Sunday, April 5, 2015

Helix, Season 2, Episode 12: The Ascendant



Peter and Anne decide to slice and dice the bodies after the gas attack last week. Why? Ah, it’s not like anything these 2 do any more has any kind of coherent motive! There’s also inappropriate Helix music and Anne seducing Peter in the shower while they’re broth caked in blood.

They don’t so much have a storyline as a game of madlibs.


Day 12

Afterwards Anne convinces him that being a murdering cult leader is so much better than being a doctor and how they will all prevail under his guidance (“they” being just the two of them) but that’s not enough for Peter (who probably realises that a cult of two is less of a cult and more a couple who are a bit eccentric on a Sunday) he wants to rule the world! (Or possibly have cultists go door-to-door “hi, have you heard the Good News about incest, rape dungeons and fungus zombies?”. Either way he wants to leave the island). Step one of operation Evangelical Rape/murder/Incest Cult involves getting past the naval blockade – so they need the cure Alan has (he does?) and then to murder everyone (because Murder).

And yes Alan does have a cure because he’s using it on Kyle. He then gives Kyle the cure to try and get it off the island which leads to Kyle having a whole “oh how wrong I was my hero Alan”. But he’s still going to turn Alan in. So Alan gives Kyle directions to a safety deposit box that contains “proof” of what happened in Paris (Alan blew up a building).

Over to Julia who is fretting because Mother is dead and with it any chance of her convincing Ilaria not to destroy the human race. Sarah is all “umm, that’s nice - BABY I GOTS BABY!” Alan drops in to join in the baby-in-a-jar love. Alan does wonder what quality of life a foetus in a jar will actually have but Sarah is happy to spend eternity trying to find an answer. She also wants Alan to join her – but he refuses because he’s too obsessed with killing immortals; she confronts him on this and he brandishes a gun.

Julia still has this pesky hope of picking which genocide she unleashes on the human race so goes and gets a lecture on Mother from Anne (honestly, I’d go to the Mycotics for information before Anne). Alas only Michael knew where Mother was and if she wants to find the location in the hopes of finding roots, seeds or scraps (which survived the island-wide nerve gas) Julia may want to check the records

With Eli’s permission. Eli being what Peter, in his new cult clothes, is calling himself. Julia finds this hilarious. Eli is still Peter and demands a huge cut of money for letting her see the archives. Olivia has also joined the cult of Eli, with the baby Peter kidnapped after killing the mother. And it seems he has found a whole group of followers from somewhere –and tells Anne to arm them.

But Olivia has switched sides again since Kyle saved Soren and she runs to warn him. He goes to warn Sarah and has a “uh… foetus in a jar?” moment. See, Kyle, this is what happens when you let Sarah wander off on separate storylines, she comes back with a foetus in a jar. Kyle wisely decides that he doesn’t want to add more ridiculousness to what he already knows. It’s time to pack up the foetus and run or be shot.

They run, chased by some extras Anne has dragged up from somewhere despite there being two separate massacres on the island. While they run, Sarah gets a crack in her foetus jar so running for their lives turns into finding a new foetus jars. Thankfully the Abby has a nice stock of foetus jars because… oh I’m sorry did you want a coherent reason for anything on this show? Silly you.

Since they didn’t get to kill any doctors, Anne and Peter realise Olivia betrayed them. So Peter murders her while Kyle hides in a cupboard and watches with Soren… really, Kyle? You don’t think you can take Peter? You didn’t think that maybe you should intervene there? Maybe then he wouldn’t have to deal with a sobbing child.


Sarah has gone looking for a foetus jar and decides the best way to do this is to torture Anne (who does point out that Sarah keeping her foetus eternally is cruel and pointless). Anne leads Sarah to the kidnapping, torture, rape, forced-birth room. Sarah is disgusted and, even focused entirely on her foetus jars, demands Anne release the women.

Meanwhile Peter has finally made some revelations about fatherhood and family and his daddy issues which would be more reasonable if they weren’t coming from a guy who just chopped up bodies and put them in barrels. A slightly mangled Anne hobbles her way to him


Alan goes to “help” Julia who still hasn’t given up on finding Mother remnants. They indulge in a little debate on whether Ilaria is the source of all evil or whether they’re doing good and whether mankind is the worst. She also adds it’s irrelevant because you can’t hurt Ilaria because they’re god. But Alan has a new theory – they’re lying. After all, Hatake needed generations to develop Narvik and now some guy has pulled out a miracle in a few years?  Now we take a sharp turn to relationship issues because everyone on this show needs a hefty dose of priorities. Julia also decides she couldn’t love Alan because of her weird genes – kind of ignoring Hatake’s epic romance with her mother.

Kyle decides to radio for evacuation from the ships around the island. These would be the ships that were tasked to kill all life on the island – so it’s less “evacuate me” and more “hey, you missed one!” But waving the cure does seem to work. A helicopter arrives – and Peter decides to shoot at it. The pilot decides he’s not having that and flies off.

Julia and Alan follow the clues to where Mother was, much to Alan’s annoyance. She finds the cure in the soil itself. Alan, again, doesn’t look happy. He pulls his gun – he’s stopping Ilaria, her genocide is just as bad as the Narvik genocide (I’d like to think this is a moral stance but I think it’s more RAWR ILARIA BAD!). Julia also pulls a gun and we fade to back

And there’s a gun shit. Everyone pretend we didn’t see Julia in the future in a previous episode looking for Alan so we can act like there’s some tension over whether either of them just got killed or not.





I’m trying to apply logic to Helix (a bad habit I know) but I can’t find any remotely sensible foundation to Alan’s theory that Ilaria is lying. Because they’re not lying to the general public, by definition their genocide plague is being kept secret – they’re lying to the board of directors of Ilaria. For what? Funding? They don’t seem to be hurting for cash. And it’s a ridiculous lie for an immortal “I have a plague that will destroy the world we can unleash in 2 weeks!” two weeks later “um… so… maybe not.” WHY?! Is this all supposed to be to spur Julia into looking for the infertility plague? But why is Julia so important? What involve the whole senior board of Ilaria in a convoluted plan to manipulate an immortal who has only been an immortal for, what, a year?

Every now and then Helix gets close to addressing a moral issue raised – like how Julia’s infertility plague is just another form of genocide and is hardly benevolent (and Utopia did it better) or how Sarah keeping her foetus in a jar around with her like some kind of pet is highly dubious – and then it runs away from it for more relationship drama and bizarre scenes


Peter still makes zero sense to me. Not one teeny tiny lick of sense. I’m with Kyle here, I’ve given up trying to understand things