Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Glitch, Season 2, Episode 1: A Rare Bird




We start with a flashback to remind us of the big reveal: Elisha, the doctor who has been our source of science and medicine in this show, is actually one of the Risen herself. She died 4 years ago - before the rest - and then faked her continued death before staggering out of her lab and her life all alone.

This news is passed on to James who is super distracted by it - which is probably a really bad thing because his wife Sarah has just had a baby and could use some support and he’s all distracted by the walking dead. Sarah has every right to be pissed to be honest - not only do they have a new born baby but Sarah nearly died during child birth so some support might be nice. James stop seeing dead people, you got a damn baby!

Another distraction is his colleague Chris who is not an entirely incompetent policeman and he’s noticed that Vic, the evil cop from last season, is missing (dead and buried) and he’s not falling for all the very basic red herrings.

See this is what comes of burying bodies rather than feeding them to crocodiles. Or koalas. Isn’t a body in Australia just eaten by the wildlife if you leave it unattended for 5 minutes?

James herds three of the other Risen off to a cabin he has to try and keep them out of trouble. Kirstie is snarky but obedient. Charlie is a doormat because… he always is and just about everyone challenges him on being a doormat this episode. Except it’s less “stop being a doormat” and more “damn it Charlie, be MY doormat”.

While Kate, James’s not-dead ex-wife has decided to move on a little from the whole Sarah/James/Kate love triangle which is something as a relief. But she’s decided to… act out like an angry teenager? I mean, I totally support her “James you don’t get to tell me what to do!” stance, but her “I’m gonna do this because James doesn’t want me to!” is not exactly something I’m running with and it all feels like she’s just being… petulant because Sarah has a baby? Anyway she falls in with neighbour Owen who is made of hotness and they both go swimming in a waterhole together (in Australia. This must be suicidal). But it’s ok because they’re both local and know where the big scary snake is (hey let’s go swimming and just swim round the… lethal snake. Australians are… odd people). They smoke cannabis and bond and discuss his dead parents and he is very very very very very hot

James is concerned because she’s telling someone she just met her name and possibly exposing herself.

Meanwhile Paddy is rampaging around being Paddy. He wants to prove his land was willed to the wrong people and has a copy of his will - except it’s several decades older than federal Australia and going to be difficult to prove. While he’s trantrumming and pouting his lawyer will do some research. In the meantime he recruits Charlie for shenanigans at the house he intends to “defend”. Charlie goes along because doormat+homophobic slurs


John Doe is off doing his own thing and is found by Nicola Heysen who originally looks like the calmist victim of a home burglary ever before she reveals she works for the sinister Noregard, the lab that Elisha worked for to study regeneration, stem cells and zombies and stuff. She drives off with Joe and gives him a hard sell on all the information Elisha kept from them all and how she just needs to study him and it’ll all be perfect. She also offers the carrot of his real identity - William Blackguard, a convict who was flogged and executed in the distant past. Not exactly a happy memory.

I am going to put down his lack of suspicion over a scientist wanting to study him to being dead for several decades and completely unaware of pop culture. Needless to say I’m calling her evil.

James goes researching actual Elisha and finds out she was apparently an entirely different person when she was alive - including having a girlfriend who believes her to be dead and having a radically different personality. Alison, her still living girlfriend (and I like that James utterly respects the strength of what Alison lost when she lost Elisha even if the show hasn’t yet and is going to need to pull something out to explain this loved one abandonment) gives James a Big Book of Science Elisha left.

And Elisha herself finds James

James finally does find time for Sarah and we have an excellent moment of Sarah showing just how overwhelmed and scared she is as a new mother and James really needs to get on side here.

Beau is no longer following Paddy around, but his racist white family is still causing him trouble, targeting him, looking for Paddy. To add to the complications, Phil, his brother (I think) arrives back in town - because he just died in an oil rig fire and has Risen (ok it’s not confirmed but we know it’s true)

One new threat facing them all is that the radius they can travel in seems to have shrunk. If they go too far from the graveyward they all start bleeding from their eyes - and the distance is shorter than it was before.


Kirstie isn’t doing much but having the odd flashback. But I’m beginning to see a concern that all of these characters are all going to get their own arcs in a series that is only 6 episodes long. This is going to be a problem. Either characters are going to be severely neglected, or there’s just going to be too much rammed in there. Each character has an arc, we have the investigation into Vic’s murder, we have the sinister Norgard, we have Elisha and her secrets, James and Sarah and now new Risen Phil. There’s no space for all this. None at all