Candles In The Dark
Episode 3 of Hold Tight starts with Michal frustrated and taking his anger out on the bins. Take that, recycling day! In all seriousness though, Michal and Anna are worried, given they still haven’t heard from Adam. Just then, Michal receives a call from the police station confirming they’ve found Adam’s wallet. As they head into the police station, the couple check it over and notice it’s bloodstained. Is it Adam’s? That’s unclear right now as the police haven’t done a DNA test just yet. What is clear, however, is that there’s definitely some foul play going on here. At this point, it’s safe to assume they’re both going to declare Adam missing. Interestingly, just prior to this the police receive a visit from Renata’s worried husband, who declares his wife missing. Quite a few disappearances here aren’t there? Maybe the police should put something out to the rest of the community to let them know? Anyway, Kaja is also concerned and prints out a whole bunch of flyers, convinced that something’s happened to Adam. She knows Adam and this long without contact is not normal behaviour. Kaja isn’t the only one putting up flyers though, as several other friends from school do the same thing. Anna eventually catches up with Beata, who believes adamantly that Adam is responsible for Igor’s death. She also points out that Adam couldn’t even look at her in the eye last time they met. In order to retrace their steps, Beata and Anna head off together to the spot where Igor was found. This happens to be an abandoned swimming pool, but they find candles all laid out in the exact spot where his body was. Was this Adam’s doing? Beata believes so and, given the flashbacks we saw earlier, it would make sense too. If you’ll remember, back in episode 1 we saw Adam and Igor in some sort of disagreement in an area that looks just like this during brief flashbacks. While this is going on, someone reports an abandoned vehicle which has been left in the parking lot of a motel for two days. At the same time, a woman heads in to a pawnbrokers looking for a tablet. She even offers up sexual favours in order to get that information. She eventually obtains it and hands it over to that cap-wearing guy we saw before. They receive a crucial name in their hunt: “Nikola Reszke.” Anna meets Pawel and requests his help to dig deeper into Igor’s death. As they head to the underground club location, the man she fought with that night just so happens to walk past at that moment. What are the odds! Anyway, Anna decides to follow him but loses him and eventually heads home emptyhanded. Anna shifts her attention across to Laura, the school psychologist. Laura reveals to the couple that night that Adam was full of rage and believes something happened that stopped him from trusting adults. And it seems whoever is behind this, it stems from this codename of Guru. The bouncer outside the underground club believes that this Guru is actually the name of a youth center. When she and Michal arrive, they find the familiar paintings up on the wall (the same ones from Adam’s room). At Guru, they begin asking around and eventually find a woman there by the name of Joanna. She was actually providing therapy for Adam. She too opens up and breaks this whole patient/doctor confidentiality agreement by admitting that Adam was not happy with how controlling his mother (Anna) had been. Anna obviously doesn’t take this well, leading to Michal trying to comfort her. As the episode reaches its crescendo, the deceased is officially identified as Marianna. The strange man and woman from before kidnap Nika as she leaves her friends. At the same time, Anna receives a message from Adam’s phone.
The Episode Review
So now we have this mysterious man and woman kidnapping people and trying to find information on Anna, despite her actually being dead. But then at least they’re not dancing about like Team Rocket (a reference to the last Coben adaptation on Netflix, Stay Close!) The mystery itself is quite good, although it’s slightly bemusing how the police haven’t intensified their search given how many people have been reported missing in this town. There’s no press conference and not really much urgency either, which does beggar belief in a way for how the police are handling this. Despite that, there’s enough to sink your teeth into with this and it’ll be interesting to see where the story will go from here. It’s not perfect, and it’s definitely not the best Coben adaptation, but if you’ve made it this far, you’re going to want to see this through to the resolution.
