Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Continuum Season One, Episode Six: Time's Up


The concept behind Continuum is interesting, but each week I find myself asking, why am I watching this?  I cannot identify whatsoever with the protagonist and find myself rooting for the so-called terrorists.

As always, this episode begins with a flash forward to the year 2077.  Kiera is called in to help put down a riot. At first she is absolutely disgusted with violence until she learns that the people are rioting over food.  It seems that the corporations withheld food from the population in order to drive up the prices.  When Kiera expresses concern she is told that someone else will look in it.  When she takes the issue to her husband, he silences her by saying that she sounds like a member of Liber8.  Now all of this happened before Kiera went back in time and she still cannot admit that while their methods might be problematic and violent that they have a point.

In the present day, Keira comes across an anti-corporation protest and immediately assumes the worst of the protestors. Liber8 kidnaps the CEO of a corporation and holds her ransom for twenty million dollars. When the money is assembled, they demand that it is handed out to the protestors. 

In the meantime, Alec step brother Justin is no longer happy with sitting in on meetings.  He takes his father's truck and attends the protest.  Alec decides to rat him out to his step dad which leads to little shoving match in the living room.  Suddenly, Alec is worried about what Justin is doing, when in fact he gave him the idea to get more involved in the first place.


Kiera continues to show no respect for law and order.  When she and Carlos manage to get a suspect in custody, Kiera shoots him up with truth serum and starts to babble about every single crime he has ever committed. This woman is a cop and forcing him to incriminate himself just flouts the very basic tenets of law and order.  This coupled with the fact that she has a history of torturing people make her a very unlikeable person.

When Kiera and Carlos manage to track down the CEO, she is strapped to a bomb with a camera on her.  Carlos gets the area cleared but after conferring with Alec, she realizes that she cannot defuse the bomb.  Kiera tells the CEO that the only way to out of this situation alive is to reveal why she has been targeted.  After a little resistance we learn that the company has been stealing from the pension fund of the employees for years. Edouard Kagame accepts her confession and disarms the bomb.  Thanks to the fact that they bet against the corporation, they made over 20 million dollars as well as furthered the project of winning hearts and minds.

Alec admits to Kiera that Justin was at the protest and of course she is horrified that he kept something from her .  Alec has been her virtual slave and spends the majority of his time monitoring her in case she needs any kind of help, and now she has the nerve to be upset that he didn't immediately sell his step brother down the river.  Entitlement, thy name is Kiera.

Unless something significantly changes about Continuum, I really cannot see myself watching a second season.  It is impossible to root for Kiera and the more I see of Liber8, the more that I side with them.  Kiera is anti-choice with no respect for individual freedoms despite all that she has seen.  What is it going to take for this woman to buy a vowel and get a clue?