COLONY Episode 2 Review - Warped Factor - Words in the Key of Geek.

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COLONY Episode 2 Review

It's Will Bowman's first day on the job, and it's an uneven one.


There's a feeling, coming out of episode 2, that Colony could quite easily slip into being little more than a futuristic police procedural. Assignment of the week kind of stuff. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if that is the case then its not quite the show I'd hoped for.

Second episodes are notoriously difficult to get right. Often they are produced many months after the pilot has successfully done its job and got a series commissioned. Also they often end up repeating a lot of the information given previously, whilst tweaking the promises made and setting up the actual story-arc for the first season. This is quite true of episode 2 of Colony.

There's no Governor Snyder this week, which is a shame as Peter Jacobson's portrayal of the character was a key element in raising the enjoyment level of the first episode. Also, Snyder's promise that Will (Josh Holloway) would be heading up his own task force to bring down the Resistance has morphed into Will working for Phyllis (Kathy Baker), being assigned a lazy-ass partner in the shape of Apollo Creed, and given the job of tracking down the man who detonated the bomb at the Santa Monica terminal. The bomb which stopped Will making the journey to locate his lost son.

This proves to be no trouble at all for Will and his task is over quite quickly. His plan to start at the bottom and work up the chain to locate Geronimo doesn't quite pan out though, as after the assailant is taken in to custody he's shipped off to another department for questioning and Will's back at square one. Assignment of the week kind of stuff indeed.

Also, this week, it becomes clear that Will's wife Katie (Sarah Wayne Callies) is not quite the resistance operative we may have thought she was. If anything she's something of the new girl, with very little pull or standing in the organisation.  Certainly not enough to help a friend in need. This makes the scene at the end of the pilot episode seem like even more of a risk for her and her family. It's a dangerous game she's playing, with the Resistance not taking kindly to anyone working for the invaders, and the Collaborators quick to round-up and ship-off any non-conformists.

Talking of being rounded-up, Will's friend and previous co-worker Carlos is taken in by the Red Hats for supplying the fuel cells to aid Will's unsuccessful journey to Santa Monica. By the episodes end Carlos was taking a trip to the 'Factory', and we got just a brief, tantalising glimpse at what goes down there as a dozen or so captives were forced to strip, engulfed in various types of light, sanitised, and dressed in quarantine outfits before being ushered into... Nope, no idea. It was very white so it could just be a really nice Apple Store and they've all won iWatchs, or maybe it's a kitchen with a large meat grinder and their about to be ground up for the invaders to eat. Your guess is as good as mine.

There are still loads of questions to be answered by Colony, as you'd naturally hope there would be only two episodes in. Who are the invaders? What do they want? What exactly goes down at the Factory? Why the big-ass walls? Are we really quite sure it's not just President Trump's latest immigration policy in action? All these and more may be answered over the next nine weeks, or, on the other hand, we may just have to sit through lots of Will running about on his assignment of the week stuff. There's enough intrigue right now to guarantee that I'll still be tuning in to find out either way.

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