Review: Gen:Lock “The Grand Guignol”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With the Anvil reclaimed and Cammie deserting, the Polity give Kazu a proper burial (apparently not doing the same for Jodie), but the remaining Gen:Lock team confront Marin on her use of the copies and desert as well. Once they escape, the team mourns Kazu and worries for Cammie, while Val tries helping Chase face his inner demon, though it just seems to give it more influence. Even so, the team plans their next step, which is to destroy the copies still being used by Marin. Meanwhile, Sinclair and Dri are taken by Holons to the Polity, Jha starts modifying the Flow to separate individuals within it, Marin explains her backstory to Miranda, and Cammie integrates easily into the Union community, eventually sneaking in and “ascending” into the Flow herself.

OUR TAKE

And I guess we’re back to juggling a dozen plotlines at once again, which I am increasingly losing the energy to mentally balance. So, let’s arbitrarily start with the ending, which felt the need to have an anti-suicide PSA to address Cammie dusting herself into the Flow…despite the fact that she didn’t do it with the intention of killing herself, but instead because she thought she would be able to connect with a community like she apparently couldn’t with her now former team. Even in the accompanying podcast, the writer of this episode doesn’t see that as a suicide because Cammie and the Union don’t view it that way. And heck, even I’m not convinced she’s actually gone since this seems like a good way to actually confirm that the Flow is real…but then again, I thought this would be about her joining the Union as a pilot and having to fight the team later, so I could be wrong. Still, let’s just lay out Cammie’s arc this season so far: She goes from being on a functional team, to being yelled at for overstepping mental boundaries, to misinterpreting someone’s memories, to being a moody child, and then ditching her team to join the other side.

You can point to how Cammie’s been handled in her previous three episodes (remember that the second episode of the season was a flashback that didn’t involve anyone except Yaz) and see these issues with the arcs that are being attempted with other characters. Kazu has secure, if narrow, views on his masculinity in one episode, then has a woman’s body in the next, then is helped to overcome this and then…dies, all in three episodes. Same with Miranda, regular soldier from Season 1, learns about the copies and then jumps a rank and…kills a bunch of her own soldiers taking back their old base. There has been a lot of speculation among the few who are still even talking about this show that it feels like we skipped a season somehow and we’re seeing what the third or fourth season would be like. Honestly, it’s probably impossible to tell how much this would be similar or different to what Gray Haddock had initially planned, but my main point here is that this season has had an absolutely horrendous pacing problem. Reclaiming the anvil seems like it would have been a fine place to end this season, but it ended up only being the first half.

And with so much changing so often and so quickly, it becomes harder and harder to keep a grasp on what is worth following or emotionally investing in. So, when the status quo is shifting every single episode to the point that we only get to see the main team of pilots actually fight twice before one died and one quit, well…it’s hard to find something to care about. Last season, we had a shallow but easy to follow understanding that Polity is good and Union bad, which was frustrating to people like me who wanted to learn more about the Union as a faction, but it made clear who was where and why. Now, we know a bit more about the Union AND Polity, but now I don’t want either of them to win, have no one to root for, and have no idea where any of this is headed. Oh neat, Sinclair and Dri might get put in Holons next? That would have been neat a few episodes ago when I had a clue what was going on! Three episodes left in the season and I have no clue what to expect, so here I go, armed with nothing more than morbid curiosity.