Review: Pantheon “Zero Daze”

Holy shit. I say this every god damn week with Pantheon. But seriously, what the fuck is even going on anymore? I don’t mean this in a bad way, by any stretch of the imagination. But every week just adds more questions on top of the questions already laid down. When you think you’re getting any sort of answers, the writers just drop everything on you that makes you question literally everything. I haven’t seen this type of writing since the first Matrix, and I applaud every single person on the writing staff so far with the each episode so far.

Right out the gate, we’re still dealing with the fallout of Chanda’s attack on Prasad, and Alliance Telecom by proxy. Who knew a t-comm company failing would cause riots and a civil war? On top of that, Logorythm bought out the server farm that was hosting David, so everything’s falling apart. Let me tell you, the coolest fucking thing this week is the use of Styx’s “Mr. Roboto.” I don’t give a shit less what anyone says about Styx, but “Mr. Roboto” is a god damn banger. And as we get the setup of a home server farm to possibly house David and Laurie, I’m just rocking out to Styx. Also, it was god damn heartwarming to see David back up after thinking he got supposedly got reacquired.

And then we get Caspian, who goes full suicidal when he confronts Hannah (or Nicole), about what she’s really doing. Caspian, for someone who’s dealing with his entire world crumbling down around him, seems to be holding everything together quite well. The scenes with both Renee and Hannah were phenomenal, and shows how cold and calculating Caspian is. If he weren’t a main character, I would peg this character to be a mass murderer.

Watching the end of the scene where Caspian came home, and hugged his mom where both had their eyes open calculating their next moves, was absolutely chilling. Like I said earlier, the storytelling is top notch, and writers for today’s shows need to take note. That said, the cracks finally show after a bit, when Caspian almost snaps on Renee. The plot thickens more so when Caspian leaves Renee at a roadside gas station, and booked it back to town. The hammer drops, again, in the last 10 minutes. Caspian’s missing piece seems to be the entire puzzle, because the plot bomb that ends “Zero Daze” makes Game of Thrones look tame.

There’s so many plots that interweave into each other, and it’s about time the two with Chanda and Laurie/David/Maddie crossed. Well, at least hint at them crossing, anyway. The closest any of these plots crossing is when Maddie and Caspian would interact. But that happened very few and far between so far. There needs to be some crossover, because Chanda’s plot seems very tertiary to the rest of story. There can be a lot there, and they just kind of fumble him. So much time was given to Maddie and Caspian. It’s going to be absolutely hard to get Chanda’s plot to come up evenly with them. I’ll just say it. Thus far, anything Chanda has done so far, could have been done by Laurie.

With the exception of Chanda’s…everything, I am amazed with how well the plot is written. Well, for the characters we’re supposed to carry about, anyway. There are so many points where I’m repeating “Dude…what the fuck?!” The concepts that are introduced, and the plots that keep everything fresh, make me think. TV shows nowadays don’t force you to think often. Last time I felt like I needed to sit and dissect each episode was the heyday of Cartoon Network with Adventure Time and Steven Universe, and the middle seasons of Game of Thrones.

I need more. I wish there was more time per episode, but I know that Pantheon has to fit into TV scheduling. But scheduling be damned, I need more.