Home Featured TV Shows All TV Shows Movie Reviews Book Reviews Articles Frequently Asked Questions About Us

Continuum: 3 Minutes to Midnight

"You never catch the Road Runner. It can't be done."

And we have another game changer.

As we suspected, Kiera's toxic future has indeed been changed, and the Global Corporate Congress is gone. But the people still came out losers -- civil war, starvation, anarchy. By meddling in the future, Alec has made it worse. What a fascinating twist.

Sonya was determined to keep the faith, but Travis and Garza gave up, and Lucas seemed to be going nuts. Learning that they all had different agendas was the coup de grace. Somehow I doubt that the old gang is going to stay together. What will the Liber8 team of psychos do now? Kill themselves? Go to Disneyland? Will they get jobs as bag boys at Wal-mart?

How cool was that long sequence with Brad and Kiera versus the four Liber8 guys with Kellog and Curtis showing up, too? I'm still confused about Brad and Curtis and their relationship with the Freelancers, but I'm glad that Brad's growing relationship with Kiera is genuine – despite the fact that Brad was the one who killed the younger version of herself. And it was on future Kellog's instructions, too. (I loved Kellog's expression when he saw that Star Wars hologram of his future self.)

The Halo plot is getting weirder, but frankly, I'd rather the corporate shenanigans center around Alec, Piron and SadTech than some corporate monster we don't "know." Turns out that jumpstarting the creation of Halo was a mistake, like we didn't know that already. Without years of development experience and other technology to build upon, Alec has created a product that makes six percent of its beta testers into violent criminals. (I thought it was hilarious that Dillon wanted Halo because it would detect criminal behavior. It creates criminal behavior, too. That's handy.)

Alec bought off Julian, and Julian just realized it. I somehow doubt that Julian is going to stay bought. A crazed Jason just told Julian (his uncle! I just realized Julian is sort of Jason's uncle) the complete truth about time travel and who came back. Julian is a smart young man. He might not dismiss that revelation out of hand just because it sounded insane.

Anyway, the Halo stuff almost feels irrelevant. Liber8 has failed in their mission and I think they just dissolved. Alec changed the future, and it's very, very bad. I have absolutely no freaking idea what's coming in the final two episodes. Don't you love it when that happens?

Bits and pieces:

— Brad Tonkin is from the year 2039. We got an interesting little scene where Brad interacted with his younger self.

— Garza nail gunned Kiera's foot. Ow, ow and ow.

— Jason knew where the Grapefruit of Death was buried. How? It was Week Ahead Alec who buried it. Did I forget Week Ahead Alec telling Jason where it was?

— We got a glimpse of Week Ahead Alec, who is still in his Freelancer cage.

— I've become fond of poor Jason and his strange relationship with Alec, his future father. How strong can the relationship be on young Alec's part if he didn't actually raise Jason, though?

— Alec is twenty years old now. I was wondering.

Quotes:

Kiera: "Don't try to rationalize what you did."
Alec: "I'm sorry I want to make the world a better place and change the stark future I'm supposed to create."

Alex: "So if the launch goes the way we want, by Christmas we'll have 30,000 psychotic people walking around?"
Jason: "Seems a bit high."

Kiera: "You shoot the king, you gotta kill the king."

Lucas: "It's like Wile E. Coyote finally catching the Road Runner. (blank looks) It's a cartoon. It's pretty existential fare, actually. There's this coyote who's just relentless..."

Alec: "This is the heart of Halo: a bio organic microcircuit that interfaces directly between brain and machine. There's no other technology like it."
Julian: "Looks like it comes out of a terminator."

Carlos: "Big Brother. Wow. This just gets better and better."

Kiera: "Kellog working for himself, Curtis working for the freelancers, and Garza working for Alec Sadler. Your plans were compromised from the beginning. No one controls the future."

Travis: "Our mission concept is flawed."
Curtis: "A soldier knows when the battle is lost."

I am really impressed. This show impresses me. Four out of four road runners,

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

8 comments:

  1. I found the scene with Liber8 and the dynamic duo a bit unbaked. There should have been more screaming all about that root.

    The plot twist on the other hand, nice and scary - and on the verge of brilliance. The whole premise of the show is that they came back to change the past, and now... everything is wide open. :)

    Cant wait.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love the twists in this show! I watched Kiera's recap of who's working for who 3 times and I still don't have it all straight - but hey, who cares? It's so much fun to watch!

    ReplyDelete
  3. The first half of the episode was so solid and moved on such assured pace. But, like WhyMe, I thought the big exposition scene was a little unbaked. It did grow on me, though, after a couple of rewatches, and it was fun to see all those characters together, pointing guns to each other and having full disclosure.

    The opening scene was terrific. Watching our main character, even if another version of her, get shot in the head like that was a very powerful image. Later in the episode, I particularly liked that Brad himself told Kiera he was the one who killed her. I also liked how they both lowered their guns in the end, forming an unspoken alliance... and maybe more than just that. Speaking of which, how twisted is this show for having Kiera’s killer be a potential love interest for her?

    Alec: “I still remember my own warning.”
    Kiera: “You better.”

    I love how fierce Kiera is. How she confronts Alec, the Freelancers, Liber8. I loved that she told Travis she kicked his ass good (although, to be fair, she survived the fight and barely managed to take him down in the process). Kiera, you rock.

    My biggest problem with the Big Scene was how Liber8 reacted. They’ve been together for years and they simply dissolved after a few minutes of exposition to new information? I don’t buy it. Garza’s decision to quit was way too quick and I was totally annoyed by Lucas’ reaction. Travis’ reflexive way to take the news was in character, as was Sonya’s determination to keep fighting. But overall the band split happened too fast. I mean, just the fact that Brad came back to the past already changed the timeline, so why give up on fighting for a better future? Kiera said herself, any future is possible.

    Maybe it’s because Liber8’s presence through this season has been on/off (in fact, I think it was the first time we saw the four of them together), but we haven’t seen enough to believe they would dissolve like that. They needed a couple more episodes to make this turn believable. Maybe this season has too many storylines and thirteen episodes aren’t enough. I surely wouldn’t complain if there were more episodes. :)

    Anyway, I’m not entirely sold on the events that are unfolding, but I can’t complain this show is afraid to pursue new directions.

    ReplyDelete
  4. So... so far we have these following timelines:

    Timeline One: the one in which Alec Sadler ruled the world, and Kiera, Liber8, Jason and Warren came from. We don’t know if that timeline has collapsed or not. If it hasn’t it now features a motherless son of Kiera (forgot his name), and a childless Alec, who will never see the changes he intended to cause (that is, if I understood this show’s mythology correctly).

    Timeline Two: the one created when Kiera and Liber8 jumped back to 2012. The one that fell apart after Alec went back in time to save Emily and created…

    Timeline Three: the one Alec created and Kiera jumped to a little later. So it had two Kieras and two Alecs. It was also the timeline Brad came from and Kellog was in charge... But we never really got to see what happened in that timeline, because Brad jumped to the past and created...

    Timeline Four: which is the one we’re currently watching, the one where Brad killed Kiera 2.0.

    It’s possible that the order of creations of Timelines Three and Four are switched, but my brain hurt when I started thinking about it, so I stopped. I wonder, though, what was the outcome for Kiera(s) and Alec(s) on Timeline Three. We know that Kellog was in charge, but we know nothing about what happened to the other characters.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've been binge-watching show and find it highly enjoyable although confusing.

    One questions which is bothering me a lot - a few episodes previously, Kiera checked a ton of databases and found nothing on Brad (then a John Doe). However, we just saw that Brad is alive in the current timeline. Wouldn't something have come up in records? Fingerprints, DNA match, something to tie him to the boy Brad in the present?

    I am trying to make this make sense via multiple timelines, but it makes my head hurt.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Actually, CH, that's a good point. Although now that I'm thinking about it, isn't it unlikely that a child would have had his fingerprints or a DNA sample taken?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Billie, yes, I thought about that, too. I just think it would have been more in character for the show to pull something like, "I couldn't find your fingerprints or DNA anywhere but I did find 2 people with DNA suggesting they're your parents..." However, I was mostly worried I had missed something, so I am going to assume I didn't and it was just a minor blunder on the writers' part :) Thank you for responding!!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Lamounier, While it was certainly an exciting episode I'm with you on not believing Liber8's just going to give up like that because Brad says his timeline is horrible. It might not even be their fault, it could be Kellog's actions or Alec's or Kiera's that made things that way. And why should they trust Brad's assessment so completely? Kiera would have described the original timeline as a shiny almost crime-free future. Maybe what sucks for the Cowichan River Militia isn't so bad for some other people. Even if it is, wouldn't it make more sense to grill him for exactly what went wrong. Maybe they can still correct things. After all, it was this moment that was identified as the critical time by the people who sent Brad, not the arrival of Liber8 and Kiera.

    With respect to the idea of finding matching DNA for Brad, most people's DNA is still not on file unless they've been involved in a criminal investigation or had a genetic test lfor some other reason. So the odds of Brad's parents being available aren't particularly good, especially since Services like Ancestry DNA had less data back in 2012 or 2013.

    ReplyDelete

We love comments! We moderate because of spam and trolls, but don't let that stop you! It’s never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.