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Continuum: Second Truths

"Apparently, you're not the only one who can envision the future."

Finally!

It took an unpleasant interlude in a serial killer's basement and the possibility of nonexistence for Kiera to finally tell Carlos the truth about herself. She was right that telling him much earlier probably would have led to her spending some quality time in a padded room, but if it had gone on much longer, it would have been too long.

It's also fascinating that our strong, unemotional superwoman heroine melted down for the second episode in a row. Kiera's situation is getting to her, and she needs a friend. But wait, she has one. Why didn't she "call" Alec for help?

I was also wondering if Kiera's gun killed Mike Venables or just knocked him out (was that addressed in an earlier episode?), and I kept expecting him to pop up and attack Carlos while Kiera was sobbing out the truth about herself. That could have been fixed by Carlos just saying "He's dead" while checking for a pulse. Plus, why didn't Kiera have the names of the Ouroboros victims stored in her CMR? Why would it be "foggy"? And seriously, if you're going to tell someone a massive truth about yourself, you do it over coffee somewhere. You don't hang around a killer's basement and put off calling in the crime scene. Okay, I'm done now.

I did like that it was his instincts and experiences as a cop that motivated Carlos in this episode. Kiera's off the wall "hunches" made no sense, but even after he told her that he was done with her, he couldn't stop thinking about what she had told him. Carlos is such a good cop. If he didn't like Kiera so much, he probably would have reached this point with Kiera sooner. And maybe that's another little problem I had with this episode.

Even though the eyelid thing was a bit much for my gag meter, I also liked that the case was so Dexter-like. As Carlos told Eldridge in the interrogation room, who doesn't wish that pedophiles would just vanish off the face of the earth? It made me wonder about the thirty other guys eliminated in the original timeline who are still out there victimizing children when they should be dead.

Okay, on to the B plot.

I loved that they began the first act with Alec and Emily coming out of the theater discussing Looper and time travel paradoxes, even though the name of the movie wasn't mentioned. Alec followed up by inviting Emily to his secret lab for a very romantic but geeky meal, and Emily seemed to be impressed. (I certainly was.)

But Emily is a plant, and that's disappointing because I really want Alec to have someone who is genuinely into him. Is she after what's in the lab, or Alec himself? Who was she talking to on the phone when she said, "I'm in"? Liber8? Escher? It couldn't have been Kellog, unless he and Emily were both acting when they met. And why would Kellog need an "in" with Alec when he already has one?

The fact that Emily didn't know who the Kardashians were was a huge honking clue that she was "off"; I tune out the Kardashians but even I know they're not Russian mathematicians. Is she a time traveler? But then again, Emily was familiar with Groundhog Day. Maybe it's considered a classic in the future. (It should be.)

At least Kiera finally met the mysterious Mr. Escher, who wants to be her friend. Although we still don't know anything about him. Well, other than that he's the CEO of Piron, one of the corporations that is part of the future Corporate Congress. Which makes me feel that he's perhaps not all that trustworthy.


Bits and pieces:

— The flashforward in the library or data storage place or whatever was absolutely gorgeous. Loved Kiera's hairdo, too. It made her ugly copper uniform look good.

— Inspector Harris is still in charge at the VPD, and Inspector Dillon "landed on his feet" at Piron. Huh. I wonder if Escher did that just to connect with Kiera?

— Escher took Todd Sanchez and his future breakthrough in microbial reversal electrolysis away from Kellog.

— The bit with Patsy Reynolds in the box was creepy.

— Loved the M.E. stuffing a donut into his face as he was talking about the victims having something stuffed down their throats.

— The basement scene and the object in the throat were a deliberate echo of Silence of the Lambs. There was an important doll head in Dexter, too.

— Note that we got a lot of talk about a vision of the future in an episode where people's eyelids were being removed. We all know Kiera's future is Not Good. Good work with the symbolism there.

Quotes:

Emily: "Why don't we go back to your place, talk about causality loops, see where it takes us?"

Carlos: "We have eight unconnected victims, eight drops all over the city, and out of that, you get sexual abuse and a circle?"

Emily: "You're going to cook. In a secret lab. I'm intrigued, Mr. Heisenberg."
A little homage to Breaking Bad. Unless she meant the actual Heisenberg.

Emily: "What smells so good?"
Alec: "Ah, lemongrass with dragon fruit Thai basil served in a test tube, short ribs braised for a microsecond at 2100 degrees Kelvin, and for dessert, snow made with liquid nitrogen. If the lady likes."
Emily: "The lady does."

Kiera: "I almost died in here, and it made me think. What if I had? You would have found me, just another victim. I would have achieved nothing. And with all the changes I've caused, I may never come to exist at all. Never be born, never become a soldier, a cop, a wife, a mother. And life, life would continue on with nobody knowing I had ever lived."
Good job by Rachel Nichols there.

Even with its flaws, this was a very good episode. Three out of four circular bus routes,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

2 comments:

  1. I suspected Emily from the get-go, mostly because this seems more like the kind of story where someone fakes interest to "get in" than the kind of story where people fall in love with strangers in coffee shops. When she all but said, "The only way you're getting any action is if you take me back to your secret lair," i knew she was setting him up. I think the Kardashian thing was just her being funny for Alec.

    I am so enjoying this show, although my sleep schedule is not!

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  2. I was suspicious of Emily too, so I'm not terribly surprised. Not sure she's another time traveler, though. And I'm glad that Kiera has finally come clean with Carlos. I thought it was a bit strange that she seemed to be able to convince her captor she was from the future more easily than Carlos. As hard as it is to believer, a few quick tech demonstrations ought to be convincing given how advanced her gadgets are.

    One thing that strikes me as bizarre about the show is its extreme Vancouvercentricism. I find it hard to imagine that the VPD would be left largely in charge of investigating a major terrorist organization. Or that Liber8 would apparently confine their activities to Vancouver rather than going global. Or that all the important future corporations would have their head offices in Vancouver. I mean, I like Vancouver but the degree to which the rest of the world scarcely to seems to exist on this show is weird.

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