Eleventh Hour: Surge
By fred | November 21, 2008
(S01E07) This episode was the perfect follow-up to last week’s in that it continues the latest trend in this show : getting better. From the start I’ve been feeling like this show had potential to be pretty good, but failed to really deliver on its promise. Something that is actually also quite true about this episode, whose premise I thought was pretty interesting, though not very new.
Alas as the episode went by, I couldn’t help but feel as if it’s not so much that the episode was bad, it is that it could (should) have been better. What’s worse is that the flaws came from Hood more than from anyone else, meaning they’re not going anywhere and need to be addressed. On the other hand, there were many signs of improvement that show we might be on the right path…
Hood has always been very private, if not secretive. Young tried a couple of times to ask a few things and try to know more about him, but he’s not one to talk, especially about his wife. But with time their relationship has evolved and they are getting more trustworthy with one another. This episode was also if not the first episode where they were joking with each other, the first one where actually worked — as well as seemed natural.
The case of the week was pretty good, and we had the usual characters we seem to find week in week out on the show : the mad scientist willing to push things too far, and the innocent victim caught in the middle of it all. The good news is that said victim was a pretty good and well developed character this week, while they previously had been a bit weaker.
The bad news, is that the show continues to get very preachy. We always have those talks about what the bad guys wants to do, and Hood who comes in not to disagree but to put things in perspectives, and blah blah blah. Because they love to talk and talk. And no, it’s not that this is necessarily bad, it’s how it’s done that is bad, you sometimes feel like getting a lecture, like it’s in there contract to have each episode to teach us about some science fact and the ethic or moral behind it. Sometimes, if would be good if things were done more subtly, it would be better — just like it’s better to show and not tell how someone feels.
I also still have a problem with the fact that Hood continues to do his little demonstration that are completely pointless. Once again he could have told us about how the research was faked, the data too perfect, never getting a little too much or not enough of what was expected, but precisely what they were looking for. We didn’t need chips or whatever to make a little show, not for something that simple and easy to both explain or understand. Either they think we’re stupid, and we’re not, or that it’s cool, and it’s not.
Just like when he explains that he needs to look manually into the research, instead of using analysis software and general algorithms because they don’t fit, and Rachel has to add how he needs to “put his own eyes on the target”, that felt like poor writing again, like they really trying to show how they both have different background and referential and yet similar methods and understanding of a same situation.
But there was better interaction between Hood and Young than in the past, and the case was interesting enough to make this a good episode in the end. The biggest flaw of the story was probably in Nesic, the bad scientist of the week, because he stayed in the back during the investigation, we only saw him looking for his human guinea pig, but never had explanation as to why there was one.
All his research seemed to be going fine, and the people behind it were supportive of his work, there wasn’t any explanation of his motives. Usually people cross the line that way, lying to everyone and testing on human subjects without proper authorization, because there’s no time if they want to save someone, or prove something, or because people above are threatening to shut things down if things don’t go faster or get better results.
But here, he was doing fine, going faster than planned, everything was perfect. So why cross the line ? And maybe it was fine because he was staging the results, but that was never clearly expressed, it was never told that his research were not going as expected, everybody else involved seemed to think everything was according to plan if not better. There was a big hole there, where human testing seems to have been happening only to get Hood & co something to do, someone to look for…
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Eleventh Hour
