Counterpart: Shadow Puppets

January 7, 2019 5:07 PM - Season 2, Episode 5

A new revelation puts Howard Prime and Quayle in jeopardy. Life at Echo is disrupted. Clare reconnects with her past.

Vulture Recap: The Butterfly Effect

posted by oh yeah! (8 comments total)

The suspension of disbelief required for this episode to work was pretty substantial -- would there not be security cameras galore throughout the OI, especially after last season's massacre by the Indigo agents? The idea that Howard Prime could skulk around to murder Lambert unobserved just seemed ludicrous to me. Not to mention Lambert not being under video/audio surveillance every moment of his captivity. Granted, the level of technology on Alpha world hasn't been fully established in-show, so, maybe it's not the panopticon of our world, but, it seems like the level of technology is whatever the plot requires, so even though people are walking around with smart-phones, they behave as if they're in a 1950s spy story.

Quayle (Alpha) is such a wonderful weasel of a man. His phone call to Clare was so sad, I thought maybe this was really going to be the end for him, but he's gone from the frying pan to the fire again. I can't imagine what Indigo has planned for him, only that it's probably going to make him wish he'd killed himself when he had the chance.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:06 PM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm confused about why Indigo is allowing Howard Prime pretend to be his Other, knowing that he's working against them and outing him to (especially) the Alpha investigator would both hurt him and sow confusion on the Alpha side.

One reason would be they know he knows who Shadow really is, and he has that leverage, but we've seen no evidence they know he knows.

I feel like I've forgotten something important about the end of the first season.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:21 AM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

I guess we know who Management are now, right? They're Yanek’s former colleagues, who along with him presumably mad-scienced the world-splitting in the first place. At least that's what I got out of that conversation.
posted by BungaDunga at 5:25 PM on January 8, 2019 [3 favorites]

... and Yanek hinted that the more... ruthless (?) version ultimately destroys their other? So this is the "bad"/(less good) Yanek who's been outcast from Management to Echo for having gone beyond the pale at some point?

Interesting that this started out of "good" intentions (double the resources, double the brainpower) but self interests started taking over? So Management is now solely looking out for themselves?
posted by porpoise at 6:00 PM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

I guess it explains how the Office of Interchange was set up and why both sides' versions look basically identical: at that point they were cooperating, they were a single group of Mad Engineers, now doubled, who set it all up.

I guess the survivors of the first clash became Management, on both sides. And they are all the Darker copies of themselves, which begins to explain why they're all so supremely paranoid, what with the remote location / human proxy 80's-vintage Skype weirdness.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:03 PM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm assuming that the 'Darker' of the two doesn't necessarily correspond to whether they were from Alpha or Prime?

Which kind of makes Lambert getting along with himself somewhat more interesting.
posted by porpoise at 7:54 PM on January 9, 2019 [2 favorites]

Quayle (Alpha) is such a wonderful weasel of a man.

omg - I only just realized that the actor who does Quayle was Viserys Targaryen in GoT.
posted by porpoise at 9:12 AM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

I think the two Lamberts getting along so well is because they're narcissists. He thinks he's the most best person in the world, so another him is just double the fun. No competing loyalties, because he doesn't give a shit about anyone else. One of them cared slightly about Clare, but not enough to actually put himself out, so no difficulty there.
posted by harriet vane at 6:50 AM on February 24, 2019 [1 favorite]