Millennium 4C10: “The Wild and the Innocent”
The Millennial Abyss | Episodes | Season One
“The Wild and the Innocent” (4C10)
Written by Jorge Zamacona
Directed by Thomas J. Wright
Edited by Stephen Mark
Aired January 10, 1997
Summary
A murder case takes Frank Black to Missouri, where he begins the pursuit of a killer traveling cross-country with a mysterious young woman on a desperate quest.
Epigraph
“O Lord, if there is a Lord, Save my soul, if I have a soul—”
Synopsis
Maddie Haskel, twenty-years-old and heartland pretty, attends her mother's funeral in Joplan, Missouri. After the service, Maddie returns to her family's home, where she is approached by a vicious-looking man named Jim Gilroy. Gilroy's attempt to rape Maddie comes to a sudden halt when Maddie's boyfriend, Bobby Webber, emerges from the shadows wielding a length of iron pipe. After Gilroy is knocked unconscious, Bobby and Maddie drive off into the night with their prisoner safely tucked away in the trunk of their automobile. A Missouri State Trooper notices the vehicle has a burned-out tail light and orders Bobby to pull over. When the trooper hears noises emanating from the trunk, Bobby grabs a .357 and shoots and kills the trooper.
Watts notifies Frank about the incident. DMV records indicate the automobile stopped by the trooper was registered to a Jim Gilroy. But Watts reveals that name is a pseudonym—and the real owner is Jake Waterston, a man who raped and murdered three nurses in 1992 and then disappeared. Accompanied by other members of the Millennium Group, Frank searches the Haskel residence for clues. He notices the word "Angel" scratched into a large- screen television, but is uncertain of its meaning.
Bobby stops the car on a remote backroad, pulls Gilroy/Waterston out of the trunk, and begins to beat him. He repeatedly asks Gilroy, "Where is he?"
A video camera mounted on the trooper's dashboard recorded the murder. After studying the tape, Frank realizes Gilroy is not the man who shot the trooper, and is unable to give frustrated police the name of the person who did.
Bobby breaks into a farmhouse and confronts the occupants, Mr. and Mrs. Nesmith. He shouts "Where is he?" at the bewildered and terrified couple. When the Nesmiths are unable to respond, they are gunned down. Realizing he had been lied to, Bobby pulls Gilroy from the trunk and threatens to kill him unless he tells the truth. Terrified, Gilroy reveals the information Bobby so desperately sought. Gilroy is forced back into the trunk, and the car is rolled into a pond. Maddie and Bobby steal the Nesmith's car and drive off into the night.
Police locate the submerged vehicle and pull it from the water. Inside, they discover Gilroy, who kept alive by breathing from an air pocket. He is transferred to a nearby prison and charged with the deaths of the three nurses, but Gilroy refuses to cooperate with the investigation into the trooper's death.
After reading a series of letters Maddie wrote but never mailed to her father, Frank concludes that Angel is the name of Maddie's son. A computer search of Gilroy's bank records reveals a deposit of seven thousand dollars made two months after Angels' birth. Frank realizes that Gilroy (who was dating Maddie's mother), sold the baby and then purchased a large screen television with the profits. Police search the records of a lawyer who brokered the sale and discover the name of the family who "adopted" the baby: Mr. and Mrs. Travis.
Armed with his .357, Bobby storms the Travis home and demands the baby be turned over to Maddie. But when Maddie takes the child from Mrs. Travis' arms, the baby begins crying. Deeply moved, and convinced the baby has a good home, Maddie returns Angel to Mrs. Travis. When Bobby protests, Maddie grabs his gun and shoots, killing him.
Starring
Lance Henriksen as Frank Black
Megan Gallagher as Catherine Black
Brittany Tiplady as Jordan Black
Terry O’Quinn as Peter Watts
Guest Starring
Heather McComb as Maddie Haskel
Jeffrey Donovan as Bobby Webber
John Pyper-Ferguson as Jim Gilroy
Michael Hogan as Captain Bigelow
James Gallanders as Missouri State Trooper
Steve Makaj as Arkansas Trooper Flanagan
John Tierney as Preacher
Renee Michelle as Adeline Travis
Jim Swainsburg as Sam Travis
Gina Chiarelli as Killean Marie Haskel
Jim Poyner as Mr. Fred Nesmith
Mary Black as Mrs. Nesmith
Production Credits
Production #4C10
Music by Mark Snow
Production Designer Sheila Haley
Director of Photography Robert McLachlan
Associate Producer Jon-Michael Preece
Consulting Producer Ted Mann
Consulting Producer James Wong
Consulting Producer Glen Morgan
Co-Producer Ken Dennis
Co-Producer Chip Johannessen
Co-Producer Frank Spotnitz
Co-Executive Producer Jorge Zamacona
Co-Executive Producer Ken Horton
Co-Executive Producer John Peter Kousakis
Executive Producer Chris Carter
Location
Book Excerpt
“Child molestation and domestic violence also came home to the suburbs in various installments of Millennium’s first, sterling season. It was not just the crime of the week, as some asserted, it was the immorality of the week, and Millennium—in strongly didactic terms—provided suburban America a bracing look in the mirror.”
—John Kenneth Muir
Back to Frank Black
REVIEWS
“A mini road-movie masterpiece.”
—Ian Calcutt
Cult Times
“Millennium offers up something very like a Bruce Springsteen song (particularly off his album Nebraska), and it’s either one of the series’ very best episodes or one of its very worst... There are elements of it that have a raw, emotional power, like the central story of Maddie and her Angel, but there are elements that are really ridiculous... What I like best about it is what I’m coming to like best about the series. It’s yet another episode that suggests the full weight of the evil in the show’s world, the way that it rises up and takes hold of people who otherwise would want to lead good lives and sucks them down into its grasp. Rather than completely side with Frank about evil being sui generis or with Catherine about it being the product of upbringing, the series suggests it’s a weird blend of the two: evil is a constant, but it needs damaged people to do anything.”
—Emily St. James
The AV Club