explained Silo 12’s connection to The Pit. We find out, along with Bex, that Silo 12 is where doctors would perform extreme therapy on select prisoners. Also, there was a select team of military officers who were let into The Pit on the night of the blast. It’s up to the team to figure out who let them in and why.
Bex and Oliver, despite not confessing about what’s on the flash drive he made, are now on the same side in this investigation. Hassani is hovering in the middle and we’re wondering if they’ll be sharing this information with him. If they share this with Morales and Shane, they’ll be a united front against the military officer and the attorney general. That would be perfect, wouldn’t it? We have a feeling something big is going to stop them from being successful.
What did you think about The Hunting Party Season 1, Episode 6 ‘Arlo Brandt’? If you have any thoughts about the show, leave your own review/rating in our The Hunting Party hub!
The Hunting Party airs on Mondays at 10 pm ET on NBC.
