S02.E08: Friend or Faux

[Tabbyclaw]

A bizarre trail of violence is traced back to a man who seems to have spawned an indentical copy of himself -- but one that embodies only his darkest, most dangerous side.

 

[Tabbyclaw]

This episode's opening scene may be the best of the series so far, at least in terms of making you go, "Okay, I'm intrigued." And then the rest of the episode follows through. I always forget it's one of the good ones until I rewatch it. This is one of the ones where the plot thickens for everyone.

 

I love every second of Audrey's interactions with the copy. It was a great and unexpected way to allow her to talk out her feelings about her identity, and it's just so very her for it to have started as just a way to distract him before it accidentally became real. We get the Rev's first direct strike against Nathan, and Nathan's drunk reaction, and Duke's discovery of whose side Evi is really on. And as for Duke himself, I have so much headcanon about his teen years, and almost all of it is informed by how he reacts to Henry in this episode.

[Shanna Marie]

Yeah, this is one of those that seems like it's going to be silly, and then it's surprisingly good, every time I see it. I do have a couple of quibbles. One is that why on earth is Nathan keeping two sets of paperwork in his office? He shouldn't be filling out two sets of paperwork and editing out the Troubles. He should just be doing the "official" version. If he wants to keep personal records with the real story for future reference, those shouldn't be in the office filing cabinet. Every time, I want to bang my head against the wall with that because while I know what they were doing in finding an excuse to get Nathan fired, it was so clumsily handled that it made everyone look stupid. And then I wish there had been a little more transition between the resolution of the Trouble and the aftermath scenes. Last time we saw Nathan, he was lying unconscious, not stirring even while a firefight was going on around him, and then we see him walking around just fine, with just a mention of his recovery, but it seems to be maybe only a day later, unless it took Duke a long time to bother talking to Henry about what happened and call his father.

 

Of course, post-concussion syndrome really would explain a lot about

Nathan's later crazy behavior. Up to this point, he's reasonably sane, though with some issues. It's after this that he starts getting nuts. Maybe he did suffer some brain damage when he got whacked on the head with a brick.

 

I loved our trio really acting like friends, with Duke introducing Nathan and Audrey to Henry as his friends and then the three of them hanging out together at the bar.