The Beginning and the End

[IHaveGoodInstincts]

The wonderful medium known as the DVD can take that 4 or 5 month cliffhanger and just make it disappear!

Being quite the old post digger-upper that I am, I missed this one while I was typing away on the paper dove thread in the Season 1 category. My post there actually related a bit more of season 2 talk than season 1, but cliffhangers can do that to you!

Like I mentioned on that thread, the separation gives mixed feelings for me. This is a bit of a "what if" scenario, but I think season two would have been much less intense if the relationship went back to the way it was in season one.

[Guest WaveCrest]

Wow, dragging up old posts are we?

It saves starting a new thread for the same episode. I do a forum search first before starting a new thread.

[Who Am I?]

I know, but it was going back back waaaaaaaaay back.

[Guest SpooktalkGiGi]

Hey thanks Richard i think is just fine and dandy for bringing back up older posts cause you forget sometimes what people have alreayd posted and its nice to be refreshed and if you are old like me you don't remember what you had for breakfast today! LOL I think it was cheerios!

Spookmeister :)

[Earthnut]

"Old" like you, yeah right. You're so old. Spook, you need ice cream, not cheerios, before you go completely bonkers.

I love old posts, there's always some new and fresh thing said when someone brings one back to front stage, something the rest of us hadn't noticed before.

[Guest WaveCrest]

One of the highlights of this episode for me was the roadblock scene. I liked that background shot of the city at night and use of colour as well. In fact it felt non-stop from after the narrated opening by Lance (as Frank), like "24" did when it was at it's best, fast-paced and exciting.

[ethsnafu]

I love this episode, simply in terms of what it set out to achieve which really highlights the forethought that went into the second season. Glen Morgan is on record stating that he wanted the opening episode of the season to be very much like its denouement. The second season was to be a circular journey that had a beginning and an end that met like that the ouroborous: the snake that ate its own tail. If you look at the opening episode the underpinnings of it are represented by a threat that the Millennium Group has kept hidden from Frank and and his family. We see the Blacks leave the Yellow House and the parting of Frank and Catherine and in a clever foreshadowing of Lara's story we even have Jordan proclaim that she had perceived angels but these angels had left her. There are many subtle parallels in this episode with the underpinnings of the seasons finale episodes. Again we see the hidden threat, this time Marburg, again we see the Blacks forced to leave the security of the yellow house, again we see Frank and Catherine separated and again a woman loses her angel. It's all subtle but it's all there. It's well worth watching this episode again and looking for the narrative similarities between it and the season finale, that's why the episode is called The Beginning AND The End after all.

That's tonights episode sorted methinks.

Eth

[IHaveGoodInstincts]

Before flipping back to page one, I was ready to take the blame for resurrecting this thread, but this is one of the few that I didn't give the 6 year time warp treatment to!

Alas, some of the threads here are so in-depth, syndication should be considered.....

Keeping the show alive by any means necessary!

[ethsnafu]

I watched it. It's still superb even after an thousand viewings or more. Slight exxageration but probably only a slight one.

I'm still of the opinion that The Polaroid Stalker is a former Millennium Group member. I accept have a penchant for reading between the lines but I'm sure there's evidence to support such a theory whether it was intended or not. I know others have thought the same thing over the years so I'm not alone in my wild assertions. In my potted history of The Millennium Group he is a former group member who was driven insane by the initiation process in much the same way Lara Means was. It would certainly account for the unhinged way he rambles throught the episode. The Millennium Group confess to having files on the individual, they know who he is but for some reason have sought not to deal with the situation overtly but to monitor him afar and keep Frank in the dark as to his intentions. He displays a preoccupation with the Vansen-West comet, a comet that we are lead to believe The Old Man is also monitoring when diagrams in his cabin reveal themselves to be diagrams of comets and though this has never been confirmed, it has been stated that the good old pause buttone reveals what appears to be an ouroborous tattoo on the stalkers wrist in one or two scenes in the episode.

It certainly sits nicely with my canon though wether that was ever the true concept behind the character I guess we'll never know.

Eth

[Who Am I?]

It is possible that the Polaroid Stalking Man was a previous member of the Group. For him to have so much knowledge on Frank, either he was a Roedecker in disguise (lol), or maybe he had resentments towards Frank from becoming like the protege of said Group at times, or maybe he was driven insane. But why toy with Frank, if he has any resentment towards The Group, why not go after the Elder or Watts's family? Why go after someone who doesn't really know who we are?