Spoilers ahead for “There Is Always a Road.”
Anna Pigeon Season 1 Episode 6, “There Is Always a Road,” starts with a scene that made my stomach drop. Anna marches Stanton, Zoey and Manny to the cave to arrest the man who attacked her, and the cave is empty. No body, no sign that Anna or anyone else was ever there. By the end of the hour, Melanie Scrofano’s Bethany has gone from a friendly side character to the center of the whole mess, and the reason behind it is oddly sad.
When the Cave Comes Up Empty
Nobody can say they didn’t want to believe Anna. But with no body and no evidence that anyone had been in that cave, it’s a hard sell, and you can feel the doubt hanging over the group. Zoey takes Anna to the hospital, where she learns she’s concussed and severely dehydrated. Anna refuses to stay overnight for observation and goes home. Zoey offers to stay with her, and Anna pushes her away again. Jesse stops by too, but when he tries to comfort her, she pulls back.
In the shower later, Anna spots something she hadn’t noticed: her attacker left a mark on her back. He also took most of her belongings. One small mercy is that Jesse had brought the box with him when he visited.
A Mark on Her Back and a Trail to the Paulsons
The next day, still shaken, Anna heads back into the forest to look for whatever she missed. Stanton runs into her there and offers to help, and together they follow the small clues the killer left behind. They find the body of the woman he had buried in the cave earlier. He had tried to throw her off a cliff.
The coroner confirms the woman was sexually assaulted before she was killed, and the evidence points to her campsite as the place where it happened. When Anna asks whether the woman had a mark on her, Stanton realizes there’s more to Anna’s ordeal than she’s told him. She shows him her back.
Back at the office, Bethany stops by with baked goods to ask how Anna is doing. Zoey tells her that Anna ignored the doctor’s advice and went straight back to the forest.
Anna and Stanton then turn to the man who threatened Anna after she broke his radio. They find Caleb in his trailer, and Anna recognizes the watch he’s wearing as one that belongs to a friend of his. Caleb admits he helped that friend move a body, and he hands the watch over. Stanton notices blood on it, and Anna spots an engraving. That’s when they understand they’re dealing with someone from Jeremiah Paulson’s family.
Caleb’s friend turns out to be JP, Jeremiah’s nephew, and the bruising on his face fits the story: Anna kicked her attacker in the face while she was trying to get away. Jeremiah shows up with a lawyer, and Stanton can’t get a confession out of JP. All they have is circumstantial evidence, which isn’t enough to take JP into custody.
In the next room, Anna has to tell Kay’s friends that Kay was murdered. She promises she’ll get Kay justice, then chases after JP and his entourage and vows to make him pay. Jeremiah pushes her away, dares her to find the evidence, and cockily wishes her luck.
Bethany Gets Scared and Anna Sets a Trap
That evening, Bethany offers to walk Anna home. She’s clearly terrified by everything that’s happened, and she questions Anna’s bravery. She’s stunned when Anna tells her about her husband’s murder.
At home, Bethany shares her fears with Manny and suggests they leave the park. She says they could ask her father for help, since he’s back in her life. Manny doesn’t like the idea, pointing out that the man has never made any effort to make amends.
Later that night, Anna starts unpacking her things while Stanton joins Jesse at a campfire.
The next morning, Zoey tells Stanton and Anna that someone driving the Paulson ranch truck most likely dropped Anna’s belongings at the post office. Anna comes up with a plan to lure JP into taking her back to the cave. Zoey worries it’s too risky, but she backs Anna anyway, and Frieda and Stanton fall in line too.
Anna visits JP while Jeremiah is away. She apologizes and plays it like accusing him of Kay’s murder was a huge misunderstanding. Then she asks him to take her back to the cave. His ego does the rest: he agrees, and he even offers to drive.
The River Showdown and a Father Who Won’t Pick Up
Then Bethany arrives, and Anna starts to feel dizzy from her drink. She notices the sandwiches and realizes Bethany was involved in her unlawful detainment. I honestly gasped here, because Bethany had been so warm up to that point.
Bethany takes Anna and tells JP to get her truck off the property. Meanwhile, Stanton and Zoey sense something is wrong when Anna never shows up at the cave. She’s at the river, where Bethany plans to drown her. Luckily, Anna had a backup plan. She uses her taser on Bethany and arrests her.
Investigators later find a lot of incriminating evidence in Bethany’s house. Anna asks Jesse for some time and thanks him for raising the alarm when she went missing.
Manny is shocked to learn his wife covered up a murder and tried to kill Anna. Bethany explains that she hated Anna for showing up and looking so brave. When JP told her what had happened and asked for her help, she felt she had to prove herself to Jeremiah Paulson.
Then comes the part that hurt the most. Bethany asks Manny to reach out to her father, and we learn her biological father is Jeremiah Paulson. All her life she wanted his validation and love, and she never got it. When Manny calls him from Bethany’s phone, Jeremiah doesn’t even pick up.
The episode closes on a softer note. Zoey takes Anna on a hiking trip to see the buffalo and reassure her that the team has her back. Anna realizes she’s ready to find her way back to the light and leave her despair behind.
Review: Melanie Scrofano Shines, but the Soap-Opera Twist Is Hard to Swallow
I’m conflicted about this one. Melanie Scrofano deserves credit for her work as Bethany. The final stretch, with the river and the phone call that never gets answered, works largely because of her delivery.
What I can’t shake is the question of why the show chose to turn a side character into the villain. The twist felt like something out of Days of Our Lives to me, a modernized version, with the secret parentage and the daddy issues landing all at once. Bethany’s need for her father’s approval gives her a motive, but it came on fast, and it felt a little unearned.
Six Episodes In, We Still Need More From the Rangers
My bigger frustration is that we’re six episodes in and the show still hasn’t gone deeper with its other characters. I’d rather see the story spend its time on Jesse, Stanton and Zoey. And since we’re asking questions: what actually happened between Geoff and Jeremiah? Speaking of Jeremiah, the show has built him up as a menacing villain, but I want to see more of his cold side.
What the Finale Needs to Deliver
With four episodes left before the finale, I expect the stakes to climb as the investigation into Anna’s late husband and Paulson’s treachery heats up. Bethany’s close ties to Paulson, along with this latest incident, have clearly left the Rangers community shaken. How those events will shape the finale is the question I’m taking into the next episode.