[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Revival Season 1 Episode 3 “Reality Check.”]
It does seem like Sheriff Wayne Cypress (David James Elliott) and Blaine Abel (Steven Ogg), who sees Revival Day as his divine calling and uses the fear and chaos that has resulted to rally together “true believers” against the Revivers, will never see eye-to-eye on Revival. And Elliott very much agrees.
In the latest episode, Blaine tells Wayne they want the same thing, but the sheriff doesn’t think that will ever be the case. Blaine suggests he think about that. Wayne can’t imagine that ever changing, Elliott tells TV Insider.
“I don’t think initially he can [imagine ever seeing eye-to-eye with him] at all. I don’t think he can. I think that maybe down the road he may see a little bit of it, but those are two characters that just clash immediately and always,” he explains. “Wayne thinks he’s a whack job — and David thinks he’s a whack job — and Steven plays him so well. Steven’s terrific as Blaine Abel.” The two previously worked together on Heels, “so it was fun to work with him.”
It’s not just the two who have a history. Wayne also has a past with Blaine’s father, “so the history goes deep,” Elliott says. “It’s a small town. Now, I come from a small town, too, so this was very relatable for me. Everybody knows everybody in a small town. Everybody knows dirt about everybody in a small town, and there’s generally a lot of history with each other. And so that’s present in that relationship. The only time I’ve ever dealt with him being the sheriff has been in a professional manner. And it’s usually not always good. I just write him off as a fringe, wacky character that I hope I don’t have to deal with much. But if I do, it’s going to be pretty straightforward. And I’m not playing games with Blaine. Blaine is out there.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Wayne’s daughter Dana (Melanie Scrofano), in tracking down her sister, Em (Romy Weltman), whose Reviver status they’re keeping secret, crosses paths with the Check brothers (local drug dealers). Em got on their bad side when she was still alive, and the brothers find her at a concert where a fellow Reviver, on stage, cuts himself open (those who have come back from the dead during that two-week period heal from any wound they subsequently receive). Dana finds them, and she ends up tasing one of the brothers then, due to his rap sheet, arrests him and uses that to get him to call his other brother, Anthony (CM Punk), who insists he didn’t know who Em was until tonight. He didn’t kill her. And so Dana makes a deal with him that they’ll stay out of each other’s business.
“I don’t think she has any choice,” says executive producer Aaron B. Koontz of that deal. “Familial danger. Her son has been threatened. Melanie and Cooper, played by Hudson Wurster, are just so delicate when she’s in the bed at the end of that and she’s holding him because she’s also talking to Jordan’s parents earlier about what it’s like to love a child, and then this comes full circle on this episode. So she has to make the deal because her son’s being threatened: ‘That’s it, whatever. I don’t care what else is going to come with this. All I know is right now they’re threatening my son and I can’t have that happen.’”
Furthermore, the threat to Em remains. “It just adds those familial stakes. And I think one of the things about Dana is she’s instinctual,” Koontz continues. “We always talk about how Dana’s flawed. She’s going to have that gut reaction and maybe that gut reaction shouldn’t have been to tase him in that place right then. But at the same time, that decision was what felt right to her because her family was in danger. So she snaps into action, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. We’ll see what those ramifications are in the future though.”
What did you think of the latest episode of Revival? Let us know in the comments section below.
Revival, Thursdays, 10/9c, SYFY