Friday, July 4, 2014

Dominion 1.03: "Broken Places"

“What awaits me there? A life, my life. Away from you and everyone telling me who I’m supposed to be.”
- Alex

This week starts with William and Gabriel meeting in a little diner outside of Vega. Gabriel is passing for human and we learn two important things during their conversation. William isn’t actually Gabriel’s son (just a follower) and Gabriel enjoys pudding (but not from a can). William is going on about Claire getting hurt and so to prove a point, Gabriel slaughters everyone in the diner. His point: William is made stronger by death and violence. So he’s tasked with going back to Vega and preparing his followers for the coming battle. I have a feeling William is going to realize he’s chosen the wrong archangel to throw in with. Out on the road, Alex is having a hallucination of Claire (regret he didn’t let her join him perhaps) as he continues his running away gag. And back in his little hidey hole, Rysen asks his angel lover (who is apparently not a higher angel) if she’s seen anyone snooping about who might be a Power. She says no since she’s basically locked up in the casino all the time.

Things are no less tense back in Vega. Arika (the representative from Helena) is not pleased that Wheel hasn’t gotten permission from Rysen to make a deal with Helena and says she’s talking to the wrong man. That’s not a very good thing to say to a man who feeds people to lions. And he’s equally pissed off at Michael for not telling then about the Powers. Michael is calm in his response and he name drops some of the other archangels. Wheel accuses him of being a deserter from the angel forces and suggests that maybe he’ll turn on humanity. Michael says it could be true but even if it was, he could kill everyone in the room and no one could stop him. He also can’t ID the higher angels since coming to earth.

Alex is continuing his trek when he happens upon an overturned truck and dead bodies. After shooting the lone survivor so eight balls can’t take them over, he siphons off some gas and keeps going. Meanwhile, Gabriel returns to his lair and one of his lieutenants is not happy that he’s meeting with humans. In fact, the lieutenant doesn’t understand why Gabriel doesn’t just walk into Vega undetected and take Alex. So I guess both sides want Alex to be their hero. Interesting. Next we find Michael browsing the market and we see that he does in fact know some of the higher angels, even perhaps another archangel. He gives the one he knows a message for the rest; stand with him or get out. We briefly deal with Claire’s current drama. Her father has rounded up anyone who had contact with the Power, including innocence children. Papa Rysen explains that they need to be proactive and he also spills the beans on his illness. Wheel is being a sneaky son of a bitch and trying to twist the arm of the senator who is sleeping with Michael to give up any info she can on his vulnerabilities or other ways to tell that he’s an angel in human form. I doubt she’s going to comply. Things are not going very well for Arika either. She gets her sister’s dead body delivered in a box from her wife. Ultimately, she makes a deal with Wheel that she’ll stage a coup and their deal for Helena’s air force will be her top priority.

Speaking of Michael, he takes off as soon as he learns Alex has left the city. Alex nearly runs him off out in the desert but swerves to avoid him. Michael says that he can’t leave Alex alone anymore and he shouldn’t done so in the past as much as he did. Alex threatens to shoot Michael (after the angel calls shotgun…which makes me giggle so hard) but relents and agrees to one stop with the angel before he’s allowed to continue his journey to New Delphi. They end up at the house where we saw the flashback last week and get a bit more of Alex’s backstory. His mother died in the house trying to protect him and it was Michael’s’ fault Jeep left him. Michael said that Alex needed to struggle and fall to rise up and be the Chosen One. Also Alex sees Jeep struggling to understand the tattoos and going crazy and trying to drink himself to death when shooting himself doesn’t work. I thought it was very interesting how the being in that place and Alex having the tattoos triggered this sort of flashes of memory from the house itself. Not surprising but Gabriel’s forces are tracking them and a fight ensues. It’s not quite as awesome as the fight in the first episode but we do get some fun tricks from Michael. Unfortunately, he’s distracted by Alex’s fight and gets stabbed and the other archangel’s sword breaks of fin his gut. That’s not good!

Things are left rather unresolved by the end of the episode at least for Michael. Alex is taking him back to Vega (I think). And Gabriel is pissed that Michael’s come to harm! So pissed he kills a random eight ball and threatens to take out his lieutenant, too. Interesting that they still feel so tied to one another even though they are on opposite sides of the war. And Claire has agreed to marry William so long as her father keeps his deal and draws up a bill of rights for the people. And William initiates a new member into his Gabriel cult. It is pretty gruesome and disturbing. I have to say I thought this was a pretty strong episode. We got a nice mix of forward momentum while filling in some of the gaps. I swear I’ll get around to watching Legion at some point to get more of the back story but I just haven’t yet. I hope that Michael is okay because he’s not looking so hot at the end. But angels are tough and I expect that the higher angels are not so easy to kill.

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