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Continuum: Second Last

Alec: "Staring at it won't make time travel arrive any faster."

Emily, whose real name is Maya Hartwell, was the heart of this episode. Completely unaware of the time travel shenanigans and refusing to do Escher's bidding and/or Kellog's, Emily proved that she truly loved Alec. She told him the total truth about herself and tried her best to remove herself from the equation. And got herself killed.

What struck me about that long, well-filmed gun battle was that Emily and Kiera were so alike, throwing themselves into it so valiantly, kicking amazing ass and risking their lives for the people they loved. Kiera even protected Emily at one point with her bulletproof supersuit. Before the Freelancers killed Emily, she tossed the Grapefruit away, and Kiera threw herself off the roof after it. That just blew me away.

Kiera is so, so ready to go home, and even though she has just hidden the Grapefruit in a handy empty metal container in Alec's lab, you just know that it's not going to happen. Is it even possible that she could go back to future before the execution and change everything? As Alec said, how on earth can she know if Greg and Sam still exist in 2077 after all of the possible timeline changing in the present day? Kiera's discussion with Escher and that final gun battle took place up on rooftops with a 360 view of the city, some obvious symbolism for the power that the Grapefruit of Death represents over pretty much everything and everyone.

Except the real power is the man who created it in the first place. The final moment of this episode showed a scary-looking and emotionally devastated Alec arriving at Piron's offices to see Escher. And do what? Alec needs the antimatter to make the Grapefruit work, and Escher has it. That must be it.

Allegiances and loyalties were definitely a theme in this episode. Emily showed what hers were before she died. When Gardiner's icky dead body was finally found in the trunk of a car, Carlos went to the wall to protect and support Kiera. You know, I thought Gardiner had come around, but apparently he was doing his best to link Kiera to Liber8 and bring her down, while the Freelancers were doing their best to pin Gardiner's murder on Kiera. What a mess.

What is up with the Freelancers? They were acting very Terminator in this episode, getting shot and looking dead, opening their eyes and getting up again. Are they cyborgs?

And speaking of Terminator, as if this episode didn't have enough going on, Alec got the DNA results and Jason is a 99% match. If Alec is Jason's son, then Alec is a paradox that was never supposed to exist. How can that be, if the elder Alec was the reason Kiera and Liber8 – and Jason – were sent back to the present day in the first place? Jason didn't acknowledge that Alec was his son and in fact, seemed confused about what Alec was saying. Jason said, "You're my... uh..." and then he said that he saw Ann Sadler "after the cage" and that he left Ann to protect Alec. The cage?



Kiera is worried about Jason and Lucas suffering from temporal illness, and fears she'll be next. I don't know if the temporal illness is the source of Jason's wacky charm, but he's such a fun character. In this undoubtedly dense episode, one moment I loved was Alec bringing out the Grapefruit, and Jason immediately popping it into the teapot. Of course, Jason said that the Freelancers could track the Grapefruit, so that even made sense. Sort of. If metal does indeed shield the Grapefruit from whatever the Freelancers have that can track it.

The continuing drama with Liber8 seemed a bit like an afterthought, although it was probably just more set up for the second season finale. It was clever of Alec to reboot Travis and get away, but Travis now has a supersuit of his own. Yes, Travis needs to be even scarier and more formidable than he already was, doesn't he?

Bits:

— The flashforward gave us the murder of Ramona Cathers of Sadtech Engineering, a scientist who specialied in antimatter. Future Kiera was taken off the case and the investigation was bumped upstairs. I'm not sure what this had to do with the present day plot, except for the antimatter thing.

— Betty the Liber8 mole revealed to Carlos that she thinks the Liber8 cause makes sense. Oh, Betty. Was that wise?

— Kiera tortured Kellog for Alec's location while he had his head in one of those hair-washing sinks. They're so uncomfortable. That had to be a drag to film.

— Mia Heartwell was guilty of, or accused of, extortion and assault, and there was mention of a dead boyfriend. She wanted to go to Thailand. Why Thailand?

— Jason said Escher didn't come from the future. Then how does he know so much about it?

— Did Carlos get shot during that gun battle?

Quotes:

Dillon: (re: Carlos) "He'll do the right thing whether he wants to or not."

Travis: "See, he designed this chip that kills compassion and accelerates aggression. Turns ordinary soldiers into extraordinary killers."
Emily: "You're an extraordinary asshole."
Travis: "No, he programmed that, too."
Was Travis joking?

Alec: "My mom thought tea would cure the apocalypse, if and when it happened."
At the beginning of the episode, Alec said that watching the Grapefruit wouldn't make time travel happen faster, as in, a watched pot never boils. Jason popped the Grapefruit into his tea kettle. I don't know if the comparison of time travel to tea was deliberate, but I found it amusing.

Jason: "Ladies! Dude! Try to keep this a weapons free zone."
And that didn't work.

It's hard to rate this one since so much of it was set-up for the finale, but I'm going to give it four out of four tea kettles,

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

2 comments:

  1. This is a terrific episode. This show knows how to do a second to last episode right. That fight scene in the end is excellent. Some of the producers of Continuum also worked on 24. It shows.

    Emily was great here, but Jason is the secondary character that steals the show for me. He *knows* the Freelancers (“I’m not going back there”, a line which we still don’t know the meaning of at this point), if people would just sit with him and have the patience to hear through his nonsense. Ian Tracey does some terrific work with the character.

    I thought Gardiner had come around, but apparently he was doing his best to link Kiera to Liber8 and bring her down

    I had the impression that Gardiner did come around, he just never had the chance to report to his superiors the new evidences he found.

    Did Carlos get shot during that gun battle?

    I don’t think so. He was just really, really tired from all the fighting.

    Alec said that watching the Grapefruit wouldn't make time travel happen faster, as in, a watched pot never boils. Jason popped the Grapefruit into his tea kettle. I don't know if the comparison of time travel to tea was deliberate, but I found it amusing.

    Wow, very interesting. I never catch on these details. Can’t wait for your review of the finale.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're probably right about Gardiner, Lamounier.

    My review of the second season finale will go up sometime tomorrow. And then since I already did season three, I'm done until the fourth and final season premieres in July!

    ReplyDelete

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