Sense8: WWN Double-D?

"Hey, look, if you guys are startin' some crimefightin' super-team Charlie's Angels shit, you count me in."

This was primarily a Nomi/Amanita episode with everyone else secondary, although everyone had something major happen.

While busy, this episode did find the time to get at least one or two small moments between the sensates. My favorite again was Riley and Capheus on the plane to Iceland. Capheus always seems to be full of so much joy and I loved him challenging Riley about her gloomy demeanor when she was literally flying through the clouds, something that delights him. Their conversation about the differences between privilege and luck was interesting and does speak to their individual backgrounds. They each lost a parent and were traumatized by it, and their surviving parent loves them unconditionally.

Take Gunnar, Riley’s father. He is waiting for her at the airport and serenades her with "Baba O’Riley" by the Who on a ukulele as she arrives. He is just so happy that his daughter is home, his every action just exudes that joy. He praises her career, makes her very thin pancakes, and argues that everyone needs music because it provides peace and joy. She makes music, just like he does. Unfortunately something is clearly haunting Riley, with that flash of someone behind her warning her that she shouldn’t have come back makes me worried for her return home.

While Capheus is clearly a half-full type of guy, he is shown the other side of the choice he has made to help Silas and Amondi. At first, Amondi’s birthday party is kind of amazing, with a big rooftop party and obvious love showered upon her. Until Capheus is taken down into an empty floor in the building below and is shown Silas' business up close and bloody. Is Silas a bad father in comparison to Gunnar? I’m not sure, because he clearly compartmentalizes what he does, but his utter lack of mercy as he cuts off the hands of a man whom he had been grooming as his number two is a stark message that Capheus is running on a knife’s edge.

Will and Riley don’t have a scene in this one because he is primarily busy with a gang meeting he sets up using the kid he saved in the first episode who acts as an intermediary. Will agrees to basically a ceasefire in exchange for pictures of Whispers the night of Angelica’s death. They get the plates of the van used and are starting to put the pieces together. That flash of her body when they find the van was shocking, but is an interesting reminder that Will is no longer like everyone else. What did Whispers do with her body? I almost don’t want to know because this shadowy organization seems as merciless as Silas. (More on that later.)

Sun’s journey was a bit unexpected as she arrives at prison and meets her new cellmates, who welcome her with open arms. While each is a murderer, they talk about the incredibly unfair gender inequality that drove each of them to choose violence to escape from their situations. We get a bit of her new routine which includes learning to sew – so her future after prison is working in a sweatshop? The only other minor plot point was a bully who stole her roommate's finished work. I bet that will come up again later on this season.

Kala and Wolfgang have a meaty scene where they finally sit down and talk. At first Kala is talking to Ganesh about her visions, asking why she is being sent these images of people, especially the man with the large "trunk." Wolfgang, sitting at a cafe in Berlin in the middle of a downpour, seems to reach out to her. At least he is wearing clothes this time. He confesses that he feels drawn to her in a way that is impossible to deny, to the point where he is planning to leave Germany to go find her.

The flashback to her childhood was beautifully shot, with the little girl getting a unique perspective on the festival. Getting lost was also like what happened to Amanita, who just ended up at the waffle cone stand, but the idea is the same. Each child runs off to explore and discover something about themselves. For Kala, it is part of why she has faith in her god, which Wolfgang doesn’t fully understand. I loved her countering the faith versus religion argument with quantum physics, because it is one of those things that breaks my brain, too.

Daniela, Lito and Hernando go to a romantic restaurant for dinner. Lito didn't like it at first... up until Hernando stepped in as bodyguard and made the paparazzi leave. It was their first night out together ever, and Dani loved doing that for them. But they came home to something less pleasant – Joaquin. He was even wearing a luchador mask so we'd know he was the bad guy. Did he really think that Lito and Dani would have sex and he could watch? Unfortunately, he stole her phone (we knew those photos she took were a mistake) and sends Lito photos of Lito and Hernando having sex which is potentially career destroying for Lito. Of course Dani runs off, determined to fix it.

Nomi and Amanita spend most of this episode talking about solving the mystery of why Dr. Metzger and whoever he works for is after Nomi. They go through his financial history and track down one of his patients, a catatonic man named Niles Bolger who is the only survivor of the Doctor’s procedure, but is clearly just a broken shell of whoever he once was. This of course would have been Nomi’s fate, death or zombie land, and it causes her to melt down a little.

Thankfully, Nomi has Amanita, who is like the best girlfriend ever. Seriously, she never even bats an eye over Nomi’s new weird connection to seven other people. Neither does her mother Grace, who is a child of the 60’s and believes that there is far more out in the world that is unexplained than we currently understand. Grace is one of the great parents depicted in the series so far along with Gunnar (Riley’s father), Shiro (Capheus’s mother) and Kala’s parents (Sanyam and Priya). This balances out the utterly horrible parents we see elsewhere, like Wolfgang’s despicable father and Nomi’s deadname dropping mother.

Nomi and Amanita’s snooping eventually leads them to a cafe where Nomi clones Dr. Metzger’s phone using equipment supplied by a new character named Bugs. He is an old friend of Nomi's from before she transitioned. His initial introduction is mildly problematic as he tries to figure out how to interact with this new version of his old friend. He says a couple of borderline things, but nothing intended as mean spirited or hostile, more like the type of thing someone says when they don’t really know what is appropriate and has a bit of a loose filter to begin with.

This culminates in one of the most intense endings of an episode so far. We start with Felix in Berlin letting Wolfgang know that their fence has disappeared, and they are ready to pack up and head to India when a pretty woman shows up at their shop, but she is a honeypot trap and Felix is gunned down. We don’t know if he is dead, but there is no mistaking who took the shot. I somehow doubt Wolfgang is going to let that just go unanswered.

Meanwhile Nomi and Amanita break into Dr. Metzger’s house and hack into his computer, they don’t find much (even porn) but when the good doctor comes home things go sideways quickly. We learn that Dr. Metzger is just a pawn, working for something shadowy and terrifying with Whispers, revealed to be a man named Dr. Matheson, as his handler.

Nomi starts to demand answers when Jonas shows up to warn them to run, when suddenly the brain dead Niles breaks in with a silenced gun and chaos ensues. After a short chase down a hallway where a poor bystander is shot, Niles kills Dr. Metzger and turns the gun on himself. However, in the reflection of a mirror at the end of the hallway, Nomi can see that it isn’t actually Niles, but Whispers somehow controlling the body of Niles.

Bits:

Dr. Metzger visited Iceland. That can’t be good for Riley. Amanita also finds a Nancy Drew book in Dr. Metzger’s house, which is kind of a weird find.

Bugs at some point in the past pulled off a major hack, but got caught in the process. Nomi, then Michael, took the fall for him. This tells us two major things. First, that Nomi is somewhat selfless (which we kind of already knew) and second, that Bugs is likely a very loyal ally moving forward.

Kristján Kristjánsson (Gunnar) is a well known Icelandic actor and singer who is also in the band Of Monsters and Men who have provided songs for productions like The Walking Dead and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Their song Thousand Eyes is a favorite of mine, featured in the pre-release marketing for the Netflix series Jessica Jones.

The festival young Kala gets lost within is called the Festival of Colors or Holi, one of the oldest in the Hindu religion.

WWNDD means: What Would Nancy Drew Do?

Future Detail: (Minor spoilers)

Whispers and Nomi make eye-contact in the final scene, but this does not appear to have created a visiting connection between them. Maybe this is because Whispers is operating Niles remotely and this wasn’t actual in-person eye to eye contact?

(End spoilers)

Quotes:

Bug: "Where's Mike?"
Nomi: "It's me. I'm... Mike."
Bug: "Oh, shit. Fuck! Right. Totally forgot. I'm a fucking idiot. 'Course it's you, buddy! (laughs and hugs her) 'Course it's you. Not you, like the old you, like a new, hot version of you. Shit, Mike! You're a total fox! I would do you! I would. I would totally... I mean not like... (looks at Amanita) not in a degrading way, like that sounded, but total compliment."

Lina: "In this country, sometimes the only place you can find a brave and honest woman is in prison."

Riley: "Privileged. Not lucky."

Grace: "Amanita never told me she was dating Robin Hood."
Amanita: "Nomi's got this whole secret identity, Mom. Silicon Valley nerd by day, political hacktivist by night. She tried to go straight–"
Nomi: "Hey, I would never go straight."
Amanita: "She tried to play by the rules, and they tried to lobotomize her."

Nomi: "You know, I still can't believe how you're just taking this all in stride. If someone told me they were hearing other people's voices in their heads, I'd be sure they slipped off their medication."
Grace: "Child of the sixties. If you didn't hear voices at least once, you were doing something wrong."

Amanita: "W W N Double D."
Nomi: "What would Nancy Drew Do?"
Amanita: "I sense a costume opportunity."

Gunnar: “I've been watching you on the internet. You've had a lot of shows. Doing well.”
Riley: “Oh, it's nothing, just playing records for drunk people trying to get laid.”
Gunnar: “Playing Beethoven's the same, you know. The people are mostly too old and tired to bother with the getting laid part.”

Amanita: “Oh my God! Nom! BFFs with Cheney. He's gotta be evil.”
This episode really does feel like it is rolling out the consequences of episodes five and six as the dangers and new reality of our eight protagonists are starting to come into focus, along with their peculiar connection, as the weight of what is after them begins to force them together. That kind of narrative balance is tricky to pull off and I think it works here.

3.5 out of 4 Children lost in crowds

Samantha M. Quinn spends most of her time in front of a computer typing away at one thing or another; when she has free time, she enjoys pretty much anything science fiction or fantasy-related.

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