The Alien Invasion Begins ... Wait, No It Doesn't!

"A Matter of Life and Death"

"OK, there is a story here, and they seem to be telling it. I like it that Leila taking on Vicky was a setup; and I cracked up when they ‘Silence of the Lambs’d’ us with Sean going to the wrong house to save Vicky. But in general I feel like this is a series of conversations that go absolutely nowhere"

The passengers from the airplane who came back to life are being held in a disease control facility, being questioned, but they can’t remember a thing. Sean and Agent Claire begin their road trip to escape the Marshal and make some strides toward finding Leila. Thomas reveals to the President that he’s still in control of the plane passengers and threatens their continued well-being. The President confronts Sophia and gets some information; oh wait, no he doesn’t. Leila gets moved to a creepy basement and escapes her kidnappers – but has an unpleasant surprise waiting for her at the end.

So we open up a couple minutes before the last episode ended, on Sean Walker and Agent Claire’s escape from the federal marshal of malevolence. Sean and Claire steal the Marshal’s car, and the Marshal calls Vicky, then shoots a random bystander and steals his car.

Marshal catches up and starts shooting at Claire and Sean; Claire helps Sean execute a bad-ass e-brake maneuver and shoots the Marshal. Hooray! But somehow I expect him to get up again, magically unharmed, like Terminator 2. I guess he doesn’t though, because Sean is disconnecting the SUV’s GPS while Claire sheds a tear for her departed colleagues. (Finally! Good God, y’all. She still hasn’t mentioned her partner who got fried in the car crash.) Sean finally convinces Claire that they need to find Vicky, who will lead them to the conspiracy that got her fellow agents killed.

Sean hacks into the Justice Department server and finds out that one of Vicky’s assumed names is paying rent on a house in Lubbock, TX, so they decide to go there. But it’s flashing back and forth between Leila’s kidnapping and the SW/Claire approach to the house in a very “Silence of the Lambs” fake-out kind of way, exactly like when Jodie Foster went to the wrong house and … yep, an older lady answers the door. But Sean and Claire stay to question the lady about why Vicky is paying her rent, which she claims to know nothing about and Sean pretends to leave by slamming the door from inside the house(hilariously, I can picture him making cartoony diminishing footsteps outside.) He noses around and finds a young boy, about 6, in his room. The boy introduces himself as Adam, and asks Sean if he’s a friend of his mother – Sean shows the picture from the cruise and yes, Adam is Vicky’s son. Sean and Claire confront Grandma, who gives them her emergency contact info for Vicky, a cell phone number with a Colorado area code. They head out.

The President is at a Bio Quarantine Facility in Virginia, where the plane passengers are being held and interviewed. They don’t remember anything after takeoff. A doctor confirms that while they were dead, they still had some mitochondrial activity – they weren’t breathing but still functioning on a sub-cellular level. Then follows the most go-nowhere conversation in this whole go-nowhere show:

President: Why would they do this?
Vice-President: To show us what they can do.
President: To what end?

Really? Why are they saying these words? I understand that people like to hear themselves talk, but Jesus, this is ridiculous. That wasted my time when I saw it on TV, and again now that I’m telling you how much I hated it. If this goes on much longer, it could be a metaphor for the show as a whole.

Anyway, the VP wants to talk to Michael Buchanan, the pilot, but Creepy Sterling got there first. Suckah! Michael explains about his dead wife and kidnapped kids. Creepy confirms that the daughters are still missing, and that he needs all the information that Michael has in order to find them. Michael gives the info that Leila knew one of her captors, and that she used the name Vicky.

The Vice President confronts Creepy, who says that he remembers the VP’s insinuation, that the CIA may have been behind the attack on the President, but confesses that the idea is ludicrous, “if only because that would put you in charge.” Hee! First witticism of the show. Only four episodes in.

Back at the White House, the President and First Lady are talking about the plane passengers waking up when a cell phone rings in their son’s backpack. It’s Thomas, calling to threaten to actually kill people next time unless the President releases Sophia and all the other detainees. The President sends Simon Lee (hi, Simon) to change out his son’s security detail, duh, and confers with Creepy Sterling. They bring up a valid question – why can’t the aliens just magick their people out of the Alaskan camp the way they magicked the plane out of the sky – the same question we’ve all been asking for a month now! However, they don’t answer the freaking question, of course not, they state it and reiterate that they need Sophia to talk. (Notice how NONE of this is new information, right? Bored now.)

The President talks to Sophia again, and she refuses to talk again. He reminds her of the time they met in the White House, with his wife, and Sophia likened her plight and that of her fellow aliens to the President and his wife’s mothers, refugees who met on the boat from Cuba. He asks her to talk but this time says please, and she does talk a little, anyway. She says that Thomas is intelligent and a natural leader, and that while their methods differ she recommends that the President give him what he wants.

So Vicky and the bad guy who looks like an accountant move Leila, with a bag over her head, to a basement, which may as well be called Cliché’ Basement of Serial Killing Doom. The CPA drinks and drops a beer, breaking glass everywhere. The CPA tells Leila that if she cooperates he will set her free, but when he goes upstairs he tells Vicky that she’ll be dead in two hours, and Leila can hear him. So she finds a piece of broken glass that he missed and sets to work cutting the ropes that bind her hands. As she does her hands get all cut, but she keeps cutting, because she’s brave, see?

We get some cute flashbacks of Leila inviting Sean to her house for Thanksgiving dinner five years ago. Then it’s back to the present, where Vicky gets the call on her cell to go ahead and kill Leila, which Leila overhears. Vicky and the CPA of doom argue over who gets to shoot Leila and Vicky wins! She goes to the basement and puts a plastic tarp on the floor, while Leila tries to reason with her. Vicky puts the gun to her head, and suddenly Leila snaps the ropes binding her hands and punches Vicky in the face. Good hit, girl! Vicky falls and drops her gun, which Leila picks up. They chase through the house and Leila shoots Vicky, what? She runs outside, flags down a police car and convinces the policeman to take her to the station. She tells them her story, they don’t believe her, but they allow her to make a phone call while they set up a psych evaluation. Leila calls Sean, but his phone is out of juice, so she leaves him a message. The police officer offers to get her a glass of water and as he disappears down the hall where we see … wait, Vicky? And the CPA? In a series of thankfully quick flashbacks we see that the whole Leila in the basement, threaten-to-kill her scenario was a set up, including killing Vicky and getting picked up by the police. Now they are just waiting for Sean to get the message and come pick her up so they can kill him.

And back at the bio quarantine facility, all of the passengers get nosebleeds at the exact same time, causing a level–3 bio quarantine freak out. Looks like you shouldn’t f*** with Thomas, right?

OK, there is a story here, and they seem to be telling it. I like it that Leila taking on Vicky was a setup; and I cracked up when they ‘Silence of the Lambs’d’ us with Sean going to the wrong house to save Vicky. But in general I feel like this is a series of conversations that go absolutely nowhere. It’s super frustrating to hear conversations like the one above, (what? Terrorism is a show of power? Orange is both a color *and* a fruit? Get right out of town.) and these conversations go on the entire show.

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE HELP SUPPORT OUR SITE, AT NO COST WITH ONE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK 'LIKE' BUTTON BELOW:

If you're interested in writing for Shadowlocked (disc and screening reviews, etc, or just getting some extra coverage for your extraordinary writing talent, get in touch with us.