S02.E12: Blood Washed Away

[MissLucas]

6 hours ago, Cardie said:

Besides, public morality may have been hypocritically conservative in the 50s but hotels certainly didn't meddle in what guests did behind closed doors.

There's a long history of hotels getting into trouble for allowing adultery or prostitution or at least being under suspicion of doing so - one of the reasons hotel detectives were hired in the first place. So, yes they were interested in what they're guests were doing behind doors unless they did not mind a seedy reputation.

[bethy]

Cole told the hotel people they were married - and even said it was because they couldn't be unmarried and staying in the same room. Cassie told the woman at the party in 1944 that they were brother and sister. 

As far as the hotel is concerned, officially, they're married.

[Hanahope]

I know plot device and all, but for the life of me, how could Cole and Cassie be so stupid.  Shoot the two people already before they are close enough to cause the paradox.  Don't stand there and ask questions, just shoot them.

The clues suggest the Witness has to be Cole, since he's the only one that lived at the house from 57-59.  The question is how did he turn into the witness and will he do the same thing now, or will he change history/future.

[Jaded Sapphire]

32 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

I know plot device and all, but for the life of me, how could Cole and Cassie be so stupid.  Shoot the two people already before they are close enough to cause the paradox.  Don't stand there and ask questions, just shoot them.

He can't help it, it runs in the 'family,' Ramse did the exact same thing.

[coppersin]

16 hours ago, MissLucas said:

Cassie and Cole in the cedar and pine house made no sense. As soon as Cassie had figured out that it was the house from her visions (it took her ages) she should have freaked out, and then be way more specific in telling Cole where they were.

The more I think about the episode, the more this bugs me. If Cassie is sold on Cole's retirement/happily ever after plans, fine. But at least sell the damn house and go far away, because "happy" seems unlikely in a place you know isn't good. And how can she be comfortable building a home with Cole in the place that she was mentally trapped in while the Witness was taking her body for a test drive? How can she not think of being drugged or of Sam's death every day? How can she not be concerned that Vivian or another Witness groupie will want to visit the house? Cassie, if you and Cole want to get out of the time travel biz then you need to literally get the fuck out.

She was dreaming of the red forest before she woke from her coma. Maybe acceptance was what the Witness meant by "preparing her" and it was somehow triggered?

[FurryFury]

This is why I had a terrible suspicion that Olivia's programming/hypnosis was getting to Cassie. Otherwise it would make no damn sense why she'd jump Cole. Rather than MAYBE thinking he's the Witness and wanting to steer him away from this fate - but that's reaching.

[snarktini]

On 7/13/2016 at 9:44 AM, FurryFury said:

This is why I had a terrible suspicion that Olivia's programming/hypnosis was getting to Cassie. Otherwise it would make no damn sense why she'd jump Cole. Rather than MAYBE thinking he's the Witness and wanting to steer him away from this fate - but that's reaching.

You may well be correct about the programming. Especially after she appeared to be thinking he was the Witness, I'd have thought that would make her more wary and curious and freaked out than randy. 

There is one more way I could spin it, though: Sex is primal, something humans cling to in the darkest times, and she's amped up due to destiny and denied feelings. She's wanted to be with him for awhile now, but she set it aside, trying to be a soldier and sticking to the mission. Which failed. Being apart and lonely has increased her feelings. And now she's found him again. No matter what they've both done -- or tried to do -- she ended up exactly where they said she would, in this house, with Cole. Her fate is sealed. She may as well get what she wants. At least once, before everything goes to hell.

Edited July 14, 2016 by snarktini

[iRarelyWatchTV36]

One bonus point for the situation we viewed at the end of the episode's 1959 portion of the show's timeline............... not possible except if he develops an undeniable need to commit suicide, Cole can't kill the person that Cassie's just (semi-)recently had sex with.   *bad joke drum-roll sound effect*

Edited July 14, 2016 by iRarelyWatchTV36

[Ceindreadh]

I just watched this ep and for some reason had it in my head that it was the season finale.

Let me tell you that there was a lot of swearing aimed at the screen when I thought I'd have to wait until next year for a resolution!

[Jaded Sapphire]

On 7/12/2016 at 3:29 AM, iRarelyWatchTV36 said:

I like the theories of Ramse still being alive/living- due to the splinter-surival injections - because as the screen went black (i.e, the ep ending), he was still breathing.

I finally got to re-watch and it sounded to me like he stopped breathing right before the screen went black. Anybody else? 

[kat165]

Jaded, I found it hard to tell with Ramse at the end. His eyes seemed squinted the entire time & I couldn't tell if there was life in them or not.

[snarktini]

10 minutes ago, Jaded Sapphire said:

I finally got to re-watch and it sounded to me like he stopped breathing right before the screen went black. Anybody else? 

That's how I read it. There was an exhale (noted on the CC) that I assumed was the end.

[iRarelyWatchTV36]

1 hour ago, Jaded Sapphire said:

I finally got to re-watch and it sounded to me like he stopped breathing right before the screen went black. Anybody else? 

That's possible.  I just remembered they kept showing him as the others were murdered and he was still breathing.  I thought he was still breathing at the very end too, but having not re-watched (yet), it is definitely possible his final breath happened just before the eppy ended.

Edited July 14, 2016 by iRarelyWatchTV36

[bethy]

I also finally rewatched and had a few thoughts:

I wish we'd gotten to see some of the road trip to Titan. I'd be interested to see what bonding went on among that ragtag bunch of misfits that resulted in the fairly cohesive group we saw this episode. Not completely unified, obviously. But there were some nice moments among the men, especially, that seemed to indicate they were working pretty effectively as a unit. I also liked the small indications we got that there was some sort of friendship between Jennifer and Deacon. Poor Jennifer. Her struggling with leading the daughters was so heartbreaking. And hilarious with her calling them assholes.

What were the symbols around and on the thing the Witness was standing on? Also, mulitple people were wearing what I think of as the Witness's mask. Is it possible that there's more than one Witness? Or at least that all the times we think we've seen THE Witness, we may have been seeing one of his (or her?) people?

I liked that Cole's faith in Ramse - that Ramse wouldn't give up, that he'd find the Witness - was actually well-placed.That's exactly what Ramse did. Even if Ramse didn't actually kill the Witness and stop the end of the world as far as we know. Cole's belief in Ramse also helps me make sense of Cole's leaving of Cassie. He truly believed - or had to believe - that Ramse had found the Witness and that that meant he and Cassie could live whatever lives there were for them in 1957. He wanted her to live without fear and thought (or desperately hoped) that she could now.

This may have been obvious to everyone else, but it struck me that Cole's accusation that Cassie's pushing him away was so she wouldn't have anything to lose was a declaration of his belief that she loves him, too. I'm intrigued by people's speculation that Olivia's conditioning somehow prompted Cassie's intitiation of sex between the two of them. Also, I'd totally forgotten Jennifer's comment about the Cassie and Cole being together being the end of the world. It kind of seemed like a throw-away line at the time, but of course nothing in this show is meaningless. 

Finally, I'm pretty sure that Ramse had stopped breathing right there at the end. The implication seemed, fairly clearly to me, that everyone who went to Titan was dead. Including Ramse. "Titan is death." But we've seen repeatedly in the show that saving people is what changes things. I'm so interested to see how that plays out!

[BasilSeal]

I too think Ramse had stopped breathing at the very end,. Jennifer and the Daughters are still outside titan though, and so, i think, is the remaining scientist. We saw him after the fire fight but i don't remember seeing him being stabbed at the end.

Surely at some point in the future Jennifer has to return to 2016 to resume her original time line, otherwise how can she become her older self who eventually dies in 2044? So either they find another time machine (built by Jones' ex husband who has something to do with Titan?) and the English time scientist guy sends her back with that, of they do something that re sets things and the original machine and possibly Jones as well are re instated.

Also somehow Cassandra has to get back to 2018 to fulfil her destiny which trigger off all of the preceding events, she could do like Ramse and go the long way round, given that the time travel injections could, conveniently, make it so she could stay young for a long period of time as Ramse has, so she can live for another nearly 60 years and still look like she's 35 in 2018. she doesn't actually have to die in 2018 as far as i can see, she just has to make the recording and leave her watch on a woman's body for Cole to find in 2044.

Another observation is that notDutch out of the Shield told Cole he'd "known him a long time" when they met for what was, for him, the last time, in Berlin. So I expected him to be involved in trying to find the primary in 1957, as he wasn't, it suggests that he meets Cole again in future episodes, which presumably means more time travelling for Cole in the next series. (which you'd expect , really).

Edited July 16, 2016 by BasilSeal

[MissLucas]

I think Ramse's dead. Whatever happens to save them is going to happen in the past and there will be a temporal reset like we had before. I like the idea that the Witness is not one but several persons though I'm not sure how that would work.

The symbols on the Witness-Platform look Hebrew to me but I don't speak/write Hebrew. The symbol on the giant tank in the background remains a mystery.

[BasilSeal]

Another thought is why the feck didn't they enlist the help of notDutch in 1957 anyway? surely looking up FBI files on the employees at the factory would have been easier than Cassandra going out on a date with every single one?

[MissLucas]

Good question - I really did not like how they handled the time-jump of those 11 months. If Cole and Cassie pretended to be married her dating spree must have looked odd. But since they were constantly fighting people might have shrugged it off.

It also seems they were only looking for the primary but never for a messenger just assuming the messenger would come to the factory to kill the primary. Granted they are harder to spot though Charlie did not make much of an effort to hide his apocalyptic inclinations.

Btw it was never explained why that particular paradox is so powerful and special. Because both Cassie and Cole were present?

[Jaded Sapphire]

5 hours ago, MissLucas said:

It also seems they were only looking for the primary but never for a messenger just assuming the messenger would come to the factory to kill the primary. Granted they are harder to spot though Charlie did not make much of an effort to hide his apocalyptic inclinations.

Btw it was never explained why that particular paradox is so powerful and special. Because both Cassie and Cole were present?

I figured (like Cole and Cassie) that since the messengers know who they are looking for already, they wouldn't need to show up too far in advance - So when my SO actually called Charlie as a messenger in the beginning, I shot him down :-p

Well the shockwave from the paradox ruptures a tank which is why the building explodes. As to why it's so destructive to time, maybe because it's the second paradox in less than 15 years?

[BasilSeal]

8 hours ago, MissLucas said:

Good question - I really did not like how they handled the time-jump of those 11 months. If Cole and Cassie pretended to be married her dating spree must have looked odd. But since they were constantly fighting people might have shrugged it off.

It's a bit of a stretch to expect us to believe that no one thought it odd that the two of them live together in a hotel suit but aren't married or apparently even together, it seems a bit odd to us now, but in 1957 it would have been positively scandalous,  but given that it's 1957, perhaps everyone was too distracted by Charlie's inter-racial marriage to notice their unusual living arrangements.

I'd assumed that the reason the paradox was so powerful was going to be somehow related to the presence of Cole and Cassie, given that the Tall Man had allowed himself to be captured and chooses to give up the information about the paradox specifically to ensure they are present, but in the end they are simply bystanders.  Obviously the reason he wanted them back in 1957 was so they can find the witness's little haunted house in the country and play out whatever destiny they have there to further the Witness's dastardly time bending ends, but we still don't get any explanation of why the death of this primary in 1957 is so important that it enough to destroy time itself.

Edited July 17, 2016 by BasilSeal

[Jaded Sapphire]

Jones did describe the paradoxes as "gunshot wounds" in time two(?) episodes ago, saying that this last one will "bleed us out" so it probably is that it's the second one to have happened.

[Cardie]

On ‎7‎/‎16‎/‎2016 at 5:26 AM, MissLucas said:

The symbols on the Witness-Platform look Hebrew to me but I don't speak/write Hebrew

They are indeed Hebrew but mine is not good enough to extract any words they might spell out.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Inside the episode:

[cynic]

On 7/12/2016 at 5:38 AM, FurryFury said:

...

I did like the episode, it had that eerie and melancholic quality that was missing from season 2....

That's it! That's what I've been missing. This season has been very good, but it feels so different and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I miss that sad, dreamy quality season 1 had. Plus, season 2 is just more "out there". I still enjoy it a lot, but I do wish that it hadn't lost that season 1 tone.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I had really hoped that Cassie and Cole working together for eleven months would have brought them closer together but it seems that all they did was accuse the other of not finding the primary for almost an entire year.

I thought that in S1, Cassie died at the CDC in 2017 but in this episode she said that she dies in 2018?

Deacon only had a few lines but they were all great. Loved his pep talk to Ramse before fighting one of the Daughters: "Try not to die." And I was totally with Deacon when he asked Ramse, "Why would you walk towards the weird music?" So practical and logical, that Deacon.

I really felt for poor Jennifer trying to fill her own shoes without the benefit of decades of experience. It was obvious that she wanted to live up to 2044 Jennifer but didn't know how to go about it. I loved that brief moment she and Ramse had when she begged him not to kill the Daughter who had challenged him and he let her go (especially in contrast with the way he casually shot the Bleeder who told him about Titan).

I actually gasped at the end when Ramse was shot/stabbed with that metal thing. Noooooooo!!

[supposebly]

Cole and Cassie make no sense to me. And unless the show wants me to hate this coupling even by interspersing it with everyone else dying, good job, well done. It really made me feel like the more sex, the more death. So, I fully expect Cole or Cassie to be under that mask. My money is on Cassie. She was supposed to feel safe in that house.

Loved that being Mother is not at all smooth sailing for young Jennifer.

I wonder if Cole wasn't actually Cole there at the end but the Witness pretending to be Cole. And teh sex! needs to happen to collapse time completely. Too cheesy?

I love Deacon. The End. I might want to let time collapse with him.

Edited July 24, 2016 by supposebly