“Fatal Exception” aired on November 19, 2019
Written by: Holly Brix
Directed by: Christopher Misiano
Grade: 3,5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
I have stated more than once in my past reviews that one of Emergence’s strongest assets, if not the strongest, has been its fascinating play on the ambiguity surrounding Piper’s nature, or more precisely, whether she has a sinister side to her character or not. Showrunners Tara Butters & Michele Fazekas, along with the episode writers, have done a great job of foregrounding that ambiguity throughout the first four episodes before shifting some of the attention to the villainous duo of Kindred-Emily in the next two.
Then, came “Mile Marker 14” with a remarkable 15-second conclusion that contained a stunning twist and the return to spotlight of Piper’s ambivalent disposition, the former via the revelation that Emily, not Kindred, was scheming to gain control of Piper, the latter via Piper’s smile back at Emily as the episode ends when she hears Emily say, “Now, we get to have fun.”
“Fatal Exception” gets only half of it right in terms of capitalizing on those closing 15 seconds of “Mile Marker 14,” arguably the best one of the season (along with that of “Pilot” with Piper in front of the mirror). This hour solely focuses on the ramifications of the twist, Emily becoming the principal antagonist, and completely ignores Piper’s meaningful smile which is, ironically, a more fitting play on the show’s long-arc strength.
Consider, for example, the endings of “Pilot” and “2 MG CU BID” (episodes one and three), both underlining the ambivalence noted above regarding Piper’s nature. The succeeding episodes two and four beautifully milked that ambivalence by including multiple scenes in which Piper displayed questionable behaviors, thus keeping the viewer in doubt. Maybe I should therefore unfairly blame Emergence for setting a high standard on that particularity, but I felt a bit let down by “Fatal Exception” when it chose to deviate from that pattern by plowing forward as if Piper’s smile never happened.
Not only does she not appear joyful when the episode picks up from where the last one ended, but she is actually sulking, as Emily accompanies her on a walk around the virtual amusement park. It does not take long before Piper gets annoyed, turns defiant, and asks to leave, much to Emily’s dismay. Perhaps for the first time in the series, there is no trace of the aforementioned ambiguity throughout the hour. “Fatal Exception” essentially portrays Piper as an innocent victim of circumstances. She is an AI, but a ‘good’ AI.
What is Emily to do, for her part, when her amusement-park scheme designed to get on Piper’s good graces falls apart? Her problem is that she lacks the sangfroid (par for the course with her barmy temperament from previous episodes) to concoct well-calculated schemes on a consistent basis. Some are noteworthy, such as the way that she manipulated everyone into believing that Kindred was the malefactor while she surreptitiously sought to possess Piper. Others are awful, such as the ones that she tries to execute in this episode. Let me jump ahead to a later scene to illustrate. What in the world was she thinking, for example, when she showed up at Jo’s house to take Piper away? Was she simply expecting Piper to use her powers to hurt members of Jo’s family if any of them tried to stop them? Amazingly, yes! She was! Wow, Emily!
Anyway, back to earlier…
Emily is now holding Alan Wilkis hostage and threatening to have his wife killed (the hitman is at her house) unless he somehow fixes Piper using Emily’s back-up drive. She is obsessed with being loved by Piper and intends to have her mind recalibrated in such a way that she replaces Jo in Piper’s memories, effectively supplanting Jo as the mother figure.
Back at the precinct, Piper mentions that Emily likes cotton candy which piques Jo’s curiosity and triggers her into reviewing recent events, leading to the realization, with a bit of assistance from Chris and Piper, that Emily played them all along. And I mean, Jo does that in record time! Here we are, no more than 12 minutes into the episode, already into a full-scale pursuit of Emily by the Southold PD.
Jo pays a visit to Kindred in prison. She did some digging and learned that Kindred bought properties on behalf of Emily’s mother whom, she deduces, Kindred impregnated while he was married. Emily is indeed Kindred’s daughter. The last thing he needed as a public figure was a scandal, so that was his way of convincing Emily’s mother to keep it under the covers while raising Emily. No wonder why he was also protecting Emily, Jo figures, because he did not call her out despite the fact that she is the reason why he is jailed.
Under pressure by Emily, Alan sets up some type of a reboot system neatly represented on screen by a virtual library where all books are blue, but begin to turn red one by one as each one of Piper’s memories with Jo gets altered to where she is replaced by Emily, until the library ends up with only red books. It seems to work for Emily, except that, as noted above, her plan rests on precarious assumptions, notably the one where she counts on Piper to abruptly turn against Jo and her family members to the point of hurting them if they try to stop the two of them from leaving from the house.
Earlier, Jo had sent Chris to knock on Maria’s door (Wilkis’s widow) because she has yet to return her calls. Maria’s behavior when she answers the door is peculiar enough to indicate to Chris that something is amiss and that she may be in danger. Chris, the champion of all deputies, enters through a window and saves Maria after a scuffle with the gunman who escapes.
Once Maria is brought to the precinct, Jo figures out the whereabouts of Alan and Emily via the most contrived epiphany possible. According to Jo, you see, Maria thought she heard a train on the phone when Emily called her, but it was actually a ferry. You betcha-by-golly-wow that Jo can also pinpoint the precise location, on the Long Island state map no less, from which a passing-by ferry can be heard. That is naturally where Emily and Alan are.
They arrive to the property, capture the hitman, and save Alan. Emily is still on the loose, having left the house earlier. Alan proposes to Jo that he resets Piper up to the hilt since Emily now controls her. His idea makes sense, but Jo disagrees because that would also mean erasing the memories that Piper built with her and the family since the night of the airplane crash. Alan is baffled by Jo’s attachment to what he considers to be no more than a computer program in humanoid form and proceeds to reset Piper anyway, but Jo destroys the computer before he can do so. I must confess that I found my rational side agreeing with Alan throughout this dialogue, although my emotional side cheered for Jo.
In the meantime, Mia is genuinely upset at being separated from Piper and she is relentlessly using the guilt-trip tactics on her dad in hopes of changing his mind. It is only when she tells the real story behind how Piper saved her and Ed by stopping the big truck from hitting them in “RDZ9021” that Alex is convinced enough to drive Mia to the house so that the two girls can reunite.
At the house, Emily has already set the wheels of her brilliant (!!) plan in motion. As she is leaving the house with Piper, Benny and Ed try to stop them, as expected. Emily smiles and prompts Piper to defend her. Piper sends Benny flying across the room, but her malaise in doing so is quite visible. So, you can imagine what happens when Alex and Mia show up as the two are leaving the house. Piper, already on tenterhooks from having hurt Benny, is not about to follow Emily’s command when it puts two of her most cherished friends in danger. It appears that Jo was right in derailing Alan’s plan to reboot Piper earlier, although she probably did not foresee this specific scenario involving Emily’s shaky plan to kidnap Piper.
This is when Piper, who has evidently evolved, suddenly begins to uncalibrate herself, so to speak, Emily and Alan’s recent modifications to her memories, essentially reverting to how they were before Jo was replaced by Emily. She does so by revisiting the virtual library and bringing back the blue books. Emily, devastated by the turn of events, escapes in her vehicle. A pat outcome to a rickety plan.
An 11th-hour shocker ends the episode when Kindred gets killed – liquefied, rather – by a prison guard while talking on the phone to a crestfallen Emily whose only wish was for Piper to love her. He attempts to reassure her that he will “clean up the mess” once he gets out of prison. Emily replies with disdain, “I don’t need you to clean up my messes anymore. I can do that by myself,” and she hangs up. Out of nowhere, the prison guard approaches Kindred from behind and kills him to end the outing. Gone is Richard Kindred – and Terry O’Quinn. It’s one of those unusual moments where the elimination of a central character is shocking not necessarily because we expected Kindred to stick around for a long time, but rather because we believed the character would stick around a long time in consideration of the actor playing the role. O’Quinn is a bonafide asset for any paranormal-mystery series, thus I find it puzzling that Kindred is written off halfway into the first season. I have zero expectations of the character being resurrected somehow either (nor should he be), since he was literally liquefied.
Overall, as the pay-off episode to the ending twist of the previous one, “Fatal Exception” falls short of expectations. I believed, wrongly, that the writing room was crafting a longer arc over the ending twist of “Mile Marker 14” during which Emily’s deception would wreak more havoc on our protagonists before they finally realize how duplicitous she is. Instead, her true nature is revealed to them within the first act, her plan falls apart within the hour, and a major character is written off by the end. I am curious, and a bit apprehensive, I must add, about how the writing room will juggle the balance between the long arc and the turnover rate of short-term storylines in the upcoming episodes.
Last-minute thoughts:
– Daphne (played by Evangeline Young who was terrific in the little-known series Law of Perdition) is now a recurring character as Jo’s helper in the Southold PD. It remains to be seen whether she will be limited to the ubiquitous precinct-filler role with humorous one-liners (see any TV procedural for examples) or given more depth in order to help viewers connect with her further.
– Ed is super passive-aggressive with Jo back at the house, still seething from finding out that she kept secrets from them. It’s a rich scene between father and daughter, one during which I could not dismiss out of hand either of their arguments.
– Personal opinion: As things stand at the end of “Fatal Exception,” a plotline centering on Emily as the main villain cannot carry the rest of the season. The episode comes across as if it was trying to show by the end that she outlasted her usefulness anyway. I am not saying she should be written off (although, no objections there), but perhaps gradually moved into the background. I’d rather watch our heroes grapple with a new challenge centering on Piper.
– Tamara Tunie of Law & Order: Special Victims unit makes another appearance as Maria. Yes, I am a fan of that show and Tunie!
Until the next episode…
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