Everybody’s Got A Story: Ravenswood “The Devil Has A Face” Review

This week on Ravenswood our living members of the fated five experienced relationship woes. This was of course alongside their attempts at coming together and solving the town mystery before another one of them winds up dead.

“The Devil Has A Face“ begins with Miranda traveling through the Ravenswood graveyard, perusing the headstones. She stumbles upon a ghost girls meeting that dissipates after seeing Miranda – and breaks a headstone in half. She runs to Caleb with the news: she might have seen Abbie. Caleb’s mind is somewhere else though.

He’s been juggling working up the nerve to talk to Hanna and dealing with the reality that his life has gone from weird to dangerous in a matter of days. He wants to speak to Hanna, but he knows she’ll come straight away if he spills – something he doesn’t want after the several near death experiences he’s had.

Caleb isn’t the only one still reeling from the previous night’s close call. In fact, Remy, Luke and Olivia are all still visibly upset. The teens meetup with Caleb to discuss what they should do. Luke doesn’t want to deal though so instead he tries to talk Remy into hanging out. However, now more in it than ever she’s in it with the mystery – just like Caleb. On a more adult note, Miranda’s uncle runs into Rochelle and Olivia as they are leaving the coffee shop for a doctor’s appointment. During their conversation, he spills the beans about some “party damage” at the house, but more importantly their awkward conversation suggests that Rochelle and Raymond may be closer than we think.

While the other three teens dig deeper, Luke creates more distance. This disconnect is affecting his school performance. In order to get his grade up he participates in a school play. Unlucky for everyone, Tess – Olivia’s ex bestie – is also in it. Tess takes some alone time to express how sorry she is about what happened between her and Olivia.

Back at the graveyard, Caleb witnesses an old woman taking flowers from a grave and approaches her about it. This woman seems shocked to see Caleb and when he inquires about it, she reveals that his relative, Henry is still alive. Remy jumps in to help Caleb find his relative through the Gazette’s subscription list. As they get ready for a visit, they both encounter ghostly hands, a white sheet and a gravesite. Instead of running (which is totally the logical thing to do), Caleb lifts the sheet and discovers the word “Go” drawn into the dirt.

Unlike before they get a move on it and wind up at Henry’s retirement/nursing home where they play a game of chess with the older gentleman. Henry does not give them very much other than the eery phrase “You’re careless, boy. You have to pay more attention to your moves.” It would seem like Caleb’s moves aren’t the only ones we should be paying attention to. While “practicing” for the play, Luke and Tess have a pretend kiss. Luke gets upset, but perhaps it’s not simply about the indiscretion.

Olivia heads over to the Collins place to talk to Caleb but bumps into Miranda instead. While hanging out, we learn that Olivia’s father was stabbed to death. Olivia and Miranda decide to snoop. so Miranda floats around Ray’s office and is there when he returns. What he coincidentally (or perhaps not so) reveals while there is a knife. Could it be the knife used to stab Olivia’s father? This might explain the weird interactions between Raymond and Rochelle earlier in the episode. Maybe Rochelle was having an affair with Raymond. Miranda then takes Olivia to Raymond’s office and it’s there that they find creepy jars of hair, one of which includes Miranda’s. Miranda gets angry and breaks the jar, then disappears. Olivia is left to sort out the shaking jars and eventually she runs.

Henry, Caleb, and Remy are fated to meet again as the old man shows up at Caleb’s with a set of keys. They go to school where they wander around the basement and conveniently unlock one of the doors. In the room they find a box that one of the keys fits into, but it breaks off when they try to open it. Miranda makes her way to the school where she approaches Luke in an attempt to find Caleb. Luke isn’t too pleased by everyone’s sleuthing at the school, but he’s lucky they are there. While Luke is busy still being upset, a piece of steel almost falls on him, but Caleb saves the day by pushing him out of the way.

Pictured (L-R): Tyler Blackburn, Brett Dier, Britne Oldford, Merritt Patterson — Photo by: © 2013 ABC Family

This appears to the final near death straw for Luke, something well illustrated when he stops by Remy’s to tell her about Tess. Remy just can’t hear it, so she makes him leave. Caleb is busy handling Raymond and the jar hair. When Caleb goes to confront Ray, he finds that the jars are no longer there. He goes back to his room and in a fit of anger throws one of the boxes he brought back from the school’s basement. It flies open and that is the last thing we see.

Four episodes in and it has become a bit more clear how slowly the story is moving. Not that Ravenswood needs to move at a lightening pace. The horror aspect of the show creates quite enough pulse pounding moments. However, there seems to be amidst all the weird things happening very little development. Watching feels very much like a “day in the life of” video. There also don’t seem to be many answers, which is perhaps partly why the show’s pacing seems off. The mystery is one of the best parts about the show (and is quite frankly the series’ largest storyline). However, viewers remaining as in the dark as the characters has resulted in a nagging desire or general lack of plot line satisfaction.

Two separate love triangles are being established, though it’s unclear why. They have some interesting characters with dramatic backstories yet to be explored. With the teens’ lives being so linked to the curse, time might be better spent letting us see that connection on screen. Luke’s development in particular seemed a little off this week versus prior episodes as well. He went from the together and honest twin, to the totally falling apart twin. One plus of the episode was getting to see Miranda interacting with characters who weren’t Caleb.

Overall this episode, while revealing seemingly important clues, felt more like filler because of how unclear those clues were. Crossing our fingers that next week’s reveals will be a bit more illuminating and jump start this show’s fun mystery plot line again.

Catch Ravenswood Tuesdays at 8:00 – 9:00 PM ET/PT on ABC Family.