“No Outlet” – aired on October 15, 2019
Written by: Jerome Schwartz
Directed by: Alex Pillai
Grade: 3 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Emergence is now four episodes old and with each hour, viewers have seemed more and more on the edge as to whether Piper, the show’s central character, is an innocent girl caught up in circumstances beyond her control, or an AI designed to serve the fiefdoms of powerful people like Richard Kindred, or an entity with a truly sinister side that is waiting for the right time to burst out in the open. At this point, the ambiguity surrounding Piper is without a doubt the show’s strongest asset. Showrunners Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters have strung together a remarkable progress of events that create ambivalence in the viewer with regard to Piper’s nature and “No Outlet” is no exception to that angle as the ten-year-old’s moments of questionable behavior multiply.
Consider the following events, for instance:
– Piper uses her power to hurt Lily, the Child and Family Services (CFS) representative, and appears to be pleased by the result in the aftermath.
– Not only do Benny and Jo find out through a clip that Piper is responsible for an incident in some phantom neighborhood that seemingly hurt three people, but the clip also establishes Piper’s clear intent to do so.
– It is hard to argue that Piper is not aware of her synthetic constitution after watching her take the chip out of her neck back in “Pilot” and flush it down the sink. Furthermore, she does her best to hide that fact from Jo and others.
– She fakes sleeping (not that she ever sleeps) in this episode when Jo comes to check on her toward the end. As soon as Jo leaves the room, Piper opens her eyes and her programming kicks into action.
Yes, Piper is hiding a lot, and Alexa Swinton’s apt performance enhances the dubiety of her constitution by smiling and talking sweetly one moment, then having her tone and stare turn icy the next.
Having noted the above, “No Outlet” is not perfect. It stumbles quite a few times in its execution via discrepancies in editing, character portrayal, and pacing. For example, let’s focus for a moment on the character of Emily who first made her appearance in “2 MG CU BID” as Kindred’s assistant.
The episode begins with Jo and Benny entering Emily’s place to find her in panic mode, screaming and rushing to leave after discovering a glitch in the OS “11 minutes ago,” and concluding that Kindred “knows.” What she means by that remains unclear. We learn later from Kindred himself that he has yet to figure out who broke into his facility the night before (reminder: it was Benny and Jo, with Emily’s help), which desperately begs the following question: were we not led to believe that Emily was under strict surveillance? According to Emily herself, “they” were “watching” when Jo and Benny met her on the street in “2 MG CU BID.” I touched on this discrepancy in my last review, but it became even more blatant this episode. It seems that somehow, the consummate professionals of Augur Industries who can control machines from afar, assassinate people, and keep anyone they desire under surveillance for however long they wish with superior technology and efficacy, have strangely decided to cease their surveillance of Emily for a whole day (and night if you count the warehouse sequence from last week) during which Benny and Jo stop by her place and she visits Jo in the precinct. Alrighty then!
I digressed, so let me get back to Jo and Benny’s visit to Emily in the beginning of the episode and tackle the issue of her characterization. While she is having a fit and rushing to leave, Jo desperately asks her help in figuring out who Piper is. This results in the panic-stricken Emily suddenly turning quiet, sitting down, and having a composed, tranquil conversation. She first claims to know very little about Emily because she just worked “on a tiny piece of her code.” She states with conviction that she doesn’t know “how it all works.” Yet, she knows that Piper is “synthetic everything” and (she knew in the last episode that a disk would save her). She even informs them that Piper is not even self-aware and cannot be told of her AI nature because doing so would create a “fatal exception error” and destroy her program.
Never mind that for someone who claims to know very little about Piper, she turns out to be a fountain of knowledge and that her sharp behavioral shifts are distracting. Here is a question: why exactly can Piper not be told of her nature? No answer is provided, other than Emily flatly stating that doing so would destroy Piper’s program. Once she is done educating Benny and Jo, the even-keeled Emily of the last couple of minutes vanishes and the panic-mode Emily reappears, as she goes back into screaming mode, telling them that she does not have all the answers and pushing them out of her way to walk away.
The unbalanced portrayal of Emily continues later in the precinct as she threatens, using a cool and calculated tone, to crash the Southold PD’s database unless Jo returns her stolen hard drive. Then, with great celerity, she shifts from cool to desperate mode, claiming that the hard drive was the only leverage she had to remain alive because she stole it from Kindred. She takes another 180-degree turn in mood, again in the blink of an eye, when Jo offers to keep her safe in no more than two sentences. A calm “okay” is her reply. In my opinion, Maria Dizzia is doing her best with the script that she is handed, one that does not leave her much wiggling room in portraying such an unevenly written character. Her last scene with Chris (more on that later) is proof of what she can do when given the opportunity to convey a meaningful set of emotions across the screen.
After leaving her apartment, Benny (proudly) tells Jo that he stole Emily’s hard drive during the visit. He gets help from an old code-breaker-wizard friend of his named April. Nice to see Ashlie Atkinson put her diverse talent on TV screens this week, nailing the role of April in Emergence while simultaneously excelling as Janice in Mr. Robot (USA Network), a diabolical character with a far different register than April.
Lily Salgado (Nikki Massoud) from CFS arrives at Jo’s house to meet her and Piper. She offers to “start the process, open a case, and make things official,” in order for Jo to adopt Piper, while I am deducing that being the chief of police must carry its perks since Piper has now been living with Jo for a few days before even the process of adoption apparently saw the light of day.
During Lily’s visit, Kindred phones Jo to arrange a meeting that leads to nowhere and leaves Jo frustrated. He does offer to take Piper off her hands, feigning concern for Jo because Piper is dangerous, according to him. Jo rejects the offer as expected.
Next, Jo has her all-reliable deputy Chris arrange a secure place for Emily to stay. There is a terrific eye-contact moment here between Jo and Chris that made me chuckle loudly, I admit, when Emily makes certain demands and Chris claims to know the “perfect place” for her.
That “perfect place” is Gaunts Brook Inn where Chris’s dad used to take him fishing on weekends. Much to Emily’s dismay, it is located in the middle of nowhere with no internet and cell-phone service. Next morning, Chris catches her trying to set up a modem, resulting in a confrontation that eventually leads a to an honest dialogue between the two during which Chris finds a way to connect with Emily – something to do with him and Lego pieces when he was younger – to the point where he actually manages to get Emily to go fishing with him. It’s probably the most heartfelt scene of the hour (even more so than the turtle scene to come later) and works as a bone fide character-growth moment for each. We would all benefit from having a mensch like Chris in our lives, a great listener who radiates positive energy, and Emily is no exception to that good vibe. She shares some of her inner struggles with him and Chris even succeeds in getting her to laugh, a first for Emily in the show, if memory serves.
Things are on much shakier grounds in Jo’s house as Piper gets nervous during the interview with Lily and uses her powers to short-circuit Lily’s cell phone, resulting in burning the woman’s hand. Even more concerning is the grin upon her face as she watches Lily run to the bathroom. It’s accepted as an accident by everyone except Jo who knows better. When confronted by her, Piper admits to causing it and apologizes but their conversation gets interrupted due to Alex and Mia arriving at the house.
Alex finally figured out the code from the air-band radio collected from Yousef back in “Camera Wheelbarrow Tiger Pillow.” They are coordinates to a spot called the Military Grid Reference System located on an empty land about an hour away from Southold. Jo and Benny drive to the location where they discover a long runway leading to an abandoned neighborhood. Quite a spooky place indeed – there is even a turned-over bike in the middle of the driveway, reminiscent of 80s scary movies – but my question is, how in the world did such a gargantuesque piece of land manage to remain unknown to, or unquestioned by, authorities in tiny Long Island? It’s one of those moments where you tell yourself, I presume, shut up and roll with it!
Jo believes that Piper used to live there – or was held hostage, depending on one’s perspective. Our two protagonists enter one of the houses to investigate further, at which moment April calls Benny to inform him that she is sending him a file from Emily’s drive that she unlocked, urging him to look at a clip at once, thus bringing us to the biggest revelation of the outing. It shows an unhappy Piper having a birthday celebration at a table, surrounded by three adults. She wants to leave and gets progressively angrier as they keep refusing. A man is heard saying, “Can we get a reset please?” and a second later Piper uses her powers to knock the table down as the clip goes dark and screams are heard. Then, lo and behold ladies and gentlemen, in the greatest coincidence in the land of all coincidences, the house in the clip appears to be the one Jo and Benny randomly picked to enter out of dozens, because shortly after watching the clip, they walk into a messy room filled with broken furniture and appliances, and a large hole blown open on the wall.
Benny urges her to let Piper go, stating that she is dangerous. “She is a machine. A lovely, amazing, manipulative machine that can simulate a human, but very much not human,” Benny says, “I fear for you. I fear for your family as well.” Owain Yeoman does a great job of selling Benny’s sense of urgency and frankly, I found myself cheering for him as he tried to pound some sense into Jo who is utterly conflicted, but not convinced enough to agree with him.
Later, Jo picks Piper up from Alex’s house (and only Piper, leaving an unhappy Mia behind with Alex) and attempts to talk to her during the drive home. However, she has to pick her words carefully because, you see, Piper cannot be told that she is not fully human. Remember that plot device introduced earlier by Emily, something about a “fatal exception error”? I would really like to hear a more substantial explanation than “it would destroy her”– and soon please – before I can drop the plot-device tag on that one.
Their ride literally comes to a screeching halt when Piper spots a turtle on the road and yells at Jo to stop. She gets out and carries the turtle off the road, saving its life. It is meant to be a moment of realization for Jo that Piper cannot after all be a machine and that she has feelings, but I am not sure how well the scene hits the intended target. We spent two full episodes watching Jo become increasingly filled with doubts to the point of developing paranoia about Piper (she has repeatedly and anxiously been staring at her, watching her through the cameras installed in the house, etc.). Having Jo suddenly behave as if all her fears disappeared thanks to Piper saving a turtle is not very convincing. The rapid shift in Jo’s disposition is conspicuously on display during her final talk with Lily and as she watches Piper sleep (or so Jo thinks) in bed, sporting a lovely smile. Gone is the internal agony that Jo manifested for almost two episodes. If I didn’t know better, I would think that the ensuing scene mocks that imbalance with Piper opening her eyes as soon as Jo leaves and staring at the ceiling while circuits inside her forearm light up for an update, or something.
The closing scene begins with April handing back Emily’s hard drive to Benny in the car. She is walking away from the job and advises Benny to do the same because it “feels wrong.” Seconds later, some gunman abruptly walks up to the car and shoots at them. Benny quickly backs the car up to the street as April gets shot and a pick-up truck slams into them. The camera zooms away from the car with smoke coming out as “No Outlet” ends in an emblematic cliffhanger, although I can speculate with a large margin of safety that Benny will survive. I cannot, however, do so for April.
Last-minute thoughts:
– As Chris and Emily leave the room at the Inn to go fishing, Emily’s land-line phone rings. Who was calling and why? This is when I curse the network for delaying the airing of the next episode by a week.
– Jo’s backstory is yet to be explored in detail. The topic of her mother comes up twice, once during Lily’s discussion with Ed, and again during the one with Jo, but both exchanges only tease bits and pieces of what happened. There is a lot more to come on that front, I reckon.
– Piper makes a forgettable attempt to run away from the house before Mia finds her three blocks further. I guess it is meant to foreground Piper’s qualms about staying in Jo’s house, probably fearing that her presence will hurt them in one way or another, but it is so brief that it comes across rather as a filler scene than anything else.
– During the ride home in the car, there is a well-directed POV shot of Piper staring into Jo’s eyes through the reflection on the front-view mirror as she asks Jo if she is afraid of her. If you need a teenage actor to deliver chilling lines in your upcoming film, look no further than Alexa Swinton.
– Nit-picking time: Jo breaks the lock of the fence gate at the site and tells Benny to wait for her by the car as she walks in. The editing is questionable here as Jo reappears no more than five seconds later on an upper-level ground talking down to Benny from atop large rocks, a spot that she could not have possibly reached in that amount of time.
– The verdict is in. Alex is an angel disguised as an ex-husband. Not only is he constantly available for Jo, but also finds time to help her with anything to do from supervising the kids to assisting her investigation, not to mention being supportive of her in front of others even when she makes no sense and offers no explanations – see the initial conversation when she arrives at his place to pick Mia up for one example out of many.
Until the next episode…
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