Ghost in the Machine
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
This week, the machine was malfunctioning, causing all sorts of people to splinter through and some of them were more splintered than others. This episode was part demon possession story, part horror movie, and while those elements mostly worked, the overall sense of a genuine threat to the facility never really manifested.
Cassie and Jones were both haunted in "Meltdown", Cassie by the Witness and Jones by some of her previous test subjects. Cassie was indeed possessed by the Witness who seems to have the ability to time travel into your brain (provided you've been "prepared"?) and the sequences of the Witness leading her around the facility to do his/her bidding were effectively creepy. And while we've seen some of the gory failures of Dr. Jones' early splintering experiments, seeing some of them moving around and trying to communicate while their insides were on the outside was all appallingly entertaining.
Cole and Cassie's relationship was bolstered in the end, as he went so far as having Ramse shoot him to jolt her out of the Witness' control. Their relationship is really the core of the series, so it was nice to see their bond in the foreground again. It doesn't have to be romantic, but it's clearly pivotal. Cole's line that he knew she'd never let him die also felt rather ominous. Their awkward exchange early on in the hour as Cole tried to nobly give his okay to her relationship with Deacon made me wish that I had more of a grasp of Cassie's relationship with Deacon or even the Deacon character as a whole. There's clearly more to Deacon than we initially saw but we should know more by now. Also, why was Whitley returned to the canvas if not to appear in episodes like this?
Deacon and Eckland's side mission was one of the highlights of the episode. I especially loved the moment where Eckland did the math for Deacon when he was trying to tell the time-warped soldiers how much time had passed, as well as Deacon's line that he would tell Eckland's hippie friends he fought off their enemies with "the powers of rainbows" instead of a gun. It was such a fun pairing that it was a shame we only got to see it in Eckland's swan song.
Eckland's death was surprisingly affecting, considering we don't know him that well. Like Jones, we are from a different timeline than the one where he was a crucial part of her life. But that's what makes his story so moving, just as the Lorax speaks for the trees, Eckland speaks for the erased. Jones' love was real, something that actually happened, whether she remembers it our not. Even if undoing the plague saves billions of lives, it will undo a lot of beautiful events and people (okay, and those mutant time zombies).
One of those people waiting to be undone by all this time travel is of course Ramse's son Sam. The Witness seems to have gone to a lot of trouble to make Cassie's mind open to his/her possession. Is it possible that The Witness only exists in the Red Forest and not corporeally? Was the Witness ever actually trying to destroy the time machine, or was the whole point of Cassie's possession and abduction to get Sam to the spot where the machine would wink him out of 2045 and over to Witness knows when? Someone was waiting for him. Is Sam the Witness? There have been clues before but his incredibly detailed model of the facility certainly makes a case for his being able to make that crazy map Jennifer found.
The Verdict
"Meltdown" had some terrific character moments but the threats to the facility, be it from the mutants, the confused soldiers, or the overloading machine, never felt very urgent. The facility wasn't going to explode and Ramse and Cole weren't going to be killed by time zombies. And being in the facility almost the entire hour was quite claustrophobic. Sometimes a show has to devote an episode to moving characters around on the board, and even done well it can feel a little contrived. Now that Sam is where he needs to be (and always was?) and the machine is fixed, we can back to more trippy time travel trips.
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