Recap: The Village 1×02 “Good Thing“

This week’s episode of The Village is our first chance to really get to know the residents living in The Village. We learn that Katie might be more like Sarah than Sarah wants to admit, Nick’s life is full of secrets — some he might have known about and he some he didn’t — and Ava wanting nothing more to be done with this mess and home with her son. So without further ado, let’s dive into all of this and more, shall we?

Sarah & Katie

Sarah is struggling to find the balance between letting Katie be her own person and make her own decisions and being the parent and expressing disappointment in Katie’s mistakes. Case in point: Katie’s 14 weeks along and has known that she’s pregnant for half of that time, yet Sarah just found out about this pregnancy days ago.

At the same time, Katie’s trying to get in her mom’s head and do what she thinks her mom wants while still living the life that she envisioned for herself. Hence why she didn’t tell Sarah yet, because Sarah had always told her that the day she decided to tell her mom was the day she lost her and Katie wanted just one more normal day with her mom.

Sarah’s now concerned that she’s lost Katie, since she’s making all kinds of big life choices behind her back. But it’s Enzo, of all people, that helps her see the light. He tells her how his son, Gabe’s father, did everything at the right age and threw it all away, so “who’s to say what the right time for anything is?”

Sarah thinks about this as she tells Katie the real story about how she was brought into this world. ‘The guy’, aka Nick, who got Sarah pregnant was a firefighter and one month on the job ended up at Ground Zero. He saw things that day that changed him and he ended up leaving. Sarah tells Katie that she kept seeing the image of the towers falling herself and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed to do something ‘radically good’ in memory of the people who lost their lives. “I didn’t know how to crochet a heart,” Sarah tells her. “So I gave birth to mine, at 18, without much to call my own. You were my radical good thing.” Katie’s even more convinced that she’s failed her mom, but Sarah just emphasizes that she doesn’t need to worry — she will always be Sarah’s good thing.

Nick

Nick is continuing to struggle with adapting to his new normal while simultaneously reconciling with what happened to him overseas. This is seen in the smallest of moments as Nick can’t even walk to the bridge and back — let alone run for a few minutes here and there — without limping on his prosthetic leg.

But it’s also seen in bigger moments, like when Nick learns he may have been responsible for one of his friends’ deaths overseas. Nick meets up with an old teammate at Smalls and asks him how his friend Cooper’s widow is doing, mentioning that he was thinking of going to see her. His friend mentions that she “doesn’t know” the real story of what happened but Nick barely knows what he’s talking about. That’s when his friend tells him that Nick made a mistake during their mission that ultimately got Cooper killed.

Nick and Katie are hanging out at Smalls later that afternoon and of course the topic of conversation turns to the military, since we learned last week that Katie is very anti-war. Nick throws out a few hypothetical situations at her that ends up with Katie spilling the beans about her pregnancy to Nick. He asks her if the father knew, which Sarah ends up overhearing and leads to her confronting him later that night.

Sarah tells him he can’t conflate Katie’s situation with their situation and that him knowing about Katie wouldn’t have changed his mind about leaving, but he says that’s not necessarily the case. Sarah continues to put him in his place, saying, “I know you were gone before you were gone… You chose war. You saw horrible things, you were angry, and you chose war. Don’t you dare re-write history.”

But then their conversation turns to Nick’s drinking and Sarah says she doesn’t even recognize him anymore. Nick is nothing but honest with her about what he’s going through; “I’m not an alcoholic,” he says. “I haven’t taken anything more than ibuprofen and I lost my leg. I don’t know if I have PTSD, but sometimes being in a crowd or on a roof or staring at these giant, street-facing windows isn’t easy.”

He wonders if his potential PTSD diagnosis is why she still hasn’t told Katie about him being her father, despite them now living in the same building at Sarah’s insistence. But Sarah insists it’s not, saying that Katie’s going to need her now more than ever and if she tells Katie, Katie will be angry with her. Nick wonders if Katie will be angry with him too, but Sarah brushes off that concern since Nick has only known about her for three weeks. But as we see in the last seconds of the episode, Nick has known about the possibility of Katie for a long time. Someone sent him a picture, presumably while he was overseas, of Sarah and Katie with the words, “Sarah has a ten year old. Yours?”

Ava

Things are progressing with Ava’s case. We learn that a man who has been forging documentation for immigrants was arrested and Ava’s name was found in his things. As it turns out, her ex-husband submitted letters from Iranian professors, who apparently don’t exist, that said Ava was a political dissident who’s life was in danger along with her application for asylum. But as Ava said last week, she had no idea that any of this was going on.

But the first step is proving that she’s not a flight risk and getting bond, so that she can fight this from the comfort of The Village and finally be reunited with Sami. Ava is hesitant about getting a judge to believe her, but Patricia tells her that from her experience, “it’s never too late to tell the truth.”

Gabe is able to be there with Ava for her hearing and walk her through what she should say, since you know he’s not actually a lawyer; that’s the good news. The bad news is that the judge’s son is a NYC police officer who was knifed down by an illegal immigrant so the judge is biased and likely going to be harsh on her. Gabe advises her to play the parent angle, but that does nothing for the judge. What does help convince the judge is a testimony from police officer Ben about how moving in next to her helped him get through a “personal tragedy” and that if she’s granted bond, he’ll keep an eye on her. The judge agrees

She gets to actually have an one-on-one conversation with Ben at the detention center, but all she can think about is that her bond is set at $10,000 and she can’t afford that. Ben calms her down, telling her that’s the next hurdle but she should see getting the bond set at all is a win. She asks about Sami and Ben tells her that he’s still a little angry at him. Through Ben, she’s able to send over a little video of her singing his favorite bedtime song.

Episode Notes:

• It’s such a small thing, but Nick and his friends drinking to “all the missing pieces” hit me in the feels.
• I have so many questions about how Nick and Sarah’s reunion at the veteran center went. Like was Sarah shocked to see Nick there after all these years? Had they talked at all since he left to go to war? How did she tell him about Katie? I’m going to need flashbacks to this at some point this season.
• I know last week I “called out” Nick for being stupid enough to lend a stranger his credit card, even if it was to harmless old Enzo. However, I really enjoyed their friendship this week. I loved the scene where Enzo tells Nick he can share his ride, only for them to walk outside of The Village and see Enzo was talking about an ‘old person’s bus’.
• Speaking of Enzo, he’s unhappy with his new roommate, Macklemore. It’s particularly hard on him cause he’s always lived with someone he loved and now he doesn’t get to. But when Sarah points out that fact to Gabe, he breaks him out and asks Enzo to move in with him.
• Remember when Patricia told Ava that it’s never too late to tell the truth? Turns out that applies to her as well. She finally tells Ron that her cancer is back.
• I have plenty of questions where Ben is concerned. Does Ben have a crush on Ava? What is this “personal tragedy” that he went through? I hope we get to go deeper into his backstory as we move through the first season.

The Village airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on NBC.