Second Chance 1.05 “Scratch that Glitch” & 1.06 “Palimpsest”

The problem with monsters of the week is that it’s something that every sci-fi does, and has always done. So without a mythology, a continuity built up in its own unique way, the tendency is to fall into cliché. There’s nothing wrong really with these two episodes. They’re just formulaic and familiar, and the best parts of both are the little quirks that relate to the tensions between the ongoing characters, not the ostensible monsters.

In “Scratch That Glitch,” someone is stalking Mary, and when news gets out about her cancer, things go from bad to worse. There’s even a deadpool on her demise. She wants to persevere with public appearances to assuage the investors in Lookinglass, especially after attempts to have a fragile Otto speak for her go badly.

In “Palimpsest,” there’s an evil plastic surgeon making monsters, though our sympathy lies with the girl who gets away. She’s a dancer/call girl, making her the kind of lady Jimmy understands well, and it is largely his unauthorized efforts that save her more than once. That she maintains a level of her own autonomy despite selling her body makes her a rather interesting variation on the trope, but the doctor (trying to create a monster as evil on the outside as he is on the inside) is a cardboard villain. It’s not clear why his male subjects (who become his henchmen) live and his female ones die, either.

“Palimpsest” has a different generic foe, the wronged employee. Clearly only delusional, a member of a red herring team of cobra-tattooed developers, he thinks all his ideas were stolen and he was forced out. So when two assassination attempts fail, he takes a (female) hostage and demands Mary in exchange. This one sees Duval and Jimmy team up with Mary to save the girl, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen since probably Westerns at least.

One sub-text of both episodes is Mary’s newly revealed sex partner, another corporate type that she was grooming to take over the company after she died. But the treatments with Jimmy’s blood are finally working, she’s doing better, so she calls off the deal. And it turns out he wants the deal more than he wants her, and he has a mole in her organization.

Again, ho-hum stuff. Where’s the super-villain Jimmy needs, and is apparently evolving to meet? Because the glitch referred to above was within our sexy Frankenstein himself; he’s not just healing in that nutrient bath he returns to daily: he’s evolving, and Otto’s program is struggling to keep up.