Thursday, September 3, 2015

Summer DVR Dump: 12 Monkeys 1.13: “Arms of Mine”

“I spent the last 28 years living with ghosts. Our only future is the future.”
- Ramse

This is the end, as they say. Or at least the end of the first season (yes it has been renewed for season 2). The situation in both 2015 and 2043 is definitely dire. I like how they sort of mirrored the pilot with Cole’s voiceover at the beginning. They added things to the end which makes sense but I enjoyed the call back to the start of the season. Cole and Cassie have managed to track down Aaron and after a rather thorough beating and a little begging, Aaron admits that he only talked to a woman who was a big investor in Goines’ company. Unfortunately, Aaron gets loose and takes off. He and Cole get into another fight and chemicals get set on fire, leaving Aaron to die a rather horrible death. Cassie is upset but she knows they need to move forward. Especially since the new head of the company is Jennifer. Somehow, they get into the keynote address for the shareholders. At first it seems like Jennifer is on her meds and is making sense but then she starts ranting about bringing back the Dodo bird. Cole and Cassie manage to get a minute with her and she reveals that Ramse (going by an assumed name) has been funding them and the company Jones works for. This is all a set up by Ramse and Olivia though to get Cole to the facility. Like I said, I can’t see this ending with both Ramse and Cole walking away. But Ramse is starting to get a little anxious. He can’t remember his son’s face. But he’s intent on destroying the time travel machine.

Speaking of, Deacon and his pale-faced buddies are going to take the facility. Once the weird guys are done with whatever they need the facility for, Deacon I going to set up shop there. He’s found a former Spearhead scientist to release a whole mess of bats into the exhaust ductwork for the facility and the power core. So not only do Jones and her small team have to worry about the floral incursion on the machine but they have to worry about the external invasion coming their way. Definitely not a god day to be them!

It seems the past and the future will be taking place at the same location with multiple incursions. As Cole and Cassie sneak in to find the machine and stop Ramse, Deacon and his weird future guys are sneaking in the same way. Guess those exhaust tunnels really are handy. I don’t have a good feeling about the outcome in the future with Jones pulling out the bomb Ramse tied to use before. Yeah that really won’t end well. And in 2015, we see Ramse meet with the other Dr. Jones (Caterina’s ex-husband). He apparently got the machine to work and he was the one sending all the flowers through.

Cole and Cassie make the stupid decision to split up to try and get to the machine. Cassie figures it is better if one of them makes it rather than neither of them. Cole gets to the machine first while Cassie ends up in a room full of red flowers. She starts hearing Olivia’s mantra in her head and hallucinating a bit. I didn’t realize until just now how much it reminded me of the trigger phrase from Dollhouse. Interestingly, Ramse doesn’t plan to destroy the machine. At least it doesn’t seem that way. He just wants to get home to his son. Cole is disgusted that the guy eh once called brother would put the life of one person over the lives of all humanity. Ramse throws it back in Cole’s face and points out that even if Cole doesn’t want to admit it, what he’s been doing has been so he can save Cassie’s life, not humanity. Ramse goads Cole, telling him to shoot him. I don’t see how that would get him home to his son if he’s dead but whatever. I guess he did have an interesting point that in order for Project Splinter to be successful in the future, Ramse had to come back and invest so that the project could get off the ground in the present.

The episode ends in something of a whirlwind of story. Jones makes a deal with the future guy that if they let everyone go, she won’t blow up the machine and they can have it. In 2015, Cassie gets to the machine room and ultimately shoots Ramse. His bodyguard gets a shot off that hits Cassie and Cole kills him. Both Cassie and Ramse are dying but Cole makes the choice to inject Cassie with the serum that Ramse was going to use and he sends her to the future so Jones can save her life. And instead of leaving Ramse to bleed out, Cole goes back for him. That’s seriously going to mess with the timeline because according to Olivia (who is not the Witness and apparently neither is Ramse), Ramse was supposed to die that day. The plague is still on schedule, too as we see Jennifer getting onto a plane to fly around the world in several months to disseminate the virus. This leave Olivia and her people to prepare the 12. Babies who will turn into the future guys in 2043. I’m not entirely sure what their purpose actually is but that is what season 2 is for. I’m glad they did resolve the plague in one season. After all, there would be no real story left to tell. Now we have to see how Cole and Ramse survive and how Cassie handles her trip to the future. Oh, and of course we need to see Cole and Cassie reunited. I’m glad they are eventually going there romantically. It’s felt like it developed very slowly and we still haven’t seen the full extent of it. If they can send Cassie back all healed then I think we can see what sort of life they can make together (almost like what it could have been like had we seen the Doctor and River Song actually travel a bit together instead of just crossing time streams).

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