#crushed by a timber from their own Ponderosa

[basingstokemercury]

I still can't stop thinking about the way Adam drops the pickaxe in The Philip Diedesheimer Story... He did not have to portray it that way and it's... Creepy isn't quite the word. Very unsettling.

He's pinned under a fallen beam (which should have killed him but that's another matter), banging a pickaxe against the rock in response to the rescue team's similar signal - to show that someone's still alive behind the cave-in.

After keeping this up for who knows how long (there are almost certainly multiple timeskips), it'd make sense if the pick slipped from his hand out of sheer exhaustion, or if he just couldn't find the strength to lift it anymore.

But that's not what we see.

Adam raises his arm to answer the signal yet again.

Then he stops, sighs exhaustedly, and lets it rest on the beam trapping him. Okay, maybe the pick will fall accidentally as he takes that moment of rest?

Maybe it's not how this was meant to look, but it doesn't seem accidental to me. He lets the pick slip from his hand, arm falling to his side as it slides out of reach - taking what seems like all hope of rescue with it.

And he doesn't react to this with horror or even seem to realise what's happened, lying still and silent except for laboured breathing as the signal repeats multiple times to no answer, right up to the moment Hoss finally breaks through.

When he smiles, jokes, and speaks with perfect lucidity and concern for someone else.

And clambers out easily when the beam is lifted, showing no signs of pain and immediately turning to help the other man trapped with him. So, notwithstanding the usual effect of having a thick timber fall on your chest and legs, he can't be that badly hurt.

And we're left with a pretty disturbing moment.

Adam, knowing help is on its way and that he's not the only one whose life depends on its coming, seems to knowingly, intentionally, give up hope.

I still don't know what to make of that.