“It’s time for everyone to open their eyes, to open their minds...”
What a great season finale! Thank goodness Rosen has finally decided to do the right thing. Well, at least what he thinks is the right thing. Having his daughter in league with the sociopath who lives forever may mess things up a bit. I can’t wait for next season. Will Rosen’s revelation make a difference, or will they just whisk him away to Binghamton so that next season will be about his team trying to survive and get him out?
This Week’s Superpower
We are getting to meet more and more Alphas. This week we had a tracker who seemed to “taste” the air. We had already met super-assassin and I think there was Bill’s twin in super strength; Cameron’s twin in speed, agility and accuracy; a guy who channeled heat; Rosen’s daughter Dani, whose power was empathetic contagion; and Stanton Parrish, a man with a perfect mind/body connection. Alphas are starting to come out of the woodwork. And then this week the government killed 30 of them, labeling them terrorists. I know that these themes have been explored before in the X-Men series, Heroes and even, in a way in Haven (another show I review), but this show does it extremely well. We fear that which is different. Our governments reflect that fear in their covert operations and their attempts to control and contain rather than understand and connect. I wonder if there is any hope of avoiding Stanton Parrish’s war, or if Rosen is just a misguided idealist.
The Alpha Team
Dr. Rosen is as flawed as everyone else on the team and they are all starting to understand this. I was appalled to learn that he had treated his daughter as a science experiment and used her to control his depressed wife. But we are all flawed, and parents always fail their children. He tries to make it up to Dani by apologizing and really trying to learn her perspective.
Bill is okay (except for drinking pills), back to normal and then back to Alpha. I really hope all this bouncing around doesn’t kill him. Bill and Nina had a touching moment as they went into the warehouse and I was surprised that neither of them were hurt. That seems to be the standard consequence of falling in love with a co-worker. I’m glad this show doesn’t do standard. Gary has lost his friend in unfair and gruesome circumstances. I’m not quite sure how he will deal with it. Rachel wasn’t central in this episode, except in terms of her abilities, which were extremely useful. She becomes more of a grown-up every week.
The Disaster, or the Incident at Highland Mills
What was Sullivan thinking, giving the order to open fire? How disorganized are her people if they just start shooting randomly? The scenes of them dropping Alphas as they ran away was awful. Poor Anna, she was starting to understand the mess she was in and probably would have been an ally. The team is going to have a great deal of difficulty getting over this debacle. I couldn’t believe the gall of Sullivan still trying to justify her actions. And what is the answer to totally getting it wrong -- we’ll give you whatever you want to keep doing the job? Rosen took the only moral choice left open to him. I’m so glad he did.
Bits and Pieces
Is Dani working with Stanton Parrish by choice? If so, did she get her boyfriend Will killed? It must have been Stanton who sent the assassin.
Every Alpha has a down side. For Stanton Parrish, it is being a sociopath. So do the imperfections of our mind/body connection make us human?
More cool fight scenes. My particular favourite was between Cameron and his female counterpart, who, by the way, won (only because Cameron hesitated to shoot her, but still she literally kicked ass).
Rosen is divorced and by the looks of it, single. Nice house.
A “gem” gem drive. Clever.
Quotes
Gary: “It’s not a fort, Bill. Bad metaphor: forts have ramparts and cannons, we have desks and chairs.”
Gary: “Infarction, I’m being immature.”
Sullivan: “You’re a therapist. Compartmentalize.”
Gary: “I don’t think I like hard work.”
Stanton Parrish: “We are not the problem. We are the solution.”
Bill: “This is Red Flag versus Us. This is endgame. I’m in.”
Gary: “I always get people to do what I want to do. I wear them down.”
Rosen: “We are the ambush.”
Rosen: “I tend to intellectualize everything. I approach everything from an analytical standpoint.”
Parrish: “War: it’s inevitable in two years, maybe three. Nothing you or I can do to stop it.”
Rosen: “You’ll forgive me if I try."
Thank you for your review! I have been really enjoying this series, and I'm so glad it was renewed. Many shows and movies have tried to capture the magic of the human versus super-human world of fear as well as the X-Men comics.
ReplyDeleteX-Men First Class, and Alphas are the only two that have gotten it right, so far. I really wasn't expecting this show to be quality, let alone so engaging. Of course it has to do with character, we care about them all by now.
Gary rushing into the building, unarmed, to save Anna, only to fail, was devastating. Rosen, causing his daughter so much pain, that she has ultimately sided with the enemy was totally unexpected.
I'm really glad this show is being covered, and I look forward to reading your reviews next season. Thank you again for your review.
TVNerd
What TVNerd said! Really. They did so many smart things this season. They even wrote out Straithern's wig. :)
ReplyDeleteIt's surprising how much I care about these characters. Especially Gary, who should be annoying, but whom I find incredibly endearing and whom I hated seeing in danger.
I kept thinking that Rosen was secretly an alpha, but it made more sense that his daughter was. Couldn't they cast her, please? She's been in half of my favorite shows in the past year or so and I really like her.
Thanks again for taking on this show, Doc. Lovely review.
Doc, the episode was so terrific and you've covered all the bases so well, there's not much to add here. Terrific!
ReplyDeleteI just want to say that I cried three times during the episode: first out of joy when Rosen and his daughter shared her feeling so intimately; then out of grief, seeing Gary holding a dead Anna; and finally out of admiration for Rosen's enormous... gut. I wanted to high-five him and his team. The Alphas Powers That Be really threw the fans some really pleasnt payoff when Dr Rosen threw something not so pleasant at the fan. I'm really looking forward to Season 2.
I've been pondering this episode a bit, and I think I'm in the "Rosen is a misguided idealist" camp. I just can't help feeling that his good intentions are paving the road to hell. What he did felt like the "right thing" in the moment, and I was so proud of him for sticking it to both sides, but the more I think about it, the more I think that "going public" is only going to accelerate the war that Parrish seems to want. This revelation is undoubtedly going to scare the crap out of the mundanes, especially when they learn about the kinds of activities Red Flag has been involved in, and Alpha-Mundane tension is probably going to escalate precipitously.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I'm really looking forward to seeing it all play out next season. As you and TVNerd note, Doc, Fear of the Other can be fertile ground for great stories. I hope that the creators really milk the political allegory.
I was delighted to see Kathleen Munroe as Dr. Rosen's daughter. She did great work as Dr. Perry on SGU, and I'm hopeful that we'll get to see more of her here, especially since she's in league with Parrish.