“American Chestnut” aired on November 26, 2019
Written by: Lindsey Allen
Directed by: Jessica Lowrey
Grade: 3 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
The outing begins with a rather ordinary scene with Emily talking to an artificial intelligence in the form of a crystal cube. It’s an effort on her part to create something resembling Piper, but when she attempts to install a disk to finalize the work, the program fails. The sequence is geared to emphasize, I presume, Emily’s obsessiveness with creating an AI who loves her (the cube refers to her as “mother”). Nothing new here, this is an obvious trait of Emily that did not need extra exposure. It’s not even part of any of the three storylines of focus during “American Chestnut.”
Back at the house, it’s Mia’s 15th birthday and the family is in a festive mood, except for Piper who is perturbed and asking questions about herself to Jo, not that Jo’s fleeting answers provide any relief. We already know that Piper is suspicious about Jo hiding something from her and that Jo fears telling Piper the whole truth due to the fatal-exception ‘clause.’ The dialogue’s tone – helped by well-grounded performances by Allison Tolman and Alexa Swinton – serves to foreground those uncertainties. Piper’s quest to discover herself is one of the episode’s two A stories.
The second A story includes an FBI agent named Ryan Brooks (Enver Gjokaj). Hallelujah folks! It took 8 episodes, but the show is finally (and explicitly) acknowledging that there is indeed someone other than the Southold PD and Benny interested in this case featuring a plane crash, murders, and an international muckamuck like Richard Kindred helming a multi-billion-dollar entity called Augur Industries. In an alternate reality outside the land of TV drama, such case would attract the attention of federal bureaus, national and international security agencies, and worldwide interest by media outlets (resulting in journalists invading Southold). In that alternate dimension, Jo and Chris would be swarmed with demands from various agencies and whatnots, have no time to spend calm evenings with the family, hold birthday parties, or have the luxury to schedule their day around Piper’s needs. The only glimmer of hint we had of this ‘normal’ dimension was the newsflash on a TV screen in “Mile Marker 14” briefly showing Kindred getting arrested. So yes, the entrance of an FBI agent as a recurring character is a much-needed injection into the narrative. As a bonus, Agent Brooks is a lively chap too!
He is in Southold to investigate Kindred’s murder. He is keen on sharing notes with Jo, knowing that her investigation ultimately led to Kindred’s arrest. He comes across personable and positive. He is not bad looking either, at least according to Abby! Jo is not as gung-ho as he is, however, about sharing knowledge with him. She and Chris agree that they should take advantage of the FBI’s resources to find Emily before they do. I am not sold on the reason for which Jo and her helpers decide to take the hard-ass approach (even Daphne at the precinct gives him the icy treatment) toward Brooks who appears to be one of the friendliest FBI agents portrayed on TV shows, but I am willing to wait and see if her instincts prove her right. Our clever Chief has earned that right.
Brooks, Jo, and Chris meet at the site of the building that Emily blew up – or so believes Jo. This is the Augur Ind. facility where Jo and Benny had to wrestle with robot dogs back in “2 MG CU BID.” Jo concludes that Emily is eliminating all traces leading to her, thus the murder of Kindred. It’s the third Augur Industries building to be destroyed during the week. This is where Brooks brings up something that sounds almost as if the show is aware of its under-populated arena of federal agencies around the case noted above. According to him, the FBI has put incredible amount of resources into investigating Augur Industries and Brooks himself has been pursuing Kindred for three years. Again, it would have added a layer of realism if we saw some of that in previous episodes while Kindred was at the center of the investigation. Brooks is here to fill that void from this point forward, I reckon. He is also aware of Emily Cox and that she is Kindred’s daughter.
In the B storyline of the episode, Alan is staying with Benny in his hotel room because Jo believes it’s the best way to keep Alan safe as long as Emily is on the loose. One problem, Alan is driving Benny crazy with his quirky habits. Jo arrives and asks Alan to eliminate Piper’s fatal exception, but he is not at all inclined to so. He knows that Piper can now rewrite her own code and sees the 10-year-old as a danger that needs to be destroyed. Plus, Emily is the one who designed the fatal exception so he would not know how to remove it anyway.
Later, Jo tells Benny to move Alan to another location since the FBI are also looking for him. During their trip, a tire goes flat, causing them to stop while they change it. Alan takes the opportunity to warn Benny about Piper, drawing a far-fetched parallel between how Japanese chestnut trees carrying a fungus that destroyed American chestnut trees and took over the American landscape, and how Piper’s AI could take over the planet – the nerd in me forced me to look this up, and yes, it did indeed happen in the early part of the 20th century. Alan then proceeds to slam the back of Benny’s head with the wheel wrench while his back is turned and escapes.
Back at the house, Alex and Piper are enjoying some quality bonding time. Piper opens up to Alex about her concerns with regard to her nature and the fact that Jo is hiding something from her. She fears that she is not safe to be around. Alex, who takes over the ‘mensch’ title from Chris at least for this outing, is reassuring and kind with her. The interactions between these two make this storyline the best of the hour.
Piper notices the map showing the location of the abandoned village to which Benny and Jo paid a visit in “No Outlet” and wants to go there (hats off to the writing room for the timely and substantial tie-ins to previous episodes). Once arrived, Piper and Alex enter the house in which she was kept. She immediately remembers that she ran away from the house when she sees the hole on the wall. She adds that she was alone and scared for a long time. I would be curious to know how long is “a long time” and if this period will be explored further in a future episode. Where was she and what was she doing during the time starting with her escape from the house to when Jo found her at the site of the plane crush? How long was she alone? One day? One week? Five months?
Agent Brooks locates Emily’s mom Vanessa Cox (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) and invites her to the precinct for a chat. Vanessa brought some old family pictures and one of them, dated June 1988, is a picture of Vanessa with her ten-year-old daughter Emily who looks identical to Piper! This is a twist that could potentially open up a can of worms. Does that mean that Emily is an AI herself? Or did Emily create Piper in her own image? More on this later.
The always-useful Chris traces an incoming call to Vanessa’s number to an Augur Industries facility. Jo drives there and lo and behold, she finds Emily inside the building. Easy peasy. You would think that Emily would be more scrupulous about having her whereabouts discovered but it’s on par for the course considering Emily’s strained relationship with the concept of meticulous planning. To Jo’s surprise, Emily denies blowing up buildings. Right then, some dudes dressed in combat gear enter the facility and begin to set up explosives. Jo and Emily make a run for the exit, and in doing so, they run into Brooks who quickly joins them. They escape in the nick of time as the building crumbles down from explosions.
Jo apologizes to Brooks later for not communicating with him when she discovered Emily’s location. Brooks is unfazed and states that he will be looking forward to hearing what Emily has to say since she is now in federal custody. Hey, the guy has taken a lot of grief from everyone employed by the Southold PD for no reason, so I don’t blame him for being curt just for once.
An endearing conversation takes place between Alex and Piper upon their return home. Alex, in his usual soothing tone, tells her that if Jo is hiding something from her, its’ probably because she has Piper’s best interest in mind. And when Piper expresses dismay about the abandoned house being her home, he gently – and firmly – replies, “that’s not your home. This is your home,” which draws a smile out of Piper. Let’s be honest, can anyone think of a more supportive bunch than Jo, Mia, Ed, and Alex with whom a young, lonesome outcast like Piper could surround herself? I think not!
After Mia’s birthday party comes to an end at the house, the family is terrified to find Piper in the garden with lights glowing on her arms. Apparently, Emily sent a gift package to her signed, “To Piper, from Mom” and Piper placed the disk inside the package on her wrist. Light patterns spread all over her body, including her eyes. Once the glowing ends and Piper wakes up from her trance state, she tells Jo that the disk told her who she was and that she is feeling okay. She appears to have survived the fatal exception, not withstanding the quasi-heart-attack experience the family members just went through watching her!
Last scene shows Alan checking into a remote hotel room. He is horror-struck to find a woman waiting for him inside. She is seemingly connected to the group setting the explosives in the buildings because there is a mask on the bed similar to the ones worn by the shoddy dudes from earlier. She accuses Alan of taking what did not belong to him. As he tries to explain in panic mode that he will “get it back,” she sticks a blade in his throat. With Kindred killed in the last episode, Wilkis in this one, and facilities blowing up all over the map, fall of 2019 is far from going down in history as the brightest chapter for Augur Industries.
“American Chestnut” feels like your conventional transitionary episode. The 11th-hour introduction of the killer woman and the rogue group to which she belongs present a fresh set of questions at a time when Emergence could use some. With Kindred and Wilkis gone, and Emily in custody, the show seems to temporarily lack a potent antagonist, a void that could be filled by these characters. Also introduced is Agent Brooks whose role seems uncertain for the moment other than legitimizing the existence of some federal authority in the Emergence universe. Better late than never in this particular case!
The most interesting development, for my part, was Emily’s ten-year-old self being identical to Piper. If the conversation between Jo and Emily is any indication, this will be brushed off as the manifestation of Emily’s desire to create Piper in her own image in order to offer her the childhood that she never had herself. It is not that the idea is not intrinsically creative (it is). I just cannot help but think that, if handled differently, it could turn into a dynamic plot leading to a plethora of long-term ramifications.
Last-minute thoughts:
– The way Chris and Jo were acting uptight around Agent Brooks at the precinct was over the top. Surely, Brooks could tell that they were keeping information from him, could he not?
– When Jo arrests Emily at the building and asks her to get rid of Piper’s fatal exception, Emily delivers the most sarcastic line of the hour: “Are you asking me for a favor while arresting me?”
– Next episode: First-season winter finale!
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