CONTINUUM’s Return is Wibbly-Wobbly

Episode 2.01 “Second Chances”

[photos: Syfy]

Well, after a bang-up first season, I had my hopes up. But this first season two episode felt really disjointed and random at times, even though it moves the story forward. Not in a way that’s distracting, so much, but in a way that feels like the show got packed too tightly.

Following the events of the bombing that took out Kagame and leveled a city block (or thereabouts), Kira’s gone underground and is now working on her own. Her vigilante antics are both a blessing and a curse for Carlos and Inspector Dillon. But it’s fun to see three Libr8 thugs get thrashed by an invisible woman.

Alec has gone “underground” as well, moving out of the house on the farm and looking for a real day job in the city. His experiences have shaken him up quite a bit, especially after he read the message to himself. More on that in a bit.

The Libr8 folks are busy, too. Sonia takes over in the aftermath of Kagame’s death. And while it’s implied she killed Travis in the season finale, it turns out she didn’t. Yet. But she gets her shots in this time, leaving him for dead in the hospital linen closet. Only he doesn’t stay dead for long, reviving on the operating table after they’ve called TOD. So that super-soldier serum finally kicked in…

Main spine of the episode deals with Kiera coming back in from the cold to help Carlos solve the out-in-the-open assassination of the Mayor just as she’s about to give a press conference about the bombing. All the signs point to Libr8, but it’s too obvious? So obvious it’s not obvious? Kiera gets all the data from all the surveillance cameras from all over, not just the ones pointing at the mayor, and sneaking it to Alec — pretending to be his mother? using his mother’s visit as cover? — she gets him back on board Team Cameron because he’s bored.

And his message to himself is still the 800-pound gorilla in the room.

Kiera’s examination of the crime scene is a nice visual FX set, and of course she figures out where the shot originated. Thus making Agent Gardner more suspicious of her after he saw her disappear into her cloaking device after the explosion. I like that she just tells him the truth knowing it’s too wild to be believable. Gardner is going to be a headache this season. I’ve yet to decide if he’s going to be an unnecessary complication in the story, of if he’s going to actually contribute something that moves the plot forward. So far, he’s the former.

And Carlos’ comment about using a Bat-Signal to contact Kiera was perfectly timed in the episode, after just enough hints at the similarity between Agent Cameron’s new status as a vigilante and her relationship with the police department. And of course, we get the reveal of the Libr8 double-blind, showing that they really were behind the assassination on behalf of Carlos’ union buddy, Jim Martin, who’s now able to run for mayor in the special election.

Kiera’s relationship with Kellog could be one of those that go either way, too. Last season, it looked as if we were getting a love/friend/partner triangle between Kiera, Carlos and Kellog. But from the look of promos for future episodes, it seems as if it’s going to be more Kiera-Kellog-Alec in a way that sees Alec’s loyalties being tested.

Personally, I think Kellog is going to end up playing into Kiera’s uncertainty about maintaining the timeline. We’ve already seen that changes can be made, when Kellog’s grandmother was killed and he stayed corporeal. So the timeline’s already been altered, but to what extent? And you can bet this will play into the path Alec has to choose after getting the message from himself.

That message? Old Alec wants Young Alec to prevent that particular 2077 from happening. Old Alec realizes in his last days, that he was wrong. What does that mean for Alec’s relationship with Kiera? Now he’s got to decide whether or not to tell her what’s in that data dump that Old Alec put into her CRM, making her have nightmares and wake up screaming in the dead of night. Kiera giving Alec the transmooker piece of the time travel device will certainly have an impact, but which way will it push Alec?

Like I said, this episode felt disjointed, like the writers had too many plates to start spinning for the season. Maybe it should have been two hours? It just didn’t flow as well as episodes from the first season. But it’s early yet. We’ll see how it progresses.

[Official Show Web Site on Syfy]     [Previous recap: “End Time”]