Continuum, Season 3, Episode 12: The Dying Minutes

Time for a flashback – not to the future, but 3 months ago when the Freelancers stole Curtis’s body and then did their quasi mystical mojo to bring him back from the dead. Catherine and her fellow Freelancers seem quite apologetic about bringing him back and how terrible it must have been for Curtis. Something he agrees with. He has been “merged” which Catherine says with an incredible amount of distaste and Curtis doesn’t seem thrilled with it either. They talk about serving (and Curtis cryptically refers to the guard as “brother”). All very cryptic.

In the cells, Alternate Alec is being questioned – and suffocated when he lies. They get a GPS co-ordinate out of him for something – and a whole lot of snark. Alec is much more fun with snark. He also tries to stab one of them with  pen which doesn’t do much – but he keeps up the snark. Catherine’s minions aren’t happy keeping Alec around to keep Kiera sweet.

Kiera drops in and has guessed that the mystery thing in the mystery room is the Freelancer founder, he who travelled back a thousand years to set up the cult. She wants to swap Alecs, Corporate Alec is fast forwarding things, not keeping things on track but Charlotte is not about judgement, it’s about the true time line. Uh… well what is the true time line? Because Kiera is from the future and she just said “this isn’t how it goes”. Kiera also casts a little doubt on the motives of their founder. She offers a deal – they give her Alec and she will give them Brad – soldier from an alternate future is a big Freelancer no-no.

Julian meets with Sonya who is all kinds of bitter at them having failed at everything – and everyone is just loving Halo though it’s the beginning of corporate control over everything. Sonya’s still fighting the good fight and wants to stop it – with Julian’s help.

To corporate Alec who is giving orders to Dillon now, “get it done Jack”, ooooooh, Dillon was a little surprised by that one. Julian continues to play nice with Alec before bringing all kinds of data to Sonya – who promptly tries to freeze him out. She goes to Lucas instead who reluctantly agrees to help. Sonya doesn’t want anyone hurt but Lucas stretches that definition – because Halo is using technology that shouldn’t be, it’s also very vulnerable. Which means Lucas can hack it and then cause every Halo wearer to feel overwhelming, horrendous terror (which… may be pretty harmful since panicking people do silly silly things) which should discredit Halo pretty powerfully.

Sonya meets with Travis and we’re reminded they are a couple. Things have got complicated, she questions how they can make any change when people can pop back in time and tweak things to their own ends – Travis’s plan now is to flee to an isolated location and try to avoid the world.

Sonya is still fighting though – she flirts her way into Piron to put Lucas’s hack in place. As Sonya leaves she runs into Julian and again tries to convince him he’s important – which he still doesn’t believe. Frustrated, she finally tells him about the time travel thing – which fits exactly with what Jason already told him. He’s worried about being a murderer, killing people for his goal but she calls him a revolutionary, a leader and puts the killing down as a “maybe”. After all there have been a lot of changes, maybe he can find a peaceful path – but she’s desperate for him to lead. But she does admit that, yes, he does kill thousands.

Curtis and Kellog continue their own cryptic plans. Something is happening which Curtis is piggy backing on and some nebulously undefined “he” wants Kellog to get what’s coming to him (which is also pretty undefined). Whoever this man is he’s very impressive to Curtis – and Catherine is his gaoler not his disciple. So I’m going with the founder of the Freelancers. I’m also going with all this cryptic bullshit being annoying

Alec was apparently pressuring Dillon to get the time machine out of evidence – which he does (breaking the rules) and Kiera walks into his office and gets a huge shock seeing Dillon playing with it. His fiddling with it, putting it back together, also pings the Freelancer radar. Kiera realises this and sets Carlos (who is angsting over a hair tie for some reason. This man just spends the entire season moping) to play bodyguard on Dillon.  He takes the chance to question Dillion about his slide into Piron’s pocket and calling bullshit on Dillon’s attempts to claim he’s using the rich and powerful to help the weaker – because Carlos doesn’t see it, he sees Dillon working on for the elite. Dillon retreats into his claims of safety of the city but seems to be happy that Carlos will keep questioning him.

Dillon tries to get Carlos to look around Piron’s lab and see what they can do for the police but Carlos refuses and leaves. Which means he misses the uber creepy – Halo becoming your own doctor, helping you rather than diagnosis. And by “helping” we mean flooding the body with hormones to control your mood or, as Dillon puts it, “pacification.”

Carlos and Dillon notice Sonya and move in for the arrest – she surrenders and Dillon tries to get Carlos to kill her. He arrests her instead and won’t even let Dillon near her.

Kiera and Brad grab a whole lot of guns, she leads Brad to the Freelancers pretending to be Kiera’s prisoner (with lots of flirting over handcuffs. This flirting has come out of nowhere…). In a crafty series of baits and switches they go in, take down the initial guards then have to fight the rest of the guards who were waiting for them. We’ve already seen Brad’s fighting skills though and Kiera is no slouch. The Freelancer guards end up dead or unconscious.

Catherine is busy communing with the mystical robed guy with the nifty voice when the alarm goes off. Brad continues to flirt with Kiera and decides to initiate his own Plan B while she rescues Alec. Alec is happy to be released by is hellaciously pissed at Kiera even with her admitting she was wrong. She leads him out and they both throw each other’s actions at each other which is emotional and touching and moving but Kiera does seem to be throwing the sins of every Alec – alternate and future – at current Alec.

Brad’s plan b involves stealing back the item taken from his safety deposit box and confronting Curtis – who apparently “believed in him.” They have a nifty fight sequence and Brad wins.

As Alec and Kiera leave Catherine and some Freelancer goons stop them – but Brad comes in with a future gun that kills 2 of them with one shot. Catherine pleads with them that there’s an order and begs her to meet the Travellers but Kiera refuses. They can only pretend to know what the future is or how things work. Whatever Catherine believes, Kiera doesn’t share – and she leaves

And Curtis kills Catherine. Why? I have absolutely no idea of it or anything else on this show any more. He goes from there to the prison cell where the Traveller is kept.

Brad, Alec and Kiera drive off with Kiera filling Alec in on Halo and Alec continuing to be very very hostile about the whole putting him in a box and leaving him for dead thing. Alec still wants to leave even after Brad describes his dystopian future. Carlos calls Kiera to the police station because he’s worried about Dillon’s whole “shoot surrendering suspects” policy.

Dillon is all joyful and invites Kiera to join him in questioning Sonya. Who seems quite perky, all things considered. She’s also really good at pointing out what an utter sell out Dillon is. Dillon invites Kiera to leave him alone with Sonya and Sonya throws some cryptic questions at Kiera. Kiera leaves and joins Carlos where they finally seem to be making their move against Dillon and his extremism. Inside the interrogation room Dillon and Sonya trade words and Sonya is definitely the better player even as soldiers appear to collect her – not police. But Sonya has the last words – she has odd blisters on her arm, she judges Dillon, declares him guilty – and bursts them.

There’s an explosion that takes out the entire room. That leaves Carlos and Kiera with the knotty problem of whether to continue the exposure of Dillon or not. Carlos also gives Kiera the time machine he took from Dillon.

And Carlos, who was waiting for Sonya, gets the news. His sudden inability to stand carries more emotion than any amount of melodramatic wailing ever could.

Kiera goes to Alec and Brad in a cabin they have prepared – with Emily. Apparently Alec and Emily had planned the cabin as a reserve rendez-vous point before. Brad is impressed by their planning skills. Kiera finally asks why Brad killed her – and he says he was supposed to kill Alec and she got in the way. Kiera asks if Alec is safe – Brad says since he’s her family, Alec is Brad’s family so he’s safe. Kiera comments that it wasn’t the family she was trying to get back to… but she doesn’t seem too sad about that. In fact, she thinks it’s odd that if Brad hadn’t shot her she never would have found him…

Wait… what… wait?

Emily and Alec make their goodbyes with Kiera in which Alec and Kiera again reflect that they just don’t know who causes what to happen in the future.

Professional Alec looks all smug in his office with all the charts around him showing Halo going through the roof and being uber successful but he then starts looking sad. Kellog arrives with a photo showing Kiera with the other Alec. Corporate Alec looks even sadder.

Ok… did I miss something? This whole Kiera/Brad relationship thing? I mean, I saw the potential, but when did THIS happen?

I’m very glad to see Dillon gone but think I would have preferred to see Carlos bring him to justice and expose him and what Piron was doing to the police department

I have… no idea what is going on any more. So many time lines and alternates and so much crypticness and mystery and I have no idea whose side anyone is on and all the old storylines are kind of creeping around half dead but nothing has been resolved. Every single time we seem to figure out what Continuum is about the whole show changes, the themes, the reasons, the motivations, the plot, it all changes before anything can be developed or resolved. It’s so frustrating because these unresolved plot lines don’t go away – the whole Liber8 plot line is still limping along despite being constantly side lined and overwhelmed in randomness.

There’s so much going on, most of which isn’t explained – and a lot of what was is now being put on the back burner. I’m intrigued by where it’s going but also annoyed because I feel if it actually does go somewhere, the reset button may be pushed again