DEM

I agree. I'm unclear about exactly how Ambrose found the bus because I thought he had some sort of epiphany well after the fact as he was on his hike, but regardless it was pretty gross how he made Cora take the fall for that. That's at least the third time he's done something like that to Cora. He claims to want to help her, but then he does things like interview the husband about "Cora's drug use" in a way that was apparently very specific rather than general/hypothetical (e.g., "Does she have a history of depression? Anxiety? Drug use? Been prescribed any medications?"), so Mason explodes and refuses to bring their son to visit the jail. Ambrose is slippery and disingenuous when he doesn't need to be, and Pullman's "private, dirty joke" acting doesn't help. I wrote off Mason in ep1 when he didn't come to the police station or even call Cora. Then he did a 180 and berated Cora for wanting to plead guilty and lost even more points. He's so far in the hole now that he loses points simply for showing his face. I haven't watched ep6 yet, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Phoebe did that because she was angry that Cora didn't answer the phone and give her all the creepy, voyeuristic details RIGHT NOW, rather than true concern for her safety. Yeah, now the show is aware of jurisdiction, when just a couple of eps ago, Ambrose and novice officer who needs to learn how to use the block function on her phone showed up to arrest husband and JD in a town that was an hour away. So many of these characters are annoying me that I hope the bones are Phoebe's, and Cora's DNA is on the blanket because it came from the family home. That's unlikely given the proximity to Sketchy Club, but I can dream. And shouldn't the police be concerned with identifying THE ACTUAL BODY?

CHIDI (to Michael): My soulmate will be books. Later... CHIDI (to Eleanor): I know that book. ... I've never seen you before... but I think, somehow, that we know each other. Very clever! I am so happy this show is back.

Congratulations to these winners (from the Creative Arts ceremony), esp. to Susan Jacobs for winning the first ever award for the new Music Supervision category!

Hahaha, this could get confusing. My immediate reaction to the photo (without reading below) was, "Oh my god, fake Eleanor!" (Yeah, I know how she's credited, but after 1x13 my mental map immediately shifted. heh)

I watched this ep again the other day and was astounded by how smoothly goo!Two manoeuvred everyone: Ishida, Mikkei, Android, Six...

Aw, damn it. Victim of not being owned by SyFy. Ugh, so sad and frustrated. This was the only Friday show I watched. I gave up on both Killjoys and Earp last year.

Technically, she's simply the adoptive mother of Five's sister. Nope, per Mallozzi it will be big and clear when it happens. Hey, how's this for ironic foreshadowing?

Five of eight. 3x11: The Dwarf Star Conspiracy Not Yet: The Double Deception 3x13: Kryden Not Yet: Carina Not Yet: The Accelerated 3x12: The Fall of the House of Ishida 3x10: A meeting with [Android's] creator 3x13: The Black Ships

I enjoyed this ep a lot! Kudos to VFX on the space battle and the opening of the portal. I liked that Ryo's Ishida story continues on. After last week, I was worried it would tied up in a neat bow (Big Overture, Little Show) and not have much lingering effect on his individual story or his relationship with the crew (as I felt Five's memory wipe sadly did after S1). But this ep showed that Ryo/Ishida will continue to be an issue. Also cool was the way it illuminated Teku's character and highlighted a somewhat hidden facet: Teku may be an honest, loyal fellow of great integrity, but the schoolteacher also possesses a spine of steel and a mind for strategy. I KNEW there was something wrong with Two when Six found her. I practically cheered when Six questioned her, but even after she passed the test I was still unsettled. By the time I had accepted that, okay, maybe all was as it seemed, BOOM! ALIEN TWO! (I kinda wish the first reveal had been omitted.) This was a great ep for Two & for Melissa O'Neil. Everyone involved -- O'Neil, Mullie, and director Murphy -- hit the sweet spot with Two, particularly in her role as commander. O'Neil did a great job differentiating Two from both Portia and Alien Two while still showing that all 3 originated from the same "base" character. And Two in the training room! And Two fulfilled her original design-purpose when we least expected it!! To be quite frank, Two vs. Alien Possession is 10,000 times more interesting to me than Two Has a Baby (??!). Actually, I'd extend that comment about sweet spots to all of the main characters. I knew and understood each of the characters, but also learned more about them. Delighted by the many surprises and, importantly, that they didn't feel hokey or forced or conveeenient. Closely related were the callbacks -- big and small, specific and thematic -- to earlier episodes. So much "Hey! Oooh!" Re: Six. Part of me believes that he will be okay, but another part recognises it could go either way. I don't want to lose Six. In closing (for now): Truffault. :-)

I'm confused. What original parents? You're saying that Five's sister might not actually have been her biological sibling? Five and her sister were actually adoptees who were then orphaned and then Sis was adopted again? Per 3x02, Five's sister is older than she ("She was adopted when you were still a baby"). I don't have a freaking clue how old Two is supposed to be, but I doubt it's old enough that she could have produced a child at least 17 years prior to present day.

My ongoing quest to understand Two continues. Does anyone have a sense of how old Two is supposed to be -- in actual, calendar years? 5? 10?

from 2x09 ERIC WAVER: When you broke free, you were brutally efficient. .... You killed them all. The research team, technicians, the security personnel, everyone on that station, except me.

Sigh. Never have I so wanted to be wrong about guessing a secret (Two's).

I'm not sure I agree. I don't think it was absolutely necessary for Rebecca to kill every last thing that moved in order to escape Dwarf Star, and mass slaughter is generally, well, shocking. She hadn't gone over the edge only in the sense that she went back to being not-homicidal for a while. For myself, for now, I think Portia is the story of how Rebecca got stuck in dark mode, rather than how she turned. In other words, Two is Rebecca's default personality (generally normal but capable of great violence) while Portia is Dark Mode.

Just watched this ep again and... Holy Moly! How is Misaki still alive?! She is surly and insolent and her head needs to be detached from her shoulders.

As I was falling asleep last night I suddenly had the idea that whatever tipped Portia over the edge -- again -- had to do with Dr Shaw (a betrayal?). Like you, I'm confused about Two's psychology. Every time I think I have a tentative handle on it and/or am prepared to "just go with it", new information wrecks my mental model. I had accepted the idea that Rebecca's by turns sterile and abusive "upbringing" in a lab led straight to Portia. That made sense. However, it didn't explain how, even with a memory wipe, she'd turn into someone with a strong moral compass (and sometimes be compassionate to the point of tears). So, I'd chalked that part up to "a wizard did it": Rebecca's base design included fully mature personality and empathy and moral reasoning. Although that wouldn't leave as much to work with from a character development perspective, she could still be predisposed to psychopathy and violence when wronged, and it fit the data. But now Dr Shaw comes along and, although her existence shores up the empathy & adult relations bits, it re-opens the question of why Rebecca reverted to full-time psychopathy. We could surmise that the mere loss of Shaw turned Rebecca back because Rebecca's personality was always shaky, but I guess there's more to the story. If we accept that Rebecca always had the capability of being a nice person, then Das at best reminded her that not all humans are terrible, so Portia was nice in that moment. That leaves Two's agency as a character intact, and it doesn't further contort an already stretched timeline. I know Ryo said stuff in 2x12, but no, just no. (Plus, Ryo's next moves were back-to-back mass murders, so his words need a lot of salt.)

OK, just go with Terrafamilia's analogy, which is exactly what I was trying to say, but TF was clearer. (Plus, all the hosts were fried so the aliens were SOL anyway.)

The ink aliens first appeared in 2x09 (Going Out Fighting) when the crew infiltrated the Dwarf Star labs on Earth in order to acquire new nanites for Two. Three and Six were captured, etc. Six is the worst undercover operative ever! By the 17th 'significant glance' at Two, I was questioning his every credential. Hmm, I'm no nuclear physicist, but I'm pretty sure it is very different. Think: nuclear power plant vs nuclear bomb (or even everyday nuclear power plant vs nuclear meltdown).

And Zoie Palmer writes Sukie, so I guess that's the correct one? But I'm with you: I hope we don't have to learn it. We know the Portia-Das scene was pre-wipe because Android (and Two) had forgotten it! It's the activity that the alt-universe Android alluded to in 2x08 and which Two and Five discussed in 2x10. Five said, "It was you. You made her this way. You took an obsolete model with no empathy emulators or emotional subroutines, and you tried to make her more human." I found it very gratifying when Das called Android "just a machine" and Portia contradicted her. I don't know why the upgrades weren't done before Portia left Sanctuary, but if what Ryo said in 2x12 about finding Android on Lyra-9 was accurate, then perhaps there was a hitch and Portia and Android were separated for a time?

Good question. I went back and watched 2x04 (his intro ep), and there he ran a diagnostic and concluded that Android was different by design. It seems to me that there's much going on with Victor that he's hiding. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he could unlock and/or already knew a lot more, but he's concealing it. The fact that he tried to convince Android that the Raza crew might have been lying about Android's memory wipe even though he KNOWS that the crew were themselves at a catastrophic cognitive loss tells me this dude is up to no good. He's probably a double agent!

Phew. In the thread for 3x07 I complained (yet again!) about the lack of tie-in between Two and The Android. Never would I have dreamt that we'd get a story like this one! Dr Victor Frankenstein Irena Shaw created Rebecca, then Dwarf Star snatched Rebecca away and tortured her crazy, but Rebecca escaped and returned to Irena, only to find out Irena was dying so Irena made herself an android body (our Android!) but then decided not to use it, and eventually the lovers (which is kinda creepy if you think about it but okay) parted ways and Portia (née Rebecca) carted Android along with her in her murderous rampage across the galaxy. Phew! Amazing. As is usual with Two and Android, however, they never got around to talking about themselves with one another. Android had nice talks with Six and Three, but it remains to be seen whether Android and Two will ever talk about what they each learned independently about their pasts and what that means for them in the present. As lovely as it was for Six to assert that Android's provenance doesn't make her "lesser" in his eyes; the Irena-Suki comparison doesn't have the same relevance or emotional resonance to him as it would to Two. This disconnect is interesting. I mean, there have been hints since at least 1x02 (I think) that Android was connected to Two more so than to the ship, and although we've seen their bond over the series, they tend to keep each other at a certain distance. It's almost as if, despite all the memory wipes, they both know there are things they don't want to deal with. Turning to the Three/Sarah story: Nice payoff! I liked the way all these threads came together. And despite my earlier desire for Sarah to be evil (heh), now I hope she never will be, and that she'll foil whatever nefarious plan Victor is plotting! That goes triple if he attempts to harm Dr Shaw (who also better not be evil). Gosh, I really don't like him. This ep clarified (again?) what I don't like about Five and why I don't find somewhat similar behaviours from Three off-putting. Five is very black-and-white, about face without any self-reflection. Three can be selfish and bigoted, but he: 1) owns those attitudes and 2) when he changes his mind it's because he's thought about stuff and he doesn't try to justify the change with high-minded (but ultimately self-serving) rhetoric. Moreover, his crew mates don't gloss over his selfishness or try to make it noble. Finally: RYO!! That flashback was a nice surprise!

Huh, I'd never had the impression that Wendy knew about the money laundering all along.

Gah, you can just SEE the writing, you know? So bad. Mia is now on my Misted List. I feel like I rate most of the characters according to who I want to least see die.

You deceived me, thuganomics! How could you? That fight scene was great though, but the editing between parts 1 and 2 was strange. Two was down and Ryo pulled over a hook/chain and then we left them, but when we came back, Two popped up again -- offscreen. I would have to have seen her regain the upper hand. I want my favourite duo back together again. That Fall needs to happen soon so Ryo can come back to his senses. Of course. I did like that Two figured out all on her own that Android was the culprit. I'm conflicted about Sarah not being evil. Heh.

Good point. Considering how much a like Two-Four as a duo, you'd think I'd be more attuned to this. I guess it hasn't felt prominent enough lately? Ryo would be a dummy to push a fight to the death. Two can survive the vacuum of space; he's not winning that game!