“Imbroglio”
Let's first talk about the element of tonight's episode that threatened to engulf everything: the emotional turmoil caused by Ilsa's near death experience. Now, I am all for emotionally based character arcs that span two or more episodes. However, in order for such arcs to work – really work – there has to be some sort of connection between the emotion turmoil and the action going on in the real world. HT failed to do that tonight, and thus everything with Ilsa felt shoehorned in, like it always does.
Now, I like where I think this whole Ilsa arc is going – she will hopefully become a more capable woman, who can hold her own during any missions she may find herself involved with. This will also hopefully stop her from just being the disapproving authority figure, a role that got old fast. (If I were super optimistic, I would hope that this change from high-class hoighty toighty to can-do action woman, but that probably won't happen.) However, this path has been quite lame, and I'm wondering if this hypothetical pay off will be worth it.
Nor does the tone of this episode help this leg of Ilsa's arc. Maybe if was just the amount of jokes shoved into the cold open, or the joke total overall, but this episode seemed more jokey than most, and this seemed to undercut the seriousness of Ilsa's plight. Also about halfway through this hour, we saw Ilsa begin to take action, which was nice; unfortunately this step forward for her was negated by her being taking hostage at gun point near episode's end. (As you can tell, I had a lot of problems with Ilsa in this hour.)
Now we can talk about the element that was supposed to hang over events, but failed to do so: the supposed threat from the board at Ilsa's company. There was never any real sense that the board would in fact cut funding from Chance and his team – this just isn't that kind of show. Conversely, even if funding was cut, what difference would that make? Chance et. al. were kicking ass and saving lives long before Ilsa ever came along.
Finally we can discuss the stand-alone story of the night, since it likewise seemed the least important thing to the writers. Given its third-tier position in the episode, it should be no surprise that this mission was quite boring. Not only was the idea of the bad guys breaking into one place in order to tunnel under to another highly original, the action level was kept quite low, which prevented any chances of the viewer becoming involved.
(But hey, at leas there was no Ames. Yay!)
“Cool Hand Guerrero”
First, let's talk about Guerrero. Though Mark Valley holds the lead, Chi McBride and Jackie Earle Haley have always been quite good in their roles, and they at times have threatened to show up Valley. Thus any episode where one of those two takes main stage is always welcome.
While the whole “man of mystery” trope isn't exactly original, Haley plays it well, and he infuses Guerrero with enough dark humor to make his screen presence constantly entertaining. Usually the worst part of the “man of mystery” is when a show tries to shine a light on the mysterious side. This rarely goes well, as the hidden side is usually a) unoriginal and/or b) not worth hiding in the first place. There is no way for sure to tell where exactly what's going on with Guerrero's personal life (but seriously, a picture of some kid?) but the show respects this trope enough to not give us everything. This hopefully free the shows up to take Guerrero's personal life in a unknown direction in the future.
Now, let's talk about Ames and Ilsa. I of course already tore up Ilsa above, but as for these two women in general, their presence on the show hasn't been good. It was somewhat of a relief that they were mostly relegated to the sidelines for this episode. This may bring about cries of misogyny, but what is a show to do when its female characters are so poorly written? No, the greater problem with this show is not what it does with females, but how it writes them. The show only really has two solutions at this point a) rewrite the characters very quickly or b) find some way from bump them from the show. I'm guessing the show runners will choose the latter.
Of course I should probably take a few sentences talking about this hour's mission. Once again not that original – a warden (Hey kids, it's James Remar!) smuggling drugs out through his prison has been done before. But what set this stand-alone story better than the previous one is that there was more episode for it to sprawl out and take its time. This way, each twist and turn doesn't feel as sudden. We can revel in the joy (for lack of a better word) of watching Guerrero stuck in prison, his back against the wall, yet still able to hold out its own. In fact, by the majority of this episode being about Guerrero, the episode was automatically more interesting than one where out heroes end up in the middle of some random villians' machinations.
Additional Thoughts:
-”You know how some have perfect pitch? Can see well at night? Well, Chance can vomit on command.”
-”I've been listening to you heave for the past 10 minutes. Why would I go anywhere?”
-“No. No! He is not going to set anyone on fire!”
-“I'm missing the opera right now. You don't want to test me.”
- A poster for the musical “Lease.” Heh.
- And was that a poster for a play/musical named “Apartheid”?
-“Okay, folks, if you could just do me a huge favor right now...raise your hand if you're a terrorist.”
-“Just so you guy know, I've got a permit for the samurai sword. It's totally legit.”
-“So what do we know about Guerrero?” “That he wears glasses.”
-“I'm the guy who robbed Gun World.”
-The recurring plate of crayfish was slightly funny.
Note: The next episode will air on Monday, January 31st. Expect news of cancellation to follow soon after.
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