‘Tell me a Story’ Season 2 Episode 5: Did Olivia escape too soon? This cannot be the end of Tucker's story
Spoilers for ‘Tell me a Story’ Season 2 Episode 5, ‘New Pages’
This dark thriller series that originally aired on CBS is taking strange turns. Especially with the Tucker storyline. As we already know, Tucker, played by Paul Wesley, obsessively stalks and later captures and imprisons a woman called Olivia Moon (Danielle Campbell).
Tucker had lost his sister when they were young and to compensate for that hole in his life, he kidnaps women and holds them against their will, so as to feel some kind of normalcy. He feeds her. Talks to her warmly. And with the exception of one occasion where he loses his temper after she tries to escape, he is nice to her (all things considering). He treats her like a muse of sorts. He needs her help with writing. Not just for material, but also as a form of addiction. He likes that he can see her trapped in his basement. He can sleep better knowing that she’s there.
But in episode 5, things get complicated. Tucker’s fiance Maddie (Odette Annable) finds a piece of paper in his home that has Olivia’s name and number on it. When she asks him who that is, Tucker tells her that she worked for the publisher who he was writing for. But Maddie gets suspicious because Tucker has been behaving strangely for days. When she snoops around, she finds out that the publisher has no one called Olivia working there.
In this confusion, Maddie tells her friend and colleague Brendan (Harry Shum Jr.) about this. This is tricky because Brendan was Maddie’s ex-boyfriend and he doesn’t seem to like Tucker a whole lot (naturally). So, he gets on Tucker’s case and tries to confront him. While Tucker makes an excuse and leaves -- he sees in his surveillance camera feed that Olivia is trying to commit suicide by strangling herself with the chains that hold her. Tucker rushes back home and tries to stop her but she puts the chains to his neck and begins to strangulate him.
At that very moment, Brendan arrives, knocks Tucker out, and frees Olivia, who runs. But before Brendan can run, Tucker wakes up and knocks him out. But as he runs outside, Olivia is nowhere to be seen. So, this raises the show’s stakes considerably.
Given that this is only the middle of the season, one can be sure that Tucker is not going to meet his end just yet. So, what are the possible things that can happen? For one, he lives way out of the city so Olivia may not be able to reach far on foot before Tucker gets to her. But in the unlikely event that she does manage to notify the authorities, getting caught and arrested hardly seems like the likely ending for Tucker.
Is it possible that Olivia will in turn come back for revenge? While that would be a callous move, it may just help lengthen the plot. After all, with five episodes remaining in the story, there is much left to happen. At the same time, Tucker also has to do something about Brendan now. He may have knocked him out, but will he also kill him? He has, after all, seen his deepest dirtiest secret, and will no doubt tell Maddie if he is set free.
We know that Tucker is capable of murder so that’s not out of the picture. Will Brendan then lose his life to this dangerous gamble? Only future episodes will tell.
New episodes of ‘Tell Me a Story’ Season 2 air every Tuesday at 9 pm ET, only on The CW.