The Disappearance Season 1 Episode 6 Review: Redemption
Dale McGarrigle
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I guess justice was served, in a karmic way.
In the end, Anthony was rescued but Henry didn't live to see it on The Disappearance Season 1 Episode 6.
Henry took Anthony's hope at a real family away from him 35 years previously, so David, even in death, found a way to take Henry away from his family as well.
Did Henry, who had been a good man for much of his life, deserve that end for that one horrible decision in his past?
It seemed harsh to me.
As a prosecutor and then judge, Henry was accustomed to seeing the worst in people.
He assumed that the genes of Jason Dodd, who had raped Maggie, would result in David becoming a bad seed.
David growing up in the house of a drug addict who eventually overdosed certainly couldn't have been a plus in Henry's eyes either.
Related: The Disappearance Season 1 Episode 5 Review: Burial Ground
But what about the half of David that was Maggie?
It comes down to the nature-versus-nurture argument. Would growing up in a loving home have helped to curtail any darker impulses he may have held?
And you have to wonder about a 13-year-old boy who can sit there and write a letter to his biological mother asking to be adopted with her overdosed adopted mother dead in the next room.
It could just be that he compartmentalizes well. It could be he was a psychopath, as Henry kept claiming. Staging the hanging of the orphanage bully with Price suggests the latter.
It was obvious that David grew up to be very smart and made a good life for himself despite all the obstacles he had overcome.
He likely would have continued to be a contributing member of society if Henry's big lie hadn't been exposed.
Henry did a horrible thing, lying to David and telling him that Maggie was dead, then letting the state take care of David.
But deciding whether to take in David should have been Maggie's call. Henry always referred to her as fragile but all the flashbacks suggested a strong, confident woman who had overcome that rape in her past.
The fact that she had started to look for her boy that was adopted, and even met him while she was dying, reinforces that notion.
So Henry robbed David of the opportunity to truly know his mother, brother, and sister. Luke and Catherine would have liked having an older brother to shield them from some of Henry's crap.
Having Henry for a father, as Luke could testify, was a mixed blessing.
There's no doubt Henry did a terrible wrong to David, who was at that time an innocent boy in need of help.
He was more concerned with doing what he thought was right for his nuclear family than what would have been beneficial for David, who he saw as a reminder of what Dodd had done to Maggie.
But does that give David the right to do what he did?
Not hardly. Not only did David kidnap his half-nephew, whom it seemed he grew to like, but also he inflicted emotional pain on his brother and sister, as well as Helen, who were collateral damage as he fired at his real target, Henry.
What he did to Catherine, the most innocent and caring of the bunch, was especially cruel, manipulating his sister's feelings.
Granted, a part of him had come to hate Luke and Catherine because they had gotten to be part of the family from which Henry had excluded him.
Might Henry still be alive if he hadn't gone rogue and shut out the police for as long as he did when everyone was closing in on Price and Anthony?
Related: Peter Coyote on The Disappearance, His Complex Character, and His Long Career
It's hard to say. David had had too long to plot his revenge against Henry.
What's sad is that Anthony actually inserted himself into David's plan because of his natural curiosity.
When he was out researching his neighborhood for his school project, he observed Price mutilating and burying cats, then followed him home, breaking into that house.
Fortunately, when David came home, Anthony skittered to the basement where he saw something he shouldn't have.
David spied Anthony fleeing, caught up to him, and pretended to be a police detective to pump him for information.
Based on what Anthony told him, David altered his scheme, abducting Anthony instead of Henry himself. Henry would do anything to get Anthony back. Anything.
As, sadly, he ultimately proved, giving his life for his grandson.
Unfortunately, the Sullivans were following the commands of a dead man for much of this episode. Only they didn't know that the injection David had given himself on The Disappearance Season 1 Episode 5 had killed him.
That left them with Price performing the tasks that David, his only friend, asked of him and Anthony reading the next clue to them.
In other words, the Sullivans could have brought in the police at any time and Price would have been none the wiser.
I'm betting that if SWAT had gotten there before the Sullivans, Henry would still have been alive, sparing the family at least some pain.
It was Henry that had to solve the clue about where he had abandoned David, reliving what would turn out to be one of the worst decisions of his life, one that inadvertently caused his family two years of hurt.
Henry did what he had to do to save Anthony and paid for his sins in the end.
Both Henry and David ended up dead but David died from natural causes at least, the same cancer that took his biological mother.
Damn, this was a gutwrenching series.
Even the villains weren't black and white but instead shades of gray. Both David and Price were abandoned by society, and the Sullivans ended up paying for that.
To follow the narrative again, watch The Disappearance online.
Did Henry deserve to die?
Did you feel bad for David at all?
Will Anthony bounce back after all he's been through?
Comment below.
Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.
