CONTINUUM Cuts to the Chase

Episode 2.06 “Second Truth”

[photos: Syfy]

Yes. That just happened.

After several chances to question just what could happen if Kiera starts to involve herself too much in the past, and after last week’s psychological “breakthrough” where Kiera basically lets go of the obsession with getting back to a family that may never exist now that she’s in her own past, we now get Kiera Cameron living in the present using knowledge of the future. And this one is a game-changer on several fronts.

Kiera finds herself working with Carlos on a serial killer case — Ouroboros, a killer who cut the eyelids off his victims so they could see every bit of the torture that followed. Only the case as Kiera knows it has thirty-eight victims, all child molesters. Whereas Carlos’ case only has eight so far. Meaning Kiera’s dropped down right in the middle of history in the making.

Victor Webster finally gets to cut loose a little bit and vent Carlos’ obvious frustration, which has been steadily growing as Kiera keeps acting strangely, asking questions about the case that make no sense to him. But she’s got inside knowledge. And telling the coroner things to look for, knowing details that she shouldn’t really know… all leads to Carlos finally — finally — confronting her about how she knows what she knows. Especially with this case. He knows there’s no way she could know what she knows about this case, and has come to the conclusion that he really can’t trust her. At all.

It’s a good progression for Carlos. He’s finally fed up with the whole “not knowing” aspect of his partnership with Kiera, and Kiera is getting increasingly frustrated by having to lie to Carlos.

The most interesting aspect of this episode is not that we finally get to see the mysterious Mr. Escher, who seems to have picked up former Inspector Dillon as his go-to guy, and it’s not really the lower tier plot of Kellog trying to get in at the ground level on some breakthrough technology. Even though those are significant in the overall aspect of things — and the Kellog storyline plays at least a tangential part in Kiera’s, because we’ve seen that some things can change without a major impact to these characters’ personal histories.

No, the most interesting thing is that Kiera seems to have accepted that she’s not going home — at least the home she knows — and has thrown in completely to solve this string of murders before it gets to thirty-eight. The show’s been slowly hinting that this was coming, especially in some of the conversations we’ve been getting between Alec and Kiera on how malleable the future can be. Looks like Kiera’s instinct as a cop has won out over the “what if” monster going around in her head.

As the case progresses, Kiera seems crazier and crazier to Carlos. Except that she’s not, as every point she makes about the case turns out to be true. And after a little Silence of the Lambs play in the basement of the accomplice, Kiera almost becomes victim number nine. But we all know Carlos will come to the rescue just in time, because… lead actors and such.

Alec and Emily are moving forward in their relationship. And pay attention to the discussion about secrets, because Emily mentions they both have them. And if they don’t get too close, they get to keep them. Meaning Emily is getting emotionally involved, and it could compromise her task…

… which is getting Alec to trust her. Remember last recap I said she’s either a plant or she’s going to die? Uh huh. She’s a plant. She might still die — the season’s not over — but I got part of it right so far.

And Carlos finally gets let in on the secret. Now, yeah, some have gritched that the reveal in the office was lame. But what’s she going to do? You want her to switch on the cloak and disappear right there for many more besides Carlos to see? Nah. Besides, Carlos walks out before she can really think this through anyway, and it doesn’t look like she’s wearing the suit. But the last few minutes give us a nice payoff — we even get Carlos quoting Occam’s Razor.

Now the question shifts to whether or not Kiera is actually making changes in the present enough to affect events in 2077. We’ve already established that this crop of characters from the future aren’t retroactively affected by change when Kellog’s grandmother was killed and he didn’t vanish. And Kiera’s memories aren’t changing with events that end up different from what her history tells her. So, either she’s immune to the changes because she’s in the past, or we have an alternate time line established from the point at which she arrived in 2013. But at least Kiera now has another confidant in Carlos.

Just not sure the basement of a serial killer is where you want to catch up on old times that haven’t happened yet.

[Official Show Web Site on Syfy]     [Previous recap: “Second Opinion”]