Review: Gen:Lock “Buried Pain Grows Poison Trees”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Marin gives the genlock team some time off, trying to keep them from thinking about the new Holon frames and leaving out that they’re copies of the team. Chase shares what he’s learned about the Polity’s first attack on the Union with the rest of the pilots. Miranda seems not to mind and even uses it as leverage to get a promotion, Yaz obviously knew all along but doesn’t care because she knows the Union’s threat firsthand and even shares her memories with the team, Val doesn’t seem to care either, Kazu is pretty shocked, but Cammie seems to think living with the Union might not be so bad. Elsewhere, picking up from the post-credit scene of last season, Sinclair escapes Union custody and almost joins up with the Polity again until he spots them killing arrested Union troops, and so decides to just keep people he can save out of the conflict as best he can. Doctor Jha escapes the Polity but is taken by the Union and taken to Tate, who tells her to help him with their plans.

OUR TAKE

Okay, I think I’m noticing that each episode of this show is so insanely jam packed with potentially set up plotlines and character arcs that I guess should all get some room to talk about, so instead of just going on rambly paragraphs like the last couple times, I’m going to sort these out by character focus. Here goes:

Chase:
So, Chase seems understandably bummed about finding out that he’s been lied to about who started the war. Even if that doesn’t really matter in the long run, it is a weird thing to leave out. This naturally has him questioning the side he’s on and reconsidering the Union’s role in all of this. He doesn’t seem to think they’re necessarily the good guys now, but he is trying to understand their perspective as best as he can. He’s also still having these vague issues going on with his code and still having that Nemesis door hanging over him, but there’s still not much hinting at what exactly that is. Is it him rejecting that Nemesis was him and that he has potential to be that? But as we’ve learned, the original Chase only became that way because Tate forced him to, so that’s not a reflection on Chase. Lots of questions here.

Yaz and Cammie:
Cammie has been really taking a hit on likability lately for a few different reasons. She seems dead set on mindsharing with everyone all the time, to the point that Val has to sit her down and give her a talk about boundaries, which is all the more important when their brains are involved, but she proceeds to completely ignore this because apparently her family didn’t have separate spaces when she was growing up…which does not address the problems with her behavior in the slightest. This was set up somewhat last season with her not really caring about others knowing her thoughts, but it’s increasingly concerning that she doesn’t seem to understand that others don’t want to be that open. But what really has me questioning her judgement is her seeing Yaz’s memories with the Union (which would have made a much better framing device for looking at that part of Yaz’s past last episode than…nothing) and thinking that the Union are actually some peaceful and cool people who might be right about there being an afterlife, despite seeing how awful life was there through the eyes of someone who has first hand experience with it. How much selective hearing can someone have?

Val and Kazu:
This one is another for the “good idea and concept, weird execution” pile. Kazu’s subconscious seems to be showing him as a woman while mindsharing, shocking him and making him think Val is to blame…somehow, but Cammie examines it and it seems this is simply Kazu’s mind. Basically what this might be hinting at is Kazu may be transgender like Val, which would be…and odd turn to say the least, if only for how they seem to be setting that up. At the start of this season, Kazu’s character seemed to take a noticeable shift to saying and doing things that affirmed his masculinity, which wasn’t something he really dwelled on last season but that’s likely due to the change in writing staff. Either way, it looked pretty clear that Kazu identifies as male, but does seem to have a pretty rigid idea of gender as it is. What could be a neat and nuanced route for this would be for Kazu to find a way to reaffirm that he is a very much a dude, while also affirming that Val is genderfluid, showing that both of these identities are valid and that what matters is being true to one’s self and being in a supportive network. Though honestly, I have no clue where this is going to go.

Miranda, Jodie, and Marin:
In the season premiere, I forgot to mention that there was a brief moment where a maimed dog is seen in the wreckage of the big battle. This was a pretty needlessly gratuitous show of violence to get the point across that there can be death in war. Well, we get the opposite end of that pendulum this week with Gen:Lock’s first ever sex scene! And it’s just as alarming and distracting and out of place, not to mention the Jodie drama from last season was best left in last season. If you want to have a sex scene or a horrific scene of carnage, less is truly more in conveying the feelings you want to evoke in the audience. As for Miranda’s views on the Union, it makes sense for this new information to not really shake where her allegiances lie, but it’s also interesting that she used it to get a promotion from Marin. Not that it will really change anything about her role or capabilities, so that sucks. Also, no acknowledgement of Leon’s death, I guess.

Sinclair:
Speaking of details they just decided not to follow up on, Sinclair has apparently gone rogue and is trying to help stragglers outside of the war…but we still have no clue when he got captured by the Union, how he got out, and even who the heck he is. Remember that the last time we thought we were meeting him, it was a lookalike, who has also gone unexplained, but that just means we have no clear idea of who the real Sinclar is as a person. Apparently he is not as loyal to the Polity as Miranda or Yaz and is drawing the line at shooting defenseless soldiers, but that’s not really enough for a clear idea of his character. And that’s all without acknowledhing that his plot feels pretty disconnected from everything else going on right now. Best guess I can give is that maybe he’ll meet up with the rest of the pilots when THEY go rogue, as the trailer for the season heavily hinted at, but I’m not exactly super excited about him interacting with them because he barely has a character at the moment.

Jha and Tate:
And ALSO speaking of characters we’ve barely gotten to know but are suddenly very important, Jha has fled the Polity and is now being coerced to work with Tate, though who knows on what. We only really got some small focus on her near the end of last season, mainly in that she used to be married to Weller (who I guess is still kinda alive, so weird they haven’t talked yet), though we don’t know a ton about her as an individual. Maybe we’ll get to see some of that as she works on whatever the hell Tate wants from her. Tate is also pretty flat at the moment but with him being the main villain at the moment, maybe we’ll get more.

Overall Thoughts:
We’re nearly halfway through this season and it seems that a major issue with the last one is carrying over here. That being that there is way too much for just the eight episodes they have confirmed to fit into. All of these characters with their own plots going on, the rapidly expanding world in terms of scope and politics, and all trying to find some resolution in only a handful of hours per year (assuming we even get a third season at this point), and if the preview for next episode is what I think it is, we might be getting another flashback episode to further halt momentum and keep the plot from moving forward with the remaining time. It’s cool to get a better idea of where each of the characters fall on the Union and Polity spectrum, and it seems a recurring theme of this season is characters rejecting or embracing a binary, but these big ideas are not being given the room for proper execution, which is only going to drag the whole series down. Here’s hoping I’m wrong with the remaining five episodes.