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 in 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 appealing to both people who want the procedural comfort and escapism of weekly cases and those who crave long-arching plots and intrigue.

There’s a larger arc at play simmering in the background, and it’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 recollecting 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 may have had too much to drink, and somewhere amid this black-tie event, she found him stabbed.

These fragments of memory are interesting because they speak to the unspoken guilt and heaviness she seems to carry.

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: 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 you can mark me down as a viewer who is reeled in by 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 would be more impactful if they actually spent time together in the same room.

There’s almost a clumsiness to these phone conversations.

Part of it is likely that they tend to talk on the 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 do a 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 more easily.

But truthfully, a lot flows more easily 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 incorporate him even when some of the cases and situations Anna is solving or in don’t exactly call for him.

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

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

When she happened 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 to dig into her father’s past and learn he had a record and that 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 Anna Pigeon so far is that it has a lovely escapist quality, and the scenery and overall feel lend themselves 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 he could either buy his land for $600K or find another way 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? Sound off below!