Reviews

Continuum: Seconds, Review

What might be one of the darkest episodes of Continuum so far raises a number of difficult moral questions. What happens when right and wrong aren't so clear...especially where time travel is involved?

By Jen Johnson | August 3, 2013 | | 0

I realize that seconds are units of time, but I get hungry late at night so by the time the show started, I was thinking more along the lines of second helpings, as in, “Why yes, I’ll have seconds of that lovely mac and cheese…” But let’s get to the show, shall we? Alec’s evil stepbrother, Julian, is getting out of prison. Who’s going to be taken out first? Who needs to be taken out first? The battle for the future continues!We learn that after the government collapse in the years before Kiera was born, prisoners were implanted with chips that made them mindless drones working in cubicles inside a factory called New Pemberton. Funny…aren’t most offices in America exactly the same nowadays? Anyway, once Julian gets released from prison in 2013, he’s tailed by Kiera and Carlos, a mission now funded by the mysterious Mr. Escher. Problem is, Julian’s existence is now going to be like George Zimmerman’s…perpetually on the run. He gets shot at as soon as he walks out the prison doors, fleeing after his mom takes a bullet.Turns out that Julian gathered quite a following while he was in prison, and Travis is part of the (for lack of a better word) cult. Julian disses them in favor of going to Sonia, looking for answers. “This is about you leading everyone,” she tells him, claiming that she knows him better than he realizes. Intriguing…are they related? Dad and daughter? Can’t wait to see where this one goes…if Julian can get over his feelings of being used and abused by Liber8.Boy, is there alllll kinds of backstabbing going on too…Lucas acts wacky and claims Sonia will take Julian’s place! Carlos throws Kiera under the bus when she wants to go look for Julian on her own! Alec protects his stepbrother even though he testified against him and told Kiera he would help her! Kiera strikes out on her own anyway, going against the police chief’s orders! Mass chaos, cats and dogs living together!It’s nice to see the stepbrothers bond over a game of pool, and their mom’s hospital bed…until Kiera arrives with a couple police goons and they nab Julian, who immediately accuses Alec of blowing him in. Brotherly love, gone in a flash. I was actually a little frustrated, because it was nice to see them getting along, and Kiera used her tech to find Julian. Relationships are getting more strained than Greek yogurt.This is an interesting episode, treading some thorny ethical ground. There’s the whole “do you go back in time and kill Hitler knowing what he does” idea, and the parallel, “do you get some vigilante justice when a known criminal goes free?” The crack I made earlier about Zimmerman is pretty valid; what is his life going to be like now that he’s a legally free but hated man? What would be an appropriate punishment? Julian ends up getting tortured, but now that he knows his future, is it right? He certainly doesn’t know what 2077 will be like. Like Alec in the last episode, he begs for his life, and is spared…thanks to Carlos. You know, the guy he shot. “Don’t question a lucky break,” Carlos warns him, “because the next time Kiera points a gun at your head I won’t stand in the way.”And after all that, Julian goes back to the cult, and a flash forward shows him killing those thousands of people Kiera knew he would.Final review: This goes down as one of the darkest episodes so far, right down to the last second when we see that Alec’s future company, Sadtech, makes the chips that produce mindless drones in the factories. Right and wrong are blurred beyond recognition. The characters of 2013 might be learning about their fates, but what happens happens despite everything. Disturbing? Yes, but this is what I like to see out of a science fiction show. Alec’s romance with Emily is on hold, we don’t know if Kiera has found out about Gardner’s death, and the body snatchers are all but forgotten for now. No matter. It’s all good. This is one of those story lines that might actually make you lose sleep tonight. Just think about the scary Theseus nursery rhyme.Den of Geek Rating: Four and a half out of five stars.Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!

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