Big Sky Season 1, Episode 2 recap: Danielle, Grace and Jerrie plot their escape

In Big Sky Episode 2, Cassie and Jenny search for the missing girls — and Cody. Danielle, Grace and Jerrie plot their escape.

The second hour of Big Sky wastes no time diving into the strange relationship between State Trooper Rick and kidnapper Ronald. After the shocking twist at the end of the pilot that saw Rick reveal himself as complicit in Ronald’s scheme and claim the life of Ryan Philippe’s character Cody, Big Sky Episode 2, “Nowhere to Run,” begins with Ronald cleaning up his mess. The first step is burying Cody and the Sullivan sisters’ cars in a big empty pit.

Cassie and Jenny are surprised when they get to Dewell & Hoyt and find that Cody isn’t there yet despite their continued search into the area’s missing girls. Denise says the last she heard of Cody was from State Trooper Rick, who is covering up Cody’s murder by claiming he went to investigate the cult, Church of Glory and Transcendence, “alone.” Cassie was supposed to go with him, so this news takes both women by surprise.

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Jessie starts to worry that Cody, an alcoholic, is off on a bender after Cassie broke things off with him. “Is he in love with you?” “I don’t know.”

At a rundown pit stop called The All In, Rick lectures Ronald about his recent sloppiness on the job. He’s supposed to take girls nobody will miss. “Dirty girls.”

Instead, he kidnapped two wholesome teenagers who have friends and family looking for them. That’s what brought Cody to Rick and Cody quickly latched on to the long-haul trucker path, hence why Rick had to kill him. Now Cassie is looking for Cody. “We got ourselves a predicament, Ronald.”

Cassie, Danielle and Jerrie are adapting to their situation, chained in the back of a truck cabin. Danielle is easily the most vocally stressed of the three. “This is like my biggest nightmare. I’m gonna be on Dateline.” Grace tries to calm her down by assuring her their mom has a tracker on her phone. Hopefully, it works. Jerrie might not have a tracker on her phone, but she does have some intel. She theorizes that Ronald is a very lonely man since before he zapped her, all he wanted to do was talk. “Okay, good. So how do we trade on that?”

On her way to meet with Rick, Cassie fondly remembers a cozy night with Cody. She taught him how to rope. “I don’t need to rope. Be it animals or people, I just call them over. If a man has charisma, he don’t need no rope. Seeing as I got you by my side, I must have done something right.”

Ronald returns home to his overbearing mother Helen. She’s pissed he didn’t call her back and lectures him about her worry. Irritated by his earlier scolding from Rick, Ronald snaps that truckers are the new American heroes because of the supply-chain crisis. Helen doesn’t appreciate his tone and then goes completely Psycho on us all. “Go back to your room and masturbate yourself while I make you some lunch, and you return with a better attitude.” NO MA’AM. On his way out, she notices marks all over the back of his neck.

Big Sky Episode 2 recap: Rick gets on Cassie’s bad side.

Cassie and Rick’s first meeting is awkward at best as Rick tries to paint the picture of Cody going renegade cop. He claims Cody wanted to storm into the church headquarters guns ablaze without a warrant or anything. But Cassie isn’t as easily placated as Rick would like. She convinces him to chat with a judge to get a warrant for the church. The missing girls, coupled with Cody’s vanishment, should be enough to procure one.

Rick doesn’t have much of an argument against her sound reasoning, so he says he’ll do it, although he’s quick to let her know she won’t be needed any longer and should be on her way. Cassie says that’s fine; she’ll start looking into local truck stops. That gives Rick pause since he likely suspected Cody was the only one with the trucker theory. Now it’s picking up speed.

After chatting with Rick, Cassie checks in at the agency to find out if there is any news on Cody from Denise. She also tells the receptionist how creepy she found Rick, Denise disagrees. “Rick Legarski is as harmless as they come, honey.” Denise really needs her people-reading skills checked. Moments later, Rick asks Cassie for a private word and doubles down on his creepiness as he slides into the passenger seat of her car — the exact same scenario Cody found himself in the night before.

Rick even blatantly lies to Cassie and tells her he’s never had a chance to use his gun before in a tangent that’s meant to intimidate her from poking around the truck stops. Cassie sees through him. “Is the goal here to intimidate me? Because it’s not working.”

In the truck cabin, Grace, Danielle and Jerrie start getting to know each other. Danielle, in a very non-PC way, discerns that Jerrie is non-binary. Before they can chat further, Ronald shows up to be even creepier than Rick. He’s offended the girls think he’s evil, and Grace calls him out on it. How can he think he’s not evil when he kidnapped and tased them? Then she calls him a monster and headbutts him in the face for good measure. Ronald’s reaction to that is to say he isn’t a monster, yet he also threatens to kill her and wipes his blood on her face. You’re sending mixed messages here, Ron.

Jenny visits her favorite local cafe, the same place she rushed out of in the first episode after contemplating confronting Cassie about Cody. This time she just wants a cup of coffee but winds up getting a valuable lead on the missing girl’s case. The waitress tells Jenny that she and Jerrie are friends. She knows Jerrie moonlights as a prostitute and says Jerrie always touches base in the evenings — last night, she didn’t. Jenny becomes even more intrigued when the waitress tells her Jerrie usually works at a truck stop in Helena.

Big Sky Episode 2 recap: Ronald and Rick’s disturbing agenda is revealed.

Back at Dewell & Hoyt, Jenny tells Cassie what the waitress said and her intent to go check out the truck stop. Before she goes, Cassie shows her a matrix in VICAP that shows a disturbing pattern of more than 500 murder victims linked to 200 suspects — most of whom are truckers. She also thinks Rick is involved in the scheme, which isn’t surprising because he literally acted like a freak. Denise thinks Cassie’s crazy and that Rick could never do something like that. Insert eye roll here. They want to talk to Denise’s cousin, who happens to be Rick’s ex-wife. “The man strikes me as a sociopath, and an ex-wife would know.”

Rick and Ronald regroup at The All In to figure out what to do with the girls. If you needed confirmation these men are sex traffickers, it’s evident in this scene. Ronald wants to sell Grace for triple the price because he assumes she’s a virgin, but Rick emphasizes that they can’t do that with the sisters because they’re too wholesome. As of yet, Rick hasn’t suggested what they will do with the young teens. I can’t imagine they’ll be freed, so is he planning to have Ronald kill them? Jerrie, however, is in deeper trouble. Rick says she’s marketable and just needs to be cleaned up before they funnel her to Canada.

At the agency, Cassie tells Denise she has a bad feeling about Cody, and Rick, for that matter. She trusts her gut because she was right on the fateful day she learned her husband, a soldier, died. “I certainly hope you’re wrong. On both.” Denise’s continued defense of Rick makes me think there is more to the story there.

In Helena, Jenny manages to bribe a clerk for access to the security camera after confirming that Jerrie was there the previous day.

Big Sky Episode 2 recap: Jerrie ruins Ronald and Rick’s plan.

We return to the kidnapped girls. Grace thinks they have two options for survival: one emotional and one physical. Her physical plan is “Stockholm,” she wants Danny to pray on Rick’s vulnerability and mommy issues to charm Rick so he’ll take the chains off and they can attack. Her emotional plan involves trying to foster a bond with Rick through singing since Jerrie has aspirations of becoming a famous star, and both Sullivans formerly sang in their church choir. Jerrie remarks that it could work since psychopaths are usually religious. “Maybe we sing for his soul.”

When Ronald finds the girls again, they’re singing a hymnal. But he doesn’t show any real sign of being moved. Instead, he just barks at Jerrie to join him and commands her to take a shower so she can be taken to a “better place.” During her shower, Jerrie takes off her wig and forces Ronald to look at her so he can see that she has male genitalia.

Not knowing how to proceed, Ronald delivers her back to the sisters. Jerrie isn’t sure what will happen next, but at least she’s not being moved, and the three of them can stay together for now. “He had a plan. Now that plan is ruined.” Jerrie also has the unfortunate task of telling Grace and Danny that they’re being held captive by a sex trafficker.

When Jenny gets home, she finds her son Justin waiting for any news on Danielle. He wants to know why the cops aren’t involved yet. Jenny says there isn’t much manpower in the area, and it hasn’t been enough time since they went missing. However, she promises him that they’re not going to just sit around and wait for the authorities.

God, Rick is the worst! He can’t even bring himself to say words like vagina despite his chosen line of work. He asks Ronald to confirm that Jerrie has “male equipment” because sometimes women have “outward-facing thing-a-ma-goos.” THING-A-MA-GOOS. Ron apologizes to Rick for messing things up, and Rick assures them they’re going to get through this, but things will get uglier before that.

On his way out, he gets a call from his ex-wife Sally who warns him that Cassie visited her. Rick realizes that he’s got a big problem with Cassie on the case just as the episode comes to a close and we see her crawling into bed with her son. I have a feeling he’s going to be in danger before the season is over.

In parallel to the wholesome moment between Cassie and her son, we have grown-a** Ronald crawling into bed with his mom beneath a giant oil painting of herself. They’re really trying to give Norman and Norma Bates a run for their money.

What did you think about Big Sky Episode 2? Are you planning to watch the rest of the season? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below!

New episodes of Big Sky air Tuesday nights at 10/9c on ABC. You can watch the two episodes now on Hulu!