The following contains spoilers for Bad S3E2 “The Meme Demon (directed by John Dahl and written by Davita Scarlet)

So it turns out that even if you’re a priest, you can still hate your job sometimes. Bad S3E2 “The Meme Demon” finds David trapped in a montage of frustrating situations and people, from a woman in confession admitting she hates her husband for leaving the dishes in the sink, to the other priests at the dinner table in the process. to sip their soup in a way that evokes one of my favorite jokes Index.

This week brings some tantalizingly complex mysteries, brought in first by Vatican Secret Service member Victor LeConte (Brian d’Arcy James) just kind of…scary looking out the window in David’s room until David returns. Not scary at all, man. Actually, I quite like LeConte. He’s so mysterious, James is delightfully odd in his performance, and the idea of ​​a Vatican secret service scratches a very specific itch I have involving religious espionage and the invisible cogs of the political machine. Catholic. I really hope it will become a staple this season.

True to form, LeConte is reluctant to share anything beyond the smallest details. David’s name drops ‘The Entity’, which is also referenced in a book focused on Vatican espionage research I looked up on Amazon, although LeConte denies its existence in favor of friends and correspondents. of the Vatican. I was also perked up when David inquired about RSM Fertility.

LeConte challenges David’s chosen vocation, deflecting David’s doubt about what God wants and frankly addressing David’s boredom, his sparse congregation – and asks David to say “yes” to being a friend of the Vatican, and by proxy , to perform the acts of their Secret Service. Again, LeConte is such a weird dude, but when he mentions the evil in New York that isn’t just spiritual, but bodily, we know he’s telling the truth. He tells David that he will be getting a call in the next few days, and David cannot share the details with anyone, not even Monsignor. Asked later about LeConte, David denies having met. Already, David is torn between his new role and being a “friend of the Vatican”.

Of course, sworn to secrecy by LeConte and eager for answers about the Vatican Secret Service and how they might be connected to RSM, David can’t really share anything about what’s going on with Kristen or Well neither. LeConte’s phone calls can come at any time, and of course they come at the most inopportune times, forcing him to rush through other adventures with his friends.

These tasks are really weird – one involves David delivering the last rites to a dying man in a hotel room, though his real task is to retrieve a postcard from the room. After the man breathes his last and David discreetly takes the postcard, one of the man’s guards insistently stuffs a $100 bill into David’s breast pocket. David finally gets some answers from LeConte, who tells David that while David deals with spiritual evil, he deals with human evil: murderers, tortures, etc. – and the dying man, a “messenger”, had been poisoned. This season has already seen a few callbacks to past seasons, and it turns out that the postcard and money may lead to the location of another messenger, S1’s Grace Ling, who went missing in her home country. I was surprised that LeConte shared as much as he did, but he didn’t share so much that the mystery dissolved. I guess this is the start of a Vatican Secret Service information flow.

I’ll be honest, I buckled in my seatbelt as soon as I saw that the title of this week’s episode was “The Meme Demon.” Demons? Memes? ON WRONG? “The Demon of Memes” borrows heavily from some of the superstitious Slenderman lore, though here the meme is “Visiting Jack.” Visiting Jack is a demon who, once he grabs you, forces you to stay inside unless you complete one of his “Licks”. One of these Licks is to shout “Captain Kirk is Christ!” at a priest’s, whom David had the joy of enduring several times in the confessional.

Lynn’s friend Ren has worked on the Licks before and is convinced he’ll be dragged to hell by Visiting Jack if he doesn’t finish them within seven days – and Jack has done the same in seven houses, killing the residents if they don’t complete the Licks. There are some particularly spooky moments this week, as our heroes jot down the addresses of each of the seven houses and look them up on Street View. In each of the photos of the facade of the houses, there is a character with a blurry face. As they scroll through each photo, the character moves closer and closer to the camera, until he’s directly in front of him, his face still out of focus. I knew where it was going as they were still parading, but it was still a nice little thrill to see the final image with Visiting Jack seemingly staring directly into the lens.

This week seemed like one of those rare weeks where the resolution is relatively simple. It turned out that the whole “Visiting Jack” meme was just that – a meme, concocted by a homeless ex-student and the Street View driver, picking out the locations in which a murder or suicide took place. producing and coordinating a photo shoot. I was kind of hoping for more ambiguity, and maybe we’ll find out a bit more about Jack later, but at the same time, I have to remember what LeConte said, that sometimes people are just cruel. It also turns out that one of the houses in question was that of Orson LeRoux, which means that Kristen is still not off the hook for the murder of the man, and as the widow of Orson, the death remains unsolved.

Kristen and Andy discuss finances, and they realize that the current price Andy is targeting to sell their trekking business isn’t going to cut it. Meanwhile, Laura is applying face cream in the upstairs bathroom when a plot of blood comes out of the toilet. Looking later, Ben is unable to find any more traces in the toilet and suggests there might be something in the pipes. Cursed shrunken head, perhaps?

We know Leland is really, well, Wrong dude, but this week he adds another reason to hate him by recruiting Sheryl to basically be an internet troll, keeping people doomscrolling and reading about the latest political controversies, global warming and the plagues of *cough*, because it prevents them from turning to God. And yet, Michael Emerson is so good at playing this character that it’s impossible to resist the magnetism of his performance. Leland tells Sheryl that every day he will bring her a “mission” and she will want to question it, but shouldn’t, because she should just do the job. It’s an interesting parallel to LeConte recruiting David: LeConte gives David complete freedom over whether he wants to continue performing Vatican duties, and even ends up giving up some information when David presses. This lends some credence to the fact that LeConte actually wants to do good, as opposed to Leland’s craving for dominance and mayhem.

Speaking of Leland and Sheryl… Edward is back and he wants to buy the Bouchards’ trekking business for a lot more than they originally expected. The only catch is that Edward wants Andy to come back for another trip for three months to show him how to make it work. This request is at the request of Leland and Sheryl. It’s probably partly revenge for Andy kicking Sheryl out, but probably more just to get Andy out of the picture again. Now I’m starting to count Andy’s days again, and I’m very afraid that he won’t come back from his trip – it can’t not hints that Kristen laments being a single mom and tells Andy, “Don’t die.”

What a fun episode! (He says weekly for the next eight weeks, probably.) BadThe mix of weird and scary, the balance between real-world lore and supernatural legend, and a generous dash of camp and dry humor, continues to fire on all cylinders. With things starting to jump back to previous episodes and seasons with increased frequency, there’s a lot more for me to bite my teeth into each week as old threads are picked up and unexpected things are tied together. We’ll see what next week brings.