Popular Culture Review 30.2
with Marion with an ambivalence suggesting that the sheriff of Villefranche may suffer from a lingering psychosis . In other words , the viewers are left with the possibility that , in finding the mayor ’ s daughter ( or in thinking she has done so ), Laurene has suffered a hallucination inspired by the three horrifying nights that she spent chained to a mountain twenty years before Marion ’ s disappearance . If it is Missoffe ’ s intent to use this scene to show Laurene ’ s mental instability , then the hysteria that verges on madness that the imaginary Marion seems to experience is a projection�or replaying--of Lauren ’ s own memories of her three nights of terror . In this sense , Lauren ’ s descent into the caverns becomes a metaphor for her descent back into her own inescapable personal hell , in this case memories of the three nights of horror that she spent chained to a mountainside .
The probability that Laurene may have experienced a delusion becomes even more likely in the eighth episode . In this final episode , Laurene finds the dead Marion Steiner in a swamp contaminated by a toxic waste that has prevented her corpse from decomposing . In fact , the coroner ’ s report sets the probable date of Marion ’ s murder at some time before the sheriff ’ s descent into the caverns . Again , toward the end of the eighth episode , now driven by the need to know the truth about the mayor and by the suspicion that the mayor has been using her , Laurene stumbles upon a large quarry pit containing the beginnings of what promises to become a huge toxic-waste plant , one that the mayor and his father plan to supervise . This discovery validates Laurene ’ s suspicion that the mayor has been carrying on an affair with her only to prevent her from uncovering a project that will contaminate the drinking water , drive the inhabitants from their homes , and increase the Steiners ’ wealth and power . But the discovery is followed by the series ’ ending horror , as Laurene
220