Hunker down for some frustrating developments, if you’re still following this convoluted story …

Abby Mills, bride-to-be Trish Wellington and Trish’s sister, Shea Allen, have returned to Candlewick Inn with Shea’s missing 9-year-old daughter, Madison, who implies she was kidnapped by Abby’s father, Sheriff Mills, who then becomes the prime suspect in all of the Harper’s Island killings since this show started Easter weekend. And that’s so many characters now that I can’t recap them all, so check the Culture Crumbs archives. An entire 6News program couldn’t back-story this one.

Local/witty drinker Shane informs groom-to-be Henry inside the inn that Trish and Shea’s stepmother, Katherine, has been knifed in the back. This increases a sense of urgency among the remaining folks to get the heck off the island, because in Harper’s Island time, Katherine was alive just minutes earlier. Henry proposes that local/Abby’s boyfriend Jimmy and Shane gas up the boat (by all means, split up!). Best man Sully will track down innkeeper Maggie (by all means, split up!). Abby and Henry head to the clinic to retrieve bridesmaid Chloe, her boyfriend, Dr. Cal, and the sheriff, but when they arrive, Chloe and Cal explain they misplaced the injured sheriff while they were “sleeping.” Uh-huh.

Oh, good, new extras! So they’ll die. The state police fly in on a helicopter to retrieve onetime chief suspect J.D. Dunn, brother of the groom, but catch up, people! He’s dead, too. They land at the marina and are shot to death. We see the gunman is wearing a sheriff’s uniform, but we don’t see his face.

Abby says she won’t join the others on the boat back to Seattle until she checks her house for Sheriff Mills. Henry won’t let her go alone, over Trish’s protests. So all three head off to look for Abby’s dad. (By all means … oh, never mind.) While the sheriff’s house is empty, he has maps to the tunnels under the Candlewick Inn, which they explored most of last episode. That supports Madison’s claim he kidnapped her and general allegations he’s a killer. Trish’s I-understand-my-fiance’s-best-friend-is-female façade is starting to crack.

Jimmy and Shane arrive at the marina to gas up the boat, which is giving them troubles, and the rest of the survivors — minus, I suppose, an entire town’s worth of people who are suspiciously MIA — file down to get aboard. Shane sees the police floating in the water, and sparks come from the generator he’s fiddling with. He shouts for Jimmy to jump off the boat. The boat explodes. Henry keeps Abby from rushing toward the fire to look for Jimmy. Is he dead? I hate this show! Then someone begins shooting at the survivors, so Henry, Abby, Shane, Trish, Shea, Madison, Maggie, Sully, Cal, Chloe and groomsman Danny run for cover to the local Cannery bar.

The Scooby gang seems to be stuck. Various accusations, many from Trish, strangely, blame all the mayhem on Abby and her faulty parentage. Innkeeper Maggie announces it’s time for another minor character to die and heads for home. Well, that’s not what she says, but later there are noises on the roof, then Maggie falls from the roof with a rope around her neck. Exit Maggie. Bar owner Nikki, the only local to come running when the marina blew up, is let into the Cannery and comforts Abby over Jimmy’s death. But she opines to Abby that maybe Sheriff Mills was the killer, as he’d changed a lot since John Wakefield murdered his wife and a bunch of others seven years earlier.

Chloe suggests they can still leave if they can reach the private sailboat she and Cal rented days ago, which is the only vessel that didn’t blow up earlier. Cal says he’ll take Nikki’s car to reach it and sail back over to the Cannery, and Sully will join him.

Madison keeps asking where her father is. Shea does not explain her cheating husband was harpooned by the killer.

Sully proposes making bottles of firebombs involving liquor and soap, I think, and fire? That and his haircut are very “Fight Club.” Cal comforts Chloe and gives her her own engagement ring to hold, as he has an important question to ask when he makes it back. The Grim Reaper chuckles. Cal and Chloe share a passionate kiss. A jealous Sully, with no lady love, turns and grabs a startled Nikki for a kiss, who says that’s cool, but bring my car back in one piece. I have been wondering since that kiss was in the promos how those two would end up together, so that was pretty funny.

Everybody throws out the homemade bombs to create a line of fire, then sends Cal and Sully out to the car. Cal’s Achilles heel is his Britishness, of course; he blocks Sully from opening the driver’s side of Nikki’s car because he thinks the left side is for the passenger, not the driver! Oh, you wacky Brits. Boom! Cal is shot in the chest. Sully heroically covers Cal, opens the driver’s side, pulls his chief rival into the car and tears off. This is a far more promising love story than anything else we’ve seen so far.

Sully will take Cal to the med clinic instead of the sailboat, where of course the doctor and aforementioned TOWN FULL OF PEOPLE are still MIA, and Cal, who is a spectacular shade of green, says he’ll have to teach Sully how to take the bullet out of his chest. I love this. Sully leaves him for dead in a trap in episode two, pursues Chloe through the series and will now perform surgery on his romantic rival.

Back at the Cannery, the group tenses up when a pickup with the headlights on rolls toward the window. There’s a body on the hood, which rolls off onto the ground. It’s Jimmy, of course! Anybody who looks like Freddy Prinze Jr. should make it to the finale. Abby waxes thankful, but as the group brings Jimmy in and discovers Abby’s inn keys in his pocket, they draw the conclusion the sheriff brought Jimmy’s body, fled without the car and is now waiting in Abby’s inn room to confront her or murder her or something. With a puncture wound in his leg and oxygen tank to help him breathe. That’s quite a leap, there. Abby takes the bait — and a gun — and over protests from Henry, sets off alone for the showdown. I think Henry will turn out to be her brother.

Anyway, back to Madison. She either was an accomplice in all this or thought she was kidnapped by the sheriff but wasn’t (which would make sense … how closely would a kid have interacted with the sheriff?) or she was lying. C is the correct answer. Madison confesses to Aunt Trish that she lied because the kidnapper said her mother, Shea, would disappear just like her father did unless she said Sheriff Mills was her kidnapper. The guilt on Trish’s face when she realizes she pushed Abby out to a trap is priceless.

Abby returns to her room in the inn. The sheriff is standing there. She accuses him of several things, including not being her father, which he pledges he really is. He says Wakefield is alive after all, he didn’t kill him all those years ago, and that Abby shouldn’t step any closer. I would heed that advice, Abby. The upshot is he loves her and sacrificed his life to Wakefield if the latter would spare Jimmy. He more or less asks her to kill Wakefield herself when a man below sets off some sort of radio that yanks the sheriff right out the window. Abby runs outside to find him hanged to death, just like her mother seven years ago.

Said man comes up to her to take her away. He’s Wakefield, and we’ve never seen him before. So yes. After all this time, the killer is a character we’ve never met. Are you KIDDING me? I hate this show!

You have one small hope, CBS. In the promo, you suggest there is a second killer involved. And there had better be, if your audience just wasted a lot of Saturdays on this show to suspect Henry or Abby or Shane or Henry or Sully, or did I mention Henry? It had better be Henry — only a killer would wear that cranberry-covered pullover. Two episodes are left. Don’t let me down.