Does Matt Bomer get an episode with the electric demon next or what, because he’s really left out of this one, which is the secret origin of Timothy Dalton—including explaining, or at least implying, why he looks so good for one hundred and fifty plus years old. No explanation for Diane Guerrero still but doesn’t matter, she’s not really in the episode.
The bad acting this episode is instead courtesy—oh, I knew it was him: Max Martini. He’s Dalton’s evil White guy pal back in 1913 when they’re out hunting oddities to bring them back and look at because it’s pre-WWI and they’re not killing everything yet. Curious colonial. They’re in the Arctic looking for some kind of monster. What they find is something entirely different and will change Dalton’s life forever. It’s initially not great, then gets pretty darn great.
The ending of that subplot—the flashbacks—is a bit of a flop but what can you do… it’s Max Martini. And it’s flashbacks to colonial daydreams, even if Dalton ends up a lot more twentieth century woke than almost any other cishet White guy in existence for the time. Presumably. While it’s a nice story and an interesting cliffhanger setup, it’s also not really character development for Dalton. We get to see him bickering with Alan Tudyk a bit… but it’s all obvious red herring stuff.
But what’s almost as memorable is villain of the week Tommy Snider. He’s “The Beard Hunter.” He eats mens’ beard follicles and taps into a quantum realm of information from it, including being able to turn Cyborg (Joivan Wade) lethal, which probably ought to freak April Bowlby out a little more but her being forcefully level-headed is too charming for it to matter.
The stuff with Snider has its ups and downs—the new shadow villains, the Bureau of Normalcy, aren’t anywhere near as intriguing as they might have been in a monthly comic in 1989, which was pre-“X-Files” for goodness sake.
But Snider’s hilariously gross. And I’m still soft-shipping Wade and Bowlby.
The episode tries a little too hard to surprise—especially in its explanations—but it’s definitely successful. Martini aside, obviously.
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