WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Evil Season 2, Episode 6, “C Is for Cop,” now streaming on Paramount+.
Evil has never been afraid to get political. Season 1’s “Let x = 9” tackled immigration, while this Season’s “E Is for Elevator” touched on the Catholic Church’s racist past. So it should come as no surprise that this week’s “C Is for Cop” is centered on police brutality, opening with a white cop shooting a Black woman after seeing her reach for her gun during a traffic stop on a poorly lit street. Of course, it was not a gun, so the case is brought to David, Kristen and Ben to see if Officer Jim Turley — who is Catholic — was under demonic possession.
The team meets with Officer Turley, who recognizes Kristen from the carpool line. Apparently, the two send their respective daughters to the same school. Kristen uncomfortably pushes the interview along, leading to a fiery yet quiet exchange between David and Turley. “If you knew the driver was Kristen’s race. Would you have fired?” David asks. “I don’t know,” Turley replies. “Thank you for your honesty,” David curtly answers back.
Kristen meets with Mira, her detective friend from homicide, who vouches for Turley and tells Kristen the story of how she also once saw a gun that turned out not to be a gun. While Mira did not end up killing the man, she still lives with that feeling. “I’m not saying there aren’t bad cops,” she tells Kristen. “There are. But Officer Jim is one of the good ones, and so am I. At least I think I am.”
Mira is also still investigating the LeRoux case. While LeRoux’s ex-wife Emily has an alibi, her new boyfriend does not, leading the police to suspect that Emily had her boyfriend — who has a criminal record — kill LeRoux. The police plan on charging them both, bringing Kristen’s guilt and PTSD that have been boiling below to the surface.
The team examines the body cam footage from that night, spotting a sigil tattoo on Jim’s wrist. David recognizes the tattoo from the wrist of another cop who pulled him over for a traffic stop, one of five over the last year. “Makes me so angry,” Kristen exclaims after comparing her encounters — or lack thereof — with the police to David’s. “You’re so sweet, Kristen,” Ben deadpans.
Mira returns to Kristen’s house, revealing that Emily’s new boyfriend has an alibi — at a poetry seminar of all places. However, since LeRoux was threatening Kristen and her family before he died, Mira needs to clear Kristen as a suspect to “cover my bases.” She examines Kristen’s knives, looking for a serrated blade, and just misses the climbing ax hanging in the closet, much to Kristen’s relief.
However, Kristen needs an alibi, so she asks her daughter Lexis if she remembers her coming home and tucking her in that night. While Lexis remembers her mother coming home, she can’t recall her tucking her in. Lexis goes to her grandmother for advice, who instructs her granddaughter to tell the truth, even if it hurts her. What should be a nice bonding moment between grandmother and granddaughter takes a classic Evil WTF turn when Sheryl offers a sacrifice and starts praying to Eddie, her creepy, wish-granting doll. “Eddie, my Eddie,” she utters. “I offer this sacrifice in the name of Lexis. She is in doubt. Bring her clarity, not calamity.” This obviously freaks Lexis out — as it should — and she runs out of the room.
Meanwhile, Ben’s night terrors with Abbey are getting worse and more frequent. Abbey presses him about CAS 3, a gene-editing project that he worked on that was supposed to cure diseases but left the babies that took the treatment disfigured and sick. Kristen gives Ben some advice on how to defeat Abbey, teaching him the bracelet tactic she used to defeat George back in Season 1.
Using an online forum known as Thee Rant, the team discovers that the sigil is for a cop gang known as the Protectors. However, Bishop Marx is reluctant to pursue the case further, as he believes David has made it about race and his sigil map. Furthermore, Marx reveals that the cops are just copying the sign from a procedural TV series, Justice Served. Still, David pushes to keep the case going, arguing that the show could be a “source of evil.”
They visit the set of the drama and meet the lead producer, Mick Carr, who explains that the sigil has been passed down from cop show to cop show for decades. He does not take well to David’s questions about his show’s influence on police behavior, pointing out that his shows have received awards from the NAACP and that he even pitched a series with three “POCs” that the network passed on. He lectures David, “You can go out there and scream ‘Black lives matter,’ and a whole bunch of people will be with you. Go and write a drama about people screaming ‘Black lives matter’ you see how fast people switch you off.”
That night, Ben receives another visit from Abbey. But using Kristen’s trick, he is not only able to conjure up a knife to defend himself, but also summons David holding a massive sword to back him up. This influences him to approach David about forgiveness. “What do you do when you don’t believe in God and you’re looking for forgiveness. Not from one person, but for something you did.” David is surprised by Ben’s question and vulnerability, but tells him to find something larger than himself — a tree, forest, the post office — to apologize to. “It allows you to say the actual words ‘I’m sorry’ to the world. Not just in your mind,” David says. Ben takes David’s words quite literally, purposely bumping into a postal worker so he can say “I’m sorry.” He gets his forgiveness from the postal worker and, just for a second, seems to find some peace.
Ben, David and Kristen are called back to the church, where they learn that Turley was not indicted by the grand jury. “Everything’s great now,” the police union representative says, seemingly forgetting that a mother of two children is still dead. David confronts the union rep, who tells David to lay off Carr. “We respect the Church, but we want you to respect us,” he warns.
Later that night, both David and Ben are pulled over by police officers — more warnings from the cops to stop questioning the TV producer. Freaked out by her friends’ traffic stops, Kristen believes that someone is stalking her in her backyard. She calls Mira for help and goes outside with the climbing ax, only to be greeted by a disfigured hallucination of LeRoux. He taunts Kristen for being a killer until Mira and Anya arrive at the scene. With the ice ax in full view, Kristen begins to confess to killing LeRoux, but Mira stops her. “You’re a good person. You’re a nice white suburban mom with four sweet kids in Catholic school,” she tells Kristen. “And you have a friend who’s a cop.” As Mira and Anya leave, Kristen collapses, sinking into her guilt, relief and privilege.
Evil stars Katja Herbers as Kristen Bouchard, Mike Colter as David Acosta, Aasif Mandvi as Ben Shakir, Michael Emerson as Leland Townsend, Christine Lahti as Sheryl, Kurt Fuller as Dr. Boggs, Brooklyn Shuck as Lynn Bouchard, Skylar Gray as Lila Bouchard, Maddy Crocco as Lexis Bouchard and Dalya Knapp as Laura Bouchard. New episodes stream Sundays on Paramount+.
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