S02.E06: Many Miles From Snowpiercer

[formerlyfreedom]

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Melanie fights for survival in treacherous conditions, vying to do what others before her could not.

Airing Monday, March 1, 2021.

 

[Mr. Sparkle]

I really liked that one. This show needs Jennifer Connelly. 

I kept waiting for her to wake up at the end, and it's kudos to the writers that they didn't go that route. 

[blackwing]

I thought this episode was dreadfully boring.  One of the reasons why I haven’t liked this season much is because there is less emphasis on the train itself.  Last season it was interesting to see how the train functioned, seeing the differences between the classes of train cars from the opulence of first class to the squalor and near darkness of the tail.  This season there has been a lot less about the train.  And now with this episode, it was almost entirely off the train.   This episode was just another struggle against the odds in a post apocalyptic world.  I don’t doubt for an instant that Melanie gets saved somehow, so the whole thing was really anti climactic.  
 

Best part of the episode was that I didn’t have to suffer through Audrey thinking she is sexy or Zara being sad sack Zara or pinched face Till looking like she smelled a fart.

I don’t buy for an instant that Melanie would have seen Layton during her hallucinations   Wilford, yes.  Alex, yes   But why Layton?  I don’t know how much time has passed in the show since the series started, but I’m guessing no more than a month?  When she is hallucinating and supposedly dying, I don’t believe she would envision a guy who was an antagonist and who she’s known less than a month.   She would have been more likely to see Ben her boyfriend or Ruth who was her best friend for years.

I did appreciate that we saw the events leading up to the train’s departure from Chicago.   So she didn’t want to leave Alex behind, but didn’t really have a choice.  Why didn’t she explain all of this in more detail to Alex when they reunited?

 

[pezgirl7]

12 hours ago, blackwing said:

I don’t buy for an instant that Melanie would have seen Layton during her hallucinations   Wilford, yes.  Alex, yes   But why Layton?  I don’t know how much time has passed in the show since the series started, but I’m guessing no more than a month?  When she is hallucinating and supposedly dying, I don’t believe she would envision a guy who was an antagonist and who she’s known less than a month.   She would have been more likely to see Ben her boyfriend or Ruth who was her best friend for years.

I didn't get the impression she was hallucinating. I thought she was just imagining them in order to stay sane. Like how people daydream and have fake conversations in their heads. I also found the episode pretty boring. Since the train missed her, does that mean she has to survive on rats for another month?

[rmontro]

3 hours ago, pezgirl7 said:

Since the train missed her, does that mean she has to survive on rats for another month?

That does seem to be the implication.  I can't remember, isn't there some reason that they can't go in reverse?  I'm not sure why they can't communicate anymore, did Wilford sabotage communications?

This was the Melanie episode I'd been expecting.  I'm sure Melanie had said at some point that she thought Alex was on the train when she left,.  I guess she was lying.  I find it hard to believe she would leave her daughter behind.  If Wilford was such a monster, maybe she could have murdered him later somehow, instead of killing her daughter along with him.  It also appears Wilford was a fairly visible character before the train left, it makes it seem more unlikely that Melanie could get away with pretending he was on the train all the time but he had suddenly become a recluse.

[Dowel Jones]

Was it ever mentioned how she acquired a snowmobile and sled?

What exactly did she do that Layton refer to as "a Tailee trick"

[rtms77]

I hope there are enough rats for a whole month because that ending sucked. I get the impression that Ep7 will show us why the train was having problems stopping or slowing down and why no communication. Wilford made his move. Alex at the end yelling for Melanie seemed to indicate something was up.

 

I think Melanie did mention she had sent people to get Alex but Alex said her grandparents didn’t trust them and wouldn’t let her go. With the tallies storming the train, Wilford murdering needed scientists to boost security she really didn’t have a choice to stay. She took what she could and ran.  
 

I find it odd Melanie was already hallucinating from the moment she got there. Lack of air maybe?  And how did she make it past the avalanche to the train but couldn't retrieve her supplies? Did the avalanche fall on the supplies? Did she still have her snowmobile? 

[meep.meep]

The snowmobile got stuck.  She left her supplies, detached the snowmobile from the first sled, dragged that to the station and entered.  She went back the next morning to get the supplies but the avalanche in the night had covered them up.

The Tailee Trick was setting up the apparatus to catch the rat.

Sooner or later, she's going to eat the arm and really become a Tailee.

[Auntie Anxiety]

11 hours ago, rtms77 said:

I find it odd Melanie was already hallucinating from the moment she got there. Lack of air maybe?

I don’t think we were supposed to see it as hallucinating. She was having conversations in her head, like we all do to some extent, with the people she needed to motivate her; wanting to prove Wilford wrong, wanting to survive because of Alex, wanting to go all  Tailie with Layton’s encouragement. Basically, the writers needed a way to explain Melanie’s actions and realized it would have been even more boring to just watch her doing stuff without any dialogue.

[blackwing]

On 3/2/2021 at 10:34 AM, pezgirl7 said:

I didn't get the impression she was hallucinating. I thought she was just imagining them in order to stay sane. Like how people daydream and have fake conversations in their heads. I also found the episode pretty boring. Since the train missed her, does that mean she has to survive on rats for another month?

Ok whether she was actively imagining them, or whether she was hallucinating, the people weren't real.  I still question why she wouldn't have seen Ben or Ruth or her dead parents before she saw Layton.  Especially Layton, who was condescending and flippant.  The only reason seems to be so that Daveed Diggs could have screen time.  I just find it odd that her subconscious would choose Layton to manifest, and then have him make fun of her by saying she was turning into a Tailee.  I suppose maybe there is an argument that she was pushing and challenging herself by rising up against Layton's criticism, but I think she would rather have manifested her boyfriend to encourage her positively.

11 hours ago, Dowel Jones said:

What exactly did she do that Layton refer to as "a Tailee trick"

I think she got some piece of metal and attached it to a rod so it could spin?  Then she put the rod over a large can, so the rat would lose balance when walking on the metal and fall into the can and get trapped.  So basically, a crude mousetrap.

Edited March 3, 2021 by blackwing

[tennisgurl]

I was wondering how they would handle Melanie being off Snowpiercer for so long, so I guess we are going to spend this episode with her then have her meet up to see what her dickhead boss has been up to. I don't really think she was hallucinating, at least for most of the episode, she was working things out in her head through talking to people she knows. So I guess Melanie was supposed to be an engineer with the guys originally, then when she ditched Wilford she took over hospitality. I always assumed that but I guess this kind of shows it, and it makes a lot of sense. She really comes off more as someone who wants to do calculations and work with building things as opposed to someone who wants to make nice with rich people in retrospect. 

My favorite part of the episode was Melanie trying to high five imaginary Layton and falling down. Then she kind of rolled her eyes at herself, it made me laugh. 

[Quilt Fairy]

I enjoyed the episode, but I couldn't help from yelling at the TV that a heat vent might keep the rats warm, but it wouldn't provide them with food. 

I was really expecting her to wake up at the end.  I can't believe that Ben and the other guy (name?) wouldn't have prepped a protocol for picking her up. 

[ReganX]

14 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

So I guess Melanie was supposed to be an engineer with the guys originally, then when she ditched Wilford she took over hospitality.

It was probably the only way to get away with the ruse. Hospitality would likely have expected to have some form of contact with Wilford, and the  passengers (at least the First Class ones) would have expected to have a channel of communication with him. An engineer wouldn't be accepted

Melanie must have been working around the clock, doing double-duty as an engineer and as head of Hospitality.

I wonder if they left other engineers behind when they had to leave, or if they were expected to manage with three, plus Wilford.

I also wonder how much time passed between Snowpiercer's departure and the Earth becoming too cold to be survivable. It was -45 Celsius in Chicago when they left, and around the -120 Celsius mark at the start of the series.

[Dowel Jones]

I wonder if ColdMan wasn't being prepped to do battle with Melanie in the snow, and he was jettisoned off camera as the train rolled by.

[iMonrey]

I liked this one too, mainly because it was a nice change of pace to see someone trying to survive in the post-apocalyptic world rather than the usual train politics garbage we've been getting. That said, I'm not sure where they're going with this. Did they effectively just kill Melanie off? I didn't seem like she'd be able to survive another month and even if she could, wasn't that a deliberate choice by Wilford to leave her behind?

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I can't remember, isn't there some reason that they can't go in reverse?  I'm not sure why they can't communicate anymore, did Wilford sabotage communications?

I could be wrong, but I don't think they can stop. I think the expectation was that they could slow down just enough for Melanie to hop aboard but that didn't happen, obviously. 

[ReganX]

On 3/2/2021 at 8:25 PM, rmontro said:

I can't remember, isn't there some reason that they can't go in reverse?

I don't know about Snowpiercer, but Big Alice can go in reverse. The big question is whether or not Big Alice can go in reverse while connected to Snowpiercer.