12 Monkeys, S02E08: Lullaby
Jan. 1st, 2023 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annavereMy boyfriend called this the 12 Monkeys Christmas Special, and it was indeed as different from 'Meltdown' as it was possible to be. I think the writers realized they'd pushed the darkness to the breaking point so they reined it in and delivered something beautifully hopeful instead.
I have officially given up on any possible predictions for where this show is going. Generally in a post-apocalyptic show there is something very concrete to latch on to. If they would only do X and Y (usually involving proactive organization and Roman battle tactics), things would get easier. They might never do any of this, but it offers a roadmap of logical causality.
Last episode, I was completely certain that the solution to the team's problems was to destroy the time machine, since this is the single vital ingredient in the destruction of all time and space. Katarina came to the same conclusion, and I was impressed when Cassie showed up to kill her. That this completely fails, and not in a way I had remotely predicted, proves that my regular brand of theorizing does not work when time travel is involved. Instead, Katarina's death triggers a Groundhog Day loop, which is always fun.
Cassie's furious bout of self-recrimination leads back, very briefly, to the now abandoned season one argument. "We've made things worse. Maybe the plague was always supposed to happen." I'm remembering Cole's highhanded declaration in the pilot that "there's nothing back there worth saving" when the future world was teeming with life back then, and after all their actions it now hangs by a thread.
Cole brings up the old problem of time travel killing him, and that reminds me: Why is this no longer a problem? Was that explained and I missed it?
Meanwhile, Jennifer gets better with every appearance. "That's not how time travel works." "Oh, look who's an expert now." She argues that time is cognizant and capable of defending itself, that "time likes time travel" and this triggers an excellent debate between Cole and Cassie on divine intervention versus mundane happenstance. And if it were simply a matter of Katarina's invention of time travel being fixed in place, then the day they sit out, altering nothing, should be enough to release them from the loop. Instead, they are forced into a very specific role of saving Hannah without anyone realizing it. That seems to speak to a higher power or vested interest of some sort.
Although possibly not. How would Jennifer have survived in a version of events where Cole and Cassie didn't intervene? This show hurts my brain.
The Cole/Cassie scene was really nicely done altogether, and did more than any previous episode to make me care about them as a couple. "The only world I ever gave a damn about was the one with you in it." It's about time that got proper acknowledgement.
Jennifer providing the answers, being the heart and soul of the mission, is not what I would have expected from her first appearances, yet it's a good look on her. "Hope is lost. Get it back." After 'Meltdown,' this can apply just as well to the audience as to the team.
Cole betrays everybody, gets them all executed together, takes the time for a serious philosophical question no one else will remember him asking, and changes the future/past for the better in a big redemptive moment. Meanwhile Cassie is given the opportunity to be a doctor again after over half a season of brutality and Katarina's daughter is returned to her. Love.
Another excellent Cole/Cassie scene, moving entirely beyond the passive-aggressive rut they've been in, seems like a perfect way to end the episode but just when I'd given up on any Ramse fallout featuring, he puts in a reappearance that is so much better than I could have hoped for that I feel mildly embarrassed even talking about it. So help me, my 'enemies to lovers' button just got pushed hard, with a hot as hell proposed murder-suicide and counter-proposed death trip (again, Cassie is good at figuring out what to say to a man with a gun to her head).
I have two fairly nice (for my standards) preferred pairings on 12 Monkeys, and was just coming around to the official couple, and as entertaining as Cassie and Ramse's previous interactions were to watch, it never occurred to me to ship them because hatred by itself isn't that great a basis for meaningful interaction. Guilt on the other hand, plus a mutual death wish? Now we're talking. Damn, Cassie's responses and intonations have done a 180 here, and it's amazing. She says his name like he's become a person to her.
And as devastated as Ramse is over Sam, I don't think that's the reason for his second bullet - that goes back, as ever, to Cole. So his drunken plan is to take Cassie from Cole and then do himself in before he has to see Cole's reaction to her death, and this is completely disturbed any way you slice it (even though I'm losing count of how many interactions on this show have resulted in actual or attempted murder) and I am there for every second of it. Damn.
I have officially given up on any possible predictions for where this show is going. Generally in a post-apocalyptic show there is something very concrete to latch on to. If they would only do X and Y (usually involving proactive organization and Roman battle tactics), things would get easier. They might never do any of this, but it offers a roadmap of logical causality.
Last episode, I was completely certain that the solution to the team's problems was to destroy the time machine, since this is the single vital ingredient in the destruction of all time and space. Katarina came to the same conclusion, and I was impressed when Cassie showed up to kill her. That this completely fails, and not in a way I had remotely predicted, proves that my regular brand of theorizing does not work when time travel is involved. Instead, Katarina's death triggers a Groundhog Day loop, which is always fun.
Cassie's furious bout of self-recrimination leads back, very briefly, to the now abandoned season one argument. "We've made things worse. Maybe the plague was always supposed to happen." I'm remembering Cole's highhanded declaration in the pilot that "there's nothing back there worth saving" when the future world was teeming with life back then, and after all their actions it now hangs by a thread.
Cole brings up the old problem of time travel killing him, and that reminds me: Why is this no longer a problem? Was that explained and I missed it?
Meanwhile, Jennifer gets better with every appearance. "That's not how time travel works." "Oh, look who's an expert now." She argues that time is cognizant and capable of defending itself, that "time likes time travel" and this triggers an excellent debate between Cole and Cassie on divine intervention versus mundane happenstance. And if it were simply a matter of Katarina's invention of time travel being fixed in place, then the day they sit out, altering nothing, should be enough to release them from the loop. Instead, they are forced into a very specific role of saving Hannah without anyone realizing it. That seems to speak to a higher power or vested interest of some sort.
Although possibly not. How would Jennifer have survived in a version of events where Cole and Cassie didn't intervene? This show hurts my brain.
The Cole/Cassie scene was really nicely done altogether, and did more than any previous episode to make me care about them as a couple. "The only world I ever gave a damn about was the one with you in it." It's about time that got proper acknowledgement.
Jennifer providing the answers, being the heart and soul of the mission, is not what I would have expected from her first appearances, yet it's a good look on her. "Hope is lost. Get it back." After 'Meltdown,' this can apply just as well to the audience as to the team.
Cole betrays everybody, gets them all executed together, takes the time for a serious philosophical question no one else will remember him asking, and changes the future/past for the better in a big redemptive moment. Meanwhile Cassie is given the opportunity to be a doctor again after over half a season of brutality and Katarina's daughter is returned to her. Love.
Another excellent Cole/Cassie scene, moving entirely beyond the passive-aggressive rut they've been in, seems like a perfect way to end the episode but just when I'd given up on any Ramse fallout featuring, he puts in a reappearance that is so much better than I could have hoped for that I feel mildly embarrassed even talking about it. So help me, my 'enemies to lovers' button just got pushed hard, with a hot as hell proposed murder-suicide and counter-proposed death trip (again, Cassie is good at figuring out what to say to a man with a gun to her head).
I have two fairly nice (for my standards) preferred pairings on 12 Monkeys, and was just coming around to the official couple, and as entertaining as Cassie and Ramse's previous interactions were to watch, it never occurred to me to ship them because hatred by itself isn't that great a basis for meaningful interaction. Guilt on the other hand, plus a mutual death wish? Now we're talking. Damn, Cassie's responses and intonations have done a 180 here, and it's amazing. She says his name like he's become a person to her.
And as devastated as Ramse is over Sam, I don't think that's the reason for his second bullet - that goes back, as ever, to Cole. So his drunken plan is to take Cassie from Cole and then do himself in before he has to see Cole's reaction to her death, and this is completely disturbed any way you slice it (even though I'm losing count of how many interactions on this show have resulted in actual or attempted murder) and I am there for every second of it. Damn.
no subject
Date: 2023-01-07 03:18 pm (UTC)Cole brings up the old problem of time travel killing him, and that reminds me: Why is this no longer a problem? Was that explained and I missed it?
I don't remember which episode, but I want to say it's around the beginning of S2 that Katarina develops a new and improved serum formula that does a better job of protecting the time travelers. It's still not foolproof, hence Cole and Cassie getting sick when they jump over and over, but it becomes less of an issue. It's kind of a throwaway line, where she says she's been working on the formula.
(edited because I needed a Ramse + Cassie icon)
no subject
Date: 2023-01-09 04:56 pm (UTC)I am genuinely baffled by the unpopularity of Cassie/Ramse. I risked a glance at the top ten relationship filters on AO3 (since I don't see preferred pairings as much of a spoiler) and they didn't even chart. From my point of view, it was practically giftwrapped. We're an exclusive club, I guess.
Having now watched the episode Blood Washed Away (aka Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies), I think Ramse might be the necessary ingredient if I'm ever to be won over to Cole/Cassie, because without him around they just do not make me happy at all. They keep falling back on a passive-aggressive routine, and that's one characteristic Ramse does not have. When something bothers him, he talks about it, and it doesn't take him a year and a half to do so. He calls parley in a corridor shootout, or sits Cassie down with a drink. It's the whole emotional honesty of enemies to lovers with Cassie and friends (to enemies) to lovers with Cole that gets me.
no subject
Date: 2023-01-09 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-11 02:03 am (UTC)