I Darwin

[Guest Jim McLean]

Not posted much on the episodes in a bit, being desperately trying to conserve the few I have left in this beautiful series. Man, I feel such inner sadness when I remember the thrill of watching season 1 half a year or so back and enjoying the cinematic wine knowing I had so many crates left down in the cellar. Now, I watch each like an addict knowing his stash is getting somewhat thinner...

Very good episode. Certainly a very strong opener and a reminder why I like Wright's constantly strong direction. Some nice layers in this episode, though I found the Darwinian monologue a bit of a mixed experience. On one hand, the opening monologue was beautiful bit of narrative and reminiscent to some of the excellent season two commentaries, on the other, as with season two, I do find the monologue is a very "X-Files" device, and I did feel the tone of the episode lost some of the realistic drama through the intellectual eulogising. In fairness, this was a good technique to mask the stories darker revelations, by adding the voice over, one feels there is a deeper, darker nature to the girl's quest than there actually is, but I couldn't help feeling as the epilogue played out, that the return of her inner voice just felt like a coda unnecessary for such a down-to-earth outcome.

The obvious counter to this was that the close parallels with Emma's family could indeed been seen as another "accident" or unquantifiable event. The Palm Trees have links to all the occurrences, present and historical yet how they tie up so co-incidentally in the episode could be seen - in light of the more down to earth revelation - as an "accident" themselves. In this light, the more ethereal use of the philosophical voice track gives these connections more weight, but I can't help feeling it wasn't required. The voice over serves the opener, and naturally makes a logical mirror in the closing, but I can't help feeling that the false clothes of this story, the episode's dramatic red herrings, so to speak, that the voice over limits the power of the final act's reveal; that to have gone out with no voice over would have very much nailed down the change of tone. Yes, it would have made the episode a little less consistent in dramatic ambiance, but to pretend there has been no change in tone and direction is a conceit when the whole payoff of the tale is that very twist from conspiracy/mythological overtones to a straight forward broken child come serial killer.

The evolution of the Conspiracy (as I suggest in my title) is a weak one merely to draw unsuspecting members in to read this thread, but there is a certain truth there. This episode plays on this season's Conspiracy orientation, and the Conspiracy orientation of so many shows of the 90s era. As such, it takes what has become a fashionable norm and uses it to its advantage. If we are the writer's prey, looking to be captured by his cunning snares and traps, this writer has indeed dressed himself in familiar clothes to fool the audience; the audience comfortable expect one creature when in fact, its an entirely different creature masked to trick surprise you. Dramatic evolution. Darwin would be proud.

I have to say my real let down with this episode was Emma Hollis. While the dementia storyline was touching, I found the character's actions - as in Human Essense - a little forced. I'm not sure whether this was the writing, acting or directing, or simply that it was trying to impress too much dramatic intent in too short a period to be convincing. Or maybe because we've seen the "don't get personal" character arc for cop dramas way too many times before. Whatever it was, this was one of the few episodes (as with Human Essense) when I just didn't feel the character played believably. When she was curled up in the cell on the verge of tears, I cringed. I've enjoyed Klea's portrayal of Emma on the whole, and only found her frustrating when the character has been hamfistedly forced into the spotlight, but I really felt something didn't hit the target, and given I've found Ms Scott's acting consistent on pretty much all other occasions, maybe it was simply the shifts in her personality and the frustration just didn't sit well with the Hollis character. When she was with her dad, it worked. When she was interacting with Frank it felt false, almost wooden. I can't pin down why, just merely it was for me, and awkward element to this episode.

Overall, a great pleasure coming from the final act reveal. Before then, it felt a little run of the mill, and I was awaiting the run unbelievable pieces falling into place of a conspiracy with maybe a Millennium Group element - just as I was meant to.

A great piece of dramatic hood winking and a solid reminder of what Millennium was really all about. I just felt Hollis' character works best on a little less volatile level. I'm sorry, but I just didn't find her part in this tale consistent enough for my liking.

[ethsnafu]

What a truly superb piece of meandering. Darwin's Eye, to my mind, is the pubertal spurt of 'Season Three', the moment at which its voice breaks and it matures. At this juncture its chaotic lack of self has not yet harmonized but it is feeling the birth pangs of adulthood all the same. I agree with you solidly on your points with regards to Hollis, she is superb as the subliminal bass track and lacking when she is the melody and it is not, as you state, a failing in Klea's acting ability but in this constant headlining of her character. One wonders if there is a member of her family whole in body and spirit, do they all revel in Dantes Inferno to provide yet another angst episode for Emma? Emma didn't have the profuseness of character to support such a bountiful back story, she works best in a gentler supportive role than in an all-cameras-clicking headline act.

My only dizzy-spell with regards to a truly welcome attempt is the appraisal regarding Darwin. Whilst he took his quill to expound his theory that natural selection alone could not have engineered the eye I see no evidence in this episode of how his spiritual concerns apply to the episode. The voiceover correctly, though simply, regurgitates a pleasant appraisal of Darwin's concerns but it fails to address to what these concerns implied. It was not a mundane proposition that all things cannot happen by accident, which is a simplistic rendering of his theories, but that all things are subject to the design of the great architecture of Godhead. If you invoke such wonder in the narrative it would have been bantam to explore it to its fullest and sincere implications.

That said, a more concerted effort to produce something of mettle can not go unrewarded. Of course the eulogising is a simple X-Files device hurried into Millennium as the template to which all things must adhere but there is a change in flavour here, the recipe becomes richer and it marks the last time this season would 'make-do-and-mend' with remnants from its sister series. Unapologetically too late but a welcome return to form.

Edited December 14, 2007 by ethsnafu

[Guest Jim McLean]

One wonders if there is a member of her family whole in body and spirit, do they all revel in Dantes Inferno to provide yet another angst episode for Emma? Emma didn't have the profuseness of character to support such a bountiful back story, she works best in a gentler supportive role than in an all-cameras-clicking headline act.

Yes, I think this was one issue I had - that the show seemed to steel back her character by throwing in as many angst and toturous backplot to make her both interesting and sympathetic, when it ends up feeling contrived and unbelivable. You should be able to have a character with no background angst and make her interesting. She doesn't come across as a character who has suffered such ridiculously unfortunate family roots, and adding it to make her "deeper" and maybe even flawed seems both lazy and damaging to the lead. Frank does have a painful background, and just as giving Robin a bat rope somewhat diminishing the unique ability of Batman to swing through Gotham, trying to layer your supporting background with a dark and bitter past as well as you lead diminishes his own unique standing.

I think Emma's initial introduction as a curious yet slightly over-keen FBI agent gave her a dimension unique to herself. She didn't need this pain. Laura Means had her pain, fine, she was meant to have parallels to Frank as well as spiritual mirrors, but Emma isn't Frank, nor does she come from his dark world, so why layer her with this rather contrived backstories?

My only dizzy-spell with regards to a truly welcome attempt is the appraisal regarding Darwin. Whilst he took his quill to expound his theory that natural selection alone could not have engineered the eye I see no evidence in this episode of how his spiritual concerns apply to the episode. The voiceover correctly, though simply, regurgitates a pleasant appraisal of Darwin's concerns but it fails to address to what these concerns implied. It was not a mundane proposition that all things cannot happen by accident, which is a simplistic rendering of his theories, but that all things are subject to the design of the great architecture of Godhead. If you invoke such wonder in the narrative it would have been bantam to explore it to its fullest and sincere implications.

I presumed that somehow the parallels between Emma's tales and the main story were made to imply some sort of accident or unexplained phenomena and thus mislead the audience to the more down to earth answer to this episode. This is why I felt its relevance to the bigging worked, but its use in the epilogue seemed a little out of place.

[ethsnafu]

Thanks for your zesty reply Laredo. I rarely concur that something confuses me for even in the depths of chaos I can usually knit a comfort blanket from a few ides but one element truly does leave me addled. This episode seems to take a popular misconception with regards to Charles Darwin and use it as the canvas the story is daubed upon. It champions the incorrect assumption that Darwin accepted that the human eye was evidence of an absurd flaw in his own theory of natural selection and whilst he does write this he writes it as a rhetorical question not as a profound truth. He in fact goes on to dismiss this very idea and explains how he believed it evolved anyway and that the ‘absurdity’ was illusory. When it is stated that "...Some things just happen. Like the eye, even Darwin worried about the eye..." this is quite untrue as is "...So how did the eye happen? How? Accident, it just happened.."

I suppose a simple explanation could be proffered that Cass herself misunderstood what Darwin says about the eye rather than a misunderstanding in the fabric of the whole narrative but I feel this isn't the case.

Not really a criticism simply an explanation of my lack of clarity.

[Guest Jim McLean]

Thanks for your zesty reply Laredo. I rarely concur that something confuses me for even in the depths of chaos I can usually knit a comfort blanket from a few ides but one element truly does leave me addled. This episode seems to take a popular misconception with regards to Charles Darwin and use it as the canvas the story is daubed upon. It champions the incorrect assumption that Darwin accepted that the human eye was evidence of an absurd flaw in his own theory of natural selection and whilst he does write this he writes it as a rhetorical question not as a profound truth. He in fact goes on to dismiss this very idea and explains how he believed it evolved anyway and that the ‘absurdity’ was illusory. When it is stated that "...Some things just happen. Like the eye, even Darwin worried about the eye..." this is quite untrue as is "...So how did the eye happen? How? Accident, it just happened.."

I suppose a simple explanation could be proffered that Cass herself misunderstood what Darwin says about the eye rather than a misunderstanding in the fabric of the whole narrative but I feel this isn't the case.

Not really a criticism simply an explanation of my lack of clarity.

Yes, even in our chat I've finding the resolution between the narrative and story relationship confusing. Hell, even the narrative alone seems to lack definition. As for Darwin, I thought the comment wasn't to suggest that Dawin couldn't recouncile the eye, merely that its complexity gave him a problem he couldn't readily answer. But yes, I agree, it does invoke that religious myth that Darwin himself couldn't explain the eye ergo the eye was proof of God. I still feel that maybe the use of language (Darwin "worried" about the eye) was to invoke notions of mythology to the story. That along with executions, FBI involvement, and questions on Darwin, that we are drawn to an early conclusion that this is Millennium Group related.

However, against this, the narrative doesn't stop on the reveal.

So what do we have of substance? I don't know. I thought I'd pull some quotes that interested me on watching and just make some observations.

"But what I want to know, what I want to know, is what makes the accidents happen.

Because something must.

Or someone."

That to me sounds like it could be - retrospectively - a self question. Accidents - accidents she commits - come from choices, albeit not necessarily outcomes that were expected; that evolution isn't just driven by the strength and the ability to adapt, but the events that occasionally create resolutions without direct intention; that some things are born from mistakes, not success or victory; that whatever is born - accident or selection - it's born from the actions of something or someone.

As she says at the end:

"Something imposes order, and something imposes accident. Order and accident. One and the same."

Essentially that accidents and order are two sides of the same coin. You need defined actions to create accidents even if the outcomes are not the direct intention of those choices. That Darwin's eye is proof that something so perfect must have been an accident, and if it was an accident, it was the result of forces of order.

Though the answer maybe even simpler than that, and closer to what you suggest.

"She's trying to make sense of what happened."

That as she says, things explain everything yet nothing; she has no idea what she means. She's taking elements of Darwin's philosophy and searching for an answer; that the eye is a two way door, it's so perfect it could be seen as the craft of a larger order, or the biggest accident. That accident and order, the outcome is the same. That while evolution implies order, it also lives hand in hand with accident.

"We watch. And we're watched.

Something imposes order, and something imposes accident. Order and accident. One and the same.

What matters is survival. Survival of the fittest."

That in the end, accident or choice, the outcome is the only universal truth; those who live on and those who die. That whether we are the increment of the a slow process of survival, or just part of happenstance, the only true definition is that we survive.

Somewhere in this issue she's looking for answer to her own survival, and I guess her only answer is however we survive, how ever evolution - or destiny - unfolds, the only certainty is that we survive, regardless of the reasons why.

Given she never seems to understand her past, nor recouncile her actions, her commentary makes little sense as we can't place a mindset to it, aside from her fixation on Darwin and accidents. Maybe by focusing on accidents its how she recounciles her own actions and the actions thrust upon her, and looking at the complexity and co-incidences that she sees bear the eye brings her validity.

Honestly. Don't know. Whether the narrative misrepresented Darwin, what it fails to do is really give any clear indication of its own intention, and I'd say thats a failing in the episode.

[4th Horseman]

Honestly. Don't know. Whether the narrative misrepresented Darwin, what it fails to do is really give any clear indication of its own intention, and I'd say thats a failing in the episode.

Let me jump in here for a moment. While i possess none of your insight or intuition concerning "Darwin's Eye", none the less, something about this particular epi is compelling. The orderly, Cheveley, her father, and Joe, the sheriff, all were sexual companions of Cass. All were decapitated which if i remember from the episode was done to "blind" them. Since we are talking about the evolution of the eye and Darwin (who certainly had trouble explaining its development), perhaps this has some significance. Also, why did she drag Joe to the very same motel room where she was raped by her father??, I am assuming this to be the location due to his head being found behind the ceiling panels in the bathroom. And since all 3 heads were found in a bathroom, the orderly's at the institution, both Joe's and her father's at the motel, could this have some importance??I would tend to agree with Laredo here, simply a failing in the episode...any comments??

4th Horseman

[ethsnafu]

It is rare for me to conclude that a Millennium episode is simply a decorative patchwork but for all my addled presumptions here I do wonder if this is the first case. It seems to me to be an elaborate and rich compote of motifs, Darwin's eye, the origami palms of Emma's father, the urban-legend-esque moment the severed head and yet the recipe fails to make a pudding. In many of my fan-musing moments I have tried to conceive the perfect Millennium story by gluing and locking the most bizarre and disparate Fortean concepts into a cohesive narrative: and failed. To me this story is scented by an over ambitious attempt to seek out profundity and use it without a clear understanding of its meaning. It is a powerful and wonderful example of failed fanfiction.

It takes slices of Darwin and misunderstands them, scenes of evocative caveats that have no true occultism and stitches them together with urban legend, slasher homage and yet another example of an intravenous injection of Hollis.

There is no doubting that it is considered nor no moment when it can be said that it isn't acroamatic but the nods, threads and strands never come together to make a whole. It is a wild brainstorm of disparate elements that the fairytale does not marry well.

It is an intriguing episode but a paradox all the same, it tempts you to understand but leaves me believing there is nothing to understand at all.

Sadly from the flavour of this it would be fair to assume that Season Four would introduce us to Emma's dead Aunt, her disabled Uncle and god knows how many more crucified and decaying souls she has tucked in her 'Acme' angst cupboard.

Good but certainly lacking

[Guest Laurent.]

Ok.. I must admit I didn't take the time to read all of the above posts as I am still knee deep in study for my last exams (There are 5 days remaining).

I just want to share my point of view of the last third of season three. I really think that the last seven or eight episode of the season were really well plotted, not necessarily as particularly well crafted episode, but plotted in the sense that the episodes all added something more to the others and that the order in which they were shown to us was really meant to define where Millennium was at the time (at its death's bed, sadly).

In one sense, I really think Darwin's Eye and Bardo Thodol share the same message and the fact that Darwin's Eye was aired first is quite important. Both were meant to be extremely complicated; conspiracies, cult, a bit of meta-science, etc. and all these elements were only there to hide the simplest story.

In Darwin's Eye, this mechanism of storytelling is shown to us within the episode. Cass drew this incredibly complex repertoire of date and various information on her wall yet in the end, when Emma forgets about the nebulous detail of the drawing she is able to see though the storm of information and see the big picture: it's all about one human person. It's a sadly simple case of abuse that led to an even more catastrophic conclusion.

Bardo Thodol uses the same mechanism but it ultimately puts Frank in a position where he has to understand the meaning of both episodes. There's possibly a bigger conspiracy or power at work during the episode but it is too complicated and hidden under layers of information too hard to put together. At the end, what saves Frank is that he understood that all that was important was the human lives involved. Understand and you are liberated.

FRANK: Forget the bowl. Forget the Group. They've stood everything on its head. Because they don't trust the clear voice you heard inside you. Trust that voice. Listen to that voice. They have no hold over you.

From what I understand of them, these two episodes are only there to remind us that at its core, underneath the conspiracies and cults, Millennium is all about the human characters. The apparent profundity of the episodes only serve to mirror the complexity of Millennium, a complexity that at times shadowed the true purpose of the series.

Sorry if that didn't make enough sense but I can't really rewrite any of it right now. I know I didn't even touch the intriguing palm trees but that's just because it would only be wild speculation (or are they just a symbol of madness, leaving this dark world to go back to a bright beach within yourself?).

Must get back to work but I'll be back to discuss this in greater length and detail as soon as I can. Cheers!

Edited December 15, 2007 by Laurent.

[Guest Jim McLean]

Let me jump in here for a moment. While i possess none of your insight or intuition concerning "Darwin's Eye", none the less, something about this particular epi is compelling. The orderly, Cheveley, her father, and Joe, the sheriff, all were sexual companions of Cass. All were decapitated which if i remember from the episode was done to "blind" them. Since we are talking about the evolution of the eye and Darwin (who certainly had trouble explaining its development), perhaps this has some significance. Also, why did she drag Joe to the very same motel room where she was raped by her father??, I am assuming this to be the location due to his head being found behind the ceiling panels in the bathroom. And since all 3 heads were found in a bathroom, the orderly's at the institution, both Joe's and her father's at the motel, could this have some importance??I would tend to agree with Laredo here, simply a failing in the episode...any comments??

No more comments other than, I agree with all your points here - that the removal of the head, of what has been seen, is relevant to the overall theme.

"We watch. And we're watched."

But again, my problem is I can find no direct narrative reconcilation with her actions, unless there is none; that her Dawin philosophy floats around her motivations but holds not direct account. If accidents and order are one and the same to her, it makes distinguishing motivation from action very difficult.

As E said, this episode seems to be over reaching its use of philosophy to create an aura of depth, but actually not delivering what it pretends to.

[Guest Laurent.]

As E said, this episode seems to be over reaching its use of philosophy to create an aura of depth, but actually not delivering what it pretends to.

Which is exactly what I ineptly tried to explain; the goal was to make us believe that their was a lot more at work than just a girl who lost her grip on reality because of past abuse. But in fact, it's all about her. I think Frank uses that exact same phrase at the end of the episode. It's all about her.

They didn't fail to deliver when they forgot to explain the link with the Group, the military or any other theories that took shape during the episode, that was their goal.. to make a 180 degree turn and show us that it was all about one human life. You can try to find a complex reason to her actions, you could find a motive linked to cult or military conspiracies, but truth is; it was all an accident. An abusive father who transformed his daughter forever. Real, flawed human characters in a harsh and cruel reality. That's the essence of Millennium.

Am I the only one to read the episode that way? 'cause I may be completely wrong then...