Continuum - Episode 3.02 - Minute Man - Review

The fascinatingly multi-layered third season of Continuum continued with another great episode that tied up some loose ends from last year while creating new problems and introducing us to some previously unseen elements of Keira's younger days in 2067.  The friendship between Keira and Alec, as well as the partnership between Keira and Carlos, grew more complex and fraught in tandem with the changes to the show's structure now that Keira and Alec are in a different timeline and have traveled to the recent past.  Since those relationships form the emotional core of the show (along with Keira's need to return to her son), I love this focus and the tensions that are growing in these areas.

The new opening sequence, by the way, is awesome and a welcome change.

Picking directly up from last week's cliffhanger, Alec turned around to see Keira staring at him as he bent over the body of Keira from One Week Ago (a setting which is now, you know, now).  Understandably pissed off after Alec used and betrayed her (albeit to save Emily, his ever-myopic pursuit), Keira began to question him as to who had killed her past self.  While Alec claimed complete innocence of past Keira's murder, our Keira reminded him tersely that this is hardly the case, since she never ended up dead in this sequence of events until Alec traveled back to them.  

It's again painfully apparent that Alec didn't properly consider the many heavy consequences of his jump back, such as his own status as a hugely important figure in the timeline who could irreparably alter it with a move like this.  As the Doctor in Doctor Who might observe, Alec Sadler is almost a fixed point in time, and that is why he threw the previously existing timeline of One Week Later into tumult and self-destruction with his impetuous actions.  And I still can't believe that almost the first thing Alec did upon arriving in One Week Ago was to immediately go around telling the people he knew in that timeline swathes of knowledge they weren't supposed to have at that point.  No wonder past Keira and Escher are both dead, and the body count is rising.

After Keira bitterly filled Alec in on her mission from the Freelancers, including her orders to remove one Alec Sadler from the equation (awkward), they had to form a very shaky alliance that drew upon the last tiny dregs of her ability to trust and collaborate with this Alec.  They went to Carlos to explain the situation, with the increasingly aggressive Keira choosing to do this by showing her partner the corpse of the other Keira.  This was a decision on her part that will have serious consequences because Carlos was not ready to deal with seeing that or accept that the woman he'd come to know for the past couple of years, his trusted friend (and let's face it, maybe something more in his heart), was now dead.  And he's suddenly expected not only to just accept that this new Keira is the real and only one, but also to help get rid of the body and assist her with her ongoing schemes to save the world.  That's a lot to take in, and the emotional toll on Carlos was visible.  He helped with the body, and he's still working with Keira, but it's going to take him a while to get over this incident.  Again, to reference Doctor Who, as it is apropos, Rose Tyler ended up with a clone of the Tenth Doctor who was essentially identical to the real thing, except that he wasn't actually the extremely specific man with whom she'd traveled and whom she'd loved.  It is, and it isn't.  If I were Carlos, I think I'd need a stiff drink, too.

Then, of course, we had further fall-out from Kellog's murder of Escher (of course it was him; I knew it) via Emily.  Kellog confronted Keira, who immediately accused him of killing Escher and unintentionally confirmed his suspicions that there are now two Alecs in this timeline.  I love the vibe between Kellog and Keira because even in a deadly serious situation like this, their conversations inject some welcome humor into the show.  That like/hate relationship between these two is what will always bind them even when their purposes are oppositional, and the actors have a fun chemistry.  It's also further proof of Kellog's keen intellect that he pieced the Alec thing together so rapidly, much to Keira's annoyance.

While Mayor Martin thought he could cleverly rid himself of Liber8 after letting them help his political career, he calculated badly by trying to pit Travis against Sonya.  Those two are just soulmates no matter how you slice it, and as the default mommy and daddy of Liber8, they were destined to reunite for their cause.  If you wanna talk about some genuine cleverness, I have to give it to Travis and Sonya for taking Martin out of play, getting revenge on him for his betrayal, and furthering their own propaganda with the public by the way they did it, all at the same time.  Poor Martin killed himself after seeing his career go down in flames, but then, we all know Tahmoh Penikett probably has about a million more shows to go guest star in, and he couldn't stick around forever.  The one element in the Liber8 side of the plot that particularly interests me now is that Garza newly has this odd, begrudging respect for Keira, which certainly wasn't the case in the previous version of this sequence, and is an intriguing, quiet little factor that I am sure will come back to play a role in how things will now unfold.  I also sense that the enmity between Garza and Sonya is by no means thoroughly doused.

Kellog blackmailed the ever-blackmailable Emily into working for him after he revealed that Escher was Alec's father.  It was pretty funny to see Kellog rolodex through all of his potentially damning knowledge about Emily until he finally found the one item that would force her complicity.  Meanwhile, sweet, cute little past Alec pieced together that Jason was his son, not his father, and I loved the hilarity of Jason's awkward, overt shout-outs to the hidden future Alec during that exchange.  As much as poor Jason has endured in his life, a lot of which we don't even know yet, he's doing a remarkably good job of dealing with all of the chaos with his two dads.

Keira kept reiterating her trust in past Alec and placed a good deal of affection in him throughout this episode, showing the other Alec how much he had lost those aspects of her friendship.  The weird thing is that if Emily had died again the way she did originally, this past Alec would react the same way the other one did.  So the Alec that Keira is now idealizing as innocent and trustworthy is essentially capable of betraying her identically.  Yet, I also understand that Keira has so little to hold onto in the wake of all these new changes.  At least she can cling to the idea of who Alec was and what he meant to her one week ago, before it all went to hell.  She was also able to acknowledge to future Alec that she sympathizes with his love for Emily and understands the importance of that, even though those feelings are still tangled with her resentment and lack of patience for the way he went about doing what he did.  So basically, I agree with Keira.

So let's talk about what we saw of Keira in 2067, which I've saved for last as it stands somewhat separately from the events of the rest of the episode, yet doubtless carries important meaning for what will occur moving forward.  This insight into Keira's past self, her affiliations, motivations, and relationship with her family, was crazy compelling.  First of all, did anyone else who also watches Revenge notice the uncanny resemblance between young 90's goth looking Keira and the brunette, just-out-of-juvvie Emily?  Next up, we gleaned that Keira's mom was a bit of a hot mess, having all of her belongings seized by the government due to debt as her other daughter (Keira's doomed, later-druggie sister) looked on.  When the officials uncovered a box full of forbidden books and such, Keira made a deal to work with the government in exchange for protecting her mother to whatever extent was possible.  While her mother thought Keira did this to save her, Keira was quick to explain that she really believes in the war and she did what she did for that reason.  Whoa, whoa, whoa, what?  I'd like to hear more about the exact nature of the war and Keira's investment in that belief system, since the banning of these books raises some real suspicions about the validity of it.  We immediately know that the government she wants to join up with is standing on shaky moral ground, which shifts our view of them, Keira, Liber8 and the whole situation just a little bit.  But also...why did Keira's family have those materials?

Another issue to ponder: elsewhere in this episode, Keira angrily told Alec that thanks to him, her family in the future may no longer even exist.  So now that Alec has changed the timeline with such potentially powerful results, is it also possible that the version of Keira's younger life in the future (2067) has already been altered?  Would the Keira we know in the show's current timeline also have different memories now, indicating that perhaps some situations, like her son's existence, do remain the same, but others may not be?  I'd be interested to hear what others think about these possibilities.

What did you think of this episode?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

About the Author - Virginia Mae Fontana

Virginia is happy to be reviewing The Vampire Diaries, Hart of Dixie, Nashville, Beauty and the Beast, Elementary, Witches of East End, Covert Affairs, and Continuum for Spoiler TV. She is a college English instructor and enjoys obsessing over films and pop music - in addition to tv shows, of course! You can find her blog, SugarRushed, at http://virginiamaeblog.blogspot.com/ and her Twitter handle is @SugarRushedBlog