Utopia (2013)
“Episode Six”, Season 2 Episode 6
Requested By
Consistent-Fruit-185 on Reddit
What do I know about this series going into it?
Never heard of it. While clicking through I caught a glimpse of the words “conspiracy”, “virus”, and “vaccine”.
Recap
A creepy man strikes up a conversation with a woman in a bus terminal. He’s going away to “a place where nobody can find” him; the woman, utterly failing to realize he’s obviously a serial killer, sincerely tells him that that sounds nice.
She, for her part, is taking her son on vacation to the south of France - by bus rather than by train, because of the environmental impact. “Oh yes, we should all think of the environment,” says Creepy Man - and proceeded to rant to her about how having the kid in the first place is worse for the environment than anything else she could possibly do.
“If you really cared about the environment,” he says. “You would cut his throat right now. I could do it for you! I’ll get out my knife!” She stares at him, deer-in-the-headlights style, until he finally gets up and leaves for his bus.
So I’m guessing he’s the one who’s going to release the virus.
Previously On
This is unusual and unexpected: the Previously On comes after the teaser. It is, as usual, rapid-fire and I can barely type fast enough to follow it:
“They are sleeper agents, trained, brainwashed,” says Anton1.
“Geoff should announce V-Day,” says Milner2.
“Eat my fucking chip3!” shouts a man with a hole in his head.
“Janus stops the vaccine from working,” says a man missing an eye.
A woman makes a phone call: “Commence,” she says, then gloats that she can’t be shot. She gets shot anyway. A man sobs over her body: “Milner!”
Recap (resumed)
Wilson and Becky4 are looking through an observation window at a man lying in a hospital bed. The blonde woman inside is named Jessica. “He’s not going to make it,” observes Wilson, who has an eyepatch.
Elsewhere in the hospital, a black man with glasses is watching a news report: “Ian Johnson” is wanted for the murder of two people, one of whom is his own brother Roy Johnson; their mother Theresa is calling for him to turn himself in.
Wilson and Becky enter and update him (they seem to be his superiors): Milner called somebody and ordered him to release Russian flu from five secret locations around the world. The virus is going to be released just before V-day, 90 days from now. But we have to be careful, because whoever she called is watching The Network (whatever that is) and will enact the secondary protocol if he realizes they’re on to him.
In fairness, the other guy could probably have guessed what the secondary protocol is: the virus will be released immediately instead of in 90 days. The three of them need to stop it on their own and can’t go to the authorities to do so.
From what they’ve uncovered so far about the conspiracy, there are three possible people who Milner called. Whoever she called will vanish from his cover identity and begin the work. They only know the identity of one of them - a guy named Paul - so if they go to look for Paul and he’s gone, they’ll at least know who they’re looking for. So Wilson, Becky, and (I finally learn his name) Ian head out. On the way, Becky warns Wilson not to give their targets a dramatic name like The Three.
Meanwhile, in a suburban home, Dugdale5 is teaching his daughter math. His son, Grant, comes in and takes a butcher knife from the kitchen. Dugdale demands that Grant put it back; Grant brushes him off, and Dugdale meekly does nothing about it.
Back to Wilson, Ian, and Becky. They’re in a van somewhere, and Ian is berating Wilson: Did you have fun betraying us and joining the people who killed my brother?
Wilson barely gets to answer when they spot Paul. Which is a serious problem, because now they know that Milner called one of the other two people - and they know nothing about who those people are.
Ah well, nothing for it. Wilson pulls out a gun: just in case there’s yet another backup plan (what if the bad guys find out their boss Milner is dead?), they should kill Paul right now. Becky and Ian freak out: Stop it, we’re not killers!
So instead they break into Paul’s house and search it. Wilson quickly concludes that they’ve found nothing. But they need to do something to prevent Paul from getting suspicious that they’re on to him:
Ian, who retains a vestige of sanity, refuses and leaves the room. So while Wilson’s doing that, Ian and Becky (or possibly Leah? Wilson’s mentioned a Leah a few times and I think I might have this character’s name wrong) find a secret cell phone. Wilson easily breaks into it because it hasn’t been updated, though I suspect he didn’t wash his hands first.
There’s only one number saved in the phone: that of Dobri Gorski, Donaldson’s professor, who told him about Jimmy Deech. I have no idea who any of those people are.
While Wilson makes a call, Becky-or-Leah takes a pill. “It must be available somewhere,” says Ian tenderly. But whatever medication she’s taking isn’t available elsewhere; it’s top-secret, and when it runs out in four days she’ll die.
Wilson returns and reports that Dobri Gorski is already in custody for murder. “I’ll call Leah,” he says, establishing that the woman in the room with him is Becky. “She’ll get us access.”
Cut to a man eating toast in a bathtub. I briefly think this is going to be Gorski, but this doesn’t look like a prison cell. In comes the guy from the bus station; his name is Terrence. “Where is it?” Terrence demands, pointing a gun. Toast Man points him to the fireplace, and Terrence retrieves not the virus but rather a piece of paper listing two locations. “Trager has the others,” says Toast Man.
As thanks for the information, Terrence goes and gets a radio.
He drops the radio into the bathtub and, well, the nickname I gave Toast Man turns out to be more apt than I thought.
Meanwhile, a crazy old man covered with blood is drawing molecules on a whiteboard. A woman comes in, probably his daughter, and tries talking to him, but he responds with gibberish. “Don’t do that,” she says. “We need to get to know each other.”
“She’s dead, Jessica,” Crazy Old Man says in English. Ah, this must be the man who sobbed over Milner in the Previously. I think these two must be the bad guys.
Meanwhile, in a hospital, a man in a biohazard suit enters the room with the unconscious guy that Wilson and Becky were looking at earlier. He’s about to remove the feeding tube when Jessica Hyde6 comes in with a gun. “I’ve got a good grip on the tubes,” he says.
“Take your hands off those tubes and I’ll let you walk out,” she counters.
But he’s not scared of her; he’s scared of the unconscious man. “He wants me dead, Jess,” which is why he is… prepared to die in order to kill him?
Jess reaches the same conclusion I did and calls his bluff. The guy releases the tubes peacefully and walks out.
Meanwhile, at the police station, Becky is walking down a hallway when the world suddenly spins around her. She takes another pill, but before it can take effect she hallucinates a conversation with the man from the Previously who had the hole in his head. Eventually the hallucination wears off, and she discovers Wilson has been standing there. He’s looked at the police report: Gorski had faked his own death by finding somebody of his own age and build, driving a truck over his skull, and removing his own teeth with a hammer to put them inside the dead man’s mouth.
So let’s go in and talk to the lunatic! “I gave my life to Janus,” says Gorski. “But now that it’s here I’m afraid. I don’t want to die.” So Janus is the evil environmentalist organization that wants to release a virus and kill most or all of humanity to save the planet.
“Why would Janus kill you?” Becky asks.
“I trained them. I know who they are,” he replies.
Wilson asks for the names of the other two; Gorski asks for protection in return. Wilson happily grants it, but Gorski immediately regrets it. Nobody can protect me from Janus!
But he presumably has worked out the obvious: better to take a chance that these people can stop Janus before he kills you, than to die for certain when the virus is released. He gives the names: Terrence Truman and Michael Johns.
Wilson gets up and leaves, waving away Gorski’s desperate objections: “You’re in a police station, he can’t get to you.” Wilson is an idiot.
Cut to Wilson and Crazy Old Man sitting on the floor together, talking about how the latter shot people he loves. This scene is oddly tinted in bright yellow, so it’s clearly not actually taking place - but I can’t tell if it’s COM hallucinating, Wilson doing some wishful thinking that he can have a heart-to-heart with his opponent, or a flashback to a conversation that really happened.
But suddenly Leah interrupts the conversation and delivers an update to the both of them: We’ve located Michael Johns, still at his job, so the man we’re looking for is Terrence. So I guess this must be reality after all; I’ll have to significantly reassess what I think is going on here, if Crazy Old Man and Wilson are actually working together for Leah. But at least I understand a bit more: it’s only Becky and Ian who are civilians, while Wilson works for this secret spy agency.
Oh, and Leah has “taken care” of Michael and of Paul.
Meanwhile, Terrence gets the location of two more canisters from a fishmonger - then shoots him. I’m starting to think working for Janus isn’t a long-term investment.
Back to the spy agency: “Bad news, he’s killing people,” says Leah. She lists Danny Silbert, a former Network virologist and current7 Toast Man; and John Trager, the fishmonger, who also used to work for them. So this “Network” is the name of the spy agency; they’re the good guys, but Janus’s people are all recruited from within it, HYDRA-style. And the connection between Janus’s recruits? They all went to the same university.
Two men meet in a field in the middle of nowhere. One, “Geoff”, hands the other, “Michael”, a recorded confession; he plans to flee the country, and wants Michael to send the confession to an address and corroborate its contents. In return, Michael will get 5 million pounds. Michael is pissed off: “What about my family? Did you forget about them?” and beats the crap out of Geoff. “You want me to get you out? You’re going to stay where you are and do what you’re told.”
I don’t get it. Are these good guys, bad guys? What was that all about?
Meanwhile, Grant has returned to the kitchen and mocks his sister for doing her French homework. His mother calls him over.
She proceeds, however, to tell him what to do anyway: don’t scare Alice, and bring back the knife you took. “Yes, Mrs. Dugdale,” he says, so I’m guessing he’s adopted; she tells him to call her Jen (not mom?). Alice smiles a secret smile, thankful that at last one of her parents is putting a foot down.
Back at Network, Jessica has taken Ian aside and wants to have sex with him in a cupboard8. “I’m with Becky,” he says. “But not for long,” Jessica replies, callously.
That’s when Becky cries out in the other room that she’s found the link: Donaldson studied at the same university as all these people they’re tracking, and Dobri Gorsky was their professor.
I don’t know who Donaldson is. But I’m a bit surprised that it took them this long to connect the dots between “Gorsky is a professor” and “all the people working for Janus went to the same university”.
While they’re oohing and aahing over this piece of not-news, Terrence gains access to the ventilation system in Gorski’s cell and floods it with petrol.
The Network is still trying to catch up: they learn that Terrence broke into Gorski’s house the night before, and have somehow figured out that 1) this means he has the locations of all five canisters; 2) that he will obtain the closest canister first; and 3) the closest canister is in a car park in Denham. They run Gorski’s credit card records to find out which car park it was, and Ian and Jessica head out9.
In the car park, Terrence obtains a hidden canister from behind a car’s headlight, gets into his car, and starts to drive away with it - right into an ambush that Jessica has rigged up. She fires a dozen shots at him, but unfortunately his car is bulletproof; fortunately, in his panic to get away he drives right into another car. She reloads and approaches, still shooting like a lunatic without even trying to check where Terrence is or whether he’s still inside.
Which of course he isn’t, and no explanation is offered for how he got out while she was watching. He makes it to a stairwell, wounded, and staggers up the stairs. He knows he won’t get far, so he pauses to put on gloves in preparation for releasing the virus10. He keeps Jessica at bay by shooting at her from above as she climbs the stairs after him, and reaches the roof - where Ian ambushes him and stabs him in the gut.
Seriously wounded, Terrence starts to open the canister. But Ian begs him: Please don’t do it! The vaccine doesn’t work, it’s going to kill millions! I guess he doesn’t know that Terrence is happy to kill as much of humanity as possible, vaccine or no vaccine. Ultimately, he’s forced to shoot Terrence dead to stop him.
Jessica arrives and holds Ian’s hand in comfort.
Denouement. Ian arrives in the hospital and embraces Becky, who is still hallucinating the guy with the hole in his head (finally identified as “Marius”). She hands Ian a vial. She’s only got two days of Thoraxin left, she says, and wants to go out on her own terms; this vial of “Nembetal” must be an assisted suicide thing.
Back home, Mr. Dugdale - who is the guy from the field with Geoff, I hadn’t recognized him without his glasses - is shocked to discover that Grant is suddenly very well behaved; he’s done the dishes and has agreed to let Alice help him with his schoolwork. “I don’t understand it either,” says Mrs. Dugdale, demonstrating the causal reasoning prowess of a six-month-old.
Dugdale (first name Michael; I’d forgotten) then goes to Wilson and asks for the fake IDs that will get him and his family out of the country. But Wilson has his mind on other things: I’ve-forgotten-her-name was wrong, he says, to try to release the virus on humanity. Losing so much life is unacceptable… but losing some is. What they should do is release the virus in an isolated village somewhere so that it can’t spread throughout the world. They don’t need a pandemic to get people to take the vaccine; just the fear of one.
What exactly does this vaccine do, that the Network is so desperate to get all of humanity to take it? Is it a sterilization program, tied to the Terrence’s environmental extremism11? Or is there some other reason?
As Dugdale watches in horror, Wilson says that he’s not going to let him flee the country after all; instead he’ll be tagged and followed with agents and cameras at all times. “But don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll free you after we do this.”
“This isn’t you!” exclaims Dugdale; I hadn’t noted it, but this is like the fourth time somebody said that to Wilson this episode.
“I don’t think I am me,” he says. What the hell is going on with him?
Meanwhile, in a hotel room somewhere, Geoff opens up a suitcase full of money, laughing maniacally. But he notices a strange residue on the bills, and we cut to later - with two people in biohazard suits killing the virus with ultraviolet light and tampering with the scene to make Geoff’s death look like a suicide.
Back in the hospital, Jessica watches jealously as Ian and Becky canoodle. When Ian leaves to get some champagne, she comes in and kisses Becky on the top of the head. But then she asks: “Are you doing right by Ian to force him to look into your eyes as you die?” A freaky and manipulative question - but we can see that it gets to Becky.
Wilson has another meeting, with a man in a yellow suit and yellow paint on his face; I think he’s the guy who tried to kill Jessica’s brother. Wilson draws a gun. “This isn’t you,” says the Yellow Man. Wilson shoots him.
So has Wilson been replaced by Janus? Has he secretly been Janus the whole time?
Meanwhile, Crazy Old Man has news for Ian: there is no such thing as Thoraxin. Becky is perfectly fine. The pills she’s been taking are causing her hallucinations12. “Why would Donaldson do this?” Ian asks; I still have no idea who Donaldson is. “Some people need to control others,” answers COM. Ian rushes over to tell Becky - but it’s too late. Thanks to Jessica’s meddling, she’s taken the suicide drug.
Elsewhere in the building, Wilson meets Leah. They nod to one another, and she leaves the room - upon which Wilson, too, commits suicide, as the camera pans over a book that displays the Chinese ideogram for “rabbit”. Why? Why not?
Two Network goons grab COM just before he can escape the building. Ian, desperately performing CPR on Becky, manages to get her to vomit up the poison - but other Network goons grab him and Jessica as well. And meanwhile, Jessica’s brother wakes up from his coma. I bet the claim that he would never recover was always a lie, just the Network manipulating Jessica, just as they invented a disease to manipulate Becky and Ian.
We return to Wilson, who it turns out hasn’t committed suicide; he used the knife to carve the symbol for Rabbit into his chest. WHY?!
He stands up, oblivious to his open chest wound, and opens the door to the chamber containing the five canisters of virus.
Lingering questions
Who is the real Janus? Wilson? Leah? Somebody else? Has Wilson been a Janus sleeper agent all along?
What does the vaccine do and why does the Network want everyone to take it?
With Jessica, Ian, and Crazy Old Man in custody (and presumably Becky as well, since she’s in the next room puking her guts out), who if anybody can stop the Network? Will Michael find a way to get a message out despite being under surveillance? Is the Network aware that Jessica’s brother is awake, or is he free to act?
How long will Grant’s good behavior last? Will his parents figure out what caused the change or remain oblivious?
Ratings
I evaluate the finale-of-the-week from an angle that its writers never intended: how well it works as an individual episode watched in isolation. This will likely differ greatly from how the episode works in its proper context. And it should go without saying that the following does not apply to the series as a whole, which I have not watched.
The rating system is from 0 to 10, where 5 is considered average for television. These are intended to be measurements, not judgements; a low rating may reflect low quality, but it may also reflect a deliberate choice. For example, a strong character piece may have no plot, or a finale may intentionally provide no closure - neither of which makes an episode bad.
Story: 7/10. A well-plotted, well-executed thriller with numerous twists and turns.
There’s one big issue I have with the plot: the idea that Terrence was “watching the Network” and threatening to enact his secondary protocol. As an excuse for why the main characters need to do all the investigating themselves without the resources of their organization, it’s better than what we usually get. But that excuse lasts for all of ten minutes until they discover that Terrence is going straight to the secondary protocol anyway. So what was the point of introducing this concept? There are two possibilities, and each one results in both a script problem and a plot hole:
Perhaps the writers intended it to explain why the main characters (as opposed to specialists who work for the Network) were the ones breaking into Paul’s house. As soon as that scene was over, the excuse was no longer needed, and they jettisoned it.
Script problem: Somebody should’ve explicitly said, after they found out about Terrence, that they were now free to use all of the Network’s resources.
Plot hole: Ian is inexplicably the only person available to stop Terrence in the car park, which is why he needs to beg Jessica to come with him. This is the exact same problem that the “secondary protocol” was supposed to solve in the Paul’s house scene earlier, only made more obvious because the excuse is gone.
Perhaps the writers intended it to explain why the main characters couldn’t use Network resources throughout the episode.
Script problem: The main characters do use Network resources throughout the episode - gaining access to the police station (twice), assassinating the two people who Milner didn’t call, accessing Gorski’s credit card history, etc. There needed to be at least a line of dialogue acknowledging these and hand-waving them as too small for Terrence to notice.
Plot hole: As soon as they discovered that Terrence was already enacting the secondary protocol, they should’ve been free to do whatever they liked.
But don’t let my long-winded exploration of the above fool you: it’s a minor issue in a story for which I have mostly praise. Wilson’s turn to evil was set up very carefully, so that when it came it felt both surprising and earned (a rare combination). I was kept guessing as to the Network’s motivations through13 the very end. And the vast majority of the episode works well as a procedural.
The subplots, too, mostly worked. In particular, the love triangle and Becky’s illness-that-never-was were interwoven very well with the main story. I wish I knew what the heck was going on between Jessica’s brother and the Man in Yellow; between Jessica herself and the Crazy Old Man who is probably her father; and between Geoff and Michael - but I never penalize the episode for things I don’t understand. Really the only subplot that falls flat is that of Grant.
Writing: 5/10. The strongest aspect of the script is the repeated hints that something is wrong with Wilson, very nicely setting up the reveal of whatever brainwashing he’s undergone. Beyond that, the script is fairly generic, with a couple of unintentionally silly moments that undermine it. Ian holding Becky’s face and imploring her to look at him, then asking if her hallucination is still in the corner of the room - I laughed out loud at that, because of course she had to stop looking at him in order to answer his question. And Grant suddenly becoming an angel after suffering the mildest criticism any parent ever gave a child for bad behavior? Mrs. Dugdale being utterly mystified that a child began to behave better moments after she established clear boundaries for him, and not understanding the connection between the two events? I really hope those aren’t indicative of what the writers think parenting is like.
Production: 8/10. A couple of bad scene transitions, and very questionable color grading in the COM-Wilson heart-to-heart. But the sets are great; the camerawork is great; and the music is phenomenal, reminiscent of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (I’m sure they were done by the same composer).
The acting was very strong. I want to single out Jessica, who is doing something fascinating with her character, but I can’t because everybody was doing a great job: Ian pleading with Terrence not to make him shoot him; Becky’s facial expression when Jessica’s parting shot hits the bullseye; Wilson perfectly straddling the line between trustworthy and psychotic; and even the woman in the bus terminal in the opening scene, suddenly discovering she’s talking to a lunatic and freezing in panic.
Characterization: 8/10. Good acting usually goes hand-in-hand with good characterization, and that’s definitely the case here. I am fascinated by Jessica’s behavior (she reminds me of Parker from Leverage) and want to know her backstory. Wilson, even before he is brainwashed, perfectly portrays the morally complex government agent who is theoretically good but regularly does evil and probably has a dozen closets14 full of skeletons. I’m curious as to Leah’s history and motivations and suspect we never get much of a window into either.
Accessibility: 3/10. This was a very difficult episode to follow. The opening scenes of were such a flood of random names that even when they were connected to characters I knew, I frequently missed them: Ian and Becky and Leah and Donaldson and Dugdale and Terrence and Paul and Geoff and Michael and Jessica… it wasn’t until after I checked my notes that I realized that Ian was the same guy who was wanted for murder (for reasons I don’t know) and that Jessica is the woman with a close relationship to COM (possibly father-daughter, but I’m still not sure). It took me ages to realize that Michael Dugdale was Grant’s adoptive father, and I still have no idea who or what Donaldson is.
Even the main plot, which I think I mostly understand, remains semi-opaque. Is the Network a government organization or a private one? How does Janus intersect with it? They both seem to want the same thing - create a pandemic to distribute a vaccine - but I have no idea why, nor why they are nevertheless opposed to each other (beyond Ian’s cryptic statement to Terrence that the vaccine doesn’t work).
Closure: 2/10. A massive cliffhanger! Wilson has turned evil and is about to release the virus; COM, Jessica, and Ian are in custody at gunpoint; Geoff is dead; Michael is neutralized; and the real Janus is still out there. The reader who requested this show said that it “never got a proper finale”, and they weren’t kidding.
Do I want to watch the series now?
Yes! I’m desperately curious to get all the answers to all my questions about the world they’re in. It’s a fascinating setting and I want to devour it from the beginning.
Is there a series finale you’d like me to try? Join our Discord or leave a comment below.
Name given in captions.
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French fry
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I genuinely didn’t notice, until reviewing my notes, that this is the same woman who was in the immediately preceding scene.
Probably about 10 amps’ worth
Closet
The official excuse to send these two is because Becky and Wilson are at the police station with Gorski’s body and therefore too far away. But does the Network have literally no other agents? What about the people who manhandle Ian and Jessica at the end?
If he’s planning to release an airborne virus that will kill all of humanity, with him at the epicenter, why does he need gloves?
If so, they’re idiots; humanity’s population is expected to peak and start to declining in the next few decades anyway.
I actually already guessed this, that the hallucinations were a side effect of the drug that’s keeping her alive rather than a symptom of the disease. but I didn’t guess the other half, that there was no disease.
Yes, “through” and not “until”! I still don’t know for sure what they’re up to.
Cupboards