Flashpoint: Planets Aligned
By fred | September 19, 2008
(S01E09) This is not the season finale, as 13 episodes were produced for this first season (and the show has already been picked up for a 13-episode second season by Canadian network CTV), but this episode will probably be some sort of “summer finale” I guess, as the show goes on hiatus and I don’t think CBS intends to air the remaining episode very soon, as fall season is kicking back in.
While not intended to be the last episode of the season, it did work pretty well as one actually. Once again we got a pretty solid episode, and as as become the rule with the show, it was not about actions or firing gun, but all about the psychological aspect of things, and like before, it was very nicely handled.
This week we had again another hostage situation, but that one was pretty different than any other we encounter before. The “villain” of the week wasn’t all that smart, I mean didn’t he see that the girl he kidnapped had been recognized ? The woman in the gas station wasn’t really what you’d call discrete, and her running after the car to get the plate numbers was kind of a major clue I thought.
Still, he went back home with his car like nothing happened, and waited for the cops to show up. Which, quite obviously, they did. But what make this episode unlike any other, was that as soon as the cops showed up, the bastard left the girls there and ran away. And while he got tracked down obviously and eventually died, which if fine by everyone’s account I assume, that wasn’t the situation.
He had kidnapped a little girl 8 years ago already, and for 8 years he made sure to get her to do and think what he wanted her to, he “brainwashed” her in a way, all that while ensuring she couldn’t leave the house. For years and years Penny never left the house, she couldn’t even get close to the windows, she never had the light of the sun of fresh air on her skin, she had become his toy. At this point, we’re really deep into the infamous Stockholm effect.
And that’s who Jules had to deal with, a girl whose vision of the world was already blurred and wrong, and now it was all collapsing on her. She was now the hostage taker, she had the little girl by her side, and a gun pointed at Jules, but she didn’t know what was really happening. That’s what this episode focused on, and while this was very well done/written, and I though Jules managed to handle the situation quite right, I would have two remarks.
For starter, I felt this was still all too easy. I mean, she wasn’t a baby when kidnapped, but still very young, and for 8 long years she knew nothing of the world but what that guy wanted her to see. He shaped everything, he made sure she couldn’t came near a window, she was ankled like a dog, she was clearly in prison, talking back wasn’t allowed, or else she’d end up in the closet! For eight years he crushed her mentally, and then that’s all it took for her to put down and the gun and walk out to her parents ??
I might be wrong there, but I felt this was a bit too easy. It wasn’t badly done, they insisted that she had to make the decision, she had to want to do it, she even had to be the one going to her parents, not the other way around, yet I couldn’t help but feeling like, for such a young kid to be mentally destroyed and manipulated that way for so long, she went back to her real room with her dad to look into her telescope quite rapidly.
Secondly, not that I wanted her to get shot or didn’t get the situation, but all along Penny had a gun, and she was also right in front of one. Our new guy, who always favors the solution of shooting everyone, was always there next to Jules, and as he kept reminding everyone by the end, he “had the solution”, he could have shot Penny. But he did no such thing, even when she had a gun on the girl, or on Jules.
Which just seemed a little odd to me, because not so long ago, in a somewhat similar situation where someone was pointing a gun at Parker, not because he intended to shoot him, actually he was even trying to commit suicide, he wanted to get killed by the police, back then, he got shot. He did, because he was armed, and pointed the gun to a member of the team, and so he had to be taken out.
Yet, in a very similar situation this week, this didn’t happen. No, Jules didn’t want anyone to shoot, but neither did Parker back then, because he also knew the guy wouldn’t do it, he didn’t want to do it, but there were rules and rules said you don’t let an armed suspect threaten to kill a police officer. So why was this different this week ?
Anyways, despite those little details and the fact that I couldn’t care less about Parker’s son or whatever, this was another very solid episode of the show, a show that will be back on CBS some time, to end its first season and then for its second season. I don’t know when exactly we will get to see the rest of it, but I think I’ll be there, because it turned out to be a pretty good shows, despite being yet another procedural cop drama.
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Flashpoint
