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Continuum: Second Listen

"That boy is not the man that you met."

Let's see. What do we have here? Bodysnatching, Doctor Frankenstein, hidden tattoos, sexy assignations, dead roommates...

The center of the story was Jasmine Garza's two bookending encounters with Alec, in the future and in the present. (Was that some outfit she wasn't wearing? Wow.) Kagame ordered Garza to kill the elder Alec, and the elder Alec ordered Garza to kill the younger Alec. Holy paradox, Batman.

Garza took present day eighteen-year-old Alec to SadTech site one, the "monument to his greed," but couldn't kill him there because he said he was in love. The older Alec couldn't love anyone. Garza must believe that Alec's ability to love has already changed the future. She's a massive bad ass, but clearly, she has some of the softer emotions, too or she would have killed both Alecs.

So Garza decided to let young Alec live because he could love, but we saw some of present day Alec's less positive qualities here. How creepy was activating Elena's CMR and looking out through her dead eyes? There was mention of Hal the murderous computer (I hope I didn't just spoil 2001 for you) and that bit about Oppenheimer destroyer of worlds and absolute power. Alec is still a cypher. His future self was ready to sacrifice his own existence to change the world, but will present day Alec be able to resist attaining that level of power without elder Alec's knowledge of what it did to the world?

So many questions. Escher told Kiera that the Freelancers have tattooed dots between their fingers and said they want power and control. Escher has those very same dots, which means that Escher is, or was, a Freelancer. What sort of coding is in those dots? Do the Freelancers want the timeline to stay as it originally was, or do they want to change it? The fact that they want power and control suggests the latter, doesn't it?

In other news, Alec now believes that Jason is his father, and just took a soda can for a DNA sample. Emily is a plant, but she appears to genuinely care about Alec, and Kiera's CMR backed that up. Kellog doesn't want Alec to work on time travel, which I find confusing; maybe Kellog just wants money and doesn't care what happens in the future.

And then there's Gardiner, whom Kiera had managed to turn into something of an ally – right before the Freelancers killed him. Kiera shouldn't have left Gardiner working alone, since he was clearly out of his league. I was just starting to enjoy the changes they were making in Gardiner as a character and now boom, he's dead. Too bad.

Bits and pieces:

— Along with the very Blade Runner copper-colored copter in the flashforward, I really liked how Garza and Kiera made such adept observations about each other.

— Alec was born in 1994, two years after Jason arrived in 1992.

— We now know two Freelancers, other than Escher, Warren and Miller, and that the Freelancers are connected with a law firm called Fisker and Associates. The thing with the beneficiaries suggested that the Freelancers don't have relatives. Which makes sense for time travelers, I guess.

— Gardiner kidded Kiera about a 'get out of jail free' card. Remember the season opener with Kiera being dragged to that tiny cell?

— Kellog called the Arc an orange slice. I thought I was being all original calling it the Grapefruit of Death.

— Alec just lost all of his roommates. Now what? Police investigation? Will Alec move into his lab?

Quotes:

Alec: "Is this your idea of pranking in the future?"
Kiera: "No… in basic, we did reboot a cadet's CMR while he was sleeping and he practically richocheted out of his bunk."

Alec: "It's weird and it's creepy and I feel like I'm reanimating the dead … (pause) Actually, that's kinda cool."

Jason: "I bring a world of experience. And day-olds."

Kellog: "Pardon the pun, but there's time for that."

Carlos: "Keep your friends close..."
Kiera: "And your enemies in a vise-like grip."

Kiera: "You're not in the lab?"
Alec: "I'm an autonomous human being, you know. I have independent functionality."
Kiera: "Yes, Hal."
Alec: "Hey, is that your first pop culture reference? I think it is."

Garza: "You, in the future, asked me for a favor. Can you guess what you wanted?"
Alec: "Dating advice?"

Three out of four pop culture references,

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

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