Colony: Disposable Heroes
July 13, 2018 8:02 PM - Season 3, Episode 11 - Subscribe

The Outliers deal with an emergency with the help of Will, Katie, Broussard and Amy. Snyder makes a play to take over Seattle. Kynes runs damage control. (IMDB) // Actually, the gang evaluate the Seattle Outliers Club, who now have a problem/ are being activated. Snyder tests Kynes, who is now forced to trigger his master plan early. Bram may have a plan of his own, Gracie is the forgotten Bowman if not for Bram.

+ Wooded area, PNW

* a Pod makes <throom throom> noises in the woods, opens
* a fit number-tattooed Asian man (One) falls out, barfs green stuff, spies an army bag containing a beige helmet and a battered M-16, runs off with it
* a Middle-Eastern woman beigehat (Two) approaches One from behind as he finishes suiting up
* there is a language barrier (Mandarin vs Hebrew or Lebanese(?))
* they show each other their back tattoos, decide to cooperate with hand signals
* One and Two find a dead beigehat with no apparent wounds, proceed to recon the area
* someone's wearing a Predator suit, luckily the beigehats come with an IR monocle
* Two goes down with no obvious injuries, Invisible's weapon makes a soft fluttering noise
* One doesn't make very good use of his monocle, gets tagged by flutter weapon
* Invisible decloaks


+ Seattle Colony

* Will has a morning coffee at home, Katie says hi
Will: "Today I actually had a reason to get out of bed."
* Katie and Will debate whether to go forward with seattleResistance
* Will, Broussard, Katie troop into Pike Pine Gym
* Dave introduces Harris to the gang, Harris is nominally leader of seattleResist
* gang spills 'Outliers,' B drops 'Morks' slang, reveals knowledge of BioEnemy
* Harris plays dumb, Will spills having kidnapped a high level IGA official
* B spills existance of 'Bioweapon' document
* Harris plays it cool, wants to verify info


* Harris checks in with Kynes, Kynes immediately wigs that the 'IGA official' was Alan
* Bioweapon = "Ally Program" (?)
* Kynes tells Harris to accept Alan's request for meeting, "Then I think you should talk to the man. Don't let him know what we know, just ask him some follow up questions about his disappearance. Let him hang himself."

* Harris meets Alan in an underground parkade, is annoyed that Scott is there too
Alan: "Some of my recent experiences have made me a bit less trusting of people."
Harris: "You mean the girl you paid to slap you around?"
Alan: "Nope. She delivered exactly as advertised."
* Scott chokes out Harris from the backseat, Alan helps prevent Harris from discharging his pistol


* Bram and his SCP partner on foot patrol, explosion sounds in distance
Partner: "Hey, where are you going?"
Bram: "To help."
Partner: "You're running toward it?!"
* Bram does cheerleader first aid

* later, Bram plays being straight with Sal (Meadow's father, a SCP authority), plays the Gracie card
* Bram's got Sal completely conned
Bram: BramSmile


* Alan and Scott arrive at explosion scene - it was a truck bomb
* Kynes is already on site, Alan announces reporting the incident to the IGA
* Kynes is defensive, Alan is snarky

* Kynes returns to his office, charges his secretary to find Harris who is incommunicado, "someone" from the IGA is there waiting to speak to Kynes
Kynes: "Helena!"
Helena: "How many outliers did we lose?"
Kynes: "Three."
Helena: hmf "This is a problem."
* Kynes tells Helena that Alan is compromised, had been abducted, did not report the event "up the chain"
* Helena is unimpressed, presses Kynes on Seattle
* Kynes is defensive, Helena remains unimpressed
* Kynes tries offense, Helena continues unimpressedness, Kynes stalks away

* Helena visits Alan at his hotel room, signals for Alan to turn on the jammer
Helena: "Are you out of your mind?!"
Alan: "This is about the convoy, isn't it?"
Helena: "Outliers. You killed Outliers!"
Alan: "Seems to be having the desired effect."
Helena: "I signed off on a false flag operation. If our Hosts find out about this..."
Alan: "A simple attack never would have given us the desired leverage. And this was just the first step."
* Alan explains how far Kynes has gone re: RAP tech, Helena snarks, Alan snarks back, Helena returns back-snark
* Helena confronts Alan over being abducted
Alan: "I play all sides, Helena. That's my gift."
Helan: snarky smirk, curt nod, walks away

* Kynes paces in his office, "They found Harris, sir."
* Kynes arrives at scene of an exploded car, "So we're suppposed to believe that Harris attacked the convoy then blew himself up (accidentally) en route to commit another act of terror. ... It's nonsense. Set him up."


* At AmyHQ, the gang discuss that Seattle knows Will and Katie are there, but B snuck in
* B intimates that LA Authority wanted Will in a Pod (?), but not Seattle Authority
* gang crystalizes own slang: Outlier => Professional/ Pro
* Katie leaves for a breath of air, Amy shows up "This is my house."
Katie: "Your Amy!"
* Katie introduces herself, Amy is initially cold, collects herself, plays nice, Katie is politic
* Dave and some beefy guys walk up, everyone goes inside
Will: "The hell is this?"
Dave: "Stay where you are."
* Dave is pissed that Harris is dead, convoy was carrying Outliers, Harris was a separate explosion
* gang and seattleResist bicker, gang immediately blames Alan (for good reason with good reasons)
* Dave demands to see the tape (of Alan's interrogation), B obliges
* gang grooms Dave, Dave needs to "see someone" tells beefy dudes to sit on the gang


* (Adam Ford) barges into Kynes' office pissed re: autopsy report, Harris was dead before being blown up
Kynes: "Sloppy. Almost like they don't care that we know. It's no coincidence our problems began shortly after Alan Snyder arrived in this Bloc. Question is how high it goes. Get me the airport director!"
* Kynes checks Helena's story for being in Seattle, checks out but with a discrepancy
* Kynes suspects a pan-IGA conspiracy against him
Kynes: "I thought we had more time, but it is what it is. Glen! Send an encrypted SMS to everyone in Project Phoenix. Let them know we've just gone live."
* Kynes stalks into a server room, "Shut it down. ... It's a shame to kill something this beautiful but, we always knew this was temporary."
Morrow: "It's been a pleasure, F. See you on the other side."

* Kynes leaves the building, run into approaching Helena and Alan, "Hehe. If it isn't Ice Queen and her evil little sidekick!"
Alan: "We ran tests on your deceased bodyguard Harris. Seems he was designated as an Outlier."
Kynes: "Do you know the difference between intelligence and cunning? Of course not. Because if you did they never would have picked you."
Alan: "You're about to pay the price for your arrogance."
Kynes: "So when do you pay the price for selling out your whole species? I can't even blame you. This is what you get when you give large power to small minds."
* snarkfest ensues between Kynes and Alan, Helena side-eyes Kynes
* Helena used to be a "studio exec"
* Kynes stalks away

* Alan and Helena put the screws on Glen the receptionist in Kyne's absence
* Alan want's Harris' files, the network is down, as is the cell network
* Alan suspects Kynes has fled


* Dave returns, all the Outlier Seattlephones have "crashed" (?) and the cell network is down
* Harris pre-programmed seattleResist to rally when that happened (?)
* Will and B are skeptical, Dave drops that Harris worked for Kynes, B clues in
* Dave is inflexible, eventually compromises, B accepts leaving Katie and Amy behind as collateral
* B and Will go with Dave, Dave's guys stay behind
* Amy snarks, Katie is politic

* Will, B, Dave observe from parked car the rally point, Dave explains, B snarks
* fuckit, they enter the building with a secret knock on a Dave lie "O'Neill. (those guys) Harris vetted them."
* a couple dozen fit people standing around inside a gutted building
* Adam Ford calls the meeting the order, states his bonafides as Harris' partner
* Ford states that he and Harris works for Kynes, that everyone present also works for Kynes
Dave: "I'm not working for a collaborator."
Ford: "Mr. Kynes saved your life. The same is true for everyone in this room. If you are here it means you are an Outlier. Which means the Morks selected you to be part of their slave army. The sacrificial first wave to be thrown against their enemies. We should all be in pods right now. Waiting for our chance to die. But Mr. Kynes put himself at risk to conceal us all from the IGA. Now war is coming and our planet is going to be the battlefield. The loser will fall, the winner will go back home and the collaborators and the Global Authority think they will inherit the earth. Mr. Kynes has a different vision. The past 18 months he has been converting this colony into a kind of an Ark."
* Ford talks up 'values' bastardizing socialism and fascism, Will and B are unimpressed


* Gracie comes home, pissed off, to an empty house
* grabs a cereal bowl, except the milk is bad, dry cerealness ensues
* Bram comes home, is hard on himself, Gracie has survivor- and bickering-parents- guilt
* Bram takes Gracie to Meadow's having been invited again by Sal


* while a PNW rain beats on the roof of AmyHQ, B and Amy discuss events, whether Kynes is the real deal
* Amy wants to be involved, has found a reason to exist again


* at Kyne's office, Alan surmises that Kynes has fled
* Helena needs to return to Davos
Alan: "Who are they sending to run the colony?"
Helena: looks
Alan: looks back "No."
Helena: "This is a critical situation Alan. You're the only one I can trust to handle it."
Alan: "Is that a compliment or the kiss of death?"
Helena: "Well. We can argue about it all you want but you really don't have a choice. They picked you. You decided to come back. And you made the mistake being good. Good luck."

* Alan surveys Seattle from the office he inherited from Kynes, and the armoured vehicles streaming through the streets
posted by porpoise (3 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Thought that this was another really solid episode. This one is just packed with stuff.

Hope nobody minds that I shuffle scenes around to promote reading-style comprehension vs. tv-watching comprehension. Some episodes are super interleaved, sometimes to the point where I feel its pointless (only explanation is that it's a tv thing for a particular type audience and its a much bigger phenomenon than I suspect) while others are pretty linear. Without running stats, I don't feel that the number of arcs in a given ep makes a difference. I suspect there are not enough episodes to do a proper stat analysis, and I also think that the churn in personnel in the editing role decreases any confidence exponentially.

* Cell network going down - in this world, does an internet/ intranet still exist? WiFi phoning is apparently a thing my phone can do...

* Looks like Kynes isn't such a smarty pants after all; his algorithm tagged Will as an Outlier, but that it didn't flag him as someone open to going along with Project Phoenix (that's activating the Outliers, right? Or is PP something else? Since the Outlier's Seattlephones "crashed" that means they couldn't receive a SMS, unless "saying" that their phones crashed is a convenient lie after recieving the SMS before the cell network died? Or maybe just sloppy writing.

* In general:

RAP issued bras don't look particularly comfortable/ effective. I don't think they quite understand the idea of different types of underwear. ** on second thought; alien ultra-advanced materials so it might look terrible but...

Colony vs Bloc - I'm not going to go back and enumerate it, but the show's pretty inconsistent about using xxx Colony vs xxx Bloc. Or am I just tripping?

IGA HQ being at Davos Switzerland is a bit on the nose.

All of Ally Walker's (especially those with Peter Jacobson) scenes were gold. Body language, inflection, expressions. If she were so inclined, coming up with a set of fake tells to employ while playing competitive poker would probably be trivial for her.

Surprising myself, Bram might actually be negative useless. Question for me is whether it's purely delimited to himself and Gracie, or if his plans are for everyone (or at least, his parents... which is another trashfire).

Disappointed that I can't (easily) get my hands on Profiler other than the first season.
posted by porpoise at 8:28 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Porpoise: the new Outlier leader Ford specifically said the network going down was the signal for activating PP if their plan was somehow compromised by the IGA.

After all, Kynes specifically ordered the network down himself and seemed confident everyone involved with Project Phoenix would understand what to do immediately afterwards.

It's smart for Kynes to geo-locate and track every Colony member using a Bloc-specific wifi network, which means he knows exactly where every Outlier is at all times. Essentially, he seeded them throughout the Colony as Sleeper Agents for a Mecha-Resistance operating in secret outside of the IGA's purview.

I think Colony = group of people, Bloc = the name of the area within the walls where each Colony's located. Meaning the Dallas Bloc still exists, but there's no Colony there (since the Raps allegedly turned it into a giant sheet of glass, per previous convos among various IGA officials).

We saw what happened on Invasion Day One last season. The walls showed up and came down with literally no notice, trapping people who were traveling apart from their families with no hope for reunification.

I'm guessing that Will, Broussard and other Outliers caught in areas that were geographically too distant from the Seattle Bloc weren't automatically inducted into PP for that reason. Only the chaos after the walls initially went down allowed the Bowmans to concoct fake identities for themselves within the LA Bloc, which held well enough until they escaped before Total Rendition at the end of last season. It seems unlikely the IGA would transfer Outliers to a central location before Podding them for off-world "re-education."

My current predictions:

- Amy is a secret double agent working for the IGA, or potentially a first-line Outlier already colonized by a Rap (I really want to be wrong about this!).

- The "true enemy" is actually a very advanced alien species fighting the Raps because they are really just a few hundred souls stored in robot bodies, and the idea of "eternal life" via Singularity violates some kind of cosmic ethical code/disproves the existence of God/robs the Raps of their basic "humanity" (for want of a better term).

- If I'm right, that would dovetail nicely into the propaganda war the Raps were waging last season -- remember Gracie's weird religious-sounding "Greatest Day" lessons and the Bright White Light/Orgasmic Feeling ritual we saw happen with Katie's sister? They were being mentally prepared to transition from living humans in physical bodies to having their souls "uploaded" to permanent storage in the Eternal Cloud.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 1:36 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Agreed re: "Greatest Day" - totally plausible.

But...

"Sophisticated people" like Alan completely dismisses GD. Burgess "believes" only because it absolves him of the atrocities that he's committed.

GD is pretty much Calvinism that the Prosperity Gospel of Evangelical religions in the United States draws from.

Evangelicalism is a farce, Prosperity Gospel is an outright scam, and Calvinism is sheer high-society hucksterism from the 1700's.

"Greatest Day," I think, was clear writing to decry the current state of corruption and commercialization in American religion, and a spotlight on how a large segment of the American populace has been con-ed and have become easy marks.

But yeah - RAPs (rapture?) and electromechanical RAPs makes sense. I wrote a bit of fanfic/ headcannon in the S04E13 thread.
posted by porpoise at 9:12 PM on July 27, 2018


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