Month: April 2009

I’ll never look at athlete’s foot the same way again.

Synopsis

Rich Sir Richard has a groovy pad in the city overlooking the Thames, his subordinate can’t tell the difference between a piece of modern art and anomaly. He’s sucked into another time but not before he deposits spores he’s been infected with on the floor. The anomaly disappears, trapping him – presumably forever.

Sir Richard later touches the spores and becomes infected, heading into the busy, yet picturesque, St. Pancras train station.

Back at the ARC, Conner’s little pets have chewed a cable, deactivating the anomaly detector. Once reconnected it registers the now-closed anomaly, which the team investigates. Conner takes a sample of the spores back to the ARC. At the same time, Danny Quinn breaks into the ARC trying to join the team.

At the ARC, Conner discovers the spores are virulent and contains them in the new environmental greenhouse.

Christine Johnson arrives at the ARC, looking for the artifact. Lester denies any knowledge of it. While Lester is distracted, Christine’s people snoop around and one becomes infected with the spores. When Conner and Danny try to rescue him, it’s too late. At first they think he is dead, but then he resurrects as a walking fungus monster. Conner thinks he kills the creature with heat and Danny, now somewhat improbably trusted with the task, heads to St. Pancras with flame throwers to destroy the creature Sir Richard has become.

Conner then learns heat helps the fungus spread and that freezing cold is the answer.

Danny captures the creature and brings it back to the ARC, where they’ve laid a freezing trap.

Jenny is nearly killed by both the creature and the freezing cold, but in the end (barely) survives. So, she quits the team and Danny is put in charge.

Analysis

Just another day in the completely illogical world of Primeval.

I’m not going to ask questions like, “What kind of life cycle does this fungus creature have? What does it gain by morphing into a man-like monster? What was the monster trying to do? Was it going to do the nasty with Jenny or was it just going to explode and spore on her? What kind of environmental pressures and conditions would lead to such a fungus to evolve? How did a walking collection of fungus make noises? It seemed like very little of Sir Richard was left, did it still have lungs? Why?”

OK, I’ll ask that question. WHY? WHY? WHY?

But most of all I’ll ask, “Why are they trying to ruin the show by having Jenny leave?” They’d just got her back to being Claudia-like and now she’s gone. Does anyone else buy this whole, “I used to be Claudia Brown now I don’t know who I am” nonsense? Obviously she doesn’t get it. No, she was never Claudia Brown. She is a genetically identical person in a different timeline. She’s no more Claudia Brown than identical twins are the same person.

At least Lester is getting a few good lines. He’s going to need them, pretty soon he’s going to have to carry the show by himself.

Here’s another one that frightens me, Abby’s little brother, Jack. So, what’s his point for being in the show? You never pay money for an actor/character if you’re not going to use them. Is it just to get Conner into a new apartment, and why would they want to do that. Surely Conner’s place for living is irrelevant. Is Jack going to be the next newest team member or is he going to be be eaten by something nasty so that Abby can decide to leave the team, too? Or… oh, no, no, no… what if Abby is killed and he takes her place on the team. That’s really adding insult to injury!

Here’s a couple things to throw out just to nit pick (and to avoid really tearing into the fungus monster). Detector? Cable chewed through? No alarms are sounded and yet, somehow the recording device still worked? I guess that idea is OK if you think of the equipment like a VCR, which typically traps the signal before reaching the final destination (the TV), but that’s not typically how ad-hoc devices like the anomaly detector are thrown together, which would do primary function first (hence the name, “primary“) and recording for analysis second.

This is a perfect example of what I mentioned in my previous review. Plot-wise, they’ve buttoned themselves into a corner. Without a stupid happening like this cable incident, they know too much, too soon about the appearance of the anomalies to tell a story that requires a “stealth” invasion through an anomaly. From now on – if there is an “on” in the future – we’re going to be subjected to an unavoidable stream of technical faults, accidents and sabotage to move the plots along.

Here’s another one: What’s that environmentally-controlled greenhouse room for? I mean apart from it’s immediate, one-time, disposable need in this particular episode? Has there ever been any indication that the ARC is attempting to collect samples from the past for research? The only specimens that I’m aware of are those that have become trapped – typically, they ones that come through and get trapped are not plants.

So here’s my last thought, my last glimmer of hope for Primeval not that both Jenny and Claudia are gone. The producers have done something admirable this year, they’ve eliminated the characters slowly, rather than waiting for the season finale. That’s depressing, because their “end” comes sooner, but plot-wise, it’s more dramatic and surprising, because everybody knows that characters (and more specifically actors) leave at the end of the season, not in the middle.

But why is that? It’s because television is a structured environment, actors are hired, usually, for whole series/seasons – typically, they’re paid for it even if they’re written out early – consequently, they’re not written out early.

I said “glimmer of hope,” didn’t I? Yes, I think we can actually count on that structure to return Jenny (or perhaps even Claudia), and even Cutter and maybe even Stephen for the series finale in about 2 or 3 episodes time. It’ll be a final farewell, and it will obviously have to involve some jiggery-pokery with the timelines again – which will perhaps “fix” some of the plot traps they’ve built into this timeline – assuming the series continues.

I wonder if it is significant that Quinn and Cutter never met?