Bellefontaine enters the train station as a siren whoops in the background.  In the office, another man is warming himself next to a pot-belly stove.  Bellefontaine tries to start a conversation, but the other man — Jones — doesn’t seemed interested.

The clerk in the station tells him the siren is coming from the Home for the Criminally Insane.  They had one go over the wall today.

Bellefontaine observes Jones’ tattered clothes, and the way he muses about the criminally insane as he fondles a fireplace poker.  He concludes that Jones might just be the escapee.  In a panic, he goes to the restroom and loads a pistol that he was carrying in his bag.

In the second act, Jones begins ruminating on the possibility that Bellefontaine is the escaped lunatic.

And that’s when he developed his drinking problem.

There are lots of voice-overs as we hear each man’s rationale for believing the other is the escapee.  I’m not sure if it helps the story that we know neither of the men is the escapee, but maybe there is no other way the story could be told.

It is just a very dull slog. Bellefontaine gives a good performance, but the episode’s strength is that unnerving siren that periodically whoops in the background.

The titular danger here is being bored to death.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch: Only bit-player David Armstrong seems to be among the living.
• Jones was Danny Noonan’s father in Caddyshack.
• Last episode of Season 2.