After seeing 315 "Quicksand", I'm thinking of the 3 eps leading into it (312-14) be like taking a big intricate puzzle from a box, and dumping all the puzzle pieces onto a table. Each of these three episodes move the pieces around a lot, but very few of the pieces actually start to connect properly. And there's some that you try to fit together but they don't fit and you have to start over again. The low quantity of connections made between puzzle pieces in those eps were what made them so damn frustrating. But in 315 "Quicksand" ... it feels like ... I think ... we're starting to see some possible connections here.
And that is why I found "Quicksand" to be a notably more satisfying episode than the few eps leading into it. Parts of the puzzle finally feel like they starting to take some sort of shape, both with the plot and with Annie's character arc. Thank god. Plot-wise, we get a huge reveal that Henry Wilcox was somehow pulling strings from prison to get that drone strike going, and that the drone strike actually was successful after all. We don't know exactly how yet, but at least we're on a path to get there. And we can feel slightly better that Arthur is not about to get fired anytime soon. It's an interesting twist, and could make for some good future storylines. Meanwhile, Khalid and his men attempt to kidnap Annie, Annie and Eyal go after them, Megan is killed, and then Eyal allows himself to be kidnapped by Khalid's men, but injects a GPS tracker into his leg so that Annie can find him. I'll be honest, I'm pretty glad they killed Megan off, because I never cared much about her character and I think that was adding to my frustration in 313-14, because so much of those episodes were focused around her. Now we can finally be done with that particular thread and move the frak on.
As for the movement on the Annie front - In 312, Annie is distraught and doesn't seem to fully know what to do with herself at any given moment. In 313, she's on a bull-headed rampage and seems to be wearing blinders to anything and everything else in her life, and in 314 she gets to the point of almost seeming like an off-kilter Annie-bot instead of an actual human version of herself. 312 lets us into Annie's head a bit, but 313-14 shut us out almost entirely. In these eps, no one knows what the hell is going on in there and very rarely do any of the characters try to find out. It's quite frustrating for the viewer, but depending on where it leads, it may or may not end up being worth the temporary frustration.
In 315, we finally start to get some teeny tiny glimpses into Annie's head again. Whew. It was kinda nice that the writers purposely set this episode in Zurich, in the exact same safehouse where Annie met Eyal for the first time at the very beginning of the series (ep 104). That way they are able give a contrast between Annie then and Annie now. Ep 104 Annie is eager, spunky, full of heart, and is very very inexperienced and green. She's like a puppy chasing after a ball. Ep 315 Annie, a couple/three years later, is much more experienced, but also more jaded and world-weary. This present day Annie is damaged, and is in both emotional and professional transition and turmoil.
In this episode Annie makes a clear choice that she's over Megan's antics, and she very satisfyingly plays Megan like a fiddle in the scene where she injects Megan with the tracker. Then towards the end of the episode, Eyal tries to convince Annie that it's not her fault that Megan was killed, knowing that "old Annie" would be very distraught about this. Instead, Annie surprises him by giving the very pragmatic (and more jaded) answer that she quite frankly does not feel much guilt about it, because Megan was given so many chances to do the right thing and she refused all of them. Eyal tells her that he hopes Annie doesn't lose her empathy for people, as it's a good quality to have, but of course before they can get more than a couple sentences into this heart-to-heart, they are interrupted by Khalid's men showing up to the safehouse. ARGH.
All in all, we're still only getting very tiny breadcrumbs on this front, but at the very least, it feels once again that the gears are turning in Annie's head, rather than the previous couple eps where it seemed like she had simply regressed into some sort of zombie-like autopilot mode. Now, in what direction the gears are turning, and where it could lead, we still have no clue, but I think something's happening. Something's a brewin'. I think. I hope.
Anyway here's my other thoughts about the ep in random order:
- I really liked the idea of Auggie's Battle Buddies storyline, but I wish they had done this in the middle of a season when they could have devoted more time to it, maybe stretch it to two eps or something. It felt a bit rushed ... but I still liked the gist of it. I also wish they would tie this into the other storylines rather than keeping it in a bubble all by itself. Maybe they will tie it in eventually ... if anyone can help Annie with her PTSD (remember that she's too traumatized to stay at her own place right now) it's Auggie.
- We only got one scene from Joan in this ep, and zero movement on the pill addiction storyline. I was glad that she was willing to help Annie out, but I wish we could get a little more on how she went from feeling like her relationship w/Annie was totally hopeless, to the point of being willing to help her on an off-book mission. These two ladies seriously need to have an H2H sometime soon.
- The one and only person that seems to be able to bring any spark back into Annie's eyes these days is Auggie. It's good that they finally made it to Allen's for drinks, but of course they don't accomplish much because they don't talk about anything other than stupid obnoxious Megan, and then Auggie drops the "I'm going to Iraq" bomb. But it does remind me of one other thing though - I have always found it amusing, the way when Annie and Auggie talk, she stares at him waayy longer and more intensely than you would with a "sighted" person, because she knows he can't see her doing it. She totally takes advantage of that and uses it to try to read what he's thinking based on the look on his face. She does it again in this scene in "Quicksand" and it is hilarious/cute as always.
- I seriously hope they use the Henry Wilcox twist as something to help set up next season, rather than wasting a bunch of precious time trying to resolve it in the finale!! They seeerrriously need to just focus on the Annie/Eyal/Auggie stuff in the finale.
- I'll admit to being a stickler for details, but it drives me nuts that in ep 309, it was clearly mentioned a couple times that the surgeons had to open up Annie's chest to get her heart beating again and to do surgery, and yet she now seems to have zero surgery scar. I thought about that in this episode because of the lowcut dress she wears. But then again I'm no doctor, so I have no clue where you'd open up someone's chest in a sitch like that haha. I just remember on ER they always used to crack the sternum front and center, right? ;-) Now I'm totally curious whether this is laziness/lack of attention to detail and a very unrealistic portrayal of this story, or if the scar would just be somewhere else.
Now o.k., to close this review out, I should say one thing - The preview for next week's ep is incredibly intriguing, but it's extremely dangerous to put anything into it at all because previews are always SO misleading. The various trains of thought that the preview put me on are definitely influencing my feeling about the puzzle pieces moving towards each other. Because the preview opens up thoughts of, "OHH maybe THAT'S the type of place they're going with all this," but whatever I'm thinking could be nowhere near what really ends up happening. So, I just ... don't know. The finale has SO much potential ... AGGH I hope it's good!! Crossing my fingers and toes and eyes and any other crossable body parts.
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