Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s07e12 – Too Legit to Quit

The network hasn’t renewed “Legends of Tomorrow” yet, so when Adam Tsekhman makes a meta-reference to the show’s weekly air time… it’s cute but isn’t a great landing. Especially since the episode’s all about the show ending.

There’s a real quick resolve to the cliffhanger. The evil robot version of Olivia Swann escaped Hell and stabbed Amy Louise Pemberton in the back, mortally wounding her. Unless they can get the spaceship’s med lab online, which requires plugging back in the evil AI running the ship (also Pemberton, in her “traditional” voice-only performance).

Luckily for the team, AI Pemberton can’t let anything happen to human Pemberton since the only plan for eliminating the humans is decompressing the ship while it’s in the (presumably atmosphere-free) time dimension.

So while Caity Lotz and Jes Macallan devise a plan to take back control of the ship (again), human Pemberton tries to make a deal with AI Pemberton to let her friends survive. The eventual solution is just the end of the show. They’ll all quit being “Legends” and stay in their timelines (it’s unclear if they can still superhero). While Lisseth Chavez goes into the Jefferies tubes to try to take back control of the ship, human Pemberton and boyfriend Tsekhman bring everyone in to see a glimpse at their future without the “Legends.”

The flash-forward reveals new careers as children’s TV hosts, politicians, parents, influencers, and so on. Except no one—outside Lotz and Macallan—has anyone from the “Legends” in their lives, and few of them can connect these future successes with their current ambitions. There’s some good acting—no surprise—from Tala Ashe, who’s particularly distraught, as well as Matt Ryan, who finds out he does not get to save his dude, which was the whole impetus for him joining the team this season. Well, rejoining as a different character.

It’s a downer of an episode, with the occasional future flash jokes not really enough to compensate for the sense of loss most people are feeling. Especially considering the show hasn’t been renewed, this outing could be the farewell voyage.

There are a couple big twists in the finale; one to get the show to next episode (the short season’s finale) and one to potentially be left unresolved if they don’t get renewed. I hate it when shows play chicken with the network… something “Legends,” usually renewed in January, hasn’t had to do for years.

But their time may be up.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e02 – Contact

It’s only taken twenty-two episodes, but “Lost in Space” finally addresses some fundamental questions about its robots. Did something make them, or did they make themselves? The show skirts around the robots having agency and sentience to make the human eagerness to enslave them a little less creepy, presumably. Though Molly Parker salivates over the idea of doing it in this episode. It’s so funny how they brought it up once and then completely forgot about the morality issue.

Everyone’s got something to do this episode, even if it’s staring into the main action of the scene like you’re superfluous (both Parker Posey and Ignacio Serricchio do it). I haven’t checked, but I’m assuming season three is the last one for “Lost in Space,” so they’re trying to wrap things up. And doing it very quickly; thank goodness the robots come equipped with a walkie-talkie feature allowing communication across half a galaxy or so.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The episode starts with Taylor Russell finding real dad Russell Hornsby alive in his cryotube. It’s unclear whether he escaped the ship or if the ship moved him over to an escape vessel without waking him up. It seems like the latter, but there’s also not a lot of talk about Hornsby. See, Russell can’t bring herself to tell him he’s her dad, so instead, they talk around it. When they finally start getting on the same wavelength… well, the writing’s not good, but Russell’s sincerity carries through.

Zack Estrin has the writer credit. It’s not his first (though the last episode he got a credit on was episode two of season three, so exactly one season before), but he’s not particularly impressive. Combined with Kevin Rodney Sullivan’s direction and the frantic but good special effects, it all feels like “Lost in Space” is in a hurry to wrap up. The time for character development has passed.

And not just for surprise reveal characters, but the main cast as well. Mina Sundwall has reverted back to her sarcastic mode, which has some okay lines, just nothing for the character. She, Maxwell Jenkins, and Parker Posey are trying to find the robot, who wandered off last episode with the reveal of an alien civilization in the distance. There are some setbacks and fretting about Posey’s reliability as a comrade, but eventually, the episode gets to setting up its way out of the current predicament. Luckily, Jenkins and Sundwall get into position at just the same time Parker and Toby Stephens do in their plot.

Parker’s full of life again, ready to go get her kids and stop feeling sorry for herself. So she and Stephens are flying down to a planet to recover a destroyed robot, so they can torture it into flying them where they want to go. Serricchio is along for the ride, which just means wisecracks. There are some all right ones too.

One Aliens riff later, they find themselves in danger from an unknown robot. And over in the other plot, the robot keeps telling Jenkins they’re in danger. Shame the robot’s got such a limited vocabulary because if he could string two sentences together, they wouldn’t have needed the episode.

It feels like the end of the first act (of “Season Three”). It could be better, could be worse. But trying to wrap up the series in eight episodes gets “Lost in Space” a lot of leeway. As does avoiding having all the little kids in it. The action just sticks to the main cast; it also seems we’re leaning in on Jenkins as messiah, which will at least be a flex, something the show’s managed to avoid doing for almost its entire run.

Lost in Space (2018) s02e09 – Shell Game

This episode may be the perfect example of “Lost in Space: Season Two.” It’s got a bunch of problems, and they’re all ginned up and exacerbated by the main cast. Mostly Toby Stephens and Molly Parker because they’re the parents. But this device—ignore an obvious problem and then act surprised when it becomes a dire situation—kind of sums up season two’s storytelling. When JJ Feild and Douglas Hodge joined the supporting cast as the eventual villains, “Space” had a chance to go somewhere.

Instead, it keeps creating problems to delay any movement. If these were actual problems—which might have been what made the metal termite episode so good—it’d be one thing. But this episode’s all about how Parker Posey teams up with Hodge after Stephens pisses her off by dismissing her. Posey and Stephens were temporary pals—Stephens gave speeches about how he learned as a Navy Seal to lead people, but then it turned out he was full of shit as far as reading his comrades. Sure, Posey had the sads because she saw Nevis Unipan, the daughter of the guy she killed, but Stephens doesn’t know she’s a second-degree murderer; he just saw her in distress and ignored it. It’s not so much inconsistent characterization as lack of it. “Lost in Space: Season Two” lets the events dictate character, only there aren’t enough events, so the characters are spinning out.

So Posey and Hodge are after the kids. Maxwell Jenkins and Mina Sundwall are going to help the robots, even if it means Hodge and Feild don’t get to torture the regular robot until a little later. Jenkins remains entirely obtuse to what’s going on around him, which would work if the show were from his perspective, but he’s not. He’s too befuddled to be functioning as well as he does here. Though it’s Sundwall and Taylor Russell who come up with the plans. Once the kids are all together, the episode works better, so it’s weird they keep the kids apart so much this season. The show refuses to play to its strengths.

Feild, Hodge, and Posey are hunting the kids through the mothership while Stephens is out in space rescuing Parker. Except since Stephens didn’t do anything about Hodge being murderous last episode, Hodge has locked them out of the ship, and they’re going to run out of fuel and die in the gas giant together. There’s a bunch of busy sci-fi action tropes they go through while in orbit, but no heart to any of it. Director Stephen Surjik can do all the effects stuff. He just can’t pretend it matters.

Things only go wrong at the end because of a character’s lack of, well, character and whether it can be overcome. It’s an episodes’ long C-plot at this point, and it was apparent from jump what needed to happen. But instead, the show moped along for four episodes just to get a drug-out finale before the season finale.

If the show’s only got as much story for the season as it seems now… the meandering to get here hasn’t been worth it. There’ve been some nice moments for the actors this season—primarily Russell and Ignacio Serricchio (who’s unconscious this episode, apparently Hicks’ing for the grand finale)—but I’ll bet it finishes with the exact narrative stakes where it started with. There’s been no progress, just a bigger supporting cast.

Fingers crossed I’m wrong.

Lost in Space (2018) s01e08 – Trajectory

Will Robinson, falling for Dr. Smith’s shit since 1965. Having not seen the original show and not having great memories of the obvious evilness of Gary Oldman’s Dr. Smith in the Lost in Space: The Movie, I don’t know how this show’s version of Will Robinson, played by Maxwell Jenkins, falling for Parker Posey’s very obvious machinations—“Your parents lie to you to make you feel better because you’re just a kid”—when she’s literally locked up for being a supervillain… I’m not sure if Jenkins’s is a particularly dippy Will Robinson or just the norm.

Posey tricking Jenkins into helping her escape and wreck havoc doesn’t happen until the third act and then mostly just to screw up the imminent resolution to the rescue A-plot. It’s all for the cliffhanger, which is fine. Jenkins and Posey have the least amount of charisma together, and it’s thankfully not a running subplot.

The episode’s kind of an Apollo 13 riff. There’s a quick resolution to the previous episode’s hard cliffhanger, which had colony leader Raza Jaffrey being a bigger dick than usual and then losing his authority to Toby Stephens and Molly Parker. They’re a team now too. It makes Stephens more likable when he admits he needs to check with his wife.

But now all the survivors know there’s not much time left before the planet self-destructs—or at least burns all the humans off the surface—and there’s barely enough fuel for one ship. Parker’s got to figure out what to do, then Jenkins somehow makes her think of the time she saw Apollo 13 and how they should do a science no hyphen fiction episode where they need to strip down a space-camper, so it can get to the atmosphere with less fuel.

There’s a very brief thread about Yukari Komatsu having to fly it because she weighs the least, which upsets Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa—the scene where they argue in Japanese makes you wish the show were about them. And in Japanese.

Turns out the only person who can wake up from unconscious in time is Stephens, which means Parker, Jenkins, Mina Sundwall, and Taylor Russell all have to work out dad going on a potential suicide mission while training him for it. Luckily, they’ve got a few days, so they’re going to work it all out.

Not. The mother-ship has to leave sooner, so it’s now or never.

Probably series best acting from Stephens, which isn’t too high a bar for him to clear, but also terrific acting from Parker and Ignacio Serricchio. Even though Parker knows how the ships are supposed to work based on the manuals, Serricchio knows how they really work. It also gives Serricchio time with the other kids—not just Russell, though they have a rushed resolve to their investigating Posey plot—and it works.

Sundwall’s got a little to do with Ajay Friese—dealing with the fallout from her parents usurping control from his shitty dad, but otherwise, she and Russell end up all support to the main plot. Appropriately end up all support to the main plot. It’s a “clocks ticking” science and engineering action story.

Stephen Surjik directs Ron Howard-style just fine. Katherine Collins and Kari Drake (who are both producers as well) get the script credit. It’s most enthusiastic when on the main plot, which is enough to cover for the drags.

Like Jenkins somehow never realizing, after so much recent experience, it’s not okay when adults talk to children the way Posey talks to him.

The Witcher (2019) s02e02 – Kaer Morhen

The episode opens with Anya Chalotra having a domestic bliss dream about Henry Cavill. Last season it seemed like “Witcher” was setting up Cavill, Chalotra, and Freya Allan as a surrogate family unit—seemed might be too strong a characterization, but there were definite tones. The dream sequence is very… lovey-dovey. Very unlike “The Witcher.” It goes to a nightmare, sure—a horrific one—but the sentimentality’s interesting.

Chalotra wakes up to discover she and her former classmate, now enemy Mimi Ndiweni are being held prisoner by elves. There’s a bit with the elves before elf magic boss lady Mecia Simson shows up. It turns out Simson, Chalotra, and Ndiweni are all having similar dreams, which will lead to a pretty good episode for them. Simson’s strong, and Ndiweni’s excellent. It’s the first time Ndiweni’s really gotten to do anything on her own—albeit while held prisoner by elves—but she’s real good.

Their plot will involve a Baba Yaga house and a “be careful what you wish for” deal with the proverbial devil. It’s good. And a lot more sympathetic than the A-plot with Cavill and Allan, who finally arrive at the Witcher Winter Wonderland. It’s a keep in the side of a mountain, where all the Witchers get together and get drunk and train and make potions.

Well, if Cavill had his way, they’d be doing those productive activities. But we find out immediately Cavill’s not a Buzz Killington because he’s a Witcher; he’s just a Buzz Killington. The other Witchers are all a barrel of laughs who really want to drink and carouse and make slightly creepy comments about Allan.

Except for Basil Eidenbenz, Cavill’s best friend, who’s just straight up intimidating to Allan.

Kim Bodnia’s the boss Witcher, who rescued all the mutant kids back when and trained them to be Witchers. Cavill clearly models himself off Bodnia, while everyone else is rambunctious.

The plot is ostensibly just Allan and Cavill’s first night in the keep, where Allan’s got to learn not to expect luxury even though she’s a princess (and even though she rarely had any in the first season), but then a monster makes an appearance.

The episode’s been awkwardly foreshadowing the monster the entire episode and how it’s going to appear and why, but it’s still an effective sequence. Cavill and Bodnia have to save the day while Allan’s got to maintain composure. Rather good effects for the show, which often has wanting composite shots. They can do plant monsters just fine, it turns out.

The episode feels very much like the setup for season two—without any apparent Westworldling—with Cavill and Allan figuring out what they’re going to be doing (training her to fight). Then Chalotra’s got her surprise arc of the season.

It’s an all right episode, though the majority of the other Witchers—those with lines, anyway—being a gaggle of jokey, drunken bros is surprising. It seemed like a solemn calling, but they’re just jackasses for the most part. The Chalotra and Ndiweni material is the best.

The Witcher (2019) s02e01 – A Grain of Truth

Despite “The Witcher” taking place in a world of magic and monsters, they don’t come up with a cool way to explain why Freya Allan’s all of a sudden got brown eyebrows this season. This episode picks up immediately after last season’s cliffhanger, with Henry Cavill and Allan finally united and trying to find Anya Chalotra. MyAnna Buring’s also trying to find Chalotra, who tapped into the fire magicks to defeat the bad guys last time, and everyone sort of thinks she spontaneously combusted from the effort.

So fire, lots of fire, potentially could’ve singed Allan’s eyebrows, made them visible. Instead of the transparent blonde they were the entire last season. Allan’s aged a little between season filming, no doubt, but with the different eyebrows—it takes a while to get used to her new look. Especially since the season one recap has a bunch of the transparent blonde eyebrows.

After finding out Chalotra’s presumed dead, a stoically mourning Cavill heads toward the Witcher winter palace, Allan in tow. It’s where Witchers go to chill and prepare for a summer of monster hunting. It’s unclear. Especially since the episode opens with a group of travelers stopping in a small village and being picked off by a flying monster. When Cavill and Allan show up in the town, it plays like it’s their destination. But apparently not. Luckily Cavill’s got a friend nearby, and so he takes Allan into a Beauty and the Beast adaptation.

Kristofer Hivju—Tormund from “Game of Thrones” but beastly most of the episode—looks like a warthog man but has a bunch of fun magic and is old friends with Cavill. He doesn’t know anything about the village being empty, also ignore he’s apparently got something living in his attic.

Meanwhile, Buring is back at the Mage Fortress trying to figure out how to get prisoner Eamon Farren to talk. Buring’s upset about Chalotra being dead and will make Farren pay. Except, of course, Chalotra’s not dead; she’s really being held prisoner by Farren’s mage pal, Mimi Ndiweni.

The main plot with Cavill and Allan getting more and more suspicious at Hivju’s, even though he seems trustworthy, is pretty good. It’s maybe not the best adventure for Allan and Cavill if you just binged the first season and were waiting for them to get together, but it’s a well-executed Beauty and the Beast riff. Agnes Born plays a mysterious woman Allan encounters—who knows Allan’s got magic too—and she’s good. It works out, mainly because it finds a good balance for Cavill and Allan.

It’s good because the other plots go nowhere. The Buring plot goes nowhere, while the Chalotra one at least gets to be the cliffhanger. Though they could’ve introduced her being alive and done the cliffhanger as the cliffhanger. The plot’s nothing in between, except a little banter between Chalotra and Ndiweni.

It also doesn’t help for the first half of the episode; I kept trying to see if they were Westworlding the timelines to gin up the narrative like they did last season. They aren’t, and they don’t draw attention to it, but it does imply this season of the “Witcher” will be less manipulative than the first.

Evil (2019) s02e12 – D Is for Doll

I’m getting more and more curious about what happened to “Evil: Season Two.” Something clearly happened. Because Mike Colter all of a sudden gets his becoming-a-priest arc back, complete with Leon Addison Brown returning (from eight or so episodes ago) as the Black reverend who’s trying to convince Colter to give up on the Catholics. It’s also a big return to “Evil” minimizing the Catholic Church literally being an international child rape cabal while emphasizing the number of assholes who work for the Church. It’s a bizarre take.

The supernatural mystery this episode is a haunting at guest star Ato Essandoh’s house. Essandoh (Alfredo from “Elementary”!) is barely in the episode. He’s only in it a little more than Elijah M. Cooper as his son, who’s the actual target of the ghosts. Essandoh and Cooper are only there to introduce an evil doll into the episode. An evil doll and some weird water damage. The former links up to Katja Herbers’s home plot, while the latter leads to Colter questioning his priestly decisions again.

Lots of priestly questioning. And even though there’s some resolution to it—with both sweet and ominous scenes for Colter. While he’s got friends’ support of the priest thing, nun Andrea Martin is trying to get him into the robe as soon as possible because they need to fight some capital E “Evil” next season. Michael Emerson’s fake redemption scheme is starting to come to light.

The Herbers home plot has daughter Brooklyn Shuck babysitting a kid (Zachary Golinger) with his own scary doll, and she ends up stealing it. Or does she?

Some significant developments in the plot for Kurt Fuller, who tags along with the team on their investigation this episode because he wants to write a book on the paranormal Church investigators. Fuller’s real good. He’s got some very dramatic scenes. He’s also got some intentionally unsurprising ones, as he finds a way to annoy the team members one-by-one while they try to work.

The biggest plot–and potentially most momentous for the show’s future-—is Christine Lahti hanging out with weird, evil rich guy efficiency expert Tim Matheson. Matheson’s got plans for Lahti; some of them make her uncomfortable, which is a little odd given her arc over the last few episodes. It’s like she escalated, then they forgot and took her down a few notches. Presumably next episode—the season finale—will have major cliffhangers for her. It’s kind of Lahti’s show at this point. No one else’s plotline is anywhere near as consistently compelling.

Also, Herbers isn’t doing great with her character’s newly zen demeanor. It doesn’t come off insincere; it comes off shallow.

But it’s a good episode, especially for one with so much rampant Catholic whataboutisms. They intentionally and forcibly pshaw child rape at least twice.

Superman & Lois (2021) s01e06 – Broken Trust

A couple significant “Superman and Lois” details this episode. First, Metropolis seems to be in the Midwest. Smallville High School is in the same conference or whatever as Metropolis High School. Second, Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman might be as old as forty-eight; at least, if he spent eight years at the Fortress a la Superman: The Movie. The Midwest Metropolis thing is cooler. I’d love to see a U.S. map of the Arrowverse.

The episode itself is one of the strongest in the series so far, despite a few major problems. The first act is poorly written. It picks up at the football game, where Superboy Alex Garfin finds he can’t be super when he’s got a migraine, and his not-super twin Jordan Elsass gets to do some human-level (sports) heroics. Garfin’s got a whole arc about confronting his childhood bullies, but Elsass has actually got the meatier part. He’s up against his old team, including an ex-friend who poached his girlfriend, and he’s trying to control Garfin. Garfin’s migraines lead to uncontrollable heat vision, something he doesn’t want to tell Hoechlin. Lots of conflict for Elsass.

He’s giving the consistently best performance on the show. A few other actors do really well this episode; Hoechlin, Inde Navarrette, Emmanuelle Chriqui, guest star Wern Lee. Unfortunately, not Garfin. Some of his problems are script-related (Katie Aldrin gets the credit), but mostly not. He just doesn’t seem to have a handle on the part yet, and it’s getting late. They’re six episodes in. So everyone else—Elsass, Hoechlin, Navarrette, Elizabeth Tulloch—has to hold up his scenes.

So Garfin’s one of the hurdles. Ditto Sudz Sutherland’s direction, which is a combination of dull, repetitive, and off. Sutherland always uses the same over-the-shoulder shots, and they’re always poorly framed. And always in the same way. It’s initially really annoying, but once they become predictable, the episode can work past them. Especially since there’s lots of drama and lots of Superman action. Sutherland does all right with the Superman action, but mainly because the situations are so good.

There’s also a series-best performance from Wolé Parks, who has a subplot with Tulloch. It’s pretty good, though she’s not really active enough. Just like Garfin, she’s a little undefined. Unlike Garfin, Tulloch can cover.

Dylan Walsh is bad. He may turn it around, but he’s not doing a good job. This episode has him and Hoechlin bucking heads—Superman being a U.S. military asset is one of the show’s most exciting turns—and Hoechlin handily walks away with the scenes. He’s still got a bad muscle suit, but he’s getting very confident in the part.

Even if he doesn’t look forty-eight.

The show’s getting really, really close. I’m almost to the point of recommending it (with the usual non-“Legends” Arrowverse caveats).

Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s06e04 – Bay of Squids

Let me get it out of the way so it doesn’t come bubbling up later.

After some previous hints, it turns out alien abduction survivor and gun nut Lisseth Chavez is actually “Legends”’s outreach to the right leaning audiences. She loves guns—she and Tala Ashe have a painful “2nd vs. 1st amendment” banter—she hates Commies (the episode takes place during the Cuban Missile Crisis), and after talking shit about Dominic Purcell for an entire episode (last one, I think) behind his back to Jes Macallan, she’s now talking shit about Macallan behind her back to Purcell.

The season’s making a mess of Purcell, who’s out of sorts because Caity Lotz is kidnapped (so kidnapped she doesn’t appear this episode, which successfully splits up the cast so there can be three distinct arcs not requiring crossover for a while), and Macallan, who’s now captaining the team. They resolve it by the end of the episode here but through shenanigans not character development. It’s also troubling because Purcell, off camera, is upset with the handling of his character and leaving or not or yes.

But the episode would still have some major hurdles.

While the team is ostensibly in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis to find a rogue alien, they’re really there so Shayan Sobhian can get Fidel Castro (Tim Perez) really stoned on gummis and play him Peace Train, which is simultaneously politically and historically cringe and adorable because Sobhian’s charming. Then there’s also the JFK side of things, where Nick Zano—turns out all Zano needs for a story arc is for Matt Ryan not to appear; they even get the same sidekick in Tala Ashe–gets to bro out with Jack (Aaron Craven) and Bobby (Preston Vanderslice) while general Nic Bishop does a low rent riff on a Dr. Strangelove general. Craven and Vanderslice are doing broad impersonations, which is fine, but the Bishop part is a real part and he doesn’t have it. Especially since Zano, even running a subplot, is fairly passive. His character development arc this episode is crushing on Ashe, whose alternate universe version is his lady love, but now he’s crushing on her dimensional clone. Even though she’s with Ryan. Hopefully it’s better than a love triangle.

It’s an entirely amusing outing for “Legends,” but ends up just being a slightly worrisome (as opposed to troublesome or problematic) bridging episode. What’s next should be great, we promise….

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s02e15 – The Endless

The Endless is the best episode of the season so far and one of the best showcases for Kiernan Shipka as an actor ever. She’s trapped in another alternate universe, only this one is where she’s an actor on a television show, seemingly “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” She quickly discovers this alternate universe doesn’t have any magic, which is going to make things a lot more difficult, and none of her new costars believe her.

Shipka’s playing the Hell version of Sabrina—Morningstar—which doesn’t matter once she’s in this alternate universe because Hell doesn’t exist since it’s television. Albeit a television show where everyone lives on set and then wakes up to a new script on their nightstand and act all day long. It’s a follow-up to the cliffhanger a couple episodes ago, where Shipka finds herself in a world where Beth Broderick and Caroline Rhea play her aunts. Broderick and Rhea played on the previous “Sabrina” show, “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” The now Christian Nationalist star of that show, Melissa Joan Hart, does not cameo.

The episode gives the entire cast—save maybe Gavin Leatherwood, Jaz Sinclair, definitely Lachlan Watson, oh, and Michelle Gomez—well… okay. It gives Shipka, Ross Lynch, Miranda Otto, Lucy Davis, Chance Perdomo, and especially Sam Corlett some great scenes. Turns out they’d just given Corlett more comedy, he might’ve done better in the show in general and Shipka’s Hellish variation’s affection for him would make sense.

So Shipka has various mysteries to solve—what’s the green room (where you go after being fired), how’s the head writer on the show, and why are her new aunties Broderick and Rhea so low-key creepy at times—only she doesn’t feel capable because she’s not the regular Sabrina. There’s character development and gravitas and drama and action and lots of comedy. The show manages to maintain the combination of fun and ominous until the last act of the episode, when the reveals come very fast. It’s not so much a rush as an escape, but Shipka’s acting keeps it going. She’s absolutely fantastic this episode.

Great episode. More than makes up for the previous one’s messiness.