3%: Chapter 2: Coins (Moedas)
November 26, 2016 4:07 PM - Season 1, Episode 2 - Subscribe

Fernando's medical exam yields a stunning discovery, a logic puzzle stokes tensions in the group, and Aline tries to find out what Ezequiel is hiding.

*We see young Fernando in flashback practicing for his Process interview, and see his father preaching the gospel of the Process.
*Fernando's medical exam reveals that his paralysis is curable with Offshore technology.
*In the first test, the group must analyze a room tableau - Fernando guesses that the woman in blue was poisoned by the hostess, but Rafael deduces that she was actually allergic to silver and that the host is a doctor, and Joana that the hostess is blind.
*Alina tracks Ezequiel and discovers that he is disguising himself in rags to go out into the city, that he does it regularly and erases the security footage afterwards. He seems to realize that the cameras are tracking him, and runs back to the testing facility without making it to his final destination.
*In the second test, the group is given 15 minutes to choose one person to be eliminated. Rafael argues that it should be Fernando because his paralysis could make them lose, and seems to have swayed group opinion, forcing Fernando to reveal the results of the medical exam. The group chooses a random draw as the only fair option, and Joana draws the short straw, but she had palmed a coin earlier, so the last person in the room (the guy she had sex with in a bathroom stall earlier) is eliminated instead.

Fernando: It took me years to accept that I would never walk again. But I did it. I've spent my entire life in this chair. This is who I am. And now they tell me that everything can change. That I don't have to be myself. That all the effort I've put in up to now was for nothing? Fuck walking, Michele. That's not why I came to the Process. I came here because I can pass. End of story.
posted by oh yeah! (3 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I'm really interested in seeing if there will be any writing about this series by people with disabilities -- I feel like Fernando's "Fuck walking" speech was really distinctive; that most depictions of disability onscreen are written from the perspective of an abled person's imagination, and fall into the 'inspiration porn' trope. This felt like something different; that Michele started to go down that familiar road only to have the perspective yanked back to where it belonged from Fernando's view.

Joana is impressively stone cold. Yowch, poor bathroom quickie dude, eliminated before I could figure out his name.
posted by oh yeah! at 4:39 PM on November 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


The disability factor is interesting to me. Is Fernando going to be eliminated at some point because he physically can't do the task or will the challenges always be largely mental and sociological?

Seems to me they're trying awfully hard to make us dislike Joana even if she is exceptionally shrewd. I constrast her with Rafael who I think is more obvious with his cheating and more aggressive with showing his disdain.
posted by fuse theorem at 5:40 PM on November 26, 2016


This show feels to me like a callback to some of the conceptual SF of the 1970s. They are getting a hell of a lot of mileage out of some very simple sets (like, maybe they filmed this over a month in a conference centre somewhere) and some intriguing logic puzzles. It reminds me of films like Logan's Run and Soylent Green in parts. In fact I described it to a friend as The Hunger Games meets The Krypton Factor.

And they sheer variety of the characters is really, really refreshing. Perhaps this is a reflection of the very heterogenous nature of Brazilian society, but it is fascinating to me. I'm sure there's layers of meaning I'm missing as both a non-Brazilian and a non-speaker of Portuguese, but I'm really enjoying this series.
posted by Happy Dave at 4:39 AM on November 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


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