Recap: Girl Time on 12 MONKEYS

Season 2, Episode 5: “Bodies of Water”
Directed by Mairzee Almas
Written by Kristen Reidel

Great episode!

In this episode we separate the girls and the guys and leave them that way for a while. The result is that the girls bond and take out a bad guy or two, while the men try to kill each other. I guess that’s just their way of bonding.

We open with creepy Olivia (Alisen Down) crumbling leaves and taking a trip to the red forest and the house that is there and not there. She is not happy with the Witness because things happened that were not foretold and because this cycle was supposed to be stable. The Witness wants her to find Cassandra (Amanda Schull) and prepare her-she suggests killing her and the Witness says NO, emphatically. The Witness’s communication is through the writing on the wall. Pallid man (Tom Noonan) observes this and taunts her. He likes chaos better.

Our time traveling group decides that they need more information on the primaries so that they can prevent them from being assassinated and time being disrupted further. They know that Jennifer (Emily Hampshire) might know, because the primary from 1944 knew about her. Old Jennifer claims not to know any details. She says the voices diminish as you get older. She must be going by her own experiences. What other old primaries has she met? She says they need to talk to young Jennifer. Cole (Aaron Stanford) offers to go back in time, but Jennifer says she remembers Cassie doing it.

Deacon (Todd Stashwick) sent five guys out on a supply run and only one comes back. They ran into an old foe of Deacon’s, the Foreman. Deacon correctly deduces that the survivor, not one of his best fighters, has made a bargain with the old enemy and that’s why he survived. Deacon shoots him right between the eyes for being a traitor. This is hypocritical of him. Deacon turns his coat every time the wind changes. I also think he thinks he’s on a different show. He’d fit right in on The Walking Dead.

Cassie gently reprimands him for it. Cole and Ramse (Kirk Acevedoe) are far more vocal about it. They take it to Jones (Barbara Sukowa), but she won’t do anything about it.

Cassie reluctantly goes back in time. It’s pretty funny when both Cole and Deacon stand there saying goodbyes at her until Jones makes them get out of her way.

Jennifer is doing well. She has gotten treatment and is taking meds. She is enjoying life and has bought herself a pet, a small turtle that I assume becomes the large turtle she has in 2044. She even has friends, which just makes me want to squee. She hangs around the old Emerson hotel a lot, hoping that Cole will come back. She is thrilled to hear that the occupant of room 607 is in, but disappointed to see that it’s Cassie. One of her friends is shocked to see that it’s Cassie. Cassie realizes she is one of the monkeys, and a fight ensues. Cassie throws her over a balcony, but she survives. Poor Jennifer. She was so proud to have friends. I assume the other girl was a real friend. I don’t think we see her again.

Even though Jennifer is doing well she has one hallucination she can’t shake. A woman, head hanging and hair streaming down. Cassie realizes that Jennifer is no help when she’s sane, so she plans to take her off her meds. She also realizes that won’t be enough, so she wants to trigger her mania. Jennifer suggests going back to her old family summer house. The girls work through some trauma Jennifer had about her mother trying to drown her. The hallucination is her mom. Cassie says her mother was wrong about her and Cassie was, too. Jennifer identifies another primary, Kyle Slade (David Dastmalchian), New York City, 1975. The pale man catches them at the house.

Deacon, Ramse, and Cole drive off to look at an anomaly together, at Deacon’s insistence. They talk a bit in the Jeep, mostly about who’s more guilty. They arrive at an old factory. The Foreman (David Dantes) is there, looking like a character out of Mad Max, with big guys wearing Hannibal Lecter masks. Deacon’s gun won’t fire. When he catches on, he is impressed that they set him up. It’s not even a grudging respect, he’s just thrilled that they learned what he was trying to teach him. Cole says, “It’s not like we were ever going to work things out over a drink.” They don’t even look behind them as the Foreman’s goons start beating on Deacon.

The girls are tied up in the old mansion. Olivia wants to take Cassie to see the Witness so she pours red liquid down her throat and puts her in a bath. Cassie sees the forest, and the house, and a figure who changes. At one point he wears a plague mask. The figure turns into Aaron (Noah Bean).

Jennifer gets taken to another room by her traitorous friend. She takes her out with a head butt. Jennifer looks like someone really should look if they use that attack but never do in the movies or TV. She looks like it hurt! She’s a little disoriented, and her head is bleeding. She distracts Olivia and rescues Cassandra from the bath. While they are escaping, Jennifer confronts the woman in a pool room, a very old claustrophobic empty pool like they have at the Biltmore estate. Olivia tries to be motherly towards Jennifer, but gets stabbed anyway. She falls into the empty pool. Jennifer and Cassandra do not check to see if she is dead. She isn’t moving but she is still alive.

Cole and Ramse confess to Jones immediately what they have done to Deacon. While they are discussing it, we hear footsteps. I know immediately that it has to be Deacon. He enters the room looking like he’d been run over by a steamroller. He has the Foreman’s trophies that he got from his victims, one of them Deacon’s brother. He tosses the belt of trophies to Ramse. He makes sure that the rank and file don’t know what Cole and Ramse tried to do, which protects his own reputation as much as it does theirs. Before he leaves the room, he tells Cole to pick up some whiskey next time he goes to the past so they can have that drink.

I LOVE this scene. I don’t like Deacon. He’s a bully and probably a psychopath, although it’s hard to tell in that world. He has a bad effect on people around him. But having him pop back up is like throwing someone to the sharks and having them come back not only with the shark’s teeth in a necklace but having made them into a wetsuit. I wouldn’t say he was more badass than Cole and Ramse, but he was definitely more cool. It shows why Deacon is important despite his drawbacks. He also doesn’t bear a grudge. After all, he deserved it.

The Tall Man/Pallid Man takes advantage of Olivia’s situation to ask the Witness to put him in charge of this cycle. The Witness says yes.

Cassie meets Cole in a bar in 2016. She gives him the year and name of the next primary to be targeted. She warns him that Jennifer says that this one is dangerous, not like her or Tommy. She tells him that she’s going to stay there to take care of Jennifer for a while, but she doesn’t tell him that Aaron is the Witness. Cole orders a bottle of whiskey to take back to the future.

Jennifer is back to full primary, sketching visions furiously.

There were a lot of great things about this episode. Who would have thought that it would take Jennifer to bring Cassie back to herself? Maybe it’s because Jennifer is a problem that can’t be solved with violence. Certainly, Cassie felt empathy towards her. Cassie was thinking for once, working to solve the problem of how to get the information from Jennifer. She also seemed to have overcome her desire to get back to the compound in 2044 as soon as she could so she could help Jennifer. I liked seeing the girls getting to know each other. I have a lot more respect for Jennifer. I’ve always liked her, but it takes real courage to sacrifice your sanity to save the world.

Jennifer may have once again changed the past, not by seeing the future but by ‘remembering’ the past in a certain way. Once she said Cassie was the one who came to the past, it had to be Cassie. As Cassie said, maybe she was just trying to make friends.Young Jennifer in 2016 saw a map of the Witness’s predictions. Her expiration date was Sept. 23, 2044. That’s soon in their timeline.

Ramse and Cole setting Deacon up was great. I don’t blame them at all. They found a solution for an intractable problem. Turns out Deacon was invincible as well as intractable. I am hoping that Deacon asking for a drink together means that he decided that there are other means of diplomacy than violence. Or, it could just be a sign of respect for Cole and Ramse.

Is Aaron the Witness? It appeared so, and Cassie might believe it. But, it’s possible the Witness can appear to be anyone. It’s another reason Cassie might have decided to stay behind. It might be that she is being influenced to stay by her “preparation”. The Witness trying to protect Cassie might be evidence that it really is Aaron.

I don’t know if we will see Olivia again. It would have been so easy for Pallid Man to have finished her off. She may come back, committing evil from a wheelchair. It’s interesting that she was not told that this was going to be the outcome by the Witness. It could be that it was something that was not foreseen, since Cassie is a time traveler and may be able to change the timeline, and Jennifer from the future may have been influencing it as well. Or it could be that the Witness was getting tired of her doubts and decided to let them take her out of the equation.

There must be something symbolic about Jennifer’s mother trying to drown her in the bath, and Cassie being taken on the magical mystery tour in a tub (very creepy) and Olivia falling into the empty pool.

With four messengers left and time being destroyed by only one more primary being paradoxed, according to Jennifer, it doesn’t seem like that would be enough to keep the plot going for very long. Something else has to be in the wind.

I’m hoping Cassie stays more herself now.

In the next episode, Cole and Ramse travel to New York to save Kyle Slade, a villain’s name if ever I’ve heard one.

 

12 Monkeys airs on Syfy Mondays at 9pm/8c.