Welcome to Charleston, hopefully ya’ll have a good stay.
What They Say:
The Price of Greatness
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While residents of Charleston may not recognize what they saw at the end of the last episode, the end result is that things have now changed as the Continental Army has surfaced with Porter and they’ve brought in the 2nd Mass to try and give them some recovery time. The group has definitely lost a lot of people along the way but the discovery of something underground, a mall that was being worked on before everything went to hell, definitely changes the feel of everything. As Anne realizes as she walks in, this place is filled with new faces, people who have similarly survived events and found some semblance of normality. And they understand what the 2nd Mass has been through.
Which is understandably unnerving.
What becomes interesting as we get a look at the underground settlement here is that because of how it’s been organized, the civilian leadership under Majority Leader Manchester, Tom’s former professor, has opted for generally just hiding out. While Weaver and the 2nd Mass have a lot of actionable intelligence to work with, the military component here is not going out and picking fights with anyone. And this is played out more so with the integration of the 2nd Mass into the routine, which has them disarming and being put into sleeping quarters that don’t keep them together. Which makes sense on the Charleston side since it keeps an internal insurrection from coming alive for whatever reason.
Settling in doesn’t go easy for a lot of reasons because of the mixed of relaxed and far too cautious nature of people. The medical side goes back to the old school method of seniority by practice, which has Anne pushing back hard against it. Tom’s dealing with his mentor being completely against the whole idea of the Skitter rebellion and what they want for participation. And in general there’s a surreal aspect to a lot of this where it really does feel like a group that’s got its head and whole body stuck in the sand to ignore the rest of the world, to let it all flow by and fix itself on its own until it can surface worry free. It makes a certain sense when you get down to it, and much of it is human nature, but it’s a cowardice in the end.
As more of it comes out, it becomes clearer that there are two distinct sides to things, where there are larger aspects of the military leadership that wants to get into the fight even though many of the rank and file have never had any real combat. And you have Manchester where he’s looking more at securing what he’s created and giving it time to grow and become something special, something that a historian and author like him only dreams of being able to do but never would because of the static and stagnant nature of the country as it was prior to the attack. Both have their merits, but neither is looking clearly at what’s going on.
There’s a lot of material dealing with this over the first two acts as we get a feel for the place, but things start to ramp up a bit more in the third as a kid arrives, talking about the Skitter rebellion and wanting to connect Tom with the Red Eye Skitter again to get back on track with things. The further tensions go on, the more you know that the 2nd Mass, or at least certain elements of it, don’t intend to stay there and play dead until the aliens leave. It’s a given, but it’s watching how it unfolds that makes it kind of fun in a very basic and simplistic way. From freeing the berserkers and getting the other elements they need together to deal with hooking up with the Skitter rebellion and making a real stand.
In Summary:
As is always the case it seems, we’re our own worst enemy. With the 2nd Mass having arrived in Charleston only to find that the pressure has been building for a coup, there’s a few basic and overly simplistic elements at play here. The show definitely uses the kind of narrative and ease of access to its workings here that we’ve seen throughout both seasons so far so I can’t say I’m surprised. Everyone hits their notes much as they have and it’s just a buildup waiting game at this point with what’s happening for the finale in the next episode and potentially more payoff for the third season that’s to come next summer. Much as I’ve felt throughout the run, this is a show that would have been all the rage back in the 80’s and early 90’s, but science fiction TV has come a lot further since then and serial storytelling itself has become more complex and engaging with shows that have far less material to work with. It’s what continues to hold this one back in the end.
Grade: B
