The Crowded Room Episode 2 Review
The Crowded Room: Episode 2 – 8.5/10
This episode pics up directly where the 1st one left off with Danny being in the ghost house with Yitzhak. We get to see the aftermath of Danny getting beat up. Yitzhak tells him he is allowed to live with him as long as he follows his rules. Danny decides to stay and tells his stepfather and mother who eventually let him. I didn’t really touch on it much in the first episode, but it is implied that Danny’s stepfather might abuse him due to Danny being scared and flinching around his stepfather anytime he got near. So, it was not a surprise that he decided to avoid his parents. Also Danny and his friends sold weed to help Danny get a date with a girl who he met at a party. Final thing I missed in the first episode is that yes Danny got beat up after getting another kid blamed for his weed.
Now that we are all caught up onto episode 2. The beginning of this episode presents an important choice for Danny as he choses to stay with Yitzhak instead of returning with his mom and step father. At the time of writing this I am 4 episodes in and we have yet to see the full consequences of this action taken by Danny. This episode really puts Danny on a new path. One that we will continue to witness the evolution of for the next few episodes at the least.
This episode’s focus is primarily the development of Yitzhak and Ariana as Danny is now living with them. Yitzhak, as we learn, is rarely there as he travels for work. This allows us to get to know Ariana. At first she barely speaks to Danny, but after Danny hosts a party where the two make out with Danny’s crush, Annabelle, they then begin to form a friendship. We get to learn that Ariana also had a troubled past that we have yet to learn about in it’s entirety but she is a partier who comes home late and who Danny hears crying quite often.
I think their relationship is quite interesting as Ariana becomes a driving force for Danny’s actions. He has been a passive character for the most part anyways but Ariana really seems to be able to shift his focus and draw his attention to things and I think that this will be important for how Danny ends up holding that gun that we see in episode 1. We also see Ariana go into a bar and have sex with a man she knows, so it gives us a glimpse into more of her life which is interesting.
Overall, I thought this was a pretty important episode that allowed better character exploration of Danny as well as Yitzhak and Ariana who will be important for the crime that started this whole thing off. While I thought this episode was important, I did find it slower than the first and not as interesting as the first which left me disappointed. I hope it starts to build the intrigue once more.
