Teacup episode 1, “Think About the Bubbles,” begins in the woods. Everything is peaceful until we see a woman covered in blood frantically trying to cut the plastic zip ties around her wrists. Suddenly her body goes rigid and she mumbles the words “Murder Maker.” She snaps back to reality and frees her hand as a big dog runs toward her. The camera pans up and we see that she’s not too far from a small farm.
At the farm, Maggie Chenoweth (Yvonne Strahovski) uses a teacup to capture a bug inside the house. She invites her son, Arlo (Caleb Dolden) to listen, calling it a “tempest in a teacup.” He grabs a paper and she slides it against the window so she can take it outside and let it go. Arlo thinks his father is going to love it, but Maggie suggests they keep it between them. As she walks outside, she passes her daughter, Meryl (Emilie Bierre), studying in her room while Ellen (Kathy Baker), her mother-in-law, cooks in the kitchen.
When Maggie gets outside, she runs into James (Scott Speedman), her husband, who was in the hay loft. She asks if the animals are still worked up and he says something has them spooked. He asks if Maggie has made peace with Ellen yet. James asks if he should take Ginger down to Maggie’s clinic, but she’s already closed up her veterinary practice for the weekend. He asks if they can talk, but she’s not ready. You can feel the tension between them.
Maggie continues around the house so that she can free the bug for Arlo, who watches from the window. Soon he sees a goat running across the field and through a hole in the fence. In the barn, Maggie tends to the horses. They’re all acting strangely. As she walks into the house, Arlo is walking around the other side of the house, heading for the hole in the fence.
The boy calls out for Mr. Goat, trying to figure out where he went. The woods are full of strange noises. Arlo doesn’t notice that there’s a woman watching him. She leaves a bloody handprint on the tree.
Maggie tells Ellen that she’s glad the older woman is there. Ellen admits that she was lonely and is happy to be there to see her grandkids grow up. But she’s also there for James, and she quickly says that she’s there for Maggie, too. Maggie admits that she never should have called her a pothead earlier. Ellen wishes everyone smoked pot because then they wouldn’t notice the tremors in her hands. Maggie knows she’s not the easiest person to help, which makes Ellen crack a joke about how admitting there’s a problem is the first step toward fixing it. Maggie compliments how great the kitchen smells and offers to get everyone for dinner.
Maggie asks Meryl if she’s seen Arlo. She’s in the middle of watching something on her tablet, and when her mother says it’ll rot her brain, Meryl recites from Romeo and Juliet and then names the chambers of a cow’s stomach. But she hasn’t seen her brother. Downstairs, Ellen and James haven’t seen him either. James thinks he might be hiding, as he tends to do, because he likes scaring people.
They’re interrupted by the sound of a horn honking frantically. They go outside to see their neighbors, the Shanleys. Ruben (Chaske Spencer) tells Maggie that their horse, Scout, is in trouble. His son, Nicholas (Luciano Leroux) begs Maggie to help him as his mother, Valeria (Diany Rodriguez), comforts him. James looks tense as Maggie looks for Arlo. He tells Maggie that they’ll look for him while she helps Scout.
Maggie tells Ruben that their animals have been acting strange, too, as he brings the horse off the trailer. She’s stunned when she sees that Scout is covered in blood. “What did you do?” she asks.
James offers whiskey to Ellen and Valeria as Nicholas recounts how he was out checking fence lines and Scout refused to listen to him, rather he ran his face against the barbed wire and eventually fell into it. James assures him that Maggie will help Scout but while she works he says he’s going to look for Arlo, leaving Ellen with Nicholas. She offers the young man some of her drink and tells him it’s their secret as she turns on some music. Suddenly there’s a high-pitch whine from the phone. Nicholas says that the same thing happened in the car.
At the clinic, Maggie grabs her supplies and starts cleaning Scout’s face as Ruben holds him still. None of the cuts look too bad, she says, asking Ruben if he wants to learn how to stitch a wound. As she moves to show him, she realizes that there’s a piece of wood that pierced the horse’s neck.
James asks Valeria if she’s told Ruben about anything and he looks relieved when she says she hasn’t. Meryl comes in and says she can’t find Arlo. Valeria says that Donald Kelly (Boris McGiver) called her earlier because their dog, Duke, is missing. She points out that the dog never leaves his wife Claire’s (Holly A. Morris) side but he ran off on a walk. Meryl asks if they should be worried and her father says he probably wandered off after the missing goat and he’s probably waiting for them to come find him. He tells her to take Nicholas and go around one side of the house while he and Valeria go around the other side.
Arlo wanders through the dark woods, calling out for help. He knows he’s lost. He suddenly spots the goat and moves to follow it, but then the woman approaches him. She’s covered in even more blood and she’s mumbling about the “Murder Maker.” She lunges at him.
Meryl and Nicholas call out for Arlo. Nicholas tells her that her family is so cool. She doesn’t see it the same way. He tries to break her sour mood by telling her a joke so she asks what he’s doing by complimenting her family and telling jokes. But a noise distracts them.
Maggie is worried that the wood may have pierced Scout’s jugular. She pulls it out and discovers that there’s little bleeding, which is a good sign. Scout’s going to be fine. Ruben gets emotional but is glad the horse is going to be ok.
Valeria mentions the look Maggie gave her, but James assures her that his wife knows he was unfaithful but doesn’t know who he was unfaithful with. And this isn’t the first time the kids have gone missing; it happened before with Meryl, long before Arlo was born. Maggie didn’t handle it well. It turned out that Meryl was stuck in the oven after they’d read Hansel and Gretel. “Kids, they’re just so stupid,” he says. He doesn’t know why he told her that story, but Valeria knows it’s because he loves his kids and Maggie. Meryl and Nicholas run up with the Kellys’ dog and Mr. Goat, but there’s something else out there. He tells them to run back into the house.
Arlo is unconscious and the woman is standing over him. She’s unsteady and bleeding from a wound in her stomach. She moves to crouch over Arlo, bending over him and opening her mouth until a colorful shimmery thing passes from her eyes to his eyes.
As everyone gets back to the farm, the Kellys arrive. Claire is thrilled to see Duke. Donald asks how long Arlo has been missing. James has a bat, telling Maggie it’s because he saw a coyote. Donald says it’s not a coyote, it’s a dog. He grabs his assault rifle and says he’ll take care of it. Suddenly, Arlo walks out of the woods. He’s mumbling about the Murder Maker and how they should run and hide, with bits of Spanish sprinkled in. He has handprints on his arms.
In the woods, the bleeding woman calls out in Spanish for someone to help her. The big dog approaches and attacks her.
Outside the farm, a car pulls up without its lights on. A man in a gas mask gets out and starts painting a blue line around their property.
New episodes of Teacup air on Thursdays on Peacock.
