Writers: Natalie Chaidez and Denise Thé
Director: Scott Lautanen
Grade: B+
I’m of two, or maybe four, minds about this episode. On the one hand, I think the gimmick they used was fairly effective, but it also didn’t really work “realistically” as written. Far from perfect, but I still liked it, and it was fun to re-watch and look at the various clues again.
On the other hand, this was just not the time for this kind of slow, experimental episode, not when the show was already struggling with decreasing viewership and dealing with a scheduling move. And there’s no reason why we couldn’t have spent some time in a non-dream reality with some of our other characters, other than that the writers wanted to devote the entire episode to their self-indulgent dream fantasy. They really shot themselves in the foot with this post-hiatus arc.
I normally love the voiceovers, and I initially liked the one at the beginning of the episode, but after watching the entire hour, it didn’t quite work. The presence of the coyote, for example, brings in a completely different type of mythology, even if it was only intended as a connecting thread from reality to dream. Just pick a mythological framework and stick with it, writers—don’t confuse the “witching hour” incubi/succubi/etc framework with the possibility of animal totems. The turtles worked, this not so much.
The back-and-forth structure of the episode also didn’t quite work because it strains credibility (I know, right) that Sarah would re-enter such a realistic, chronological dream each time she was rendered unconscious. The dream also just… didn’t feel very dreamlike. There were some really lovely clues that it was a dream, to be sure, but to have that kind of structured, coherent dream is incredibly rare. And this one had computers with realistic graphs and brain scans, and realistic facts about sleep cycles and smoking. The dream also detailed events with characters that were outside Sarah’s point of view, like the doctor and John, which is, again, extremely uncommon.
Another issue is that this episode didn’t tell us much we didn’t already know about Sarah. The previous episodes have done plenty in terms of establishing her issues, and I didn’t notice any new ones here, or any resolving of old ones. We knew she’s kind of batty and has weird dreams (the Pilot episode began with one of Sarah’s vivid J-Day dreams). We knew she’s afraid of getting cancer. We knew she feels anxious about Cameron’s relationship with John (“I don’t like the way he responds to you” in “Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today”). At the beginning of the episode, we thought Sarah had killed a man, then we found out he wasn’t dead, but by the end of this hour, he was dead again. And Sarah killed him. Again. Was it more pre-meditated this time? Is that what we were supposed to get from it? I’m really not sure how things stand any differently after this episode than they did before, which makes it feel like a waste of space.
However… it was still kind of fun, so having said all of that, I’m going to gleefully unpack some of the “clues” about both Sarah’s psyche and the dream/reality structure.
The first clue that the sleep clinic was a dream is that Sarah was in one at all. It’s automatically jarring to go from the end of the previous episode, with the reveal of the HK, to Sarah checking into a sleep clinic with John as the supportive son urging her to get better.
And I twinged to the idea that the events in the van were real when Ed asked her who she was working for. Realistically, that was a completely reasonable question, but it struck me as a strange question for someone in Sarah’s nightmare to ask. It seems much more likely that her subconscious would have the guy knowing who he was working for and questioning her on behalf of the machines, rather than completely ignorant of who and what he worked for. Which is exactly why it struck me as a clue that that part of the story was real. Of course, if Ed didn’t know who he was working for, who was he talking to on the phone about luring John and killing Sarah? The guy who stole the HK from Weaver?
Anyway, despite that big clue, the thing that kept me most unsure that the sleep clinic was a dream was what I mentioned above—it was too realistic. The computers, the random facts, the pieces of art, the calendars and knick-knacks on desks, etc. The details were just too damn precise to feel dreamlike to me. The fact that the dream also peeked in on John and Cameron at home (with John making googly eyes at Cam despite being presumably all caught up in the Riley drama, which was a clue in the other direction) threw me off, as well.
As for Sarah’s psyche, that aspect of the episode was fun even if we didn’t learn much of anything new. Although, one of Sarah’s fears is John being preyed upon by older women? Hee.
The entire cafeteria sequence was great because it indicates not just that Sarah is afraid of intimacy between Cam and John (the flirty “Those won’t be as good as yours” and Cameron’s sexy return smile), but she’s also afraid of Cameron usurping the nurturing role. Cameron has taken better psychological care of John than Sarah at times this season, so it makes sense that Sarah would be afraid that that kind of emotional nurturing would extend into basic, mother-ish things like keeping track of John’s daily carbs and personalizing the impersonal pancake box recipe that Sarah uses. If Cameron could be mother, lover, and bodyguard, where would that leave Sarah?
The vending machine sequence was layered, as well. In Sarah’s mind, Cameron is so in tune with other machines that the bond extends to vending machines! And the same goes for Cam’s ability to provide for John—she’s so amazingly adept at giving him what he wants that, once again, it extends to vending machines!
At least Sarah’s subconscious believes that John would eventually believe her and come for her in such a questionable situation, even if she also doesn’t believe he’s capable of saving her.
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