Saturday, August 26, 2017

Zoo, Season 2, Episode 9: Black Forest



Time for our weekly dose of utter nonsense and brain farts pretending to be a plot.

Starting with Jaime stopping the plane from crashing which I’m sure shocked us all. Are we all shocked?

Mitch - or Duncan because of the mind control switch - does manage to escape during the crash to make his way back to Abigail’s side because his head chip is aksing up.

On the plane at least the tank with Clem in it and all their spinal fluid collections are safe. But Dariela is out - a plane nearly crashing with Isaac on it is the last straw - it’s time to leave. She asks him to come with her - but he can’t abandon the mission

She does leave on good terms though, at least, with plans to meet up again after the mission is finished. I don’t want Dariela to leave but at the same time the conflict endlessly swirling around her was aggravating. But I think there’s also something gendered about this. In previous seasons, Abe was the compassionate nurturer and the one I’d see most likely to be a primary caregiver for a child, while Dariela was the action/intervention orientated soldier. Sure Abe’s a scientist now - but this was something that was dropped in during the downtime from last season - it could just as easily have been Dariela.

Jaime falls into a kind of despair though - Dariela leaving, Mitch missing and evil, Jackson missing - it’s all very sad. But Abe is back in his role of giving everyone happy hopeful speeches. He’s very very good at that. Time to get back on track - to which they reach out to Logan

Meanwhile Logan and his merry group have managed to destroy the Hybrid nest in the Black Forest. Yay… kind of. Sure the nest is gone but they have no way to destroy the spores which are super deadly and they lost a load of men in the process. So baaad.

Thankfully when he joins Jaime & co bringing with him a Shepherd prisoner to help them track Mitch’s head-chip (co-opertation requires knives and Abe being resonable but ultimately the Shepherds don’t like Abigail either because this whole hybrid destroys the world thing was not part of the agenda) he also discovers Max and Abe have found an enzyme that destroys all pathogens. Virus, bacteria, fungal spores. All pathogens…


..

.

Everyone is remarkably calm considering they’ve discovered the magical panacea, cure of all infectious disease.



Over to Abigail who is joined by Mitch who both has his chip reset so he stays as Duncan and so he can spill lots of info to Abigail including all about the collection of spinal fluid and Clem being pregnant and the baby being in trouble and the need for Clem’s ex, the baby’s father to get a blood transfusion. As luck would have it, Abigail has acquired this completely random man who was on Pangea and she has been merrily brainwashing (he believes Jackson is releasing the hybrids, not her). Why? Who even knows it’s just one of those fun coincidences! Anyway Sam thinks Jackson and co are the worse and believes Abigail when she says he needs to be injected with random stuff to help save his baby.

Jackson has finally found the spine to start questioning Abigail with the hybrids and how daddy would Disapprove. But he also learns she can control hybrids like he can animals and makes the huge, plunging logical leap that she is a) a hybrid and b) the one whose spinal fluid they need for the cure. He’s right but, really, she’s showing literally the exact same psychic abilities he has. Yay for logical leaps!

Jackson manages to free himself and almost kill Abigail - only to have Mitch intervene and save her. Abigail seems almost shocked that her brother wants her dead

When the gang arrives they find Mitch shooting at them - and Jaime takes him down. She tries to pull the “oh Mitch you will never shoot me” but she’s not a fool. She also counts the bullets - he does shoot at her, dry firing the gun and she knocks him out. There’s still angsty

They find Sam posing as a prisoner and “rescue” him to take him back to the plane to transfuse with Clem… only to see her and the baby have a very violent adverse reaction. They both kind of watch - shouldn’t there be leaping into action here?

The Shepherd does catch up with Abigail at her computers - and decides to shoot them rather than her. For some reason he thinks Abigail is up to something other than ending/controlling the world with her army of pet monsters… isn’t that motive enough? He demands she answer his questions. Except Jackson then saves her (whut?) then she saves Jackson (whut? Apparently she still needs him?) then he knock hers out to claim her spinal fluid… only to find she’s dying. He calls for help (again… whut?)

Can we all decide who are enemies here and kill them already!

Speaking of, Jaime decides to leave Mitch in Duncan mode for the time being as he needs him to do something Dunan won’t do. I’m going to assume this is something plot related and not some kinky sex game. Either way, obviously this is deeply unethical and going to come back to bite Jaime.

Logan takes his enzyme with him to his team in Seoul where they’re investigating another gooey hybrid nest



I know an American television show is going to be American centric here - but can we pause a moment to consider the events that apparently happened in thes space between seasons with the hybrids and this agency now apparently playing save the world - but only with Americans

The US, Canada and a huge chunk of South America lost the entire west coast. The wall in the US is placed at DENVER - that means 8 entire states have been lost along with sizeable chunks of 4 more  (including about, what, 25% more or less of the US GDP with them) - and in the process the US spent what must be trillions on a giant border wall all in the space of 10 years. Yet when there are issues in Black Forest and Seoul, we’re seeing the organisation handling this is primarily American full of no-one but American people… America should be on her knees after this and certainly not in a place to take point. At very least I’d expect a coalition.