As we move to the second day of the quarantine, everything
is tense. Those inside the cordon are all worried and trying to follow the
rules (Jana and her friend Stacy have an awesome relationship and are great
together stuck with friends and colleagues at their job) expecting the cordon
to end soon. Alex,
something of a hero after his actions with Xander went viral is trying to
keep everyone calm and collected while Sabine insists that controlling the
message is vital to stop people panicking. There’s lots of tense communication
by phone between various people.
And then things get a whole lot worse
They find there’s another person who was in contact with
patient zero – Elizabeth – and she is not in quarantine in the hospital. After
a moment of panic they conclude that she is still in the cordon zone (so not
infecting all of Atlanta) but she has run around through the zone. Most
terrifying, she attended a party (yes, some teens had a quarantine party because
parents are stuck outside the fence, of course they did). By the time they get
to her and get her to the hospital many of the partiers have already left and
since it was a party they’re nearly impossible to identify. The virus is
definitely out.
Attending that party was Amy, a friend of Teresa, which
means Teresa (the pregnant teen) is no terrified se has been infected, harming
her baby. She’s also worried about infecting her grandmother – the disabled old
woman who is Bertie’s wife (hey the characters are linking up). It also means
Xander, outside the cordon, is even more desperate to get in.
The virus being out means Dr. Cannert lifts the lock down
on the hospital. Holding everyone inside is now pretty pointless with the virus
burning around – though Kate stays as she has nowhere else to go with the kids.
We also find Kate is on what appears to be anxiety medication.
But the cordon on the zone is doubled over – the electric
fence reinforced by a huge wall of containers. It is now going to last far more
than 2 days. The quarantine is now in place until the disease burns itself out.
Alex asks how they get help to those inside and Sabine is
ominously silent…
…because helicopters and air drops have not been invented…
Character who most needs a slap upside the head baton now
passes from Kate to Jake who continues to treat the quarantine as a personal
affront against him: taking out all his anger on Alex. I even give a grudging
point to Kate for delivering an awesome take down of his tantrum, pointing out
she has 11 year olds keeping it together better than him. Ok, to be fair I’m
going to say that we all react to panic and fear in different ways. I think
this is, perhaps, an especially terrifying thing to face for a man like Jake –
strong, very physically fit, cishet white man is not used to facing something
he is utterly powerless against.
They’re also really trying to push a “sinister tool of
the government” side plot. And, yes, I completely understand why people don’t
trust the government. Not so much why people think the government would spend a
gajillion dollars quarantining an entire neighbourhood (and not a poor one at
that – remembering that Janna’s high tech laboratory and an apparent first
class hospital are inside the quarantine) for funsies. But, hey, governments do
some sketchy stuff…
But we have a reporter calling Alex a tool of the establishment
for daring to follow the rules the CDC is giving (which is, y’know, what he
should be doing). Ok this is because the reporter is trying to bully him (with
some really nasty and needs-to-be-called-out race baiting) into doing what the
reporter wants. But I get the feeling the show genuinely expects me to think
Alex has a moral quandary here.
And I think we’re supposed to find it ominous that Syria
hasn’t claimed responsibility for sending terrorist germs (because any country
would totally own up to that, right?) and that Isis hasn’t claimed responsibility
(does anyone think Isis has bioengineering labs? And is Isis the only terrorist
group in the world now?)
Then there’s Bertie, the nice guy trapped in the hospital
deciding to speak up and ask Kate during her little explanation with the school
kids who decides when to let them out. Now, again, I totally get Bertie being
suspicious of the government (and gods alone know and older Black man has
probably had a lifetime of damn good reasons) but raising that in front of a
room full of 11 year olds? And asking the teacher (which is pretty
infantilising of Bertie as well)?
Or Kate asking why patient zero died after some of the
people he infected. Kate, you’re a teacher, you should know about different
recovery rates for disease. Otherwise we’d have a strict time table for every
illness. These things are not sinister Containment
stop trying to convince us they are!
Also this show is based off a Belgian show that original had
an Afghan refugee. Which certainly wouldn’t have been better – but the writers
have deliberately changed the identity of patient zero to attack the current
vulnerable middle easterner who is being demonised. This was a deliberate
attempt to target Syrian refugees at a very vulnerable and desperate time for
them.
