3x09, "The Small Dark Movie of Your Life"

[jimsmyth]

Arg.  And Wow.

ECR hit me like, well, like a truck.


I'd forgotten it was a multiparter.  I'd forgotten the number of the multi was three.  I don't know what comes next, or what story is left to tell, or what further things will happen.


I hope Reyes will be all right.  I have no space for Daphne being anything BUT all right.  (Daphne.  This feels like a painful step on your journey, like Esther's back.)  I hope the team falls together, not apart.


PTB are PTB.  Totally surprised and ECR'd (ECRed? ECRd?), just like I should have (did) expected.

I blame Sol.  His style is a delight to read, and reader-brain was all distracted and stuff. 

Now to get my pen out of that washroom...

[kakiphony]

I figured that it was because they were working on a set up with would require a team mate to expose themselves to a gamma who could cause aneurysms with a thought. It doesn't take much to misunderstand the gammability and end up with a dead teammate. And think about the set up - they knew exactly where this guy is. A sniper, several shots to the head, dead gamma, everyone goes home safe. I'm guessing everyone on the team is thinking about that option right now.

That's what I thought during that scene, but then my brain starting over-thinking as it is prone to do when panicked. I thought, "Don't they all know it's dangerous? Why does he have to tell them that? Isn't it obvious from the gamma's patterns that an agent approaching him could have a stroke?" But perhaps the gamma's whole mythology wasn't apparent to the whole team? And so he needed to tell them to emphasize that one agent really would be alone and that the danger was even beyond the usual?

That just seems so...obvious. Hence the over-thinking.

"...and the mirrors glittered like sunspots..."

I am ignoring that bit madly. Fiendishly ignoring it even.

I'd assumed it was because Sol is the shooter.  

That was my thought during his initial conversation with Reyes about the need for rest. But then, the over-thinking kicked in...

[Clarentine]

I'd assumed it was because Sol is the shooter. 

Huh. How does that work with his retirement?

Under the Retired Character Reimbursement Act of 1992, re-activated characters get a certain number of "no shit, there I was" moments before they exceed their yearly quota and must pay the penalty.  

[tylik]

Okay, I'm going to play guessing games.

So, we just had a gamma commit suicide in a really messy weird way that badly injured Daphne and took out a random individual truck driver. The truck driver, particular, does not seem to fit into what we know of the gamma's mythology. And Daphne was listening to him. But that's a little more guesswork, and it's certainly believable that a gamma might lash out as someone trying to take them into custody. Anyhow, importantly, he didn't cause an aneurysm in Daphne, who was the immediate threat if one posits a threat response.

Really?

Hypothesis: Singh* is a honeypot.  (By which I mean essentially bait. Likely poison bait. Is the term in common use?)

We already have one story arc that points to... well, the term used in canon is "Moriarty" but I still prefer to term Puppetmaster. Because we already have evidence (see last season finale) of someone or something that is controlling gammas.

And now we have Singh. His first known victim collapsed at Sol's feet. Now, yeah, it is Sol. If anyone were going to have a major case lead collapse at his feet while he was on a book tour and not even working for SU, it would be Sol. But really? (Though... why did the whole team go? There is something else behind this that Reyes is planning for, and I think it's not just the possibility of gamma!Todd. As frightening as that would be. Though it is a pretty darned scary anomability.)

So they find this guy in record time. (Though the surprisingly young homeless guy Sol gave money to sounds far too much like Singh. I guess I'll just trust Sol to have mentioned that if they were the same. Though all those jokes about Sol's anomability being freakish coincidence are sounds a little darker this morning, I'll confess.) Daphne manages the situation brilliantly - not the least, I'm sure, because she's worked with brilliant young doctors before - and Singh suicides in a manner not really consistent with what we know of his rather protocol following mythology.  While Chaz is using his mirror thing to monitor events.

"...and the mirrors glittered like sunspots..."

And if it is the Puppermaster, the Puppetmaster has run into Chaz before, at least, as in this circumstance, through one of his puppets.

And, of course, the narrative arc would seem to suggest that the team will be looking at a continuance of life support decision for Daphne. I'm hoping that's just building tension, and will note that I'd be pretty surprised if Daphne didn't have a living will. (Though that might just come down to Tricia having to make that particular horrible decision. These things are rarely cut and dried.) It was a little odd to realise I finished reading this about the time Daphne was being admitted.

Thoughts? Critiques? I'm not at all attached to this interpretation, this is just my current attempt at putting the pieces together. (And of course, I can't really propose a set of experiments, other than "read the next episode".)

* As an aside, that name is somehow so evocative to me. I've known so many bright, ambitious students and doctors from the Indian subcontinent. Probably more neurosurgeons than neurologists...

[tylik]

And by the way, so far? Absolutely brilliant.

It's interesting that this appears to be an account that Sol wrote some time later.

Jenny Chan's savings before her aneurysm, two months ago, were substantial. They will continue to be substantial even after she wakes up, in another seventeen days, and shapes her first mangled, tracheotomy-choked word. It will be hot. She will be too weak to kick off her blankets. The NURSE will run for the attending physician. It will be eight minutes before someone takes the blanket off.

(Unless this is merely narrative device. After all, Solomon Todd would never do that.)

[jeffy]

Nothing complex about my emotional response to this. Wahh!

I'm sitting here nodding to all tylik's speculations.

[MadGastronomer]

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

[Tegyrius]

And, of course, the narrative arc would seem to suggest that the team will be looking at a continuance of life support decision for Daphne. I'm hoping that's just building tension, and will note that I'd be pretty surprised if Daphne didn't have a living will. (Though that might just come down to Tricia having to make that particular horrible decision. These things are rarely cut and dried.) It was a little odd to realise I finished reading this about the time Daphne was being admitted.

I don't think Tricia's gonna have to make the call.  Or, at least, not solely.

The decision, at least in part, will be driven by Chaz, who will have to use the mirror to determine if Daphs is still in there.

(Edit: Not that I want to be right about this, mind you.  But that's the nightmare scenario that's been chewing on me all day.)

[txanne]

WAUGH.

*flees*

[DavidG]

Aaaargh!

There's nothing complex about my ECR right now, just a heartfelt "Oh, god, no!"

[DavidG]

Secondary reactions:

I really don't like that set of injuries. Even if Daphne survives she could be benched for a long while, or permanently. And if we do end up in a life-support decision, then that's a horrendous thing to put T through.

Do I remember something with the truck crash seen from Esther's perspective. I thought it might be in the season promo, but it isn't.

'Marfans or EDS' wow, impressed, though I thought the risk with Marfans or Vascular EDS was mainly aortic dissection, not cerebral aneurysm.

'The Small Dark Movie of Your Life' - flashing in front of your eyes at the moment of death?

And as Ink Rose already pointed out, Oh, God, Hafs!

The Coincidence Monster: Sol and the first victim, Sol and the panhandler, everything falling into place so neatly, and the truck falling so precisely, no matter that it had to punch through the guard rail.

[Tegyrius]

Do I remember something with the truck crash seen from Esther's perspective. I thought it might be in the season promo, but it isn't.

Yep.  Rites of Passage.

[DavidG]

Hypothesis: Singh* is a honeypot.  (By which I mean essentially bait. Likely poison bait. Is the term in common use?)

I certainly know what it means, so does wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clandestine_HUMINT_asset_recruiting#Love.2C_honeypots_and_recruitment

I'm not 100% convinced by the hypothesis, but I won't rule it out. There's two ways to read 'the relaxation on Singh's face that wasn't relaxation but resignation' -- he's brought it on himself, or someone else has inflicted it on him. For someone who has been obsessed by failure and the loss of a life, death might come as a relief from either potential source.

[DavidG]

Do I remember something with the truck crash seen from Esther's perspective. I thought it might be in the season promo, but it isn't.

Yep.  Rites of Passage.

Thanks! An extra character crept into the link: Rites of Passage should work.

"Esther Falkner will remember this later, in bad spots. Watching a truck overturning, slow and inevitable, in the sunny summertime of a New York expressway. [snip]

Sometimes you fail."

Oh, crap!

[kvon]

I think Reyes will be in trouble.  Again.

Could someone remind me of the connection to sunspotty mirrors?