Day 14: Death Toll 6,043
As should surprise no-one, Adam survived his little jaunt
to the fence and has now set up a board of various things to think about – the
victims, their ages, the fence et al.
Things are slowly decaying in town with a large number of
orphans and drying up food supplies – and kids tasking up driving which doesn’t
end well. It’s a nicely ominous “everything is falling apart” foreshadow. Gord
and his sister Francis
speak to the little girl, Sarah who lost her brother in the car crash.
To Wylie and her newborn baby. Her sister, Melissa has
taken in a lot of kids at the church to look after them and would really like
Wylie’s help but Wylie has completely withdrawn, not going out and not even
naming her new son.
To the rich folk’s household with kid Chuck completely
failing to reassure his sister Amanda about their other sister Lana’s
disappearance – she’s been gone for 4 days. Charles senior, arsehole rich guy,
has finally died from the virus
Day 14: Death toll: 6,922
It’s time for another town meeting (led by Ms Symmonds
the teacher) – but whole the last one was full of sombre and concerned adults,
this is full of noisy children. They have a message to play from Minister
Miller, the lady who holds some kind of authoritative role outside the fence.
She confirms that everyone over the age of 22 is now dead which, bright side,
means the rest of them probably will live. She wants the survivors to then burn
the bodies.
Francis takes little Sarah to the beleaguered Melissa’s
church hall crèche – I wonder if Sarah saying “he died” about her brother will
ever be less heart wrenching?
Far more tragic is watching the survivors gather all the
bodies of their loved ones to take them to the bonfire. It’s taking so long
that Chuck eventually decides to draft all over 12s to move the bodies. Lana is
also still missing
Gord goes around being a saint, first of all he and Francis
steal food for the orphans from the supermarket and then he stops to lecture
Ronnie on stealing drug. Ronnie pulls a gun and to make it worse Chuck and his
cronies show up. Chuck is happy to back down from the gun wielding Ronnie, Gord
almost has a death wish but they don’t stop Ronnie leaving with the drugs.
Gord and Chuck discuss the grocery store theft – and Gord
apologises, he assumed it was a giant chain not belonging to his family, but he
adds that there are kids who need food. Chuck does ask Gord talk to him about
any future acquisitions – Chuck (and his hockey team minions) wants to hold the
town together until the fence comes down and thinks about how to control Ronnie
(with force) while Gord uses intelligence (getting Ronnie’s brother Pat to reel
him in). We also learn Gord used to be on the hockey team before his dad forced
him to quit and help on the farm.
When Gord leaves, one of Chuck’s hockey minions shows him
a picture of one of the bodies with a finger cut off – they guess Ronnie did it
to get her ring. Chuck and his minions decide to visit – except reasonable
brother Pat has zero reason to trust Chuck. There’s a tense confrontation and
Chuck even tries to be reasonable – but there’s so little reason to trust him
that Pat won’t listen – it devolves into insults before Chuck & co leave.
Pat is pretty suspicious of his brother himself.
Gord and Francis go to see Melissa who is beating herself
up over Sarah’s brother’s death, blaming herself while Gord, fellow saint,
points out she desperately needed help sooner.
Adam is still researching rather than helping with the
bodies, unlike Ms Symmonds who checks in him, he isn’t so sure the fence will
definitely come down just because they burn the bodies. He points out that they
have received no help, no guys in HazMat suits to help deal with the bodies,
just leaving a population of kids and not-long-since kids to cremate their
loved ones. He’s also curious about the 22 year old cut off age of the virus
death – which just doesn’t match with Ms Symmonds guess of youth and greater
health. His research hasn’t thrown up any information but he does try to lighten
the mood with an unnecessary cross dresser joke.
Adam’s research leads him to a guy called Art Gary, it’s
a thin lead but he’s the only person he can find with high government clearance
and links to Pretty Lake. Wylie arrives and she’s despair and depressed and
desperately needs a hug
The next day she goes to the lawyer’s office where she
agreed to sell her baby and looks, presumably, for the contract. The lawyer is
dead, his young son isn’t – and he has a knife. The poor kid is desperate and
scared and quickly goes from threatening to begging her to stay. As they look
for her papers, Wylie collapses. Since the kid doesn’t know what happened, he
calls on those collecting the bodies to take her and his dad to the big body
pile.
In the woods, Gord finds the body of a woman, Chuck’s
sister Lana – and it looks like she died
violently not from the plague. He calls Chuck and they bring in Adam as the town’s
resident brain. It looks like suicide but Adam spots a few things that point to
a second person being involved. They agree to preserve what evidence they can
for the investigators before removing the body since they don’t want to leave
her there until the quarantine is lifted. When Chuck is gone, Adam tells Gord
Lana was murdered
We have some painful scenes of grief and burning bodies
and Chuck trying to talk to his sister Amanda (who is disabled, confuse, sad
and angry over her missing sister). Francis throws rocks at a car – a nicely
shot moment of such a good kid doing something so mindlessly destructive
surrounded by wreckage. She gets a call from her aunt outside the town but the
reception is poor and they’re quickly cut off.
Amanda tries to cook (under the idea that cooking burgers will bring Lana back) and nearly burns the store down. When Chuck asks Amanda what happened she lies and Chuck’s minions assume it’s Ronnie who is behind the fire. Gord is the voice of reason, asking them to wait until the fence comes down and report the fire to the authoirities.
Adam follows up on his lead about Art Gary and finds a
picture of him with Minister Miller. He goes through the huge pile of bodies
looking to see if Art is among them. He finds his body and quickly searches
him, taking something from his pocket. He also hears Wylie and hurriedly pulls
her from the pile as Chuck finishes his speech and they start the fire
To the prison – which is also full of bodies. The guy we
keep following who still needs a name is locked in his cell and desperately
calling for help. Eventually the remaining prison guard arrives and gives him
food for a week – she’s planning to leave but is under orders never to let him
out. Apparently the guy killed his dad to protect his mother, or so he claims.
She checks his file and decides to release him – probably a mistake since he hits her and steals her gun.
I am, again, surprised by this show – there’s a lot less
drama and angst than I expected –though there’s still a lot of excellently
presented grief. Instead we have a lot of people dealing with the terrible
situation with an almost common theme of these kids and young adults having to
grow up extremely quickly. Some are just plain excellent at it and need to take
the reigns now – Gord. Some are completely overwhelmed like poor Melissa. Chuck
is trying to step into some kind of leadership role likely pushed by his
family’s arrogance and class privilege – but, unlike his dad, does seem to be
genuinely care and be trying to do a good job. He reminds me of Melissa, only
with more power, more influence and higher assumptions of both himself and what
he can do – while at the same time being equally out of his depth. Mixed with
this you have people fighting their own ongoing personal battles – with Wylie
and Pat, others taking advantage of the situation as they can with Ronnie – and
Adam pulling back to look at the bigger picture beyond all the personal,
survival and town drama
In theory it’s a nice balance. We have morality
conflicts, deeply personal stories, survival stories of keeping the town
working and surviving with an eye kept on the ongoing meta as well. It’s a good
idea and a great concept that I applaud.
Execution wise? Not so much – so many characters (I have
a feeling the prison storyline is really going too far), so many names, so many
people to keep track of. There’s a bit too much going on and, because of that,
not enough time to develop most of the characters to a level where I actually
care about them enough. I’m not put off the show, but at the end of the second
episode I’m not really hooked either.
Can we just make Gord leader please?
