Resurrection: Us Against the World, review

Being hailed the number one drama of the season, at least ratings wise, Resurrection continues to look for its footing in its first season. So far, the show has been inching forward in an investigation of its central mystery and primarily focusing on the family relationships of the returned characters, but how do you continue to make the same problems interesting week in and week out. Kurtwood Smith has been terrific as Jacob’s father Henry, but it’s getting tiring to watch Henry internally struggle whether he should embrace the returned Jacob as his own son. Tonight’s episode featured some new interesting action, but parts lagged on more slowly than usual.

As for the action, returned father and sketchy figure Caleb Richards got his hands plenty dirty. After seemingly murdering a man, Caleb faced investigation from Agent Bellamy and Sheriff Frank. Bellamy puts the pieces together and sees that all things point towards Caleb, but Frank initially is reluctant to follow his lead. At this point, Frank’s disdain towards Bellamy still seems random and unfounded, I understand that Bellamy is a stranger poking around into painful family memories, but Bellamy has been nothing but helpful so far, and most of all, right. Bellamy even proves that Caleb was behind the bank robbery all of those years ago, using the holes and the mask found last week as proof.

Once Bellamy gets Frank onboard to look for Caleb, Frank explains just how the first robbery went down. The scene plays in black and white until transitioning to color and present day, where Caleb is once again robbing a bank, except this time he murders a cash truck bank guard. Caleb holes up inside of an abandon factory where Henry and Frank used to work, and when he is apprehended, he sinisterly warns of more chaos to come. So far Caleb is the most intriguing character, but I still find actor Sam Hazeldine to be rather ineffective and leaving something to be desired.

Another big chunk of the episode is dedicated to Tom dealing with the return of his lost lover Rachel. Tom and Rachel have a complicated history, the two were in love twelve years ago when Rachel crashed her car off of a bridge in an attempt at suicide. The tension and hurt expressed in Rachel and Tom’s scenes give the show a weight that his been missing since Jacob’s return in the first episode, and watching Tom confront a lost love while now being a married man adds a different twist to the returned person format we have witnessed so far. I like where their story is heading, but it’s still early, hopefully it continues to get more complicated from here.

The rest of the episode was dedicated to Jacob, who is really starting to lose my interest. It’s not that his scenes are particularly bad, they’ve just yet to really go anywhere. Jacob has trouble sleeping, and in tonight’s episode while lying awake, bright flashlights shine into his bedroom and Jacob screams. Finally, we’re lead to believe, we’re about to amp things up and discover new secrets in the Jacob storyline, but it only turns out to be some meddlesome neighborhood kids eager to get a glimpse of the ghost boy. It really was a letdown, another normal moment in a storyline that should be pushing for more extraordinary circumstances. All we really discover tonight is that Jacob has trouble sleeping, but has an overactive metabolism that keeps him eating constantly, a quality that Jacob shares with Caleb. We also learn that Jacob can sense Caleb, it’s how Maggie discovers Caleb’s location after his second heist.

Resurrection continues to offer up a couple of elements per episode that keeps the program worth tuning into, or at least keep it from being a waste of an hour, but unless things start to rev up soon, the show can turn into a snooze fest very quickly. Caleb hopefully made a credible threat tonight that things are only just getting started, let’s just hope it’s sooner than later.

Den of Geek Rating: 3 Out of 5 Stars

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