S02.E07: Free Radicals

[thewhiteowl]

Quote

Bram embarks on a risky sabotage mission with his friends; Will faces the new Resistance; Kate learns a dark truth about the bloc.

[SimoneS]

Damn, I underestimated the Prison Resistance. Maya sacrificing herself to blow up the ship was totally badass. I will miss the character and actress, Jessica Kennedy Parker, who I like a lot.

So the Colony is a death camp where they are slowly moving out the population. I am not surprised. 

Go Katie! I look forward to her working with Broussard. So after all the beating up on Katie, she right back where she started except this time Will is board. RME.

There was no follow up on what the nervous resistance guy saw right?

[Netfoot]

10 hours ago, SimoneS said:

So the Colony is a death camp where they are slowly moving out the population.

Is it a death camp though?  The woman in the pod wasn't actually dead.  She was pumped full of green goo and placed in a pod for transfer off-planet.  If the sole point was to eradicate the population, why not simply line them all up and start shooting?  Or save bullets, cut off the food supply, and wait for them all to die of starvation?

Something else must be going on.

[GreyBunny]

13 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Is it a death camp though?

It might as well be.  Whatever the aliens want, it can't be good.  I seriously doubt it will lead to a long, happy life for the humans.

Good riddance to that murderous succubus Frankie.  I didn't have any sympathy for her.

“Two years, three months, and nine days” - that's spooky.  They should have escaped the bloc with Will's former partner when they had the chance.  

[Clanstarling]

I assume the countdown is to the "Greatest Day," which can still be interpreted as the annihilation of the humans in the bloc. I lean more towards thinking that the chart (graph? I always get them mixed up) shows the progress of a plan to convert humans. I think Katie's sister's ceremony is one step in the process. I'm not sure if the woman who drowned in blue goo is a second step, or different approach. But they're clearly doing something to her. 

So once all humans in the bloc are either converted or dead - that's the Greatest Day.

I liked that the big boss didn't just reprimand Will, but his asshole partner as well. Will had a strong point - the girl's death wouldn't have mattered as much if the partner hadn't killed the rest of the cell. She was more than a recruiter though - given that she triggered the bomb.

[Hanahope]

I totally expected Maya to talk Bram into doing the bomb.

definitely glad Wills partner got reprimanded too.  He could learn from Will.

cant wait to see Broussard go to work.

i guess Katie's sister isn't completely brainwashed. 

[Haleth]

8 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

So once all humans in the bloc are either converted or dead - that's the Greatest Day.

If that's the ultimate purpose, to clean out humans, it seems like the aliens are going about it the long way and going to a heck of a lot of trouble to do so.  Ever since the first episode when it looked like food and meds were scarce, life in the bloc hasn't seemed all that much of a hardship.  People other than the rebellion seem to be going along with their lives as always. Why are the aliens even bothering to keep (most) people settled down if they want everyone gone?  Why the gradual population reduction instead of a clean sweep?

[Clanstarling]

33 minutes ago, Haleth said:

If that's the ultimate purpose, to clean out humans, it seems like the aliens are going about it the long way and going to a heck of a lot of trouble to do so.  Ever since the first episode when it looked like food and meds were scarce, life in the bloc hasn't seemed all that much of a hardship.  People other than the rebellion seem to be going along with their lives as always. Why are the aliens even bothering to keep (most) people settled down if they want everyone gone?  Why the gradual population reduction instead of a clean sweep?

My theory (which is sheer conjecture) is that they require living, conscious humans for something - to download their consciousness? Serve as host for a symbiot? I'm not sure. But whatever this process is, it is gradual.

The downward curve on the graph could represent multiple ways in which the population will be reduced:

1) those who have been been prepared to become their physical hosts (the true believer converts, perhaps) disappear from the graph at the rate they expect the conversion to happen

2) those they use for work, fodder, or whatever they need to set this process in motion (the factory, the work farm) disappear from the graph in the expected rate of consumption (ie deaths)

3) those they have no use for and plan to flat out exterminate (the sick, the rebels).

By the time it's all said and done, in the two years, etc., the remaining humans are no longer humans - absorbed by the aliens. When they take over the Earth completely - then that will be The Greatest Day

[GreyBunny]

The nazis didn't kill every prisoner that got sent to a concentration camps.  While 9/10 were gassed as soon as they got off the train, the rest were kept alive for a while and used for slave labor or "medical" (torture) experiments.  Prior to that they were rounded up and imprisoned in ghettos to await their train trip to a camp.

That the humans have been trapped in "colonies" (ghettos) and threatened with death to themselves and their families if they stepped out of line or tried to escape is a big clue that the aliens' intentions are far from benevolent.  Lindsay is a complete ridiculous dumbass for not seeing this.  The aliens are using the humans for something - slave labor, reproductive experiments, fuel, food.

[Raja]

1 hour ago, GreyBunny said:

The nazis didn't kill every prisoner that got sent to a concentration camps.  While 9/10 were gassed as soon as they got off the train, the rest were kept alive for a while and used for slave labor or "medical" (torture) experiments.  Prior to that they were rounded up and imprisoned in ghettos to await their train trip to a camp.

That the humans have been trapped in "colonies" (ghettos) and threatened with death to themselves and their families if they stepped out of line or tried to escape is a big clue that the aliens' intentions are far from benevolent.  Lindsay is a complete ridiculous dumbass for not seeing this.  The aliens are using the humans for something - slave labor, reproductive experiments, fuel, food.

The problem is that the Nazis didn't have super human technology to control their prisoners and actually needed manpower although they still wasted so much in SS guards and not using them as SS soldiers fighting the Russians. With the technology the drones represent and what has to  be a drop in the resource bucket compared to interstellar flight a robot can be working at the warehouse instead of teenagers.

[Shades of Scarlet]

Hmmm.  I can't decide if my "they're not aliens" theory took a hit with this one or not.  

Regardless, this was a near-masterpiece after last week's very blah (by this show's standards) installment.  The opening scenes leading to the Green Zone attack were incredible.  The house raid had a cinematic level of direction and a first-person-shooter degree of excitement.  The Frankie character was a white hat in terms of the overall story but palpably evil (that poor kid with the illness - I assume he thought he was acting as a courier and had no idea he was on a suicide mission, and by the way, Red Handers, what did that attack, which clearly killed dozens of innocent civilians, achieve exactly?).  And the show averted the apparent parallel between her and Maya (sex act as a tool to recruit) by having Maya sacrifice herself. 

If an audio engineer operating in secret under these conditions could dope out that quickly that the signal heard by the NASA astronauts was a countdown, why couldn't NASA, over a period of decades?  (Shades of Independence Day there, incidentally.)  That makes me think the Earth governments were (and are) in on it.  Maybe there's one dying alien remaining that needs humans for food or psychic sustenance as that concept has been foreshadowed.  It can control limited numbers of humans directly, the Davos elite, and they've been promised a life on an Earth cleansed of "free radicals" in return.  

Broussard's observation that the bloc is a death camp was brilliantly acted and utterly chilling.  But . . . is that only the fate of the troublesome Los Angeles bloc?  Do the "Hosts," or their human minions, plan to recolonize Los Angeles after emptying it?  (That could give a whole new meaning to the show's title, the import of which has always been murky to me.)  Why turn Dallas into a sheet of glass but adopt this strategy for Los Angeles?  Why do Snyder and Helena know what's in the shipments, but Nolan does not?  Why bother to release Bram in six months when the bloc will be emptied in twenty-seven?  

So Maddie did NOT deliberately create an opportunity for Katie to see that file?  I'm struggling with that as Amanda Righetti's line delivery of "I'll be right back" was IMO unmistakably meant to convey that she knew what Katie would do.  Perhaps Maddie was playing for the cameras that she knows or suspects are in the Bowman house?  

Fascinating stuff.  I am just going to assume that USA will renew this and stop worrying about that.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Shades of Scarlet

[Clanstarling]

17 minutes ago, Shades of Scarlet said:

So Maddie did NOT deliberately create an opportunity for Katie to see that file?  I'm struggling with that as Amanda Righetti's line delivery of "I'll be right back" was IMO unmistakably meant to convey that she knew what Katie would do.  Perhaps Maddie was playing for the cameras that she knows or suspects are in the Bowman house?

I wondered about that too. It seemed clear to me that there was special emphasis when she said that, and it didn't really jibe with what happened in this episode.

IIRC, the cameras are just video images, and not audio. Maddie's back was to the cameras, at least for a good part of the discussion. If there isn't any audio, then her accusation/question might be real (and puzzling in regards to her delivery of that line). If there is audio, then it could be she's playing to the observers to save herself.

17 minutes ago, Shades of Scarlet said:

Hmmm.  I can't decide if my "they're not aliens" theory took a hit with this one or not.

I know. Though I'm firmly in the "they're aliens" camp, this made me wonder if they were humans who adapted to a different environment. On the other hand, the containers were going up, not coming down. So I don't know.

I think the hapless bomber recruit was intending a suicide-bombing, but when he saw the innocent human lives that would be taken, he changed his mind. I think the girl was the fail safe in case he chickened out.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Clanstarling

[Shades of Scarlet]

2 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

I wondered about that too. It seemed clear to me that there was special emphasis when she said that, and it didn't really jibe with what happened in this episode.

IIRC, the cameras are just video images, and not audio. Maddie's back was to the cameras, at least for a good part of the discussion. If there isn't any audio, then her accusation/question might be real (and puzzling in regards to her delivery of that line). If there is audio, then it could be she's playing to the observers to save herself.

I know. Though I'm firmly in the "they're aliens" camp, this made me wonder if they were humans who adapted to a different environment. On the other hand, the containers were going up, not coming down. So I don't know.

I think the hapless bomber recruit was intending a suicide-bombing, but when he saw the innocent human lives that would be taken, he changed his mind. I think the girl was the fail safe in case he chickened out.

I think you're right about the cameras being video only, but Maddie might not know that and she certainly wouldn't know the placement of the cameras in the house.  (Nor, necessarily, does the audience.)  Oh, no, wait, Jennifer could hear what Will was saying to Katie about her!  "Jennifer is weak," etc.  So there definitely is audio.  I think Maddie was just there for show, assuming the presence of surveillance, and maybe even to communicate a warning.  I've never met Amanda Righetti or anyone else on this show, but I feel like I know her style very well because I watched Reunion and then every episode of the The Mentalist.  With that in mind, I thought I picked up on some meaningful glances from her to Katie/SWC in the kitchen scene, and there's just no question about the "BRB" line's emphasis.  She was cagey in the scene with Nolan (while the makeup was being applied) as well.

Yeah, on second thought I believe you're right that the suicide bomber knew what he was doing and carrying although I don't know how he expected to get past the Redhats' checkpoint inspection.  The lingering camera shots of the people on the bus and in line (including the adorable little girl, sniff) were clearly meant to convey that he changed his mind.  So come to think of it maybe his target was the checkpoint station itself, which is what the cold-eyed demon witch (she was seriously scary) meant when she radioed that he didn't reach the target.  But color me still unclear as to what that mission was supposed to accomplish. 

I forgot to mention in my first post above the outstanding way that Josh Holloway played Will's conflicting loyalties and feelings as Burke shot the other members of the cell in the yard, and then Will wordlessly let the young kid go.    

[Clanstarling]

8 minutes ago, Shades of Scarlet said:

Oh, no, wait, Jennifer could hear what Will was saying to Katie about her!  "Jennifer is weak," etc.  So there definitely is audio. 

Thanks for reminding me, I'd forgotten about that.

Yes, I've watched Amanda for years on the Mentalist. I stopped watching the FBI season (I think she'd left the show by that season, right?) Anyway, yes, I thought she was giving Katie the go-ahead. Though maybe she didn't realize Katie would download the file, or that it was monitored and now she's saving her ass.

[Raja]

4 hours ago, Shades of Scarlet said:

Hmmm.  I can't decide if my "they're not aliens" theory took a hit with this one or not.  

Regardless, this was a near-masterpiece after last week's very blah (by this show's standards) installment.  The opening scenes leading to the Green Zone attack were incredible.  The house raid had a cinematic level of direction and a first-person-shooter degree of excitement.  The Frankie character was a white hat in terms of the overall story but palpably evil (that poor kid with the illness - I assume he thought he was acting as a courier and had no idea he was on a suicide mission, and by the way, Red Handers, what did that attack, which clearly killed dozens of innocent civilians, achieve exactly?).  And the show averted the apparent parallel between her and Maya (sex act as a tool to recruit) by having Maya sacrifice herself. 

 

I was just the opposite I thought he knew he was dying and going in as a suicide bomber. Only the civilians including little kids lined up to get in the green zone caused him to falter before reaching the guard post and the greatest concentration of Red Hats.

[rose711]

On 2/24/2017 at 9:27 AM, Netfoot said:

Is it a death camp though?  The woman in the pod wasn't actually dead.  She was pumped full of green goo and placed in a pod for transfer off-planet.  If the sole point was to eradicate the population, why not simply line them all up and start shooting?  Or save bullets, cut off the food supply, and wait for them all to die of starvation?

Something else must be going on.

They need them to work. They also need to keep people under control so there isn't massive and costly resistance.

[ottoDbusdriver]

8 hours ago, Shades of Scarlet said:

If an audio engineer operating in secret under these conditions could dope out that quickly that the signal heard by the NASA astronauts was a countdown, why couldn't NASA, over a period of decades?  (Shades of Independence Day there, incidentally.)  That makes me think the Earth governments were (and are) in on it.  Maybe there's one dying alien remaining that needs humans for food or psychic sustenance as that concept has been foreshadowed.  It can control limited numbers of humans directly, the Davos elite, and they've been promised a life on an Earth cleansed of "free radicals" in return.  

Also Shades of X-Files, with the shadowy government figures working towards prepping for the invasion -- BEFORE -- the day of the invasion.

[Shades of Scarlet]

6 hours ago, Raja said:

I was just the opposite I thought he knew he was dying and going in as a suicide bomber. Only the civilians including little kids lined up to get in the green zone caused him to falter before reaching the guard post and the greatest concentration of Red Hats.

Yeah, you guys are clearly right.  I rewatched it tonight and think I figured out what led me down the wrong path.  First, there was just something off about him being on oxygen when we know that the "invaders" took away access to insulin.   I guess his oxygen tank could work for more than a year post-Arrival but it seemed strange, so as effective as the opening was, that semi-incongruity took me out of things a bit.  Second, I didn't think the Redhat checkpoint seemed like a particularly high-value target for a group that utterly destroyed a recruitment center and even attacked Will's workplace.  Also, while the Red Handers seemed okay with killing everyone at the recruitment center because they were all deemed collaborators, reaching the same conclusion about and slaughtering a bunch of people (including at least one little kid) waiting to get into the Green Zone seems far too excessive and unlikely to accomplish anything.  This is why I started thinking the kid wasn't in on the bomb aspect of the plan, or was originally intended to set it off inside the Green Zone. 

Now I'm wondering if the Red Hand group is unwittingly doing false flag work for the Authority.   Helps cull the population while avoiding responsibility. 

[Anela]

I thought that Maddie left Katie long enough that she could see where her son was, and that he was still alive, but didn't expect her to do anything that might endanger Maddie and her son. 

[GreyBunny]

I think they were doing a test run for their bomb to make sure their design would work on the ship and decided to take out some red hats and presumed green zone collaborators in the process so it wouldn't be wasted.

Edited February 27, 2017 by GreyBunny

[Hanahope]

14 hours ago, Shades of Scarlet said:

I forgot to mention in my first post above the outstanding way that Josh Holloway played Will's conflicting loyalties and feelings as Burke shot the other members of the cell in the yard, and then Will wordlessly let the young kid go.    

I think that if Will's partner wasn't shooting the other  cell members in the head, Will might have stopped the other young man.  But Will wasn't going to let the guy get shot.

I don't know that Maddie knows about the surveillance in all the houses, and I presume at least for the moment, there's no surveillance at Nolan's house.  Certainly Katie did, which is why she couched her answers the way she did.

I agree that while Maddie may have thought Katie would look at the information, she didn't think about Katie's downloading it, and certainly wouldn't have thought that the aliens were monitoring downloads.  She did a pretty good job covering up for Katie when Nolan was asking her about it, but I think its only a matter of time before Nolan finds out Katie visited that night and puts 2 and 2 together.

I do think its aliens, since they have air/space ships that look completely different from earth ships and they did initially find that sound/countdown from the Moon.

[rose711]

I don't know how anyone has the idea that this is anything other alien technology. If an earth power or powers had this technology they wouldn't be using it in the way we've been shown. Why would Russia or China care about dividing LA or glassing Dallas? It makes no sense.

The only thing this show excels at is showing how people will gladly take the chance at power or brutality over other weaker people. Turning people against is either is the key to control here. This is why the aliens can't do it on their own. They need to use religion and all psychological tricks to control the population.

I wish the show had better pacing and hadn't cast the lead actress who I think can't act for anything. 

Shes good at being selfish I guess so there's that.

[Arynm]

I think they need the humans fresh so to speak. Whatever they are using them for, they have to do it a little at a time. If they could have wiped the planet clean of humans at the beginning, they would have. No way would they have wanted to deal with a species who they must have known loves to fight back. Humans are nothing if not predictable. They won't go down without a fight.

Loving this season and I will revolt if I don't get another one.

Edited February 27, 2017 by Arynm

[Dowel Jones]

On 2/26/2017 at 0:32 PM, Shades of Scarlet said:

That could give a whole new meaning to the show's title, the import of which has always been murky to me.

I get the impression, after this episode, that the colony is actually somewhere far into space, and those pods are for transporting humans, under suspended animation, to that location.  The warehouse is shipping a huge amount of supplies in addition to the pods.  Eventually they will move out or destroy the entire population of LA, plus any other locations in the world.  One wonders what fate will befall the redhats and the Lindsays of the world at that point. 

My first thought when the bomb detonated was that Maya should have waited until they were clear of Earth, so there would be less suspicion on the labor camp. 

Once again the resistance shows itself to be woefully disorganized and trained.  The first guy to get shot in the house blunders into the room with his gun at his side.  The second guy, after dispatching the redshirt hat, doesn't even take a bead on Will and as a result takes four in the chest, and one in the head.  Now, we obviously can't have Will getting killed, but by rights he should have been. 

[Clanstarling]

7 hours ago, Dowel Jones said:

My first thought when the bomb detonated was that Maya should have waited until they were clear of Earth, so there would be less suspicion on the labor camp.

I can see that. On the other hand, it is a sign to everyone in the bloc - resistors and those who don't believe resistance could be effective - that they can hurt the aliens themselves - not just their fellow humans. I'm sure whatever media there might be is controlled, but that victory will be whispered and celebrated throughout the block in no time. And the resistance will grow.

[Raja]

23 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

I can see that. On the other hand, it is a sign to everyone in the bloc - resistors and those who don't believe resistance could be effective - that they can hurt the aliens themselves - not just their fellow humans. I'm sure whatever media there might be is controlled, but that victory will be whispered and celebrated throughout the block in no time. And the resistance will grow.

Or after so many years of entertainment we expect perfection. That the brave soldier will get all the way to the mothership, but that is for a two hour movie and not the second act of a series.  When they are just as likely to die like someone stowing aboard a jet liner's cargo hold or wheel well long before reaching the optimal location. It was just like the suicide bomber who would have been caught by the police dog long before he got to a Green Zone target

[rose711]

On 3/1/2017 at 9:22 AM, Clanstarling said:

I can see that. On the other hand, it is a sign to everyone in the bloc - resistors and those who don't believe resistance could be effective - that they can hurt the aliens themselves - not just their fellow humans. I'm sure whatever media there might be is controlled, but that victory will be whispered and celebrated throughout the block in no time. And the resistance will grow.

We have no way of knowing what would happen on the ship. We have to assume there are at least drone patrols.

Also I needed to see that the resistance could achieve something. I posted a few times that I was ready to give up on the show because it seemed hopeless.

i still think the shows pacing has been way off. Maybe if they last they could get a new show runner to help them. The next episode after this one is very good, but it's taken them too long to get to this point.