Episode 4 marks the midway point of Harlan Coben's "Run Away," and you can tell. Things were already getting complicated, but "A Different Time" just throws in a bunch more subplots and possibilities for good measure. Coben's story structuring can sometimes feel like a writing challenge, a response to a dare about how much lunacy can possibly be folded into a single narrative, and you really get a sense of that here. But perversely, it's all starting to make a bit more sense. The questions being raised, although they don't yet have answers, feel right; like you know the answers are going to shed some light on a couple of other things you've been wondering about. This is why these shows are so compelling, almost in spite of themselves. They're like those puzzles you give toddlers to do, where they have to fit a shape in the right hole. That satisfying click of correctness never leaves you. Less of the drooling, though, hopefully.
If you recall the opening scene of the season, Paige watched some guy in a balaclava viciously assault someone. Now that Wiley Corvel has revealed that Paige actively sought out Aaron, Simon has realized that something happened to Paige at Lanford that drew her to him. But what? Well, as a bit more of a clue, "A Different Time" returns to that assault, so we can see first-hand the young boy being viciously beaten with gym equipment. In the present day, the victim, now with a heavily scarred face, is watching Simon stomp around the campus.
Simon and Ingrid helped Paige move into the halls of residence, so they're vaguely familiar with her former roommates, Katie and Judy. Simon speaks with Katie first, since apparently Judy is off-campus for the term break. Katie, instantly suspicious, tells Simon that Paige drove to see Aaron and then suddenly started acting like she hated Katie. And this was before the drugs.
Paige also apparently told Katie that she was having "problems at home." But what does that mean? Whenever Simon thinks back, even their arguments were pretty tame.
Simon reaches out to Sam to check through Paige's planner, revealing cryptic "PVB" notations. These entries started on October 9th and seemed unrelated to any club, like the Family Tree Club. Judy, Paige's former roommate, explains that PVB stands for "Professor van de Beek," a guy who ran the Family Tree Club and was assisting Paige in her transition to medical studies, just like her mother. Judy reveals that Katie has been behaving oddly since her huge fight with Paige and subsequently kicking her out. When Simon and Judy confront her about this, she's nowhere to be found.
The next time we see Katie is at the end of Run Away Episode 4, where she's sending an email warning the professor that Simon is onto him. However, the email doesn't get delivered. Nevertheless, she's right that Simon is onto him. After trying to track down the professor and learning he's been on sabbatical since Paige dropped out, Simon runs into a kid with a scarred face trying to break into van de Beek's office. The kid, whose name we'll learn later, tells Simon that van de Beek was a massive creep, implying he had relationships with students. Simon jumps to the obvious conclusion and passes the professor's name on to Elena.
On the subject of Elena, Alex tells her that Neil wasn't surprised that Damien was looking up his own ancestry - he too was adopted and was trying to trace his biological family. He was adopted through an agency called "Hope and Growth," the same one as Damien. This connection is becoming increasingly explicit by the moment.
"A Different Time" also reveals why Elena has been following Maria around. She's her dead husband Joel's secret daughter, which means he was having a secret affair and had a secret grandchild. Not so secret that Lou didn't know about it, which is why Elena has been keeping her investigation a secret from her.
As predicted, her crossing the line by breaking into Maria's house, which was caught on camera, backfires considerably during her next visit to the vegan cafe, where Maria has her arrested. This is especially annoying since she was looking at an RIP post for Kevin Gano, another of Ash and Dee Dee's previous victims, the one whose death they staged as a suicide.
Isaac confronts Jay about the CCTV footage showing him following Ingrid, and the reports indicating that she was agitated and stressed. He's taken to the station, where he reveals that they used to date years ago, before she met Simon. This might have made Ingrid worried about being seen together and facing gossip. He also mentions meeting her at his apartment after she left the restaurant, though he doesn't go into detail about why. Isaac believes it's obvious they were having an affair, though Ruby isn't convinced.
This revelation is a big deal, as it could be one of those "problems at home" that Paige apparently told Katie about. Simon has a flashback to a fall-out with Paige when he accidentally read her messages, which were open on her laptop. He even mentions it to Yvonne. When he gets home and Isaac is waiting for him, the pieces seem to fall into place.
Was Ingrid having an affair? Did Paige find out about it? Later, Simon asks Yvonne if Paige is really his daughter – he thinks that might have been what she found out, which sent her spiraling.
The title of "Run Away" Episode 4, "A Different Time," comes from a woman named Mrs. O'Hara, whose home Ash and Dee Dee turned up at in the previous episode. Mrs. O'Hara had fostered them both, and while she seems quite fond of Dee Dee, there doesn't seem to be much love lost between her and Ash.
But Dee Dee is big on self-improvement these days thanks to her association with a religious cult called the Beacon of the Shining Truth, which has its own songs and everything. Ash is skeptical, but she's adamant about him facing his greatest traumas and moving on from them. And a lot of those traumas are tied to Mrs. O'Hara, who, it turns out, used to burn both of them with an iron among other fun disciplinary activities.
Mrs. O'Hara's justification for this? "It was a different time." In other words, whatever. Naturally, this doesn't really suffice as an excuse, so Ash shoots her in the face a few times, and he and Dee Dee bury her in the garden. Good riddance, as far as I'm concerned.
