S02.E01: The Damage Done

[aghst]

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While venturing deep in the jungle, Allie and Margot reveal the truth about how they became fugitives from the U.S. Government 

Not much happens in real time.  They're on the trawler going up some gorgeous river valley.  The tracking shot from a drone follow the valley into the dawn with birds flying low to the water until they come up on the trawler that the Foxes escaped on at the end of last season.

They start telling the kids why they're on the run.  So it's a big backstory episode, going back 13 years, when Dina is like 3 or 4 while Charlie is an infant.

Allie has a corporate job, is a brilliant software engineer who's written code that could be used for good, such as tracking the impact of bird migration due to climate change.  But there's no money in that so his employers have sold the software to the NSA, which uses the software for "predictive intelligence."

Allie and Margot are separated.  But he's hacked her phone -- remember these are the days before the modern smart phone -- so that he can track it with GPS.  He spies on her going out to dinner with another man.

Next morning, Allie goes to Margot's to pick up the kids but while waiting, he sees schematics for a bomb.  Turns out Margot's date is some climate activist and Margot herself has a history of "direct action" doing things like spiking trees to prevent logging.

So despite having two young children to take care of, she is plotting to bomb some biotech company.

You can guess the rest, unintentionally, they kill someone with that bomb while Allie gets himself in trouble with the NSA and the FBI by hacking into his software used as a database for illegal surveillance of US citizens to spy on Margot and her paramour/partner in crime.

Margot is ready to give up, feeling guilty for the unintended killing of a lab worker but Allie convinces her to run.

So Mosquito Coast was released as a movie in 1986 with River Phoenix playing the role of Charlie Fox, the son to the crazy father Allie played by Harrison Ford.

But in 1988, he played a key role in Running on Empty, a movie about a couple who were radicals in the '60s and their children.  River Phoenix plays the son of the couple, who take their family on the run because they also bombed a laboratory to stop animal testing but killed people -- they don't show the bombing but that's the big reveal in that movie..  Their son is like 17 or 18 and the couple struggle with not giving their children a chance at a normal life.  In the end they tell their son to leave them, find his own way.

It's interesting that the writers and show runners of this show decided to do a mashup of two River Phoenix movies from the late '80s as a driving plot for this show now.

The backstory depicted on this show takes place in the 2000s, maybe early 2000s.  I don't think it's quite convincing that Margot would take such action, with two young children to care for.  The profile of a well-intentioned activist driven to potentially fatal acts fits more in the '60s than in the 2000s.  It is a bit of a jump from spiking trees to bombing a lab which takes all kinds of planning and sustained energy.  It's not something that could be done impulsively.

Interesting that they don't show the NSA couple from season 1 at all.  The FBI agents who interrogate Allie are new so maybe they make a reappearance if they get an idea of where the Foxes are.  After those NSA agents died in Mexico City, maybe the US govt. is more motivated to capture them.

The entirety of the first season was about them trying to reach this place, this hideout of radicals who had invited Allie.  Well they make a brief appearance, someone video chats Allie and pleads with him to come help them build infrastructure.  Video chat wouldn't have been so good 13 years ago but this woman knows that Allie and Margot were separated at the time.

I'm hoping they get to this place with the new group and some other things happen.  They better not use the whole season -- I believe there are 10 episodes in season 2 -- to show them trying to reach this Xanadu or whatever Allie called it in season 1.