“Where You Belong” aired on December 10, 2019
Written by: Kendra Chanae Chapman
Directed by: Paul McGuigan
Grade: 4,5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Raising the stakes for the winter-break or in season finales has been a long-time modus operandi of paranormal shows since time immemorial. Emergence joins the convoy with “Where You Belong” – and does so with success I should add – via the promise of extra layers added to its core mystery and a startling revelation about one of its main characters.
It’s a welcome turn of events considering that a charismatic villain (and actor) was written off and the ‘new villain’ replacing him was pacified, all within a span of two episodes. I mentioned in my review of “American Chestnut” that the show suddenly found itself in need of a potent antagonist. “Where You Belong” adequately addresses that issue and pushes the envelope further by tagging a well-liked character to the so-called villain’s side. I am not using the term ‘so-called’ lightly here, because I am not convinced that Benny is a bad guy, so to speak, despite emerging at the 11th hour as an A.I. collaborating with the merciless Helen (Rowena King).
For that matter, I am not entirely sure Helen is acting in bad faith herself. Could they simply be motivated by self-preservation? Most likely. Could they, from their perspective, be kidnapping Piper in the name of saving her? Probably. Are these acts wrong or malicious? It depends on which side of the fence you stand. This is why “Where You Belong” works for the most part. It infuses a fresh set of intrigues into the show’s overall arc without foraying into the land of the absurd, and piques the viewers’ curiosity for the upcoming batch of episodes in January.
The outing picks things up in the hotel room where Helen brutally executed Alan to close out the previous one. I have never read an interview or an article centering on the accomplished director Paul McGuigan who also helms this episode, but having seen several of his past works, I am beginning to wonder if he has a mirror fetish. That being said, McGuigan is on top of his game throughout this episode. He also directed “Pilot” which ended, if you remember, with the terrific scene of Piper taking the chip out of her neck while looking into the mirror (or, into the camera). This time, we see Helen looking at herself in the mirror (or, into the camera) and casually applying fresh lipstick as she tells the person on the other end of the phone that she is heading to Long Island next. Another mirror-camera scene follows a few minutes later, this time with Jo and Piper, during which Piper comes clean about taking the chip out of her neck because, she adds, it was prompting her to leave the house and she did not want to.
Squeezed between these mirror scenes are two dialogues taking place at the house in the aftermath of Piper’s luminous upgrade at the backyard in “American Chestnu.” Both scenes are geared to ensure that you become an ardent Mia fan, if you were not already one. In the first dialogue, she essentially reassures Piper, in the most lovely and sisterly way possible, and without saying the exact words, that she will always stand by her side.
The second one begins with Abby, Alex, Ed, and Jo talking inside the house, still recovering (except for Jo) from the shock of seeing Piper’s body glow earlier and learning that she is not human. Under pressure from the questions flowing her way, Jo comes clean about some of Piper’s secrets such as her physical make-up, the exabyte disk, and the fatal exception. This is when Mia walks in and decides to be the only adult in the room: “I can see you all whispering in here. Piper and I talked. Nothing is different. So you guys have to get your heads straight starting now. Got it?” Dear Mia, you rule!
These scenes constitute probably the best starting four minutes among all episodes of Emergence so far.
Chris, the most mentioned deputy in the Christmas-wish list of all sheriffs in the land, finds anecdotal references on Reddit about a cyber-terrorist group called Splinter whose description fit the shady dudes encountered by Jo and Emily in “American Chestnut.” Benny brushes it aside, saying that they sound like “some sort of an urban legend” to him (an off-hand remark at the time, significant in retrospect).
Ed has a meeting with someone recommended to him by his doctor about some type of gene-therapy trial to help him fight cancer. There is one problem. That ‘someone’ is Helen, the then-unnamed assassin of Alan! They meet at the hospital and, boy, does her pitch to Ed sound good! His chances of outcome after five years increase to 96% compared to 48% with chemotherapy and there are no side effects. It’s basically a cure that sounds too good to be true, as Ed rightfully suspects. In return, Helen wants Piper handed over to ‘them,’ a deal to which she refers as “a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
We only learn of her offer after Ed arrives home later, visibly flustered, and informs Jo and Alex of the meeting. It’s a neat trick by the writers to keep viewers in suspense about Ed’s response to the “arrangement” through a commercial break, and some.
The same method is utilized once more when Alex reaches out later to Helen to meet, only for viewers to realize later that he was merely executing a scheme set up by Jo to “hook, line, and sink” Helen – although, I must admit to being far less fooled by this false trail than the previous one. We are meant to consider the possibility that Alex could be naïve or protective of Mia, thus weighing the option to turn Piper over to Helen against everyone’s wishes. The problem here is that this behavior is too out of character for Alex to be plausible. Furthermore, the way he phones Helen, moving anxiously into an isolated room while looking behind him, appears too dramatic to throw the viewers off in any meaningful way. It makes even less sense once it is indeed confirmed that he was collaborating with Jo and Ed. Why would they not be present when one of the most crucial steps of their plan, Alex calling Helen to set up a meeting, is being put into action?
The more interesting part of the sequence is what Helen says to Alex and how she says it, when they do eventually meet. It’s hard to unequivocally conclude that she intends to harm Piper. In fact, she appears rather protective of the girl and wants her safe “where she belongs.” “With us,” she adds, where she is “surrounded by people more equipped to handle her specific needs.” According to her, Piper “is one of a kind and needs to be treated as such.”
She also denies any connection to Augur Industries and the eldritch neighborhood in which Piper was kept. The cliffhanger at the end of the episode reinforces the ambiguity about Helen and her peers being the “bad guys.” As I noted above, I have yet to shove Helen and Benny into the ‘enemy’ category and I appreciate that writer Kendra Chanae Chapman seems to have consciously foregrounded that uncertainty – side note: if she is reading this by any chance and laughing at how far off my assumption is, please don’t tell me!!
Agent Brooks pays an unexpected visit to Benny, leading to an unpleasant conversation between the two. Brooks read Benny’s article about Jo adopting a little girl and wants to know more. With alarm bells ringing in his head, Benny curtly refuses to indulge him. It’s the first time since his introduction in “American Chestnut” that Agent Brooks engages in irksome behavior.
Later, he visits Emily at the hospital and it does not take long before she spills out to him some juicy details about Piper. Next, Jo is called into his office at the FBI, which brings us to the outing’s most intriguing scene. Jo brings Brooks up to date on just about everything, except that Piper is an AI. She even lets him in on her plans to capture Helen via the scheme she concocted with Alex earlier, and invites Brooks to join them, under the condition that once Helen is captured, Brooks and the FBI will leave Piper alone.
The scene also showcases our chief’s high-IQ and shrewd preparation skills in terms of doing her homework before walking into a possibly hostile milieu adroitly represented by the FBI building. McGuigan’s camera work puts the emphasis on how intimidating everything at the lobby appears to her, how uncomfortable she is with the idea of giving up her gun at the checkpoint and not being in control, unlike at the Southold PD. By the time she arrives to the isolated room and notices Brooks waiting for her with a recorder in his hand, there is no doubt left as to who holds the home-court advantage. Hint: It ain’t Jo.
Relying on his belief that he has Jo backed against the wall thanks to the information obtained from Emily earlier, Brooks takes a menacing tone from the outset. When Jo hesitates to answer, he reminds her that she could possibly face five years in jail for lying to a federal officer. Yet, by the end of this fascinating tête-à-tête, Jo somehow finds a way to gain the upper hand over Brooks and bend him to her will because – kids, repeat after me – she has meticulously done her homework. Agent Brooks and the FBI are in dire need of results and Jo is the one with the necessary information to achieve them. Brooks has little choice left but to join Jo’s team for the evening. Who am I kidding? Of course, he is in! He could not even believe that Splinter got in touch with Jo, let alone dream of capturing one of them, after they eluded him and the FBI for 15 years.
In yet another another touching dialogue between Ed and Piper at the house, the latter wonders if she can find a way to help Ed as she lays her head on his shoulder. “I’ll start thinking right away,” she adds, to which he replies with a smile, “okay.” I recommend having some Kleenex nearby, even if it’s your second time watching this scene, or third, or fourth.
Jo, Brooks, and Chris watch Alex from afar as he drives to the dock on a rainy evening to meet Helen. McGuigan brings in a neat set of tricks with the camera splits to move things along at a swift pace. For reasons too long to list here, the meeting falls apart and Helen drives away in a hurry. Our protagonists pursue her and eventually corner her car on a bridge, but Helen jumps off the bridge on foot and escapes! At first, I questioned why none of them considered shooting in the leg to stop her run, but then I reconsidered when I put myself in their place. Who would believe that a human being (wink) would consider jumping off that bridge on a night like that and expect to survive? It’s likely that they were momentarily thrown off by her crazy endeavor and therefore could not react with alacrity. In any case, Jo immediately calls home and instructs Benny to take Mia, Ed, and Piper to the precinct!
Once at the station, Jo is told that Benny dropped Mia and Ed and took off with Piper, claiming that Jo instructed him to bring Piper to her. It’s a lie of course, Jo did no such thing. The shocking betrayal by Benny begins to dawn on Chief Evans in yet another well-directed sequence (I am not exaggerating, McGuigan should be nominated for some kind of award for this episode, but I am certain it will go unnoticed by the so-called experts) during which the score and the panning camera shots amplify the steadily increasing malaise felt by everyone as they learn that Benny’s phone is disconnected and that he checked out of the hotel hours ago. He basically fooled everyone for weeks and kidnapped Piper.
We are not yet done with twists though. He drives Piper to an abandoned gas station where he said that they would meet Jo, except that, much to Piper’s dismay, they meet Helen instead. Piper is genuinely alarmed when Benny hastily slaps a wristband on her, designed to prevent her from using her powers.
In a stunning closing scene, Helen and Benny attempt to reassure Piper that she is not in danger and that she is better off with them because Jo, although “she has been very very good” to Piper, “would never understand” her. Benny extends his hand to Piper as both he and Helen start glowing with light patterns coursing through their bodies before the curtain closes on the winter finale.
Last-minute thoughts:
– Does this mean that AIs are unable to recognize each other since Piper showed no awareness of Benny’s true nature until now, or was it simply because Piper has not yet mastered her skills? She did, after all, successfully resist Emily’s virtual library and survive the fatal exception, did she not?
– Splinter is not exactly a beacon of smart planning. Helen’s attempt to convince Ed to give up Piper was not exactly brilliant to begin with, and then, her agreeing to meet Alex later for the Piper exchange by the docks and not account for the possibility of police presence is even more confounding. Along the same lines, didn’t Benny already have many chances to kidnap Piper anyway, if that were his (or Splinter’s) objective all along?
– I love how Alex approaches Jo in the living room as if he has something to say, only to end up listening as she engages in a monologue while he quietly alternates between half-smiles and raised eyebrows, until he leaves without uttering a word.
– I also love how Abby cannot hold back her glaring smile when Ed brings up the idea of clinical trials. She smiles, smiles, and smiles more, as he keeps talking. It was so contagious that I found myself smiling throughout that scene.
– I wondered early in the episode, when Benny first appeared at the precinct, why his head was not bandaged or even swollen after the wrench blow by Alan in “American Chestnut.” Now, it makes sense. Most humans would have probably suffered a nasty head trauma, needed stitches, or even possibly go into a coma following that full-force strike to the back of the cranial unit.
– The line and delivery of the hour: “I am a master at espionaaaage.” Signed: Alex.
Until the next episode…
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