|
|
 |
 |
 BRIEF SUMMARY:
While insisting her boyfriend talk to Adam about do dging GSA, Marc Griffin accidentally flings Megan Alexander to her death. Adam arrives soon after.
Fearful of being perceived as a murderer, Marc empties Adam’s mind, leaving him unconscious. When Adam wakes up, Marc is there, armed, and accuses him of m urdering Megan. Adam doesn’t believe him, but he runs away before the cops can get there.
Mason Eckhart discusses the capture of Griffin with Lena Blake, an Ophidian mutant with a secondary eyelid and the capacity to blow a blinding gas from her mouth. Other agents have failed because they are defenseless against Griffin.
Eckhart learns an amnesiac Adam has been arrested for murder. Concluding Griffin has stolen his enemy’s memories, Eckhart visits Adam in jail, posing as his old friend and current co-worker. Mutant X manages to rescue Adam and bring him back to Sanctuary, where his condition worsens as his brain starts a melt down process.
 Griffin, even though unable to interpret the information absorbed from Adam’s mind, leads Eckhart and his agents to the rogue mutant’s hideout, breaking into Sanctuary and taking control of the premises.
Emma convinces Griffin to return Adam’s memory, thus saving his life. The team regains control of Sanctuary and Eckhart’s own mind is wiped clean by a contrite Marc Griffin, now willing to clear Adam’s name of any wrongdoing.
THEME OF THE EPISODE:
 Trust, how do you know who you can trust and who’s really out to get you? Fear, the primal scare of being falsely accused.
PLOT HOLES:
None whatsoever. This is actually one of the best rounded out episodes in the whole series. No loose ends of any kind.
CREEPY MOMENTS OF THE EPISODE
Eckhart instructs his agent Lena on Griffin’s mind-wiping gaze. She demonstrates how the second eyelid works. Eckhart, fascinated, says, “Can you do that again?”
Brennan and Emma run into Adam leaving Megan’s apartment building. Trying to find out what’s going on in his head, Emma tries to read Adam’s mind, only to see him lost in a foggy limbo, literally not knowing where to turn.
Mason Eckhart’s visit to Adam in jail, posing as his friend and ally. Unctuous, sincere as Lucretia Borgia, and just as venomous, he is a spider encasing an amnesiac Adam in a coccoon of lies. We fully expect him to sting the innocent and disturbed fly any moment.
And the creepiest moment of all: after returning to his old self, Adam runs into Mason strolling down a Sanctuary hallway. Mason states he’s not simply leaving, but will have his enemy’s home impounded by his agency. Adam sucker-punches the obviously frail Mason Eckhart, felling him and leaving him unconscious. The hero of the series proves he is fully capable of wrongdoing, thus confirming Jesse’s doubts from the beginning of the episode. Would Adam be capable of a crime? This shows that yes.No question.
TOUCHING MOMENTS
When Jesse phases into Adam’s cell and, together with Brennan, they convince him to try his commlink ring on. Jesse way of talking Adam into trusting what he says and not what Eckhart has force fed him is heart-wrenching.
When Adam returns to Sanctuary, still amnesiac, and is reintroduced to Shalimar and Emma. Shal’s face, at first lit up at the sight of her friend back home, falls apart when he obviously doesn’t recognize her and greets her like a stranger.
WAS IT CENTRIC?
Absolutely! A totally Adam centered episode. Everything seemed to be told through his confused, foggy point-of-view. The younger team members had about equal amount of screen time, and each one had a good job and a specific function on the episode.
BEST CHARACTER AWARD
In this episode, it goes to Adam with honors! This is a story where we are presented with the full force of his raw intelligence. Even robbed of his stored knowledge and long term memories, he is capable of storing short term information and process it, analyzing and putting together the pieces of the puzzle as they’re handed to him. His ability to learn things fast is also unaffected and he demonstrates time and again why he could be regarded as the world’s smartest man alive. On the emotional level, he is more human than ever. Puzzled, scared, bewildered, unable to tell at first glance who is on his side and who is just deceiving him, Adam pushes his reasoning capabilities to the limit, the only thing he has left. Also, we are hit by this hero’s capacity for evil the moment he assaults a physically frail foe whose only threat to him are his caustic words.
BEST LINES:
Brennan: “Come on, even geniuses have to get their groove out once in a while.”
Marc: “You don’t know where to hide, do you?” Adam: “Yeah, something like that.” Marc: “I know a place.” Adam: “Good, so now we have the blind leading the stupid.”
Shalimar: (referring to Griffin) “Wait until I get my hands on this guy. I’ll leave him with a few memories of my own.”
Brennan: “I think we should take Adam for a little stroll down Memory Lane.”
Lena: “We’ve just received word from the prison. Adam has escaped.’ Mason: “My day just keeps getting better by the minute.”
Mason: (referring to Sanctuary) “My piéd-a-terre.”
Shalimar: (To Lena) “I think it’s time you crawled back into your rock.”
Adam: (To Mason) “Why don’t you do yourself a little favor and take get your ass out of my Sanctuary?”
UNEXPLAINED EVENTS
None noticeable. The team knew everything there was to know, there were no leaps of faith or sudden flashes of knowledge shining out of nowhere. One thing led to another in a perfectly ordained chain of events and nothing was left without a proper explanation.
THINGS WE NOTICE
-Jesse voices some suspicion of Adam, asking Shalimar if they might be mistaken and Adam is really responsible in any way for Megan’s murder. Sounds like he doesn’t know his mentor very well.
-Shalimar demonstrates her feral abilities beyond mere physical prowess. She flashes her eyes and is capable of seeing heat marks on the ground. She smells blood stains and is able to tell what blood belongs to Adam and what doesn’t.
-The lackey of the week, Lena Blake, was actually competent, but why would she try to apprehend Griffin on her own, without bringing back up, the first time? It allowed for Adam successfully stealing her prey.
-Mason Eckhart at his best, silky villainous, creepiest self. His dialogues with Lena Blake, his visit to Adam in prison, his victorious stance leaning on the Dojo control platform railing and surveying his newly captured Zen dwelling, are a joy to behold.
-Emma’s multiple psionic abilities. Even though she is portrayed as a telempath, a mutant capable of accessing, processing and projecting feelings and emotions, Emma DeLauro is clearly a powerful multi-psionic, having already displayed such different powers as telepathy, illusionism, and astro-projection. On this episode, she uses telepathy when reading Adam’s mind to discover what is going on inside his skull, and illusionism, when projecting Megan’s image to Griffin, so he will agree to help restore Adam’s stolen memory banks.
-Very well, a funny ending, brilliantly acted, with Eckhart wandering around GenomeX hallways, not knowing what all those people were doing or where his office was located. Regrettably, on the following episode, this loss of memory was never mentioned, no side effects presented, confirming the sad tendency of the series to the self-contained storylines. This is also one of the rare glimpses of Eckhart’s vulnerability; his arrogance is gone and not knowing his place, he’s polite. He looks at least as scared than Adam did.
PURIST REACTION
This episode gets four and a half Wadjets.
    
Presumed Guilty’s Wadjet count lost one wing due to the appalling assault on a clearly disabled person by the so-called hero of the series. That the kids find this amusing fragilizes all other characters as well. This unexpected, unprovoked burst of violence all but destroyed the brilliant work presented on the episode. Excellent soundtrack, good fight choreography, superb writing until that moment, characters true to themselves, actors at the peak of their performances made of this episode one of the best in the series.
Falconia
More discussion of this episode
|
|
 |
|
The Sun Never Sets on PureMX.net
|
|