In episode 6 of The Passage, I Want to Know What You Taste Like, Winston escapes and tastes quite a few people. Amy learns to use her telepathy and family connection well enough to track him.
It turns out to be Richards who was bold enough to have Lila kidnapped while she was praying in church. Since he’s having her brought to the compound, she joins the team that’s hunting for Winston. She’s just in time, because Brad is not okay with his replacement little girl growing up so quickly and working with the dark side, meaning Horace Guilder. Lila becomes Brad’s new/old handler, in order to help keep the peace.
Jonas and Elizabeth have a loving reunion, but also face the truth about her condition. Sykes remembers the friendship she and Babcock developed before Babcock turned into a semicomatose vampire without the ability to speak. Babcock resents that Sykes didn’t maintain their friendship after it appeared that Babcock was braindead.
It seems to me that etiquette would require the one with the telepathy to make the first move in that situation.
Recap
Episode 6, I Want to Know What You Taste Like, begins a few minutes after episode 5 ends with Amy scaring Winston off of Brad during their escape attempt. The search for Winston has escalated, with helicopters flying over the grounds using spotlights, while soldiers swarm the ground. Brad has taken Amy into the elevator, which is now stuck. When she comes to, Brad wants to know how she did the scream, but she doesn’t know.
Amy wants to go find her lost book, but Brad is more concerned with hiding her abilities from the Project NOAH staff. Richards finds them and gets the elevator door open. While they’re being rescued, Brad reminds Amy not to let anyone else know that she has new abilities.
Sykes stands over Dr Pet’s body (he seems to be completely dead) and has a bit of a melt down over how far out of control the project has gotten. Guilder is with her and is excited by what he’s seeing. He feels that the project has finally come up with usable results, so he’s certainly not going to cut the funding or kill the subjects at this point. He’s shocked that Dr Sykes, who understood what she was getting into and was gung ho in the beginning, has had such a change of heart.
Guilder tells Sykes that if Winston kills half the people in Colorado before they catch him, that will be Sykes and Lear’s fault.
Guilder is such a deliciously horrible person.
When Sykes looks up from bowing her head against Guilder’s attack, Shauna is in her line of sight. Shauna takes Sykes back to six months ago, right after Shauna was infected with the virus, and was in the dormant, waiting stage. Shauna charmed Sykes into getting her a horror movie to watch to alleviate her boredom.
Brad, Amy, Guilder and Richards are all in the main building’s safe room, where Richards and Guilder plot strategy, and Brad and Amy wait. Amy’s still thinking about her book, making Brad uncharacteristically brusque with her. He’s momentarily forgotten the significance of that particular copy to her.
Richards tells Guilder and the rest of the security team that Winston left the compound, right after he removed his tracking chip from his neck. It was found near the perimeter fence. Guilder reminds Richards that they have to find Winston before he gets to a populated area, or “it’s the end.” Richards agrees, but the search drones can’t see through the tree canopy, slowing down their search.
Amy overhears their conversation. She closes her eyes and concentrates for a moment, then sees flashes of headlights and a road. She tells Richards and Guilder that she thinks she can see what Winston sees.
Brad, the overprotective surrogate dad, tries to keep her quiet. He has the best of intentions, but her powers might be the only chance they have of finding WInston before the virus spreads to far to stop.
Guilder is thrilled that she’s already so useful. Sykes and Richards question her more closely. Richards guesses that Winston might be near Highway 145. Guilder decides they need to bring Amy with them on the hunt for Winston.
Brad disagrees, but Amy stands up to him. She knows that she can help find Winston and this could save a lot of people. He decides that he at least wants to go with them. Amy agrees. Guilder says that Amy, his new toy, will ride with him.
Sykes tells Richards to be careful. Really careful. And to take care of Amy. And to not die when they’re in the middle of a fight. He assures her that he always finishes his fights, and kisses her hand. It’s a tender, romantic moment, something these two don’t often get.
Lila and her kidnapper are near the Project NOAH compound when they stop because somebody is lying in the road. Surprise! It’s a viral vampire’s victim!
The driver gets out to investigate, then is attacked by Winston when he checks the body. Lila escapes into the woods on foot while Winston is distracted.
Why didn’t she take the car instead? Winston was more likely to notice her if she ran around the car to the front seat, and you’d hope a kidnapper would be smart enough to take the keys with him when he left the car, anyway.
In reality, there would be no escape, because Winston could easily track and catch up to her. But the books are full of plot holes and stupid mistakes like this, which is typical of the horror genre in general. We’re going to have to let these kinds of things slide, for the most part, or we’ll do nothing but pick the show apart. However, I can’t promise not to rant about the whoppers occasionally.
When the Project NOAH team finds the bodies Winston left on the highway, Richards recognizes the driver and vehicle. Meanwhile, Brad has given Amy another brusque lecture about trusting no one and following orders, which Amy doesn’t take very well.
Then he finds Lila’s wallet in the abandoned car. He helpfully responds by punching Richards in the face. Richards says that he was bringing Lila to the compound because she was a liability.
She was also going to be killed by whoever killed Sierra Thompson. I doubt that was Richards. He probably saved her life by kidnapping her and bringing her to the compound. Brad somehow thinks it’s Richards that got her involved in the conspiracy, instead of the combination of her own, Brad’s and Amy’s choices.
Brad is having serious control issues in this episode. After all of his talk about not panicking, he spends most of the episode in various degrees of panic. He’s unable to trust that Amy’s common sense is guiding her as well as it always does, and that Lila is a grown woman who is able to make valuable contributions to the operation.
Boys, puberty doesn’t actually make teenage girls stupid or silly. That’s a myth meant to disempower women. Girls, keep that in mind. And physical fighting isn’t the only way to contribute to battle.
Amy has more flashes, this time of a cabin in the woods and a middle-aged woman. She tells the team that she saw a tree, a cabin and a lady, then runs off to lead the group toward the cabin.
Brad is upset again. Guilder is even more impressed.
Jonas and Elizabeth finish making love, which seems like an extremely unwise choice for him. Even though the virus is passed through blood, I can’t imagine that the exchange of other bodily fluids is a great idea. Maybe he doesn’t care if he’s infected, now that she’s also infected.
Elizabeth tells him what it felt like to lose her memories and then the rest of her mind. She remembers Tim coming to her. But she knows Alzheimer’s is incurable and that there’s something Jonas needs to tell her. He tells her the whole story, from the Bolivia expedition to today.
Brad catches up to Amy and yells at her for real for not listening to him. She tells him he’s not her dad, he’s just a guy who tried to kidnap her.
Low blow.
Guilder pulls her away.
Elizabeth is shattered to learn that she’ll turn into a viral in a few days. She blames Jonas, and calls him out for the continued human experimentation, especially on a child.
Jonas tells Sykes about Elizabeth. Sykes tells Jonas about the way Amy drove away Winston with her scream. She wonders if Amy’s mutation of the virus is stronger than Fanning’s. They decide to make a serum from Amy’s version of the virus and see if it can beat Fanning and keep Elizabeth from succumbing from her Alzheimer’s.
Winston finds the woman in the cabin and bites her, but is interrupted by Fanning, who tells him that he’s ruining Fanning’s plan for all of them to escape together. Fanning also wants Winston to kill Amy, because she’s helping hunt for him. Winston is confused, because he thought Amy was family. Fanning says it doesn’t matter what she is, she’s on the wrong side.
In a flashback to six months ago, Sykes brings Shauna a copy of The Fly (the 1986 David Cronenberg version) and fresh-baked pizza. Shauna talks Sykes into sharing the movie and pizza with her. Sykes doesn’t like horror films, but there aren’t many other women working for Project NOAH, and Shauna is insistent.
After the film, Shauna notices that both she and Sykes have semicolon tattoos, signifying that they are survivors of suicide attempts. Shauna says that her attempt, when she was 14, wasn’t completely serious. She took a handful of Tylenol and drank some vodka, but she knew her mom was coming home and would find her. Sykes made her attempt when she was 18, and she was very serious.
Lila finds the cabin with the middle-aged woman. Winston stopped feeding before she died. Lila finds her and begins treating hers wounds.
Sykes begins her tests that pit Amy’s virus against Fanning’s. Jonas checks in with her, and says all of the things to her that he doesn’t want to say to Elizabeth, about his guilt, fear and anger. He feels that whatever happens to Elizabeth now is ultimately his fault. And he finally truly sees the dangerous potential the virals pose to the world. Sykes tells him to hold it together while they wait to see what happens with the tests she’s currently running.
She knows the virals are dangerous, but I don’t think she’s grasped their world-ending potential yet.
Sykes remembers the next thing Shauna asked for during her incubation period. She wanted Sykes to go see the movie A Quiet Place, then come back and tell her all about it. Sykes talks to Richards about getting permission to go off campus. He decides to go with her, so she doesn’t have to be scared alone. It’s their first date.
The woman in the cabin wakes up a while later, fully healed, and saying she feels amazing. Lila doesn’t understand how her fast healing is possible. The woman obsessively quotes a recipe, which is probably the last thing she was thinking about before Winston bit her.
Then she zeroes in on Lila, repeating the word “pulse, pulse” as she approaches. She completes the flip into a viral just as she gets to Lila, with her fangs appearing, large, red veins showing in her skin, and her speech transforming into a wraith-like screech. Lila hits her several times with a fireplace poker to drive her away.
The viral is still attacking Lila when the Project NOAH team comes through the doors, guns blazing. Brad grabs Lila and pulls her out of the way. Richards shoots the viral in the chest several times, while also calling for his men to open the curtains and let the sunlight in.
The viral begins to burn wherever the light touches her. As with humans and fire, the sun’s rays would kill her after a few minutes, but it wouldn’t be an instantaneous death. The virals can spend short amounts of time out in the sun without dying, which corresponds to what we saw when Shauna was under the UV lights for her execution, which Richards stopped just in time.
Once the viral is dead, the group convenes outside, where Brad observes that the situation is worse than he thought, because the virals can easily reproduce. Richards tells him that this is how Fanning was turned into a viral in Bolivia.
In other words, the people in charge of the project have always known that the virals could do this, and how quickly the virus could spread if it/they escaped the lab. This is why the old viral in Bolivia was kept in a weakened state and in a tiny, remote cage.
Lila joins the argument, and Richards tells her, “You shouldn’t even be here.” I thought he was the one who ordered her brought there? Is he blaming her for forcing him to kidnap her now?
Guilder gets everyone back on track, and asks Amy what she’s seeing that can help them. Amy was tuned into Winston during the argument, and tells them she’s seeing clocks, pipes and water. Richards asks if she means water meters, since there’s a pumping station nearby. They set out to check.
Brad now has 2 women to keep track of who won’t listen to him.
Tim pops in to visit Elizabeth as she once again sits staring into space. She’s not happy to see him. She also needs to confirm what form of vision this is, and he doesn’t really give her a firm answer, which means she still isn’t anchored in reality, something she desperately needs.
He wants to talk about this miraculous cure he’s given her, and takes complete credit for it. Tim explains that he never lost sight of the goal to cure her Alzheimer’s, and now, her mind is better, plus she’s one of the lucky few who will get to be part of a spectacular future that most of humanity is going to miss.
Elizabeth doesn’t like what she’s hearing, and says that Jonas told her that the virals are monsters and her cure is only temporary. Tim rants that it’s the doctors who experiment on humans who are the monsters (he has a point, but now he’s one of them), and that her mind will stay sharp and she’ll continue to feel great, even after she flips.
As the team approaches the pumping station, Lila explains the implications of the way the virus is transmitted to Brad. She understands that the speed and ease with which it infects new people means that it will spread at a catastrophic rate, with each new infected person infecting an infinite number of new people themselves.
Lila also asks about Amy, so Brad explains her new abilities symptoms, plus the symptoms of puberty that are making his life challenging. They remember Eva for a moment and hug, then they’re at the station.
Guilder has reinforcements on the way, but Richards doesn’t want to wait. He takes his team in, including Wolgast. Before Wolgast leaves, he gets in another fight with Amy after he tries to order her around. He tells her he doesn’t want something terrible to happen to her. She replies that something terrible happened to her when he kidnapped her, and then again when they put the virus into her. Now she just wants her book back.
Her words echo what Carter said to Wolgast on his grandmother’s front porch, that the time when he could have protected Amy was before he took her from the foster home. Now he needs to help her, not hold her back.
Lila steps in and suggests that she and Amy stay outside to act as lookouts while the others are inside searching for Winston. Before he leaves, Wolgast tells Guilder that Amy won’t fall for his manipulations. Guilder thinks he and Amy are hitting it off.
Six months ago, Shauna and Sykes talk about the movie Sykes went to, then Shauna asks why Sykes took the Project NOAH job. Sykes explains that surviving her suicide attempt left her wanting to do something important. She thought this program would give her the chance to do some good.
Shauna used to want to die, but now she doesn’t, which is why she took the Project NOAH deal. She knows she’s not the first inmate they’ve experimented on, and she wants to know what happened to the others. Sykes doesn’t answer her question, of course. She just tells Shauna that she’s doing great so far, and that she’ll be with Shauna every step of the way.
In the present day, Sykes finds that Tim’s virus has destroyed Amy’s version, so it can’t help Elizabeth. Shauna appears to her as she’s checking the test results. Sykes isn’t surprised to see her.
Shauna is angry that Sykes abandoned their friendship when Shauna turned, but the test results all showed that Shauna wasn’t aware of her surroundings anymore. Until very recently, they thought the virus destroyed the intellectual capacity of the infected.
Logic doesn’t fit with Shauna’s plan, so she goes off on a rant, telling Sykes that she’s just a bad person who thinks she’s a good person, which makes her even worse. She uses Sykes’ suicide attempt against her as part of the attack. The whole thing is meant to manipulate and demoralize Sykes. She tells Sykes that nothing the doctors try will be successful. They won’t be able to help Amy or Elizabeth and the humans will all die. Then Shauna wants to know what Sykes tastes like.
Sykes comes out of the vision feeling like she’s just lived through a horror movie. During their chats, Shauna paid close attention to what makes Sykes tick, and has spent the time since figuring out ways to use the information.
Jonas is waiting for Sykes when she comes back to herself. They exchange bad news. He tells her that Tim told Elizabeth that the virals are a cure for humanity. Sykes tells Jonas that the viral test didn’t work. He asks which viral she just saw. She tells him it was Babcock, who told her they’re going to kill everyone.
Jonas believes Babcock. He says that he should have killed Fanning in Bolivia. He was Jonas’ best friend, but Jonas is going to have to kill Tim anyway. He’s going to kill all of the virals before they kill anyone else. Sykes agrees to the plan.
Winston has been busy creating more virals at the water treatment plant. Richards, Wolgast and the team kill them as they search for Winston. Winston runs outside, toward Amy and Lila, since Fanning ordered him to kill Amy. Amy senses that it’s her he wants, and thinks she’s faster than him, so she runs away, drawing him away from Lila.
Winston follows her and develops open sores in the sunlight, but it’s not enough to kill him. Amy runs into a garage to hide, but Winston finds her. Even though he squeezes her throat, she’s able to scream loud enough for Brad to find her. She escapes from Winston by pushing a set of shelves onto him, and runs by a garage door, which Brad throws open. Brad shoots Winston. The virals that Winston made all drop dead when he dies.
Once the dust is settled, Amy stands alone outside and cries. Brad walks up behind her. “I’m gonna find your book. You must really miss your mama. I wish I could have met her. She raised an amazing kid. I lost a daughter. She was about your age when she passed. So I know. I know what it’s like to lose someone. And I must think about her a hundred times a day. How about you?”
Amy: “Like 200 times a day.”
Brad: “It’s grief, Sweetheart. And it’s awful. It’s sad and it’s heavy. But I want you to know we can talk about your mama anytime you want.”
Amy: “I’m sorry I was such a jerk.”
Brad: “I’m sorry I wasn’t listening to you. I don’t want to lose you. And I know I’m not your dad, I don’t think that. But everyone needs someone in their corner and that’s what I am, okay? I’m on your side. No matter what.”
They have a full body hug.
Richards rounds them up to head back to the compound. Brad asks him to let them go instead. Richards says he has to take them back, but he’ll find a way to get them out. He can see that the whole thing is falling apart.
Guilder pulls up and tells Amy to ride with him. Brad and Lila will be in the next car. Guilder drives away. One of his men knocks Brad out.
Sykes and Jonas stand in front of the cells and waste time until Guilder and Richards return to the compound. Then Jonas turns the UV lights on in the cells while Sykes meets the others at the cars. Richards and Amy ask where Brad and Lila are, but Guilder brushes them off. Then Amy doubles over in pain. Richards explains to Sykes that when Winston died, the other virals he’d created died too. She races to Level 4B to stop Jonas. If Tim dies, so do Elizabeth and Amy.
The Twelve, minus Winston, all recover, but they are all very angry. Tim and Jonas stare at each other with hatred in their eyes.
Shauna appears and tells Sykes that it’s too bad she doesn’t like horror movies, because she’s living in one.
Commentary:
Fanning, Virals and Strategy
Fanning’s strategic genius came out this week. He didn’t just give Elizabeth the virus because he loves her and wanted to save her, or to prove he’s better than Jonas and could be the one who saved her. Those are part of his motivation, but he also gave her the virus so that she can act as his insurance policy. He knows Jonas is the only one who’s jaded and rebellious enough to disobey military orders and try to kill the virals. But if it means killing Elizabeth, Jonas will never go through with it.
Everyone else is part of the military chain of command, or they’ve already been brought under the virals’ psychological control, like Grey. Lear was the only serious threat, along with possibly Wolgast and Sykes. They both care too much about Amy to kill her outright as long as she looks and acts like a young girl.
Guilder is an amazingly horrible person. He doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he wants barely controllable monsters that he can set loose on the unsuspecting populace of an enemy state. He certainly doesn’t bother to think the ramifications through. As Richards said, Winston reproduced the same way that the old male viral in Bolivia made Fanning. Guilder isn’t shocked to discover that they can reproduce this way.
Why didn’t Sykes and Lear turn right around and kill the other eleven virals, since they only need Fanning alive? Because that would be the end of the series. Because they didn’t have time, for one thing. Guilder wouldn’t have allowed it, and he was already back at the compound. By the time they recovered from the revelation that Elizabeth and Amy are linked to Amy, figured out that they could still kill the others, moved Fanning to a safe location, then let those weak UV lights do their work, Guilder would have already had them both executed ten times over.
The virals also need to be thought of as a personification of all of the dangerous diseases, weapons and substances that humans have experimented with over the last two centuries, and now have to live with. Governments, scientists, business interests, and so on have all had their justifications, that they thought were reasonable at the time, and many still do, for setting loose these ills that will have to be dealt with indefinitely, whether it’s waiting to treat illnesses until they become epidemics or allowing the use of products that are poisonous and will continue to contaminate the food and water supply for centuries to come.
It’s a consistent human trait to be overconfident and ignore warning signs until it’s too late to avoid danger. Horror stories, con men and multinational corporations depend on it.
A Viral Ghost Story
There are similarities in theme between the current part of The Passage and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In this scenario, Jonas, Brad, Clark and Nicole are the Scrooges who need to change their ways and save the world, with the help and influence of the ghost/virals. It’s doubtful that they’ll all make it.
Fanning is like one of the ghosts who haunt Ebenezer Scrooge, maybe Jacob Marley and the past, an eternal reminder of the mistakes that have been made, possibly with the power to create still more mistakes, definitely with the capacity to punish those he decides are part of the problem. Shauna is another of the ghosts, maybe the ghost of the future, popping in and out to pass judgement on current and recent behavior, while trying to entice her victims to believe in her version what’s to come, always making promises and looking forward. Winston was the ghost of the present, living in the moment, taking what he wanted from life while he could, heedless of consequences.
Amy and Carter are alternate versions of the future and present. Amy is all about positive growth that doesn’t forget the past but isn’t stuck there either. Carter indulges in life’s momentary pleasures, like a glass of iced tea and enjoying time in the rocking chair on his grandmother’s porch, but he keeps his desires under control. Both are moderate, moral versions of the same concept, the green alternative, if you will. 😉
Elizabeth is likely the alternative version of the past, but we haven’t seen enough of her yet to know if she’s actually a viable alternative. She’s forgotten the past and herself once already and Tim is trying to influence her perceptions.
Strategy, Goodwill and Control
Unlike in the books, Fanning counts himself among the Twelve. With Winston gone, that puts his count back down to 11, and delays his takeover plans. But Elizabeth and Amy have both been given the virus. Do they have to turn into blood drinkers who only communicate telepathically in order to count as one of the Twelve?
We still haven’t been told which form of the virus Grey gave Elizabeth. Does he want her to stay recognizable to Lear, so Lear will keep her alive, so he gave her Amy’s version? Or does he want her to be strong, and assume it would take a less diluted version to cure advanced Alzheimer’s, so he gave her Babcock’s or an even earlier version?
Babcock still looks quite human, but she seems to be one of the most powerful virals. I suspect her power partially comes from her own innate abilities that she had before the change. She was already intelligent, manipulative, good in a crisis, ruthless, loyal and strategic. She was just uneducated, abused, and poor, so she hadn’t had a chance to develop her abilities beyond using them for basic survival and crime (which was mostly for survival). Now, she may be a prisoner, but she also doesn’t have to fight for her day to day survival, and she has Fanning, an evil genius, to mentor her in strategy and manipulation.
I liked what Shauna said about Sykes being the worst kind of bad person, the kind who thinks they’re a good person. That describes her so well. She has good intentions, but she’s lost whatever moral compass she once had, and thinks she can use “the greater good” to justify any number of atrocities, thus paving her road to hell.
Jonas has already figured out that he’s on that road, and accepted it as the price of trying to save his wife. He drew a line in the sand that he didn’t want to cross, but then was forced to, and did it knowingly. Sykes, like Richards, keeps moving the line, while both fool themselves about the implications.
The men and the authority figures in this show have a tendency to think they can control people and reality by withholding knowledge. Control in general is a major theme in this episode, and the season. There’s so much denial going on in the Project NOAH compound, and this is another aspect of it.
Brad thinks he can stop the virus from taking hold of Amy, if only he can control every aspect of her life, including what she knows and what others know about her. Does this have something to do with the way Eva died? Or does he just sense that he’s losing her already?
Fanning and Lear are locked in a death match over Elizabeth that they’ve been silently waging for many years. Control over her mind and health have come to symbolize victory, especially for Tim, since he understands that he’ll never be first in her heart. Giving her the virus that’s based on his blood gives Tim a certain amount of control over Elizabeth’s mind and actions. It also ties her life to his in a way that’s deeper than marriage- literally until death do us part.
For Book Readers:
Major Changes from the Books in This Episode
The series made some major changes from the books in this episode, which change its course from that of the trilogy.
In the books, Amy’s virus was from a different source than everyone else’s, a group of tourists who’d been examined separately, instead of Fanning and the virals who attacked Lear’s expedition. That had important implications for Amy, Lacey and Alicia. Fanning couldn’t control Amy and Lacey, and had to fight to control Alicia, because of the separate strain, not just their strength as people. Amy and Peter survived the death of Fanning because she had a separate strain and had shared it with him.
Now, the TV show has made it very clear that everyone has the same strain and if Fanning dies, they all die. That’s a HUGE, fundamental change from the books. The “good” virals were always willing to die for the cause, but making it a definite result, and knowing that from the outset, makes any attempt to kill Fanning a suicide mission for a viral.
And in the books, he had enough control over the virals’ minds to stop them from killing him. That means that Amy literally can’t be the one to kill Fanning, if they stick to the rule that a viral can’t act against the direct orders of its creator. While I personally think the third book is one big poorly written plot hole, this is an even more difficult twist to work with.
Is this why they had Fanning scoff at the idea of Lear finding a cure? Will they figure out a cure, or figure out the way drowning removes the virus, then kill Fanning? Will they eventually kill all of the other virals, but keep Fanning locked in a cage in a dungeon, the way that the viral who bit him was? That would bring his story full circle.
They’ve begun to touch on the virals telepathic power already, but they haven’t touched on the other big issue. Fanning knows everything that’s in the mind of all of his descendants. The Twelve each know what’s in the mind of their own descendants. The books played games with this, never fully acknowledged the ramifications, and forgot its existence at times. That was another important feature of making Amy from a different viral strain. Fanning wasn’t guaranteed access to her mind the way he was with Alicia.
Depending on whether they turn, maybe Elizabeth and Amy can learn to block him out of their heads. Maybe with time, Sykes and Lear can strengthen other forms of the virus. Right now, it would appear that they won’t have that time, but we know that in the books Lear survives for decades, and gives Lacey a further attenuated form of the virus. Maybe that version will be made for Elizabeth in the series.
Meanwhile, as I expected, Winston was sacrificed instead of Babcock to show what happens when one of the Twelve dies. While it’s not surprising that they didn’t wait as long as the books did to kill one of the Twelve, it is surprising that they did it this quickly. Could it be that they’ll kill the rest of the Twelve one at a time, instead of in a single massacre? That would be much more suspenseful and work better for a TV show.
Some of the endless cross-country treks from the books could result in killing one of the Twelve, like the characters hoped. Especially if they keep Amy with them and use her psychic ability to find the others, instead of ignoring her abilities completely.
That way, the audience gets some periodic gratification, and the characters don’t seem so inept. All they have to do is follow-up on leads quickly and think through the ramifications of information they’re given, instead of ignoring the obvious and constantly making the stupidest choices possible, like they aren’t living with dangerous predators outside the gates at all times.
The Unholy Trio of Guilder, Lila and Grey
One of the most vivid scenarios in the books, to me, is the century-plus long relationship between Horace Guilder, Lila Wolgast, and Laurence Grey in book 2. Their story could be pulled out and fleshed out to make a great movie, all on its own, with the later addition of Sara Fisher, of course.
So I’m watching the development of Grey, Lila and Guilder with interest, in the hopes that in season 2 or 3 we’ll see the Homeland in all its dystopian glory. It’s very amusing that the unholy trio of Grey, Lila and Guilder are all together at Project NOAH, with Grey safely and conveniently locked up, ready to merrily skip off to Iowa together to keep the human race alive.
James Le Gros is playing Guilder as such a reptilian predator, which was just the way I saw him in the books. I can’t wait to see how he engineers his infection with the virus in this version.
This version of Lila is much better than the book version. I’m not sure what happened to David, who I thought was waiting for her in the car near Lacy’s at one point, but good riddance, in my opinion. Better to put Brad and Lila together for the time being, and let her be part of the emotional and medical support team for Brad and Amy.
As in the books, Lila has the issue of having lost her child, but she and Brad seem to be nearly back together as husband and wife. She’s in a more emotionally comfortable situation than she was in the books, with her original husband and the replacement daughter he chose for them. But she’s also going to have a front row seat for the viral apocalypse. So assuming she survives this time, and something still happens to Brad (he’ll sacrifice himself for one or both females, let’s face it) she’ll still have some good reasons for losing her mind, and looking for another replacement child. The idea has already been put in her head.
Image courtesy of Fox.
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