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S01.E05: What Lies Beneath


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Claire speaks with Sean, who has no memories of her or their life together, and tries to get him to remember something…anything about his past; Wes has an epiphany and heads back to Mali to take another look at the fulgurite, and Lena keeps a watchful eye on Minx to make sure that her conversations with Drill have ceased.
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ZZZZzzzzzz...

... literally.  I fell asleep after about 30ish minutes -- because everything was just a rehash of what we already knew and characters just reiterated the same information.

 

It feels as if every third episode is just 90% rehash / filler with an attempted OMG scene tacked on in the last few minutes.

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(edited)

This show is amazingly fun. I loved the scenes between Claire and Sean, I continue to think Minx is the best part of the show which is unusual. That thing Wes dug up in Mali was so much Drill.

Yes this episode was filler but it was entertaing emotional filler.

Edited by Chaos Theory
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(edited)

In the previouslies, we see Claire and Sean talking about her affair while Sean is wearing his Air Force uniform.  I always thought the affair between Claire and Wes occurred after Sean disappeared but apparently that happened before.

 

Sorry, but just because Drill absorbed the clouds coming from the cooling towers, the reactor should still be exposed and melted down -- how did Drill undo the meltdown and restore the containment chamber containing the core ?  Do the writers not know how nuclear power plants work or about basic radiation physics ?

 

Henry thinks its magic that the reactor explosion was contained.  Of course it's magic.

 

And now Drill has yet another kid making bombs.  No big surprise there, because Drill apparently controls all the children in the world at this point -- is this a ripoff of Torchwood: Children of Earth ?

 

Sure, that picture of Sean's lie detector test looks EXACTLY like the fulgarite formation in Mali.  Whatever Wes.

 

Wes decides that since he's in the middle of a crisis and has to get his family out of town, now is the time to bang the missus.  And Minx gets her wish granted by Drill that her mommy and daddy love each other again.  Awwwwww.  Pretty sure Drill had nothing to do with that.  And is Lena no longer pissed at Wes for banging Claire ?  Because she seemed pretty pissed about that.

 

Wow -- that is quite the leap that Wes took comparing the fulgarite formation to a volcano erupting.  Thank goodness that woman was nearby talking on the phone about her child's project for school involving a volcano.

 

Claire discovering that As 33 wasn't Arsenic, but was in fact the team and jersey number for some kid that Henry played baseball against -- is just fucking ridiculous.  And that kid just happens to be the son of the woman at the DoD office that was talking on the phone to her child about a volcano.  And all of this was a plan by Drill to get Wes back to Mali.

 

Does the local Mali rep know something that he's not letting on -- because that whole speech about examining and not removing seems to imply he knows a lot more.  Plus with all the locals showing up, makes me think that something else has been going on for a while.  Then after they did up the mystery rock, the Mali rep. is all get it the fuck out of here -- like he knows what it is/has seen it before.

 

So if this mystery rock was under the ground, did it grow and catch the plan as it crashed ?  Because that seems equally stupid.

 

Drill has a hard-on for Wes.  Why exactly ?  Because everything this episode seems to be all about Wes.

 

The fulgarite above the surface that had funky blue lighting in it (that no one suspected was odd in the first place) was just the tip of the iceberg for a huge rock that glows blue.  So is this rock the physical manifestation of Drill or another entity ?  Because hitting that rock hurt Sean.  Is it a crashed alien spacecraft ?

 

Hope Drill is busy enough in Africa that he won't have Mynx take the gun and shoot her mom.

 

Lena really is the shittiest parent on this show.  Knowing that her daughter is supposedly under the influence of an entity of some sort, she has no problem letting Minx loose in a play area out of her sight -- just so we get the panicky "I can't find my child" parental moment.  And then she leaves a loaded handgun (that was safely stored in the gun safe) on the night table where anyone can take it while she's sleeping.

Edited by ottoDbusdriver
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(edited)

Otto wrote: "Wow -- that is quite the leap that Wes took comparing the fulgarite formation to a volcano erupting. Thank goodness that woman was nearby talking on the phone about her child's project for school involving a volcano."

I do believe that woman was Wes' secretary. Also the boy said that Drill told him to call and ask her a question about the volcano. So Drill definitely wanted Wes to dig up the "rock".

Iooks like it might be a crashed spaceship (or part of one) to me.

Edited by Dot Com
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I do believe that woman was Wes' secretary. Also the boy said that Drill told him to call and ask her a question about the volcano. So Drill definitely wanted Wes to dig up the "rock".

 

But that's the weird thing -- Drill is apparently not only all-knowing but prescient in that Drill told Ethan to call his mom at a precise time to talk about his volcano project just so that Wes would be nearby and could overhear that end of the conversation.  In fact, Drill told Ethan to build this home volcano project so that it could specifically be used in the ruse to convince Wes ?  Did Ethan's mom not think it was weird that Ethan was building a science project that wasn't for school ?  It's yet more convoluted Rube Goldberg-like setups to get to the end result -- better known as filler.  An entity this powerful should just be a juggernaut destroying everything in its path -- and if it can see the future, there'd be no stopping it.

 

But if Drill can see the future and can manipulate physical matter (fix Harper's mom's brain damage issues, fix Henry's hearing, contain a reactor explosion, catch a plane falling from the sky in the middle of the desert in Mali), why does it need children to do it's bidding ?

 

One good thing about this episode -- no Harper.

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But that's the weird thing -- Drill is apparently not only all-knowing but prescient in that Drill told Ethan to call his mom at a precise time to talk about his volcano project just so that Wes would be nearby and could overhear that end of the conversation.  In fact, Drill told Ethan to build this home volcano project so that it could specifically be used in the ruse to convince Wes ?  Did Ethan's mom not think it was weird that Ethan was building a science project that wasn't for school ?  It's yet more convoluted Rube Goldberg-like setups to get to the end result -- better known as filler.  An entity this powerful should just be a juggernaut destroying everything in its path -- and if it can see the future, there'd be no stopping it.

 

But if Drill can see the future and can manipulate physical matter (fix Harper's mom's brain damage issues, fix Henry's hearing, contain a reactor explosion, catch a plane falling from the sky in the middle of the desert in Mali), why does it need children to do it's bidding ?

 

One good thing about this episode -- no Harper.

 

I'm not sure if the writers worked out Drill's character because it already seems very powerful as it is.

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I'm thinking that while Sean had that piece of fulgurite (sp?) stuck in him that It was able to read and drain all of Sean's memories from him. That's why Drill is so obsessed with Clair and Wes and those around them. Also explains the amnesia.

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I'm thinking that while Sean had that piece of fulgurite (sp?) stuck in him that It was able to read and drain all of Sean's memories from him. That's why Drill is so obsessed with Clair and Wes and those around them. Also explains the amnesia.

 

That makes absolute sense. I'm hoping that Drill is actually after Wes to kill him, because of Sean knowing about the affair between him and Claire. Man, I hate those two character a whole lot. I only like Claire when she's interacting with Sean and sometimes her partner. 

 

This is still a stupid show and now that Teen Wolf is back, this show can go onto 'watch later...whenever' territory. Lena/Wes is a horrible couple. Literally, Lena's willing to forgive him and she's like 'I'm not leaving you!' and she gets mad when Wes has to go back to Africa to find out what's with Drill. Like, I get that she doesn't want him straying but....geez, lady, Wes is an asshole but he's trying to find out what Drill is so Minx can stop talking to him. Cool your jets, he's not going to Africa to find a woman to cheat on you with. Relax, and put that gun away before Minx shoots someone with it. At least put it under your goddamn pillow. Lena's a very poorly written character; she has reasons to be mad and overprotective, but I just don't like her enough to care. 

 

I hate Wes so much more than Claire's partner, and I don't like Claire's partner at all. 

 

If Drill can basically do everything, including absorbing nuclear power and not causing radiation, why does he need Sean to do his bidding? 

 

I feel bad for Sean; his wife was having an affair with Wes for god knows how long, his son looks more like Wes than he does like him and Claire, and he now has amnesia and being controlled/manipulated by the same entity that's causing kids to kill people. Because please, those accidents that Sean had been following had to have been caused by kids, or Drill found kids later on to manipulate. Either way, Sean's life sucks and I hope it ends with Sean taking Henry, Minx and most of the other kids far away while the city gets nuclear bombed with Claire and Wes in the centerfold. 

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Lena really is the shittiest parent on this show.  Knowing that her daughter is supposedly under the influence of an entity of some sort, she has no problem letting Minx loose in a play area out of her sight -- just so we get the panicky "I can't find my child" parental moment.  And then she leaves a loaded handgun (that was safely stored in the gun safe) on the night table where anyone can take it while she's sleeping.

 

Also, when Wes told her he wanted to get her and Minx out of town, she made some lame comment that she could now take of her and Minx.  Based upon what?  It seems a person or entity is manipulating your daughter and you don't want help?!? 

 

This is a takeoff of that tried and true trope of a girl being stalked by a killer, creature or supernatural entity and when people want to give her guards or a tail, she balks, even though she has no fighting skills or supernatural abilities.  And she always get caught, or kidnapped and the hero has to save her.

 

Always take the help unless your name is Buffy. 

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Sure, that picture of Sean's lie detector test looks EXACTLY like the fulgarite formation in Mali.  Whatever Wes.

 

Yeah, when they showed the lie detector read-out I was like "Are we supposed to know what that is?" Even when Wes held it up against the pictures of the fulgarite (SP?) I still couldn't see the connection. Whatever they were going for there didn't come across like they wanted. At all.

 

 

Lena really is the shittiest parent on this show.  Knowing that her daughter is supposedly under the influence of an entity of some sort, she has no problem letting Minx loose in a play area out of her sight -- just so we get the panicky "I can't find my child" parental moment.  And then she leaves a loaded handgun (that was safely stored in the gun safe) on the night table where anyone can take it while she's sleeping.

 

This is perhaps the most frustrating part of the story for me - the way the adults are glad-handling these children who by now have proven themselves to be potential bombers, terrorists and murderers. Once it's been established they are being "controlled" by some unexplained entity and doing all sort of horrible things, they shouldn't be running around loose and unsupervised. They should be locked the hell up. Put 'em all in a cell or something and see what "Drill" is able to do for them. Because at this point the priority should be figuring out what the heck "Drill" is and how it's getting kids to do shit like this. 

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This is perhaps the most frustrating part of the story for me - the way the adults are glad-handling these children who by now have proven themselves to be potential bombers, terrorists and murderers. Once it's been established they are being "controlled" by some unexplained entity and doing all sort of horrible things, they shouldn't be running around loose and unsupervised. They should be locked the hell up. Put 'em all in a cell or something and see what "Drill" is able to do for them. Because at this point the priority should be figuring out what the heck "Drill" is and how it's getting kids to do shit like this. 

 

Occasionally they ask some questions, but they keep ignoring the more important problems for some useless subplot like the cheating early on or other things and this is after learning about their own kids' connections with Drill.

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This is perhaps the most frustrating part of the story for me - the way the adults are glad-handling these children who by now have proven themselves to be potential bombers, terrorists and murderers. Once it's been established they are being "controlled" by some unexplained entity and doing all sort of horrible things, they shouldn't be running around loose and unsupervised. They should be locked the hell up. Put 'em all in a cell or something and see what "Drill" is able to do for them. Because at this point the priority should be figuring out what the heck "Drill" is and how it's getting kids to do shit like this. 

 

Ditto and triple ditto (tritto?). 

 

I can't begin to tell you how irritated I was when Lena finally found Minx talking with that girl in the indoor playground thingie, and Minx gave her attitude, "You're embarrassing me!"

 

Oh, really?  Let's see how embarrassed she'd be if mom kept her locked in the house, no play dates and no opportunity to do more of Drill's bidding. 

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Forget the house - I'd be completely freaked out to have Bad-Seed Minx in my house, even if she were my own daughter. That kid belongs in a locked ward, or pre-emptively pushed down a set of stairs for the good of humanity.

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(edited)

Forget the house - I'd be completely freaked out to have Bad-Seed Minx in my house, even if she were my own daughter. That kid belongs in a locked ward, or pre-emptively pushed down a set of stairs for the good of humanity.

Yes but she is also the best part of the show. This is one of those shows where I do not understand the low ratings. This is a fun show.

Edited by Chaos Theory
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Yes but she is also the best part of the show. This is one of those shows where I do not understand the low ratings. This is a fun show.

 

I almost didn't watch it at all because I loathe creepy, precocious tv children.  I'm still not sure I want to keep watching, to be honest.  I find myself just wanting to slap them all, including the parents.  Claire bugs me the most.  It drives me nuts that, every time she talks with her son, she acts like she's so delighted, like he's just taken his first step or tied his shoes for the first time or something, like super, wow, buddy!  And I can't handle how her face barely moves.

Edited by izabella
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I almost didn't watch it at all because I loathe creepy, precocious tv children.  I'm still not sure I want to keep watching, to be honest.  I find myself just wanting to slap them all, including the parents.  Claire bugs me the most.  It drives me nuts that, every time she talks with her son, she acts like she's so delighted, like he's just taken his first step or tied his shoes for the first time or something, like super, wow, buddy!  And I can't handle how her face barely moves.

 

Same, especially since this show was promoted as kid-centric. I am always hesitant on supernatural shows involving kids. I would say, for me, Wes bugs me more than Claire and he might be the one to have me stop watching the show for good. He acts like he couldn't care less about Minx because he's only shared one scene with her (just the two of them). Not to mention he has barely been around his own wife (which...ok, she's not the best person in the world, but he also cheated on her) and he looks like he wants to run out of the scene every time he shares a scene with his family. He seems more attached to Claire than them, despite the fact that he just 'chose' Lena and Minx this past episode. I'd rather have a parent like Claire, who at least acts like she loves and wants to protect Henry, rather than Wes, who looks like he'd rather be single 90% of the time. Also, Barry Sloane. I stopped watching Revenge around the time he was on it, but the episodes I did see, I was not appealed to him at all.

 

Now, Milo Ventimiglia on the other hand....

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Wes is also portrayed as an unprofessional moron too. I am having a hard time he would have his position if most of the government knows he is a cheating, lying, moron who has screwed up more jobs than succeeded. Plus, he agreed to name is daughter, Minx? Of course, I met a 10 year old where her name is pronounced: "Alien" it's spelled differently but everyone in the room looked at her going: "Why would your parents do that to you?" I also agree, with the strange plot changes, so Claire and Wes were having an affair way before her husband disappeared? That just throws the plot out the door with her so shocked and amazed he was alive and the motivation for the affair. Now its: "My son lost his hearing, my husband was too busy flying missions for the government, hey Wes let's hook up." None of the characters are likable and the kids are extremely stupid and of course Drill can change the law of physics with a thought. He's Q but boring.

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(edited)
...so Claire and Wes were having an affair way before her husband disappeared? That just throws the plot out the door with her so shocked and amazed he was alive and the motivation for the affair. /quote]

There was no change in plot. We knew about the affair from the first episode. Remember when her partner brought up the fact that the claims that Claire was on leave because of her husband's death made no sense since she and Wes both took leaves not just at the same time, but months before the husband's death., with the speculation being they were having an affair and got caught. We also found out that Sean went on the mission as a way of getting away from Claire because of the affair. So the son's accident contributing to the affair is not retconning.

Edited by Happytobehere
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Claire doesn't believe in miracles, but she believes in an entity named Drill who can't be seen, but can talk to her child only in his head?  What the what?

 

Lena loses her kid, freaks out, and then turns her back on said child to have a long phone conversation with her husband?  I totally thought that Minx was going to be gone when she turned around again.

 

I hope that the gun Lena has on her nightstand is not loaded, but I'm sure that it is.  I mean, at least keep it under your pillow, ha!  This household has failed gun safety!

 

So, is Drill going to jump into Wes's body in the next episode?

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I thought from the first episode that this show could be viewed as a case study in Shitty Parenting These Days and nothing I've seen since has changed my mind. At this point I'm watching just 'cause I'm kind of a completionist. I don't think I even like any of the characters anymore -- I was willing to cut the show a lot of slack because of all the goodwill I'd built up for Lily Rabe over the course of American Horror Story but I don't even like her character any more, and every episode rises (sinks?) to a new level of preposterous. Anyway, I'll hang in until the bitter end. It'll be interesting to see how this all gets wrapped up (or not).

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I thought from the first episode that this show could be viewed as a case study in Shitty Parenting These Days and nothing I've seen since has changed my mind.

 

Oh the parenting definitely gets even worse.

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This show is silly. Oddly compelling. But very very silly.

Even if an inter-dimensional energy being sucked up all the radiation, the site would still be a smoking ruin. And that's not even the silliest thing about this episode.

The volcano call was gobsmacking in its sheer WTFery as was AS = baseball player!!

And Minx's mother is so dumb. I think they're going for denial but it just smacks of stupid. Probably where her daughter gets it from.

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