12 Monkeys, Episode 4
Dec. 2nd, 2022 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annavereDid I mention how beautiful the lighting is on this show? I just came off Breaking Bad and a David Lynch film, so the mere fact that 12 Monkeys is able to attract my aesthetic notice after that speaks volumes. The scene between Cole and Ramse in the tent was just gorgeous, like Caravaggio or something.
Again, rambling, so again cut.
This show does an impressive amount of genre hopping. Atari drops the plague storyline except for beginning and ending with Cassie. The rest of the episode is centered squarely on the post-apocalyptic portion of events, and has a higher proportion of action scenes, which could have made it feel generic, but the writers are smart people and amped up the amount of heavy lifting character interactions to compensate. It's amazing.
Time travel cleverness also increases in this one, given Cole takes a short trip only two days back. What's interesting is that Katarina didn't engineer this - the machine was damaged in the firefight. She says at the end it isn't possible to make the machine do such short jumps. This means that something else was responsible for Cole's trip, which ensured both that the facility was stormed and that he was able to return and save everyone. So is time managing itself? Is it fate? A higher power? It would be cool if this concept were developed going forward.
Alright, social Darwinist character incoming, arguing the polar opposite of what everyone else has so far, to wit: Everyone who died of the virus were supposed to because they weren't immune, while the immune now get to take over the world. This is (while horrendously brutal) an argument in favor of an actual future, something no one else has trotted out yet. Aside from that, I'm not sure what I can say about Deacon, because he's styled from the same archetype as Sims and that's coloring my impressions something fierce.
Max is an interesting character, with a lot of conflicting loyalties displayed. There's her father's death when she was thirteen and having "no choice" but to join the West VII, which she has long since committed herself to. She gained a sincere attachment to Cole, such that she didn't instantly holler for the guards when witnessing his escape from the camp, but then sided with Deacon. Did she grow bitter at being abandoned over time, or was it only finding out how well they were living that tipped her over the edge? Then what made her change her mind in the tent scene? The episode leaves her having committed to the facility, which is probably going to be a very hard adjustment, given she was way deeper into scavenger lifestyle than either of the guys (or flipping that around, if Deacon conditioned her to accept orders, she might have a much easier time adjusting). Either way, there's a lot of potential to this character...
I adore Cole and Ramse squabbling over which of them has to kill the dog and then Ramse's rueful conclusion that they're going to die, as it's revealed they instead adopted it. Cole seems to take that criticism fully to heart, given how he throws himself into Deacon's crew.
Cole and Ramse in the tent gets right to the heart of one of my favorite tropes ever, the "I'm here to kill you and at the last possible second I'm gonna let you go instead" concept. "I walked up to him, gun in hand, so what does that make me?" Stunning.
This is the first episode that got me to take a close look at the script, because so many conversations turned into loaded ethical and philosophical debates. Ramse to Cole: If it happens for a reason, why undo it? Or Deacon to Cole: At least you're not alone anymore (while ordering him to kill Ramse).
Again, rambling, so again cut.
This show does an impressive amount of genre hopping. Atari drops the plague storyline except for beginning and ending with Cassie. The rest of the episode is centered squarely on the post-apocalyptic portion of events, and has a higher proportion of action scenes, which could have made it feel generic, but the writers are smart people and amped up the amount of heavy lifting character interactions to compensate. It's amazing.
Time travel cleverness also increases in this one, given Cole takes a short trip only two days back. What's interesting is that Katarina didn't engineer this - the machine was damaged in the firefight. She says at the end it isn't possible to make the machine do such short jumps. This means that something else was responsible for Cole's trip, which ensured both that the facility was stormed and that he was able to return and save everyone. So is time managing itself? Is it fate? A higher power? It would be cool if this concept were developed going forward.
Alright, social Darwinist character incoming, arguing the polar opposite of what everyone else has so far, to wit: Everyone who died of the virus were supposed to because they weren't immune, while the immune now get to take over the world. This is (while horrendously brutal) an argument in favor of an actual future, something no one else has trotted out yet. Aside from that, I'm not sure what I can say about Deacon, because he's styled from the same archetype as Sims and that's coloring my impressions something fierce.
Max is an interesting character, with a lot of conflicting loyalties displayed. There's her father's death when she was thirteen and having "no choice" but to join the West VII, which she has long since committed herself to. She gained a sincere attachment to Cole, such that she didn't instantly holler for the guards when witnessing his escape from the camp, but then sided with Deacon. Did she grow bitter at being abandoned over time, or was it only finding out how well they were living that tipped her over the edge? Then what made her change her mind in the tent scene? The episode leaves her having committed to the facility, which is probably going to be a very hard adjustment, given she was way deeper into scavenger lifestyle than either of the guys (or flipping that around, if Deacon conditioned her to accept orders, she might have a much easier time adjusting). Either way, there's a lot of potential to this character...
I adore Cole and Ramse squabbling over which of them has to kill the dog and then Ramse's rueful conclusion that they're going to die, as it's revealed they instead adopted it. Cole seems to take that criticism fully to heart, given how he throws himself into Deacon's crew.
Cole and Ramse in the tent gets right to the heart of one of my favorite tropes ever, the "I'm here to kill you and at the last possible second I'm gonna let you go instead" concept. "I walked up to him, gun in hand, so what does that make me?" Stunning.
This is the first episode that got me to take a close look at the script, because so many conversations turned into loaded ethical and philosophical debates. Ramse to Cole: If it happens for a reason, why undo it? Or Deacon to Cole: At least you're not alone anymore (while ordering him to kill Ramse).
