“Killshot: Pt. 2” aired on January 28, 2020
Written by: Michele Fazekas & Tara Butters
Directed by: Paul McGuigan
Grade: 3 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Emergence’s first season is in the books on the heels of a two-part season finale high on action and shock value, but not carrying enough substance to recover from the game of diminishing returns in which it had been engaged over the second half of the season due to lack of coherence and direction for the most part. More on that later, let’s dive into the finale first.
We pick up exactly from where “Killshot: Pt. 1” ended, with Helen chasing Ryan and Jo who shielded themselves in some room with a steel door at the compound on the island. Apparently, the rustling sound they heard as part 1 ended was that of Helen turning into nano-dust form and making her way through the water pipes in the ceiling to enter the room. By the time the dust drops down from the ceiling and rematerializes as Helen, Jo and Ryan already left the room.
A kookier scene occurs later when a single nanobot, in the form of a bug, reaches Ryan and Jo through the pipes in another room, penetrates under Jo’s skin through her palm, and travels up to her head. Agent Brooks stops its progress at her neck by pinching it with his fingers right around Jo’s carotid artery, I kid you not! He grabs a butcher’s knife and cuts it out with a swift move that required his whole arm to swing around, meaning that Jo’s artery should have probably burst asunder and left her bleeding profusely. Instead, Ryan just saved Jo and flung the nanobug across the room. Who cares where the nanobug is or if it could crawl right back at them, because it is more urgent that the camera focuses on Jo breathing a sigh of relief as she looks deep into her male savior’s eyes followed by putting her forehead against his to show her gratitude.
In the meantime, Alex arrives at the precinct with Piper (remember, Alex finally relented and agreed to take Piper to see Benny, despite Jo’s strict instructions not to do so in last week’s part 1). Chris informs them about Jo going to Plum Island and decides, out of the blues (read: contrivance), to show Piper and Alex the exabyte disk that Jo left for him to safekeep. Piper recognizes the disk, “this is me,” then suddenly asks to go to the bathroom. When she rejoins them moments later, she is accompanied by Benny who is somehow freed from the locked cell. Do not dwell on how he could get out or the randomness of Piper wanting to go the bathroom and freeing Benny in plain sight at the precinct because Chris, acting all upset, pulls his gun out and points it at Benny, partially to mitigate the outrageous nature of the sequence, and partially to get the narrative to the point that anyone watching the show saw coming miles ahead: Benny and Piper are going to Plum Island (Alex and Chris tag along for good measure) to join Jo and Ryan for the denouement featuring the fight against the evil machine.
Another massive suspension of disbelief is yet still needed when the four of them show up at the facility moments later and run into Jo and Ryan. In other words, they left Southold PD, contacted Yousef, convinced him to take them to the island, met him by the dock, traveled by boat to the island, got off and arrived at the compound, and located Jo and Ryan inside, during all of which Jo and Ryan somehow managed to evade Helen through corridors and rooms (and water pipes) in the compound. Anyhoo, they come across a well-sealed biocontainment laboratory and decide to isolate themselves in it to hide from Helen.
In the meantime, back in Southold, Chris had supposedly handed an envelope with the exabyte disk to Ed, because we see Ed arriving home and locking it away in the safety box at home.
Remember the cliché-ridden muckamuck (played by Currie Graham) from the Department of Justice whose speaking style forayed into the 1950s noir-fiction comic-book genre when he intervened in the FBI agents’ interrogation of Brooks in “Killshot: Pt. 1”? His name is Michael Denham, he is back and even more irritating than before. He arrives at Jo’s home with his men, waves a search warrant, donning a smile like a cardboard villain.
Denman wants to retrieve what “belongs to the federal government” (the exabyte disk), he claims, while otherwise making abject comments to Ed like, “You look okay for a cancer guy.” Eventually, Denham’s men find the safety box and do what is necessary to get it open, only to find a necklace inside the envelope. Denham tells his men that it’s time for to leave and it’s Ed’s time to gloat with a grin: “Eh, what a shame, Mr. Denman. Wasting all that time and taxpayer money for nothing.” Well played, Ed!
Back to Plum Island…
Jo and the others realize that Benny snuck out of the containment lab with the killshot. Jo decides to go after him and Chris follows her because… that is who Chris is! Aside from being a mensch, he is also the most loyal deputy of all times – Side note: This is about when I really began feeling nervous about Chris surviving the season finale.
When Jo catches up with Benny, he is in the mainframe room, switching the power off to lure Helen there. He convinces Jo to hide and allow him to inject Helen with the killshot. When Helen arrives, Benny tells her that Jo and the others are on the roof. Helen, still under the impression that Benny is an ally, says “let’s get it over with” and turns around to walk. Benny uses the opportunity to stick the killshot in her back. The problem is, we are only halfway through the episode and Helen cannot die, especially without Piper’s involvement in the final showdown. The killshot has zero impact (naturally), except to annoy Helen enough so that she puts her palm on Benny’s chest and makes him collapse to the floor in agony. She leaves as Benny’s liquid-blood is gushing out of his body to the floor. Jo comes out of hiding to comfort Benny in his last seconds with a profoundly soothing look into his eyes that glimmer one last time before he dies (read: shuts off, gets permanently deleted).
Next, we see Jo at the containment lab to update Alex and Ryan, except that Chris is not with her and she is speaking in a monotonous, mechanical tone. That’s right folks. We learn, out of nowhere, that AIs in Emergence can also shapeshift. That is Helen disguised as Jo talking to Ryan and Alex!
She wants them to hand over the power source, but Alex notices her bizarre disposition and warns Ryan who has the device in his pocket. Ryan pulls out his gun, but “Jo” quickly turns into a dust of nanobots and swarms the two men. Piper comes to the rescue, making the Helen-swarm leave the room with a single stare, except that Helen pickpocketed Ryan in the process and stole the power source. Amazingly, the only FBI agent to show interest in this globally consequential case also happens to be one of the most useless law-enforcement agents living in the land of primetime TV.
Helen is next seen in a room with the energy bubble, taking out the power source from her pocket. Piper enters the room to check the final box in the list of requirements for what has been telegraphed long time ago: the final showdown pitting her against the big-bad monster.
Helen activates the energy sphere, starting an upload and causing Piper to float lifelessly in the air. As she approaches Piper, Jo appears out of nowhere, snaps the wristband on Helen, and knocks her out with one of the most potent right lead-hooks ever executed by a non-boxer. It was apparently a set-up by the Piper to distract Helen, although I am not sure how they could have foreseen Helen making Piper float with the upload, nor do I believe they accounted for Helen’s arm breaking the frame of the energy sphere as she was falling down after Jo’s hook, causing the sphere grow louder and rotate wildly.
Alex, Chris, and Ryan join Piper and Jo in the room. Considering that the energy sphere is rotating frantically and about to explode “like a nuke,” according to Alex at least, they move to escape but stop quickly once they notice Piper murmuring in most humdrum tone possible (for some reason), “It won’t be enough. It will be too big. Bigger than this building. Bigger than this island. It will go all the way to our house. And farther than that.”
Piper, who had apparently switched the exabyte disk with Mia’s necklace at some unknown point, hands it to Jo, then forms an impenetrable barrier around her and the sphere like the one she formed around the car when a truck was speeding straight for her, Ed, and Mia back in “RDZ9021.” In short, she is sacrificing herself to save everyone else!
A ray of light originating from the sphere eventually shoots into the sky from the top of the building. A moment later, it’s dark and calm again, Piper and the sphere are missing, and Helen’s body is still laying on the ground. The brilliant (!) Alex tells Jo to use the disk and Helen’s body to bring Piper back. Helen is somehow going to magically transform into Piper!
As if it did not sound outrageous enough, it’s when Alex justifies his crackpot idea by saying that he saw Helen become Jo, “so why not, right?” that it begins to eerily feel like the writing room knew of how outrageous the script really is, because consider Jo’s immediate reaction to Alex and his follow-up justification:
Jo: “Are you insane?”
Alex: “Maybe. But this whole thing is kind of insane, right?”
Haha… okay!
Sure enough, Jo places the disk on Helen’s wrist. Helen opens her eyes and smiles. Jo smiles back. Nanobyte transformation turns Helen into Piper. More smiles. Hugs. Tears of joy. We’re going home, boys and girls!
Ryan, Chris, and Abby join the family celebration where Piper reminds Ed of Helen’s promise to cure him of cancer, and claims that she can now achieve that goal herself with a bit of work. Then, it’s time for some reckoning of the heart for Jo as Ryan first, then Alex, in their different ways, let her know separately that they would like to know where “she stands.”
The one with Alex gets especially sensitive when he informs her that he is moving, having accepted Francis’s job offer (made in “Applied Sciences”). As the two say their goodbyes and Alex is about to enter the car, Jo rushes to him and implores him to stay. Alex asks “Why?” even explicitly stating that he would stay if it were because she still loves him and wants another go at their marriage.
The problem, as it has always been, is that Jo shilly-shallies whenever the topic of commitment comes up. She remains silent again here, which pretty much answers Alex’s question. I love happy endings for couples as much as the person next door, but at no point in this season did Jo’s comportment signal anything toward Alex about needing him around for reasons beyond safety, occasional company, and convenience. He repeats for the umpteenth time that he cannot stay around while she is figuring out what she wants.
Back at the island, a major clean-up operation (read: making evidence disappear) is underway. Benny is carried away in a body bag while Loretta and Denham examine the mainframe room. They find the used killshot and see no signs of Helen. However, Loretta claims that Helen is partly integrated into Piper and she can verify that by pressing a button on some gadget that she has in her hand. The remote-control gadget must have a viewer either showing Piper’s room or her body signals, because they keep looking at it as Helen reminds Michael that it is where he just “executed a search warrant.” As soon as Helen presses the button, we see Piper’s eyes pop open in her bed back at Jo’s house, before the screen turns dark and the season comes to an end.
Loretta’s enthusiasm about seeing Helen functional implies that she told Ryan and Jo a fairy tale back at the garage about wanting to eliminate Helen. Wouldn’t that awkwardly mean that her plan was to get Jo and the gang to stop Helen but hope and pray at the same time that they do not destroy her in the process? And if her plan were to ultimately integrate Helen into Piper’s body somehow, how could she have possibly predicted Alex turning into a genius at the right moment and thinking of using the disk to transform Helen into Piper? That would make Loretta the most punctilious vaticinator of modern times. Assuming that Helen is inside Piper now as Loretta claims, which AI is in control anyway?
Notice that the questions above do not even venture into the high-stake area of questions such as what happened to Piper’s body, what that ray of light did in which direction, if some alien species beamed Piper and the sphere away, or how on earth is Piper the only AI with feelings (oh wait, Benny began having them too, oh dear).
I would love some payoffs to the above questions, and more, but I am not holding my breath. The increasing lack of direction and recent dependence on shock-schlock twists have turned into liabilities for Emergence in the late stages of the season after a solid start. The lead duo of Piper and Jo began as multi-angled, clever characters, only to end up as no more than the savior AI (Piper) and her protective-mother figure (Jo) whose only other principal quality is to perpetually remain romantically confused.
With all due respect to Enver Gjokaj as an actor (solid performer in 3022), I fail to see Agent Brooks’s significant contribution to the season as a character, when so much more could have been accomplished with his screentime had Kindred and Wilkis not been written off and Emily portrayed as an unstable figure. Perhaps, Ryan was introduced to make up for the alarming lack of law-enforcement presence in function of a case that should have put every federal agency and global organizations to high alert, instead of solely falling on the shoulders of the Southold PD’s chief and her one loyal deputy. Speaking of Southold, have we been introduced, in a meaningful way, to any of its residents exccept Yousef? What happened to the process of worldbuilding?
In terms of pure plot machinations, what began as a genuinely intriguing mystery has evolved into a string of narrative shifts, dying characters, and whole lot of hand-waving, before underwhelmingly settling into a garden variety of good AI vs. bad AI.
That being said, the nucleus of the show always had potential, which means that a creative writing room can still fabricate engaging storylines around the existing material, add depth to current characters, introduce new ones, and make its location alive and layered. Countless shows suffered through growing pains in their initial seasons only to turn into hits. The question is, can Emergence successfully turn that sharp corner, and more importantly, will it even get that chance (hint: see ratings)?
Last-minute thoughts:
— At the entrance of the biocontainment area there is a sign saying, “Warning: Live Virus Area.” Not that it mattered, or that anyone cared.
— Helen’s accidental hand-contact with the energy sphere’s frame as she is falling must be what kills her, I presume. As potent as Jo’s right lead-hook was, I doubt it could kill an AI on the spot, regardless of the wristband.
Until season 2, pending renewal…
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