Again my review is getting up later than I had hoped! It’s been a crazy few weeks at work, and part of me still can’t believe it is already October…but better late than never!
I’m not quite sure why they chose a Daniel Day Lewis movie for the title. I suppose I could look it up and try to find some parallel, but I’m hoping that it isn’t because Kripke is seeing season two as a sequel of sorts. True that often times HBO seems to do that with their shows. Remember last season Kripke talking about this show as being like “Game of Thrones”? Often times I have felt with HBO shows (like Deadwood, Rome, Game of Thrones for examples) after a magnificent season one, the following seasons felt like subpar sequels. The seemed to bear the burden of being overdone like movie sequels are. People carry this belief that sequels need to have more blood and more killing and more sex and more nudity and more blah blah blah than the original had. As if the story needs to keep trumping itself. PLEASE tell me that Kripke doesn’t have plans for this in the show. I really like the way this season has begun and hope that it stays true to the form it seems to be styling itself into. Maybe they could do things more like how HBO did True Blood after season one. I actually think the third season was my favorite so far…I really liked season five, too…even with all the vampire religion stuff…season six was a little too 24 for me. I was immensely happy I didn’t watch it live and was able to blow through the entire season in a couple days…but moving along…My point is that season one, that was supposed to set the scene really was as boring (in my opinion) as the first book of that series was. I felt when Ball broke away a bit from the molding, the show got better. I am hoping that Kripke, moving beyond the initial vision (or maybe it would be best to say the vision that JJ and Jon remodeled his to be) will make the second season stronger than the first.
The second episode of the second season was written by Paul Grellong and directed by Phil Sgriccia. I got to see Sgriccia direct an episode of Supernatural the year I went to VanCon, so it is always exciting to see his name. As far as Supernatural goes, that caged area for the captives of creepy Titus Andover’s gang reminded me of the holding area in “The Benders” episode.
We find out that Aaron was dead for two and a half hours before he came back to life. His girlfriend, Cynthia, sees this as a miracle, and shows off some of her more religious freak side while Willoughby really gets a wake up call in the form of the group of people who took the Sheriff and Miles…erm…Stu…Monroe’s captors store him in a pool reminiscent of Def Leppard’s “High and Dry” album cover, and Charlie, too eager to kill Monroe, winds up getting captured herself…Neville sets out to take down the “Patriots” in a shocking, yet very familiar, way…
Again this episode, I was very impressed with the pacing. The episode went from one group to another, keeping the story moving. Before we knew it, the eppie was over! I really like the way they have put people together. I felt last season that the two less experienced actors, Tracy Spiridakos and JD Pardo, were the weaker links on the show. So far this season, we see them “paired off” in a sense with stronger more experienced actors. JD’s scenes with Giancarlo Esposito have been really great. Neville’s twist with taking out the rebel who was going to help them made sense in the calculating, goal oriented way we know Neville is. It looked like he kept his son in the dark about his plan too…Whether it was because he didn’t trust Jason to be a good enough actor to not give away the plan, or if he felt that Jason wouldn’t approve and might speak out against it, I can only speculate. I think, however, that things are going to get very interesting with these two. No doubt we will be delving into those familial bonds in many ways.
My favorite line from Twin Peaks was when Dale was asked what he feared and his response was “The possibility that love is not enough”. This seems to be a theme we will be looking into a lot. People that stay together or have the backs of people because of familial relations, or people that have a sense of duty toward another recur throughout the series thus far. We find ourselves muddling over questions like when has someone gone too far, changed too much from the person that we loved, to the person that we actually chose to be bonded to? That question was one that came up with Miles and Bass last season. Even though it looks like the two of them have done everything they can to sever that tie and move on, interviews out and about let us know that Miles and Bass will be meeting up again soon and it appears they will need to work together…maybe come to some kind of place where they again can respect and love (brotherly) each other?
There were a couple of little things thrown into the episodes, almost as asides, that were truly wonderful too. We didn’t have the plethora of acoustic rock tunes like we did in the last episode, but we had very familiar pop culture references in the form of television and film as our legends. The Sheriff wanted to be a law man after being told stories about Walker, Texas Ranger from his father. Aaron was telling the children the story of the Ghostbusters. And how much truth is in this really when we think about it. What will live on after we are gone? How will future generations remember us? The way we saw ourselves, the things that were popular forms of entertainment at the time? That is how it has always been done. Shakespeare didn’t care about his plays, he wrote them to make money. What he cared about were his sonnets. Now we read his plays as important literary works. We utilize them as a way to understand Elizabethan culture and we revere the poetry of it. We see the brilliance Shakespeare had as a storyteller.
Another theme of the night was that no good deed goes unpunished. Miles tries to break out the woman held captive instead of just leaving himself and is recaptured. As predicted by Charlie, taking Monroe alive meant that he was going to break out and Adam would wind up losing him…Rebel guy was going to help Neville and Jason and wound up with a bullet in his brain for the trouble…
Speaking of, Neville twisting the “Patriots’” game and making it his own was interesting and cruelly manipulative like Neville has a propensity to be. He talks about how they (this fake US government) created the problem (by dropping the bombs) and are now coming in to be the solution. This is exactly what he did by stopping the attempt on Allenford’s life. There was some really great camera work in that assassination attempt scene, too. I enjoyed it thoroughly…Just wanted to add that in…
Going along with the manipulation, and the good deeds are bad theme, the creepiest baddie I can think of right now, Titus Andover, talks a bit about the new world order and the loss of moral obligation. Sounds like creepy Andover was into kiddie porn, too. I suppose it could be something else, but he was the headmaster of an all boys school…and he’s creeptastic. They can’t get rid of him fast enough in the opinion of this reviewer. It all seems to have to do with that girl that was behind the red door…Her name is Jessica Andover…Since they were checking blood, most likely checking blood type…looks like blood transfusions are being done on her? Guess we will have to wait to find out more on that one! If the whole scene wasn’t creepy enough, we also had one of those wind up music boxes with the ballerina that spins as it plays “You Light Up My Life”. This was alarming on so many levels. I had one of those music boxes. Mine wasn’t as scary…but maybe after 15 years it would be…no, wait…mine was way older than that and it still wasn’t that creepy. Must have been the room…But we do know that Titus is somehow connected to these evil Patriots. We don’t as of yet know how, but we know there is a connection.
Aaron is about as freaked out about what happened to him as we are, which is good. We know that there is something about Aaron. His OS from when he was as MIT was the OS in the Tower. Do the nanites link organically to him somehow? It seems these things he is starting to see–like Ben bleeding out and talking to him–have to do with the nanites and Aaron coming back. Is this their way of communicating with Aaron? Is Aaron a conduit of sorts like that kid in the XFiles? IS HE NEO??? Well, he’s something anyway…we will have to wait to find out more.
What about Monroe? I would venture a guess that President Foster died when Atlanta was incinerated…or at least right now that appears to be the most likely scenario. This new government that calls itself the United States knows that Monroe is still alive and they have a bounty on his head. Monroe has been able to sneak around keeping a low profile, but only for about six months. Adam knows who Monroe is. Chances are others do as well. The fake “Patriots” are telling people he dropped the bombs. Only a precious few people know he didn’t. Charlie, one of the only people who knows he didn’t drop the bombs, seems fixated on taking Monroe out. From what I’ve read it does look like she will have to grudgingly put aside her hate to focus on the bigger problem. It is very clear that Bass doesn’t hate Charlie, and understands her anger. There is a very interesting chemistry between them and I’m excited to find out where it goes.
And what is up with the dead rats???
Let me know what you thought of the episode and what you hope to see this season!
