“What do ya call two ducks?” A para-ducks, get it?! Sorry folks, I could not resist! I feel like I say it almost every week, but this week’s episode of 12 Monkeys was awesome! It was packed full of so much information, action, and sparked so many questions/thoughts, that I believed it was the season finale at first! Luckily, there is one more episode left until we have to play ye olde waiting game and I am sure it will leave us on the edge of our seats!
Even though I am a fan of this show, I always felt like there was something a little off about it. I could not put my finger on it, but it sparked an odd feeling in me. This week, I realized what it was. There is no closure at all in this show. It is like each week we are offered a chunk of a larger, super-long movie. The episodes always leave me wanting more and feeling incomplete, but when I view the entire season as one elongated movie, my crazy head feels a little better about it. Gone are the days of the 80s sitcoms in which problems arise and are solved in 30 minutes. Gone are even the days of the hour-long television drama that presents and solves a problem in an hour or two hours if it is “to be continued.”
12 Monkeys presented the problem of the Plague in the pilot episode and suggested the solution as Cole’s time traveling. Each episode, though, presents sub-problems that have splintered off from the Plague or are a direct result of Cole’s time travel. If one hole is plugged, three more leaks erupt for Cole, Railly, and Jones to try to fix in the next episode.
Remember early on when Cole demonstrated a paradox by touching Cassandra’s watch from the future to her watch in 2015? Cassandra finds Jones in 2015, where a dying Cole has been abandoned. She tells Jones about the paradox and it inspires Jones, who thinks of a way to save Cole. She believes that injecting the Cole we know with the blood of young Cole from 2015 she can create another paradox that will save his life. I do not even pretend to understand the science or medicine behind it, but I accepted Jones’s idea (hey, she developed splintering after all!) and was happy when it worked! The science really was not even explained (tsk, tsk writers). Jones suggested it and it worked, no questions asked which irks me a bit.
When Jones and Cassandra find young Cole, we also meet his father — who is quite paranoid. We learn that Cole’s mother left them when she decided she could no longer keep Cole safe and his dad also reveals that she mentioned something about the Army of the 12 Monkeys. The Pallid Man makes an appearance after Aaron contacts Olivia (the lady with the soothing voice from “Red Forrest” episode) and strikes a deal to save himself and seemingly Cassandra. I really wish Aaron would become one of the many casualties of this show. The Pallid Man kills Cole’s father and would have killed the young Cole as well if it were not for some fast movement from Cassandra and Jones.
With his father dead, Cole is taken to CPS and put in a foster home where he meets a young Jose Ramse for the first time! Of course, this cannot be a coincidence. Is it fate or did Ramse or Olivia somehow work out this meeting in order for everything to line up? At any rate, we learn that Jones, the Pallid Man, young Cole, Cassandra, and young Ramse were all connected as far back as 2015. As they leave young Cole, Cole and Cassandra finally hold hands — which is a little weird and reminiscent of Big. Despite the paradox, Cole is stuck in 2015 and no longer able to splinter.
My favorite character had a hugely entertaining scene! Jennifer Goines shows up at Markridge (Leland Goines’ company) and orchestrates a hostile takeover. Jennifer almost channels the Joker in this scene. She is the most lucid and makes the most sense as she ever has so far. Instead of being bat shit crazy, she is now super villain crazy in super high heels and a smart sweater vest with pictures of guns stitched on it.
I know deep down I am not supposed to like the bad guy, but her character is so well written and portrayed so dynamically that I cannot help myself. I cannot wait to see what she does next!
I am also haunted with the idea that she was infatuated with Cole and I cannot wait for them to be reunited at a key cross roads where she will have to inevitably pick between her agenda and him.
Meanwhile in 2043, Jones has her team of scientists searching through all of their research for any leads they may have missed. They have lost track of Cole in 2015, but the time traveling machine is still active. While Jones and her team are busy researching, a red vine has appeared and is growing on the machine. Tests reveal that it is not from 2043. I have no idea what this mysterious vine could be or mean, but I am sure it signifies there is much more about the “Red Forest” than meets the eye.
Right before the end credits appear, some very odd alien/dead-faced people appear outside of the facility leaving dead bodies in their wake. They are depending on good ol’ Deacon to get them into the facility!