SECOND CHANCE Notches Up Another Decent Yarn
Episode 2 “One More Notch”
So, last week, the show started off with the one thing I really hate: the whole jumping back in time after starting in a particular point in the story. I hate that. But the show pretty much redeemed itself with the rest of the episode.
This week, the show starts off with the other thing I don’t like much: a dream sequence that doesn’t really have much to do with the plot.
However, it turns right around and hands us something that actually makes a certain amount of sense, given the criticism that the lead character suddenly wants to fight crime. Jimmy (Rob Kazinsky) hears about two escaped convicts who busted out of prison during a major power outage that times out to the same time Otto’s Frankenstein experiment was going on. So Jimmy convinces Mary (Dilshad Vadsaria) that they’ve got a moral obligation do something. The escape is their fault.
Mary, to the annoyance of her brother Otto (Adhir Kalyan), agrees to use the Lookinglass resources to help track down these two convicts, who escaped with a third convict, who happened to catch a bullet in the leg and is now laid up in the hospital. So Pritchard goes to pay him a visit, using… let’s say “unconventional” means to convince the guy to spill the beans on where the other two went — meeting with a gun dealer, who ends up dead on the floor with Jimmy standing over him just as the police show up.
Yikes.
Meantime, the FBI has been asked by the Seattle police to help with the manhunt. Duval (Tim DeKay) not only has this to worry about, but he keeps seeing Jimmy in the middle of his case — at the hospital, at the gun dealer’s apartment — so he freaks a bit out when Jimmy shows up at Duval’s house and identifies himself as Duval’s half-brother James.
The rest of the episode has Duval trailing after Jimmy after they meet with the owner of a Chinese restaurant; her grandfather ran a crime syndicate and owes Sheriff Pritchard a favor. They learn that the escapees have asked for three passports, and with Jimmy’s suggestions, Duval figures out one of them has a daughter and a former relationship. But by the time he gets there, they’ve taken off with the little girl.
Mary brain blasts that the girl will have a Lookinglass tablet with her, since she’s eight years old and is in the second grade, all of whom got tablets.
So, Jimmy heads off to retrieve the girl, and he’s got no idea how long before he has to go back in the tank because Duval’s got his phone, so Mary heads off to help Jimmy in the field — to Otto’s growing consternation.
Of course, it works out in the end, with Jimmy and Mary retrieving the girl while Duval finds the escaped cons after the fact. He gets the collar, the girl goes home, and everyone’s peachy.
I like the fact that Otto is growing more impatient with the arrangement, with his suspicion that Mary could be falling for Jimmy. Otto sees the resurrected Pritchard as Lookinglass property. His only purpose is to generate white blood cells to fight Mary’s cancer. He doesn’t see Jimmy as a person, and that’s an interesting notion that should be explored with much greater depth. When is a person a person? Just as we saw in Orphan Black with the clones, there is a question of whether these “artificial persons” are even real people. Do they have rights? Are they property?
The other ticking time bomb is Duval and his suspicions of Jimmy. Will he figure out the truth? This episode, we got a bit of family history at the Chinese restaurant, where Sheriff Pritchard used to cut notches in the bar every time he caught a bad guy. The fact that “James” does the same thing gives Duval pause, and if he’s any good as an FBI agent, he should start to put the pieces together pretty quickly.
Otherwise, he just like Lois Lane standing next to Superman in glasses.
