[SPOILERS] The penultimate part of Persons Unknown was mostly as dumb as the majority of episodes have been, but it was definitely helped by a last-minute twist that worked nicely. My expectations have sunk so low that I don't expect this show to surprise me, which means I'm much easier to fool, and that's in the show's favour.
But first, we had to suffer some poor moments: the arc about Ulrich (Alan Smyth) falling in love with Janet (Daisy Betts) went nowhere interesting, as he was forced to make plans to have the town's inhabitants "flushed" (i.e. pressured to kill each other, with the last one standing being allowed to survive), and instead decided to lead everyone to safety by disarming the perimeter "pain-wall". A noble act of treachery that resulted in him having his head blown off by his superiors -- in perhaps the single most confusing moment on television this year. I assume something shot him from the way it was directed, but the moment was edited (or censored?) so ham-fistedly that instead of shock, I felt bewilderment. And it was such an abrupt end to Ulrich that it made the build-up between Ulrich/Janet feel even more unnecessary than it is.
The rest of the episode became a weird psychological game, as every character was seemingly killed by their fellow captives. Charlie (Alan Ruck) suffered a fatal heart-attack after arguing with Erika (Kandyse McClure), but may have actually been given a lethal injection; Blackham (Sean O'Bryan) was beaten to death by a mystery man in a baseball cap; Moira (Tina Holmes) went crazy and caved Erika's head in with a piano and door, before pushing Graham (Chadwick Boseman) off a balcony and trying to strangle Janet, who instead managed to kill Moira with a fire extinguisher's hose round the neck; and Joe (Jason Wiles) poisoned his beloved Janet, to emerge as the sole survivor. Only, in a retrospectively obvious twist, all the deaths had been faked as part of a masterplan for Joe to sacrifice himself and get everyone out of town in body-bags.Why does a town full of surveillance cameras fail to overhear people coming up with this elaborate escape plan? Why didn't someone check to make sure the captives were definitely dead? Oh, who knows. And at this stage, who really cares? The twist worked quite well; doing enough to salvage what was becoming a very stupid episode in many respects.
The finale of Persons Unknown was perhaps the best episode the show's managed since mid-season, but there was such an appalling lack of answers to any of the big questions that it made me furious. Audiences have been led to believe this show was a self-contained summer miniseries, never intended to last longer than its 13 episodes, so there's simply no excuse for ending it without explaining anything. That's just audience manipulation by the network. It also possibly shows how clueless the writers were throughout, because it feels like they had no overall reveal or answer to give us. I don't blame anyone for thinking they've wasted 13 hours of their lives on this show, because there's simply no way NBC will be bringing it back.
Following the van crash that closed episode 12, Joe has been removed from the town and inexplicably apparently given a second chance; Janet wakes up in a San Francisco hospital, where her story is made to look delusional by the Organization's Director (Joanna Lipari) posing as a nurse; Moira and Erika are on the run in Morocco; Charlie and Blackham are driving aimlessly in a stolen car; and Graham is being interrogated in the Organization's notorious "white room" with intravenous drugs. How did everyone get so separated? Who knows.There was only one element of "Shadows In The Cave" that had any merit, and that was Janet's escape from hospital to return home and be with her daughter Megan, because that’s been a constant desire for her character from the start. I could actually feel some kind of emotional response to Janet finally getting to see her daughter (even if Megan didn't seem particularly excited or happy to see her). and the reveal that Janet's mother has been secretly working to unravel the Organization wasn't too implausible. It at least explained who was pulling Sam's strings, the mysterious man who helped Mark (Gerald Kyd) and Kat (Lola Glaudini) a few times earlier this season.
Speaking of whom, Mark and Kat have been a really pathetic double-act all season and this finale made them look even more useless. After 12-weeks of investigating the Organization all around the world, chasing leads, and intending to rescue Janet, they both had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the story. Their only small victory was in locating the HQ of the Organization, The Mansfield Institute, in Iowa. Shortly after, both were caught and detained by the villains. I guess it was intended to be a tragic end for them, but it just made me realize the only point to their characters was to bumble around in the outside world and let the writers shed light on a few areas of the Organization it would otherwise be impossible to. They just had no positive effect on anyone. A flashback to when Mark was married to Janet, upset over news of her pregnancy, surprised me because I barely remember the fact those two are supposed to have a history together.
For the most part, all the characters were pushed aside to do nothing in this finale, because the only half-decent story belonged to Janet. But, inevitably, everyone was eventually recaptured and sent back to suffer at the Organization's hand. It wasn't even shown how everyone was recaptured, we were just left to accept that fact when everyone woke up back inside nondescript hotel rooms -- with the twist being that Kat's stuck in an internment camp full of caged dissenters (with Ambassador Fairchild amongst them), Joe's new group includes Mark, and Janet's new group includes her fellow escapees, who have apparently progressed to "Level 2": a large ship called "Almas Perdidas" (Spanish for "Lost Souls"), sailing across a turbulent sea.
A fun ending in many ways, yet overwhelmed by the exasperating knowledge that there won't be a second series to give us the answers cruelly denied here. Or was this show sold to us wrong from the very start by the network and, in interviews, some of its actors? If I'd known the creators were vying for a second year, I would probably have quit Persons Unknown weeks ago, but the promise of concrete answers kept me going. So the fact absolutely none were given is utterly unforgivable in my eye. Why were these people chosen? What is the Program? How many "levels" are there? What do people achieve or win at the end? What do the Organization hope to gain from any of this? Why someone just kill Mark and Kat? I guess we'll never know.Overall, Persons Unknown will go down as a summer flop that took a derivative idea and didn't know what to do with it. The character development was poorly handled (you barely knew anyone's back-story beyond generalities, until awkward monologues a few hours before the end), entire subplots went nowhere or in circles, there were plot-arc's that existed just to eat up time, and it just had a very improvised feel about it. But most inexcusable was the fact it became clear even creator Christopher McQuarrie didn't have any firm answers -- or if he does he decided to withhold them and let everyone believe this miniseries had a beginning, middle and end. It didn't, and because of the show's abysmal ratings, the end-game and answers will never be known.
Asides
- As if to cap the silliness of this episode, why did they cast the excellent Robert Picardo and have him wear a woman's white wig?
- Blackham knew Charlie's wife's name, hinting that he's a mole. Nothing could be made of that before the show ended, but the prospect of Blackham secretly working for the Organization all this time is crazy. They've already pulled that trick twice! Mind you, quite why Blackham didn't just claim he read it in those personal files everyone was given awhile back, is beyond me!
- Just to speculate, would season 2 have divided its time between Joe's group going through the town-based rigmarole all over again, Kat trying to escape her prison camp with the Ambassador, and Janet's gang doing pretty much the same thing again while getting sea sick?
- The finale's title is a reference to Plato's Allegory Of The Cave, although there was nothing about this episode that really plays into that. Sounds intellectual, though, right?
WRITERS: Linda McGibney (1.12) & Chrisopher McQuarrie (1.13)
DIRECTORS: Jonathan Frakes (1.12) & Michael Rymer (1.13)
GUEST CAST: Joanna Lipari, Alan Smyth & Andy Greenfield
TRANSMISSION: 28 August 2010 – NBC, 8/7c
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