[For the previous entry, click here.]
The dashing Dr. Matt is forced to face the ugliness from his past when a drunken-driving accident involving a married couple in Trinity stirs the memory of the doctor's tragic loss of his own wife and daughter. Naturally, the supernatural sheriff of Trinity, Lucas Buck, is the driving force behind the recent accident--part of a fiendish plot to send the doctor on a terrible guilt trip. The ever-tempting Buck then tries to detour Matt (a recovering alcoholic) from the road of sobriety by proffering a bottle and promising
him "oblivion."
Meanwhile, young Caleb fixates on his creepy neighbor Mr. Emmett (shades of Boo Radley), who is spied digging a conspicuously rectangular hole in his yard and howling the name "Omar" at the moon. To the impressionable Caleb (just returned from watching a horror movie), Mr. Emmett seems to be burying a dead body in his pumpkin patch. Caleb ultimately is proven right, but Mr. Emmett is not the nefarious figure he seems, as the episode emphasizes the gap between appearance and reality. This American Gothic theme is further sounded when Caleb's cousin Gail tutors him about gardening: a plant with a sinister-sounding name like "snakeroot" isn't actually poisonous, whereas "the ones with the pretty names, they can kill you."
"To Hell and Back" ends on a seemingly heartwarming, all-dogs-go-to-heaven note, but Mr. Emmett's love for, and loyalty toward, his deceased pet is overshadowed by the act of small-town malice that caused the canine's death in the first place: someone put lye in Omar's food!
Once again, the small details form a large part of American Gothic's allure: as Dr. Matt experiences a ghostly flashback to the scene of his family's car accident, the audience is given a close-up of a Massachusetts license plate lined with the phrase "The Spirit of America." Of course, in the context of this television series, that slogan connotes much more than patriotic pride.
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