S01.E05: Earthshine

[ottoDbusdriver]

Episode Description:

INFLUX steps out from the shadows, weaponizing the debris in a terrifying experiment; Finola struggles to keep her newfound knowledge from affecting her work.

[Paloma]

Enough already with weepy Finola and the calls with her sister! I suppose in this episode there was supposed to be some relevance to the plot, with chief villain singing the Spanish song while waiting for transport. But if this was meant to make me care about the personal relationships, it didn't work. The only thing I liked about the Spanish song element was that I could understand all the words, despite it being decades since I studied Spanish in school.

And I love NYC, but it would have been more interesting if they hadn't been able to stop part of Manhattan from disappearing.

[sempervivum]

Love how they don't even bother to evacuate people when a hunk of the city's going to be sucked up into a wormhole. And once again Our Heroes figure stuff out - all Bryan has to do is wander around in the basement and lo! he spots the piece of debris stuck to the metal support.

I had almost no idea what was going on, and is this the first we've heard about SMERSH, I mean INFLUX? 

It's a miracle Fiola had time to chase after the bad guy, what with her teary-eyed worrying about her undead dad and sharing childhood memories with her crazy sister. Ugh.

[shapeshifter]

So, one question: 
Am I correct in thinking that the bald man who shot himself in the head "for the cause" appeared in a later scene on the street in Manhattan, presumably as a clone?
If so, the writers need a stern talking to about how this cheapens on-screen death for the viewers and makes them not care.

I like that this page has #1, #2, and #3 versions of the song translation to click on. Skimming them quickly gives a bit more sense of emotion and meaning. 

Assuming this episode wasn't any better than the others, I think I've discovered a recipe for watching the show without hate-watching (most of) it: 
I'd been fretting about a life altering decision I made when I fell asleep watching a PBS program on math and physics and the theory of everything, and so woke up with the always comforting idea that in alternate universes I made infinite choices, including the alternate choice I was thinking I probably should have made --and then I realized this show was coming on and so was totally primed to watch discombobulated physics, heh. 

Edited March 30, 2021 by shapeshifter

[ottoDbusdriver]

I'm still trying to figure out how INFLUX figured out that they could create a wormhole with 4 pieces of debris combined with metallic arcs on either end of the wormhole ?  That seems oddly specific, and not something that an evil organization would even come close to figuring out in a little over 6 months.

"Manhattan" looked a lot more like Vancouver where this show was shot -- especially like how they tried to cover up the Gastown steam clock.

Maybe I missed it, but was the word 'Earthshine' mentioned in the episode ? 
I was folding laundry and watching it in the background, so not paying real close attention to the whole show.

[shapeshifter]

20 minutes ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Maybe I missed it, but was the word 'Earthshine' mentioned in the episode ? 
I was folding laundry and watching it in the background, so not paying real close attention to the whole show.

I didn't hear (or see) "Earthshine" either, and the transcript for the show isn't up yet.

[possibilities]

I watched the first few minutes and then suddenly realized I didn't care anymore. Unless I hear it gets a lot better, I've decided not to watch this anymore. 

[Paloma]

7 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Am I correct in thinking that the bald man who shot himself in the head "for the cause" appeared in a later scene on the street in Manhattan, presumably as a clone?
If so, the writers need a stern talking to about how this cheapens on-screen death for the viewers and makes them not care.

I think you are correct--though I wasn't paying close attention by that point (in fact, I wasn't even sitting in front of the TV for much of the show), my husband was watching and said something to me about seeing a man in Manhattan who was supposed to be dead. If this was a clone, I guess it would explain why the bald man said something like "I will rise again" just before he shot himself. 

[Syme]

10 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

I'm still trying to figure out how.....

They read the man pages, of course!

[*nix joke: the man documentation is instantly available a running system via the "man" as in manual, command.]

Notice how careful Batman and Robin were to wear gloves when examining the {temporary} survivor? Ooops. no gloves.

 

[skotnikov]

11 hours ago, Paloma said:

And I love NYC, but it would have been more interesting if they hadn't been able to stop part of Manhattan from disappearing.

I sure they would love to do that, but show's budget couldn't allow this 😭 

[shapeshifter]

37 minutes ago, skotnikov said:

12 hours ago, Paloma said:

And I love NYC, but it would have been more interesting if they hadn't been able to stop part of Manhattan from disappearing.

I sure they would love to do that, but show's budget couldn't allow this 😭 

Kudos to writers for putting into the script that the death toll would have been enormous if it happened
--although if they'd had the budget for the CGI, there could have been almost no deaths.
I'm picturing someone at an ironing board in their apartment and then the next minute they're ironing in a park or a restaurant in Jersey or wherever "INFLUX" was going to transport the Manhattanites to.

[Melina22]

9 hours ago, Paloma said:

I wasn't even sitting in front of the TV for much of the show

So, not exactly a rave review then. 😁

[tennisgurl]

This episode had a very different vibe then the past few episodes. It was much less moody and didn't do the "weird alien thing as metaphor" case of the week and instead focused on the villains and a larger scale threat. On the one hand, that means that the plot seems to be inching forward to something actually happening. On the other, the only thing this show really has going for it that makes it stand out is its melancholy, ethereal atmosphere, so without it this just becomes a generic action procedural. The bad guys are some boring generic terrorists who have some big evil plan and its probably part of some boring conspiracy we've seen a billion times on TV and movies and the heroes stop them from doing this smaller part of the evil plan, it just felt so boring. I think I've liked this show a bit more than a lot of people here, but this episode lacked most of the things that I like about this show, like the cerebral atmosphere and the surreal cool alien tech, and stuck with its dullest aspects. 

Obviously this show isn't going to blow up Manhattan so there were no real stakes here. Not even the characters seemed to think the bad guys were actually going to succeed in their plans, everyone was just going through the motions. No one even tries to evacuate or make any preparations for what could happen because everyone seems to know they would stop the bad guys in time. Seriously, is Finola brand new to MI6? Was she always just a lab person and is just now in the field? She seems like she is constantly on the verge of tears and unable to be even remotely professional, being passive aggressive towards her partner and spends more time sounding freaked out and about to cry then doing anything helpful. I found her comments about how she and Bryan "see things differently" both this episode and last week to be really snotty. "Sorry that you don't value human life the way I do, it must be hard not being as wonderful as me." I did laugh when she was whining to her boss about Bryan and his bosses keeping her dad a secret from her, and she was like "yeah shocker an intelligence agency keeping secrets, just like the secrets we're keeping from them" to her indignation then just told her to get back to her job. 

Edited March 30, 2021 by tennisgurl

[Syme]

17 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

So, one question: 
Am I correct in thinking that the bald man who shot himself in the head "for the cause" appeared in a later scene on the street in Manhattan, presumably as a clone?

My first thought was it was an Observer, but I don't know what his name was. Jan, Feb, March?

[AnimeMania]

5 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

5 hours ago, skotnikov said:

17 hours ago, Paloma said:

And I love NYC, but it would have been more interesting if they hadn't been able to stop part of Manhattan from disappearing.

I sure they would love to do that, but show's budget couldn't allow this 😭 

Kudos to writers for putting into the script that the death toll would have been enormous if it happened
--although if they'd had the budget for the CGI, there could have been almost no deaths.
I'm picturing someone at an ironing board in their apartment and then the next minute they're ironing in a park or a restaurant in Jersey or wherever "INFLUX" was going to transport the Manhattanites to.

I think that you have to be moving from one side of the field to the other, so people walking and cars driving might be all that are affected.

It seems strange that only the bus went through in the beginning, I guess there wasn't much traffic and the field was only on for a very short time. I am not sure why the bus was twisted in the middle.

[Mean Jeanne]

Well I’ve tried to give this show a fair chance but the level of suckery just increases with each episode. I’m out

[CarpeFelis]

12 hours ago, Syme said:

They read the man pages, of course!

[*nix joke: the man documentation is instantly available a running system via the "man" as in manual, command.]

Nah... since when do evil terrorist organizations bother to RTFM? (While we’re making bad jokes here, as a female software engineer I just have to say it’s ironic they’re called man pages when none of the men I know ever read directions...)

[Dowel Jones]

That was one draggy episode.

[ottoDbusdriver]

I'm just surprised that these 2 pieces of debris didn't open up a wormhole of feelings.  All the other debris pieces so far seemed to produce some sort of emotional component. #sarcasm

[Melina22]

The colour palette of this show seems to be gray, brown and concrete. It works for some scenes but it's wearing a little thin, especially when the plot gets dull and incomprehensible. 

So what are INFLUX doing and why? Do these guys get, you know, days off or coffee breaks? I can't believe any of them are willing to take the silver thingies knowing they could end up in the middle of a concrete post or halfway down a flight of stairs. 

The first couple of minutes of this reminded me of Fringe, in a good way, but Fringe hooked me in a way this didn't, with fascinating, understandable stories and fun, quirky characters. It's all in the writing, really. 

[shapeshifter]

On 3/30/2021 at 12:10 AM, shapeshifter said:

On 3/29/2021 at 11:48 PM, ottoDbusdriver said:

Maybe I missed it, but was the word 'Earthshine' mentioned in the episode ? 
I was folding laundry and watching it in the background, so not paying real close attention to the whole show.

I didn't hear (or see) "Earthshine" either, and the transcript for the show isn't up yet.

The transcript is up, and no, the term "earthshine" is not uttered during the episode. 
I suppose it's possible it was cut?
From TimeAndDate.com, here's a definition of "Earthshine"

Quote

Earthshine is a dull glow which lights up the unlit part of the Moon because the Sun’s light reflects off the Earth's surface and back onto the Moon. 
It is also sometimes called ashen glow, the old Moon in the new Moon's arms, or the Da Vinci glow, after Leonardo da Vinci, who explained the phenomenon for the first time in recorded history. . . .

If there is some way this links to the episode, I'm missing it.

[Paloma]

2 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Quote

Earthshine is a dull glow which lights up the unlit part of the Moon because the Sun’s light reflects off the Earth's surface and back onto the Moon. 
It is also sometimes called ashen glow, the old Moon in the new Moon's arms, or the Da Vinci glow, after Leonardo da Vinci, who explained the phenomenon for the first time in recorded history. . . .

If there is some way this links to the episode, I'm missing it.

"dull glow" or "ashen glow" pretty much describes the lighting of all the episodes.

[Melina22]

14 minutes ago, Paloma said:

dull glow" or "ashen glow" pretty much describes the lighting of all the episodes.

Soggy Ashen Glow. It's the 2021 Colour Palette of the Year. 😁

[Syme]

5 hours ago, Melina22 said:

It's all in the writing, really. 

 

And always has been. (The reason I was such a Veronica Mars fan.....)

[Melina22]

17 minutes ago, Syme said:

And always has been. (The reason I was such a Veronica Mars fan.....)

You're a a Marshmallow! Me, too! Good times, good times. 

[Diapason Untuned]

On 3/29/2021 at 10:32 PM, sempervivum said:

Love how they don't even bother to evacuate people when a hunk of the city's going to be sucked up into a wormhole. And once again Our Heroes figure stuff out - all Bryan has to do is wander around in the basement and lo! he spots the piece of debris stuck to the metal support.

They can't really show a huge amount of people evacuating with COVID restrictions, plus they only barely found out were the wormhole was literal minutes before the thing activated.

 

Quote

I had almost no idea what was going on, and is this the first we've heard about SMERSH, I mean INFLUX? 

Been around since the first episode.

 

20 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

This episode had a very different vibe then the past few episodes. It was much less moody and didn't do the "weird alien thing as metaphor" case of the week and instead focused on the villains and a larger scale threat. On the one hand, that means that the plot seems to be inching forward to something actually happening. On the other, the only thing this show really has going for it that makes it stand out is its melancholy, ethereal atmosphere, so without it this just becomes a generic action procedural. 

I had the same feeling myself. I liked the fact that the plot was picking up steam and we were learning some more about Finola's handler and Influx, but I did miss the elements of dealing with trauma,

Then again, judging by all the comments I'm seeing, most people watching the show hate the idea of emotions in their sci-fi.

 

5 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

The transcript is up, and no, the term "earthshine" is not uttered during the episode. 
I suppose it's possible it was cut?
From TimeAndDate.com, here's a definition of "Earthshine"

If there is some way this links to the episode, I'm missing it.

A reference to how the wormhole needs to be triggered between two poles.

[shapeshifter]

10 minutes ago, Diapason Untuned said:

6 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

The transcript is up, and no, the term "earthshine" is not uttered during the episode. 
I suppose it's possible it was cut?
From TimeAndDate.com, here's a definition of "Earthshine"

If there is some way this links to the episode, I'm missing it.

A reference to how the wormhole needs to be triggered between two poles

Sorry, but I don’t get the connection/similarity between the wormhole trigger and earthshine. 
Can you explain a bit? In layman’s/shapeshifter’s terms? 
[and here’s another one of those moments when I consider changing my screen name to something like  Fido or Freda]

[Diapason Untuned]

14 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Sorry, but I don’t get the connection/similarity between the wormhole trigger and earthshine. 
Can you explain a bit? In layman’s/shapeshifter’s terms? 
[and here’s another one of those moments when I consider changing my screen name to something like  Fido or Freda]

The wormhole required two debris attached to metal poles at a distance from each other to absorb atmospheric electricity to activate , just like earthshine requires light reflected off the Earth from the Sun to hit the moon where it is visible from Earth. The atmospheric energy is the Sun and the two poles are the Earth and the Moon.

 

On 3/29/2021 at 10:48 PM, ottoDbusdriver said:

I'm still trying to figure out how INFLUX figured out that they could create a wormhole with 4 pieces of debris combined with metallic arcs on either end of the wormhole ?  That seems oddly specific, and not something that an evil organization would even come close to figuring out in a little over 6 months

The Chinese had already figured that part out, as you can tell from that handy video where they demonstrated that, so they learned that when they stole the debris from them.

[iMonrey]

Whatever the deal is with Finola's father, the show is taking too long to get to the point. It's been one episode after another of "Ooh, he's supposed to be dead but he's alive! How can he be alive! But I saw him in the morgue! Is he a clone? He's not a clone!" Um, no. If the show thinks we're on pins and needles over this, they have miscalculated. We don't really care that much about Finola at this point. Why would we be on the edge of our seats over her father - a character we've never met?

Also, when Finola's boss Ferris told her she was sending someone with the thumb drive footage of the China incident, that someone basically told Finola her boss is keeping things from her. Why would Ferris send some underling with such sensitive intel without thoroughly vetting that employee? What exactly is going on at MI6? Is there some underground rebellion factor there too?

I think the show is trying to be more ambitious than it can actually handle.

[ottoDbusdriver]

7 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Whatever the deal is with Finola's father, the show is taking too long to get to the point.

Sidebar:

As compared to say .... the Blacklist ??  We're 8 seasons in to that show and we still don't know who Lizzie's father is or if he is alive.

End sidebar

 

[tvfanatic13]

4 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

She was acting like a petulant child throughout the entire episode.  She isn't the least bit professional. Priya shouldn't have told her anything about her father and what the Americans' knew.  Priya had to know how Finola would react.

Finola needs to stop talking around things and come straight out and have an open and honest conversation with Bryan.

I was having a horrible time figuring out what was going on in this series.  Turning on CC really helped with this episode, and I don't have hearing loss.  Just listening and reading the dialogue helped it sink into the old noggin.

Can you explain it to us then?? 

[Terrafamilia]

Gosh, they just let anyone waltz into restricted areas in New York, don't they?

[shapeshifter]

10 hours ago, Terrafamilia said:

Gosh, they just let anyone waltz into restricted areas in New York, don't they?

Pretty much, heh.

[saber5055]

On 3/31/2021 at 11:04 PM, ottoDbusdriver said:

As compared to say .... the Blacklist ??  We're 8 seasons in to that show and we still don't know who Lizzie's father is or if he is alive.

However, this show does offer an explanation for where Lizzie is/went.

[alvajon]

On 3/31/2021 at 4:32 AM, Melina22 said:

The colour palette of this show seems to be gray, brown and concrete. It works for some scenes but it's wearing a little thin, especially when the plot gets dull and incomprehensible. 

So what are INFLUX doing and why? Do these guys get, you know, days off or coffee breaks? I can't believe any of them are willing to take the silver thingies knowing they could end up in the middle of a concrete post or halfway down a flight of stairs. 

The first couple of minutes of this reminded me of Fringe, in a good way, but Fringe hooked me in a way this didn't, with fascinating, understandable stories and fun, quirky characters. It's all in the writing, really. 

I miss “Walternate” (Fringe) ...

Edited April 11, 2021 by alvajon