'The Sinner' Season 3 Episode 4 Review: Jamie's maniacal urges finally reveal the mystery behind Nick's death
Spoiler alert for Season 3 Episode 4: 'Part IV'
In a very poignant moment from the fourth episode of The Sinner's Season 3, Jamie Burns (Matt Bomer) points out detective Harry Ambrose's (Bill Pullman) penchant for saving lost, tragic souls looking for a way out - something that ends up being the defining element of an episode that exhibits Ambrose's babysitting expertise.
'Part IV' of this season's murder mystery shows Jamie's evolution into a maniacal psychopath as he embraces his inherent violent urges while also dancing around a pattern of flashbacks and nihilistic outbursts from the new father who can't seem to move on from the recent death of an old friend. But beyond the speculations of Nick (Chris Messina) continuing to have a firm psychological hold on Jamie and the manifestation of Jamie's guilt after letting Nick die, the episode highlights the extent of Jamie's loneliness. He is desperately seeking a thread to hang on to - something he finds in carrying on Nick's legacy.
The episode kicks off with one of its many pivotal flashbacks from the night Nick died. Nick and Jamie are drinking at a bar and Nick expresses his shock over Jamie hiding the pregnancy news but doesn't hesitate to draw him in once again with the temptation of having everything sorted in his car. The flashback, as we will find out much later in the episode, leads to the two of them digging the grave in Sonya's estate and that's right where we learn about Nick's elaborate plans for the two of them: kill a human. The moment he hears of it, Jamie freaks out but Nick assured him he would never lie to Jamie and that he would be by his side till the end.
Nick is able to justify this urge to kill and to face death as animal nature. In his defense, he sites how animals kill every day and god doesn't shun them for that. According to him, the paper game he plays with Jamie at the beginning of the flashback which is all about fate, luck, and chance is the only way to approach life and be free of the inevitable ultimatum. And by the looks of it, the idea has now seeped into Jamie who somehow feels compelled to continue the game as that's the only way he can feel the truth and also Nick's presence from beyond the grave.
In his pursuit to feel the truth, we find Jamie walking along deserted roads, taking a train to New York, visiting random art galleries, standing on the ledge, considering taking the step and more. In all of this, the only constant is Ambrose tailing him, practically babysitting him because if Jamie acts out, it will be on Ambrose. Jamie's suicidal tendencies have been there for a while now but just walking into traffic doesn't cut the mark anymore. He needs more to satisfy the unquenchable thirst for what lies beyond death and he does that by befriending middle-aged men and wing-manning his way into coke and liquor parties in hotel rooms, confronting them for no reason at all - acting out like an edgy teen, who Ambrose so rightly puts is just angry at the world, while quietly imagining going on a full homicidal spree on all of them to unleash the lonely beast within.
It all pretty much boils down to Jamie's wife, Leela Burns's analysis: everything Jamie does is coming from a white man's sense of privilege that he tries to mask as painful loneliness and being consumed by guilt over watching his former lover die. Jamie's suicidal maniacal tendencies see a spike when he attends an afterparty at a former student's place and is confronted by a shaman type clairvoyant who can automatically sense a lost friend's essence attached to Jamie's soul. Jamie bolts from the room immediately and decides to head into the night with his student but instead falls back to Nick's games of facing death and he does that through the same stunt Nick expectedly pulled the night his car crash.
By this point it has been revealed that Jamie and Nick's game of facing death involved driving a car at full speed on the highway and not stopping for anything, thereby leaving it all up to fate and chance whether they would survive. Their car crashed and Nick forced Jamie to not call 911 as the territory he was slipping into was beyond any other pleasure, and that's why Jamie watched him die - helplessly. While Ambrose's constant tail stops Jamie from actually causing any harm after the speed-bender he takes his student on, it doesn't escape our notice that Jamie is constantly a threat to any life around him all because he wants to give up on his own so bad, but can't bring himself to do anything about it. Our concerns are answered the very next scene when Ambrose finds out the shaman from the party has been murdered.
Jamie's explanation of this nihilistic beast he can't contain anymore is loneliness. He asks Ambrose if the older man can feel it in his own guts too, but at the same time, he is also clinging on to the last flicker of hope that he hasn't gone insane. In that, Jamie - manipulated with the promises of a facade - can't stop honoring the last man he considered the most honest of all. But in all of this elaborate quest for feeling the truth and venturing into a great beyond, the fact that it's not just Nick's hold on him and probably something way more inherent that completely fails to register in his psyche. It's not the lack of order and reign of chaos in the universe that's propelling him towards embracing the danger he thinks resides in every human and that will bring forth his tragic downfall.
'The Sinner' Season 3 airs on Thursdays at 10 pm only on USA Network.
