It’s amazing how quickly your life can change. One minute, you’re a happy family, with good jobs, the home you’ve always wanted, your loved ones around you. And within the space of seconds, everything you knew is torn apart – and you don’t always know why.
That was the theme of this week’s episode – changes in a flash. Katie and Will’s son Charlie is separated from them; Beau, Will’s co-worker, loses his wife and his dream home because his dishwasher broke down and he was in the wrong place; Katie crosses the line from observer to committed Resistance participant. The consequences and effects are enormous. But for what? And why? Once again, we’re given clues and hints, tantalized and teased, but no answers!
COLONY — “98 Seconds” Episode 103 — Pictured: Josh Holloway as Will Bowman — (Photo by: Jack Zeman/USA Network)
Did you catch the clues as to what’s outside the walls? Pia, Bram’s girlfriend, says that she and her cousin have been sneaking under the wall (which makes the weirdest spooky sounds) to supplement their families’ rations. “What’s out there?” Bram asks. “The rest of the world,” Pia answers, but later, when he pushes her to tell him what’s beyond the wall, she says, “There are no people. It’s totally empty.” What happened to the millions of people that should be beyond the wall? What did Will expect to find when, in the first episode, he was trying to get outside the Los Angeles Bloc to look for Charlie? The entire Southern LA area is one of the most populated regions of the US – have they been moved? Killed? Sent to another Factory? Yet, later in the episode, in the Yonk, Katie and her sister discuss the liquor that’s just been delivered for opening night. “The beer’s from San Francisco,” she says. And while the bourbon she pours could easily be from before the invasion, beer doesn’t last that long. So someone is brewing beer somewhere – does San Francisco still exist? Is it under invasion rule like LA? Or is it empty, like the Santa Monica bloc?
What was the point of the mission that Katie participates in at the beginning of the episode? The cell doesn’t plan to loot the truck – they’re timing to see how long it takes for the drones to show up (98 seconds). But it goes wrong when other people in the area start taking things off the truck, and Redhat guards riding in the back jump out shooting, and then the drones show up – in 98 seconds – and begin to fight back. No mercy, no arrest – shoot on sight. Again, the actions of a dictatorship rather than a benevolent government. And this shows up again when Will and Jennifer get to the home of the Resistance member who was killed – Justin’s parents, who have done nothing more than “harbor a traitor,” are hauled off to the Factory, as a warning, Jennifer tells Will.
COLONY — “98 Seconds” Episode 103 — Pictured: (l-r) Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman, Kim Rhodes as Rachel — (Photo by: Danny Feld/USA Network)
Who can you trust? Who thinks that the Bowmans’ new tutor is trustworthy? I certainly don’t! “Your home is a sacred place, and your privacy is important to me,” she tells Katie. “Whatever I see and hear will stay inside these walls.” Sure it will. Do we believe that she hasn’t spent time bugging the house? This Transitional Authority doesn’t seem to be above invasion of privacy. How about Jennifer, Will and Beau’s co-worker? Beau calls her a “true believer,” and her actions seem to indicate that this is the case. But as Will notes, she was quick to let them take the task of checking out the community center – did she know this was a Resistance cell safehouse, and not want to show her face there? And then there’s Phyllis, the department’s boss. Last week, it seemed like she was telling Will that it was important for someone who actually cared about the people to be in a position like hers, rather than someone who’s allegiance was completely to the Transitional Authority. Yes? No? Will asks Beau if he thinks Phyllis has ever seen one of the invaders. “Seen one? She may be one,” he answers.
Bram’s teacher – he reluctantly, and without any enthusiasm, has the class pull out their new code of conduct books. “As the youth of our Colony,” begins Pillar 4 of the Transitional Authority Code of Conduct, “you hold the keys to our future. It is a sacred responsibility. You choose to adhere to the values of the Authority because it is moral, just and right.” Series creators Carlton Cuse and Ryan Condal looked at the behavior of French citizens during the Nazi occupation, and at the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany, for the basis of this show. Indoctrination of schoolchildren into the Nazi beliefs was an important part of this society. From the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “German adolescents swore allegiance to Hitler and pledged to serve the nation and its leader as future soldiers. Schools played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas to German youth. While censors removed some books from the classroom, German educators introduced new textbooks that taught students love for Hitler, obedience to state authority, militarism, racism, and antisemitism.” Sound familiar? But Bram’s teacher, obviously (if anything is obvious in this show) isn’t a supporter of the new authority – Bram stays after class, and passes his teacher a cassette recording of Geronimo’s earlier broadcast. What is the teacher doing with these tapes? He says he’s been watching the launches that Snyder showed off to Will – and says that the most recent one was different, that “the bigger mystery is what’s happening up there. The last three nights, I’ve been monitoring the skies, and I saw something up there – low Earth orbit, something huge. Like it blocked out Polaris for a minute, then disappeared.” Bram, too, is now in danger – resisting the Authority in some way.
Were you surprised that Snyder showed up, with an armed unit of Redhats, at the Yonk’s opening? “I have plans for this place,” he tells them – talk about a buzzkill! And even scarier – when Will asks him what’s in all this for the Proxy, Snyder answers, “In my world, there are a lot of conflicting theories on governance. I believe that the softer hand is more effective. No one can change our present situation – it’s immovable. So instead, everyone needs to try to appreciate the good things. The city’s cleaner and safer than it’s ever been, there’s no worry of terrorism or unemployment, you can even catch a bus from anywhere to anywhere in 20 minutes. Bringing back places like this is one of the ways we give everyone places to put their energy into. That’s good for me. It’s good for you. It’s good for everybody.” It’s scary that Snyder believes that killer drones, no-appeal sentencing to the Factory, removal of the right to privacy are “the softer hand.” And his “good for me, good for you, good for everybody” echoes Geronimo in the beginning of the episode: “I am Geronimo. You are Geronimo. We are Geronimo.”
COLONY — “98 Seconds” Episode 103 — Pictured: Peter Jacobson as Proxy Alan Snyder — (Photo by: Danny Feld/USA Network)
So at this point, we know Katie is active in the Resistance; Bram is involved, although separately and most likely without his parents knowing; and Will is working for the Transitional Authority. But does he have a long game going on? Katie is worried by Broussard’s warnings that “Will can be one of two things to us – an asset or a hazard. With you on board he’s an asset. But if you’re not…” Either her intel needs to be of better quality or Will needs to get worse at his job, and Katie understands what he’s telling her. She expresses some of her fears to Will, but she can’t tell him everything, because he doesn’t know that she’s actively working with the Resistance. “We sold our souls and we may never get anything in return,” she says to him. And she may not be talking just about Will’s deal with Snyder, but also about her deal with the Resistance. What he tells her, though, is interesting. “Snyder likes me,” he says. “I’m learning things. Things that can help us. If I can figure things out, we can use it. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.” Does he plan to use his position to covertly help the Resistance? Can she trust that if she tells him what she’s been doing, that he’ll support her? I’m not worried that he will turn her in – but would he try to talk her out of it? After this comment, it seems a lot less likely.
COLONY — “98 Seconds” Episode 103 — Pictured: (l-r) Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman, Josh Holloway as Will Bowman — (Photo by: Danny Feld/USA Network)
Theories? Who are the invaders? What is the Factory? Is this what it seems to be – an alien invasion? Or is it the product of a human conspiracy and major power play? How did everything get so organized and so scary in less than a year? Does this sound like pre-planning to anyone else? And if you’d like to talk about the show and the episode, join our Facebook group, Colony – The Resistance.
Here’s a short video from last week’s episode with some commentary from Carlton and Cuse:
Colony’s Website
@TalkColonyTV’s Episode Podcast (this is for Ep 2)
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