Overview (Spoilers Below):
The extractors have had to fight hard to stay out of prison, but their latest job will send them right into the heart of one. Is freeing a small army of prisoners from the clutches of a corrupt and tyrannical warden more than even they can handle?
Our Take:
This week’s episode sees the extractors landing themselves in prison. It was bound to happen since they’ve been breaking the law by illegally extracting specific clients. Although, there is an important reason they got sent to the slammer.
“You Can’t Run from Control” has Equa and the team becoming inmates at Fuchu Prison, a maximum-security prison full of prisoners who either committed petty crimes or are wrongly accused. The prisoners are under the supervision of a power-hungry warden, who unfairly subjected them to hard labor and extended sentences. Their plan to escape and set the prisoners free is to compete in a horse race, where the winners are released from prison. Fortunately, Equa’s Fatal Luck ability might help them accomplish this mission.
The episode places the characters in a Great Escape situation in which they attempt to free every inmate in prison rather than just one. This is one of the things that helped make the episode stand apart from the extractors’ previous cluster explorations. Although, that might not be enough for the episode to reach the same heights as the Steve McQueen classic that inspired it.
However, there is another element that prevented it from being another typical and pointless assignment. It actually provided some development in its seasonal plot. The show took nine episodes to reach that point, and I must admit it was worth the wait. More importantly, it hints at the potential main antagonist the extractors will be up against later on.
The prominent example of its developing arc is the warden, a cybernetic woman who’s larger than Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. The warden is working for the “manager” of the ecosystem management AI to keep people in their respective clusters. However, she secretly plots to raise an army of prisoners she kept in Fuchu Prison to overthrow her manager and assume control of the system. I would’ve been quick to call the warden another one-dimensional antagonist, but her secret agenda made me say otherwise.
“You Can’t Run from Control” is unsurprisingly another standard assignment for the extractors, but in a prison setting instead of a cluster. Fortunately, this mission was a bit more enjoyable than the previous ones, except for the eighth episode, which is still the best of the bunch. The horse race sequence works effectively with Equa’s surprising outcome, and the scene with the extractors battling through the security drones is a bit more thrilling than the others presented in the season. The episode also works because of its brief tease of the city’s manager, which would hopefully come into play in the remaining episodes. Because of this, Estab Life has finally caught my curiosity and my attention.