Yahoo News Is Evil’s [Spoiler] Gone for the Foreseeable Future? Show Bosses Robert and Michelle King Weigh In
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Evil Season 4, Episode 4, “How to Build a Coffin.”
This week’s Evil featured a very close call that almost ended with a Bouchard family member’s death.
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Under hypnogogic suggestion from Leland, Kristen’s husband, Andy, came thisclose to injecting their youngest daughter, Laura, with a drug that would stop her heart. At the absolute last minute, he was able to overcome the demonic mission by sticking the hyperdermic into himself, giving himself a near-deadly cardiac event. Kristen found him, and the needle, in time to get him to the hospital and save his life. But when he woke up, she assumed that she now had unavoidable proof of the drug habit his doctor suspected a few episodes back.
“I think we need to look into an addiction-treatment program, Andy,” Kristen gently told her husband, who immediately refused. “It’s something else. It’s something worse,” he said, admitting that even he had no real idea what was going on. But on one point, he was clear: “I need to stay away from you and the girls.” Then he announced that he was going to check himself into a psychiatric hospital in upstate New York, citing the need for “separation” from his wife and children.
The break was so affecting — and felt so big — that we immediately asked series co-creators Michelle and Robert King what this development means for the rest of the Paramount+ drama’ final season. For starters, is Patrick Brammall, who plays Andy, leaving the show? Read on for their answers.
TVLINE | Let’s talk a little bit about Andy’s trajectory in the first part of the season. Will he have a presence past Episode 4, maybe in spirit, if not in Patrick Brammall’s body?
MICHELLE KING | A little of both.
ROBERT KING | Yeah, both. First of all, Patty’s such a good actor. If you’ve seen his other show, he’s very funny. So, you know, he’s so often the hated guy on this show which —
MICHELLE KING | But not by us!
ROBERT KING | — not by us at all! But I mean, he’s a good person to have around. Obviously the difficulty for us is that he has another career, so we grab him when we can.
TVLINE | There’s a lot of back-and-forth in the first four episodes of the season about how Kristen and Andy are feeling about each other. When faced with what happens at the end of this episode, though, how is that hitting her in a way she maybe thought it might not?
ROBERT KING | You know, part of this is based on [the fact that] you deal with a lot of directors in this business. And directors are journeymen and journeywomen who have to travel long distances, stay on a show for months or weeks, and then go home. And we were talking to a director who was saying how difficult it was to go back home and how often you didn’t fit into the family. The family had a working relationship, especially if you were on a movie that could have [had you] three or four months away.
Based just on how difficult it is, and how it takes a psychological toll — and here it has the added problem because of something going on in the plot that makes him really alien to this family. So, I think it’s slightly tragic for Kristen that he can’t fit back in, but also maybe a bit of a relief, because she at least has a system without him.
And he just still seems like a little bit of a frat-boy guy. I’ve always thought of him as someone who didn’t quite know how to be a dad or disciplinary dad, you know? Kristen has been running the ship on her own. [Laughs] You know, with difficulty.
What did you think of the episode? Hit the comments with your thoughts and predictions for the rest of the season!
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