We’re going to the
other half of the split storyline again - so it’s back to Denver.
Julius is officially
done with feeling that guilty over Phil and his big dramatic attempts to commit
suicide. He sneaks into the morgue to free him and cover up that Phil keeps
dying and then reads Phil the riot act. He can keep trying to kill himself but Julius
is done covering it up and will allow the people of Denver to discover he’s a
quasi-immortal and then he can see if vivisection will be the thing to finally
kill him. Phil takes this into consideration and decides to find his wife
Julius is super happy
about this and on cloud nine tries to flirt with Frankie his boss - and we see
some consequences of Julius being a vampire for so long: he has no knowledge of
modern slang. Frankie brushes over this so she can get to climbing that tall,
hot bunch of muscles. Make the most of it Frankie, the fridge is calling.
Phil goes to the
record office to find his wife and is told it will take several days. To which
Phil responds with a deeply menacing death threat. This is a foreboding warning
of things to come… he learns his wife has beens shipped to Loveland. A prison
camp where people never ever come back. And Phil can’t go there unless he
commits a heinous crime
Yeah… that was
probably not the best advice to give. He promptly shoots the guard giving him
this advice and then gives himself up so he can be taken to the prison camp.
As an aside we also
learn that Denver keeps track of your “debt” and you’re not allowed to leave
until you’ve paid up. Including the “debt” you accrue while eating while in
quarantine
Another person facing
imprisonment is Jolene. Jolene has been handing out pamphlets warning people
that the vampire repellent they all are injected with causes psychotic breaks.
Jolene has no regrets, she will continue to inform her patients of the risk.
This isn’t really a crime but no-one cares and she’s locked up - so Caitlyn can
control Sarah and her brilliance.
Caitlyn openly says
this to Sarah’s face and Sarah begins her Done Era. She demands a captured
vampire and a gene sequence - barking angry orders at Caitlyn in a nice little
power play. She gets her sequencer - with ominous words from Caitlyn about
their power and reach. Sarah doesn’t care much, she gets the elder blood gene
sequenced, does some weird experiments with the angry vampire - which she then
uses to murder Caitlyn
Including letting the
vampire bite Caitlyn, killing the vampire, watching her feel the pain of
turning… and then kills her. Do not piss her off - she does not take prisoners.
She then tries to
rescue Jolene - but she’s being shipped to Loveland in the evacuation.
Evacuation?
Well -first let’s
catch up with Axel and the survivors who are derailed in their trip to Denver
by Kit going into labour. There are complications in pregnancy… and when their
uneducated attempts to turn the baby fail they resort to caesarian section.
Which is, of course, a commonly used and success medical procedure in 21st
century hospitals… and pretty much guarantees the death of the mother when
performed by non-medical personnel, in non-medical settings without medical
tools, drugs or even herbs.
And Kitt dies
And while it is very sad and emotionally powerful it is surprisingly rare to see dystopians acknowledge things like how dangerous childbirth is when you don’t have 21st century technology and resources.
Of course it also
means that Kitt has existed entirely to be a baby dispensary. Baby has now been
dispensed so she can shuffle off. They continue to Denver where Axel drops them
off and goes his merry way. The rest of them go into Denver and notice that all
their defences are very good against vampires who die under ultraviolet light
and pretty much useless against day walkers.
They try to inform
them of this and Denver continues to be bizarrely resistant to warnings. I
honestly don’t even begin to understand why this entire city is so dedicated to
not hearing warnings? Why? Why would anyone do this?
Well the plot says
it’s necessary so they continue to be hostile to any warnings and drag off
Marybeth who isn’t willing to just stand and be silent.
Which is when Ivory
leads the sisterhood to Denver. Scab wants to just attack and Ivory smacks him.
The humans of Denver are intelligent and have survived. They need a cunning
plan instead.
That plan means just
walking in and attacking the guards, turning a lot of them. Soo… sooo this is
the cunning plan? Exactly the same tactic as always. Of course the guards of
Denver fail terribly in the face of vampires which are immune to sunlight and
almost completely immune to bullets.
Many people are
killed, the strong turned and, apparently, the young kept for food so at least
someone is remembering that they’re genociding their food supply. This prompts
an evacuation - which has Sarah helplessly watching the bus with Jolene in it
drive away.
Barry and Dre manage
to hide with the baby so don’t get eaten like most of the quarantined people.
While Julius tries to
rescue Frankie leading her through all the vampire hunting. He gets bitten
which isn’t an issue because he’s immortal. But Scab also sees him and since
Julius is the one who turned him, he has a beef. He chases Julius down and we
get a really convoluted scene where guards decide to drag Julius to safety so
he is helpless to stop Scab biting Frankie.
So Frankie is fridged
- which is annoying in an episode that already had Kitt die and Marybeth be
taken away and feels really thrown away. I mean, what do we know about Frankie,
what was the point of Frankie? Even having her have sex with Julius seems
designed only so he can have a oh-my-woman angst to match Phil. There are other
motivations, folks! Also it’s weird that the clearly not remotely compassionate
authorities of Denver had two guards willing to risk their lives to bodily drag
the very big and strong Julius to safety while he struggled against them. I
mean, even relatively nice people would probably let him run into danger in
these circumstances - but nope, these people are going to throw all their
safety away to save the big lug?
It makes for a more
dramatic scene. Also more hilarious is how Julius pretends to struggle but
clearly isn’t because the two guards probably aren’t actually strong enough to
physically drag Aleks Paunovic away if he really struggled
This seems to be the
end of the sanctuary of Denver - which had already just sort of managed to pull
several plot lines together. I think it was very necessary to bring them
together but I do kind of wonder if we’ve just united them in time to scatter
them again - are Julius, Flesh and Sarah really going to stick together after
this?
It also feels vaguely anticlimactic. I mean we set up Denver as a sanctuary then began to more than hint that it was a little sinister - and then vampires pretty much wipe it out? It feels like this storyline was just starting before they nuked it...
