Sanctuary 4x03 "Untouchable" recap/review
I don't know what Geek Speak plans to do, but the editor is going to be traveling, so no more issues until February. So just that I'll be prepared whatever she decides (and because I think people like reading them) I'm going to keep up with my reviews so they'll be ready in case they're wanted in the first post back.
That said, this one got long again. Sorry about that, folks.
"Untouchable"
04.03
Written by: Gillian Horvath
Directed by: Steven A Adelson
US Airdate: October 21, 2011
In short: Helen Magnus has to contend with a team of UN inspectors who will decide whether the Sanctuary continues getting funding. Henry, meanwhile, has to deal with the return of his girlfriend Erika.
Recommended: YES!
"We could waste a lot of energy fighting this battle, but there's a long war ahead."
"Okay, but if you start calling me 'young grasshopper,' I'm quitting."
- Helen and Will about the UN liaison team
Following a failed mission in Jakarta, the United Nations sends a troubleshooter named Craig Addison and his team of "untouchables" to go through the Sanctuary with a fine-toothed comb to determine if they should continue receiving funding. Helen is being left out in the cold following the mission, not to mention the Hollow Earth caldera eruptions, and the near catastrophe caused by the Abnormal uprising. The team's arrival is preceded by Erika Myers, Henry's HAP girlfriend, who has some news for him: he's going to be a father! I hope it's not a litter... Fortunately, Erika is a technogeek and offers to help Henry get their systems ready for Addison and his goons.
Addison arrives with a group of his own technogeeks that he calls "the untouchables." Helen is very calm in her approach to the intrusion, leaving the ego-bruising and bristling to Will, which he does very, very well in this episode. Will is really on top of things in this episode. I liked him a lot more here than I have in the recent past. He was willing to accept Helen's behavior, but he wasn't going to lay down.
WILL: "If you call me 'sport' once more, I'm gonna knock your teeth in. Welcome to the Sanctuary!"
Once Addison's people have left with Will, Helen lets Addison have it. She points out that she knows what game he's playing, she calls him on referring to the Sanctuary as a "menagerie" and its residents as freaks and monsters. Addison leaves his cocky smile plastered on and struts through the house like he owns everything in it. He warns Helen that her days of having carte blanche with the governments of the world is over because she's gone off on her own too many times. He's a self-righteous prick, and I spent the entire episode waiting for Helen to smack him.
HELEN: There's over a hundred years of history here, Mr. Addison.
ADDISON: Any chance you'll call me Crai--
HELEN: None whatsoever.
When Addison's tour takes him to Henry's lab, where Addison's second-in-command belittles Henry's equipment. Erika immediately expresses her dislike of Addison, proving that even werewolves have good instincts when it comes to people. When he warns her of the freaks and monsters they keep in the Sanctuary, she nearly turns wolf and slams him against the wall. Henry and Helen are able to pull her back, and Erika admits that she overreacted and she couldn't stop herself. Helen and Henry take her to an isolation room to get checked out.
Helen discovers that the drug Erika's aunt was giving to her to prevent transformations also wreaked havoc with her fertility. Her cells should have locked to prevent transformation so it wouldn't harm the baby. The hormones from the pregnancy are affecting her ability to handle emotional triggers, and she could change without intending to and harm the baby. Helen runs blood work to see if she can find a treatable chemical imbalance that will make things easier and, in the meantime, she asks Erika to remain in isolation just to be safe.
After Helen leaves, the Big Guy fills her in on Addison and his team.
BIG GUY: "Addison asked for coffee."
HELEN: "Uck. Philistine."
As someone who can barely stand the smell of the stuff, I have to say I love the running thread of Helen being so anti-coffee. This scene between her and the Big Guy was so great in every way. I wanted to quote the entire thing up above, but I didn't want to make this review a transcript. Suffice to say it was a great moment between two friends who have, lest we forget, known each other for about sixty years.
Will expresses his concern with how comfortable Addison's team is, how Helen is acquiescing to their every demand without putting up even the semblance of a fight. She assures him that everything that's happening is necessary to prove they have nothing to hide. Will comments that she's being very "zen" after her "one hundred and thirteen years on the mountaintop," but he's still the same uptight guy he always was. He agrees to see it through, but he's still nervous about the outcome.
Addison finally has a sit-down with Helen and Will concerning the mission that prompted his employers to send him in. The Abnormal uprising was controlled - just barely - and everything worked out fine, despite Abnormal attacks on Lotus training camps worldwide (which Will blames on Lotus bombing one of the calderas). The straw that broke the camel's back was a recent mission to Indonesia in which Helen and Will tried to capture a Crixorum, the telepathic Abnormal who was controlling the three armies rising from the caldera (remember? I said I hoped they went back and addressed that? I should have trusted the show). The Crixorum was the hidden leader of the invasion force, coordinating attacks across the globe. Thanks to help from Kate in Hollow Earth (whoot, Kate reference!), they managed to track him down to a fish market in Jakarta.
A local informant named Wahid pointed the Crixorum out to Helen and Will. When they moved in to capture him, a troop of SWAT-like mercenaries swept in from the shadows and attacked. The Crixorum turned the soldiers against each other and tried to make his escape, but one of the soldiers got off a lucky shot and the Crixorum died in the water.
Will deduces from Addison's reaction that it was his team that botched the operation. He claims it was just a 'Plan B' they enacted because of how the Sanctuary 'dropped the ball' in the refugee camp. They were just protecting their assets. I don't understand how this became Helen's problem. She did everything right. She was prepared to counteract the Crixorum's power with headphones. She kept the majority of her team well away so they couldn't be turned on each other. She had the situation well in hand until Addison's unprepared gunmen blustered in and started blowing shit up. The only reason they found the Crixorum in the first place is because they were following Helen's team. It's like Addison threw a water balloon, and the UN is shutting Helen down because her clothes got wet.
Addison's next bombshell is that the man who was shot was pulled from the canal and dissected. Imagine their surprise when his brain was revealed to be completely normal: He wasn't the Crixorum at all. Helen insists his team made a mistake in their examination, and Addison splits her and Will up for separate interviews.
In the B-plot, Erika's hormones continue to cause problems with her biology. Her hand transforms into a claw and won't change back, and she lashes out (verbally, no evil possessed claw hand) at Henry until he's able to calm her down. Eventually she goes missing from isolation, and Henry tracks her down in his annex. She sets up a gremlin on his computers that will track errors and record his fixes, eventually learning enough that it can repair future errors on its own without his help. Henry is geeked out and turned on in equal measure. Well. Maybe not equal.
Addison warns Helen that he is the only thing standing between the Sanctuary and its continued existence. He accuses her of doing the same thing she did with Big Bertha, faking the death of a powerful Abnormal and then hiding it away. Helen refutes his allegation, and Addison reminds her of what's at stake: Her high-level allies aren't returning her calls, and people are standing around with scissors waiting to cut off her funding and freeze her assets. It's all up to him, and the decision his team makes, whether or not that happens.
ADDISON: I'm the man who can bankrupt your Sanctuary with a phone call.
Helen admits that the man who died was just a puppet being controlled by the true Crixorum: Wahid, their informant. He used the distraction to escape. Helen and Will both say they kept it out of their report because the Crixorum is far too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands, so they made sure no one else was looking for him while the Sanctuary tried to find him on their own.
Addison accuses the Sanctuary of hiding the truth to make themselves look like heroes. He mocks Will's unquestioning trust in Helen (even though, as Will points out, it was Addison's distrust of her that caused all the problems in the first place) as hero worship, claiming she's a surrogate mother in his eyes. He claims that Helen's stubborn refusal to cooperate makes sense since she's protecting her monopoly, but he compares Will's loyalty to Helen as a betrayal of "his own kind."
There's an interesting tidbit in here about Will's father. His father was never around and they never really got along, and Addison drops a mention of an indictment that came along just as Will was starting to fit in at the FBI. So apparently Will wasn't on the outskirts just because he was the kid who claimed a monster killed his mother. Very nice teasing of backstory there! Here's hoping it pans out!
In the midst of all this, there's a very cute scene between Erika and the Big Guy, chatting about Henry. The Big Guy was around the whole time Henry was growing up, and the two of them have a really great brotherly connection. Erika prods Biggie for information, but she gets interrupted when her gremlin program reveals Addison's cronies are trying to get through firewalls and into confidential areas of the mainframe: patient records, resident inventory, microfilm database, Gregory's journals, "call it everything."
Henry says that he stopped them, and Helen casually tells him there was no harm done and walks away. Henry rightly points out that it's an attack, and the audit is just a subterfuge to get their foot in the door. She agrees, but refuses to pull the plug and kick them out. There's something in her smile, the calmness in the way she took the news, that you just know she has an ace up her sleeve.
Addison finally drops his bombshell on Will: the people who hired him (the ones who run the world) are sick of Magnus playing the superhero. She keeps secrets and she lies without compunction. They know they will never be able to control her, so Addison has an alternate plan. He says that Helen's ego is threatening the Sanctuary's existence, and they need someone to keep her in check. He thinks that someone is Will. Addison says he will recommend the Sanctuary keeps its funding, but Will becomes the UN liaison and the Sanctuary is put under his management.
Last week, I expressed disbelief that Will would be offered the big chair in Helen's absence. But this way? With him as a lackey, the head of a puppet regime so that the United Nations can finally be in control of the Sanctuary? Yeah, I can totally see it playing out that way. Will is the kind of person the UN wants in charge. Helen is the kind of person who should be in charge.
Will reveals the truth of what happened in Jakarta: Helen chased Wahid down into an alley and offers him a deal. If he remains on the surface, he will eventually get captured or killed, and a lot of innocent people would die in the meantime. She offers to take him home, to the Hollow Earth being rebuilt by Kate and Garris and the other Abnormals who went back peacefully.
Addison confronts Helen with this news, claiming she sent "the Hollow Earth Osama back home to regroup." Helen calls it sending him to safety and chastises Will for giving Addison more ammunition. Will claims he was just telling the truth of what happened. She tells Addison that the Crixorum was far too unpredictable and dangerous to be utilized safely, and Addison says her actions (letting a mass murderer go free) constituted a capital crime.
Addison now controls everything: Helen's funding and access to world leaders is now controlled by him. He tells her to start being reasonable, or he'll just cut her out and move on without her. She can either close the doors of the Sanctuary immediately or accept that the global Sanctuary Network is totally and completely owned by the UN Security Council.
ADDISON: That's right. I'm your new boss.
HELEN: Get out. Right now. Take your people with you, you have ten minutes.
He claims she's signing the Sanctuary's death warrant, and Will seems stunned that she's finally fighting back. Remember when I said I wanted Helen to smack Addison?
HELEN: You knew I would never hand over my records, my residents, my friends to whatever Abnormal Guantanamo Bay you're planning. I'd sooner burn it to the ground. I have given five lifetimes to this work. I have seen everyone I love die for it. Do you really think you can begin to take that on?
ADDISON: This is insane. (to Will) Would you please talk some sense into her? (to Helen) Your research has been bought and paid for over the years by the people I work for. You turn me away now, you're out in the cold for good.
HELEN: You come near us again... and I'll arrange for you to be eaten.
Violence isn't always the answer. Sometimes it's so much more badass to knock the guy on his ass without laying a finger on him. The Big Guy "politely offers" to escort Addison out of the building, and Henry freaks out. Helen and Will congratulate each other on a job well done. Helen assures Henry that the Sanctuary will be fine; she has money in places that Addison doesn't even know exists, and there's one more secret weapon. They have the Crixorum.
They're keeping him under heavy sedation until they have a way to secure him more permanently. Helen did offer to escort him home, but he refused. Helen shot him, sedated him, and secretly moved him to the Sanctuary where he's been dozing away ever since. The interrogation by Addison was an intricate lie orchestrated by Helen and Will. The Crixorum is a vital component to the current troubles, and she wants the leverage at the Sanctuary instead of some government holding cell.
HENRY: "We're gonna need to fortify our defenses, aren't we?"
HELEN: "Very much so, my friend."
Helen spent a hundred and thirteen years planning this move. The Sanctuary needs its freedom to do what it needs to do. She can't keep catering to the paranoia of the UN or the governments of the world. Addison was partially right when he said Helen didn't care which governments rose or fell. She started her work when Britain ruled the waves. Her mission to protect Abnormals isn't something that can conform to the current administrations or balances of power. She has to be free to find solutions that work for everyone and everything.
HELEN: I've made a lot of choices in my life, some of them in haste. This was my chance to rethink the road I was on. Rethink what the Sanctuary needs to be. ... There are changes coming that the world is not ready for. So from now on, we make our own rules."
And with that, the Sanctuary is rogue, free to do whatever they want. Here's what I don't understand... is the UN really that stupid? Look at the facts of this case. Helen tracked down the most dangerous Abnormal currently running loose. She managed to contain it. The team the United Nations sent in got slaughtered, killed an innocent man, and they only got that far because they were following Helen. Cutting ties just means that the UN will now be swinging in the dark. The Sanctuary will be absolutely fine without their help. It's the UN that will have to come crawling back when the next crisis crops up.
Meanwhile, in the resolution to the subplot, Helen discovers that the medicine that prevented Erika from transforming for so long have caused problems with her reproductive system. Her body is fighting the hormones released by her pregnancy. Helen offers a treatment that will slow the pregnancy enough that her body can tolerate it. She'll still have a healthy child if everything goes right, it'll just take 22 months. So maybe Bonnie from Family Guy was a HAP! That would explain why she was pregnant for so long.
Helen tells Henry that he has to make some big decisions... the Sanctuary is heading into uncharted waters, and it's no place for a baby. He can either stay to help, or he can go be with Erika. Henry, of course, wants to go with Erika but he also knows the Sanctuary will need him. Helen promises she's fine with whatever decision he makes.
This episode was great on all counts. All of the characters had stuff to do, and all of the actors pulled it off perfectly. Even Brian Markinson as Craig Addison was just perfectly smarmy, conniving and evil. He made no attempt to hide the fact he was a snake. Not to mention Amanda Tapping as Helen Magnus. This episode was an introduction to the "new" Helen, and it revealed her new calm, zen attitude perfectly. She's spent over a century planning her next move. Her conversation with Addison about "really great plays" is even better in retrospect, when you know that she's planning a sucker punch that takes him completely off-guard. Helen is still the madwoman shown in Tempus, but now she's turned her use of that anger, hostility and... well, just plain strength into a science.
I never really liked the fact that the Sanctuary was so beholden to world governments. It explained where they got all their money, and how Helen was able to do so many things under the radar, but it seemed like they were shackled a bit. Now the shackles are off, and it's time to let the Sanctuary be what it was always meant to be. The episode title doesn't refer to Addison and his lame little Eliot Ness comparison. The title of this episode refers to the new Helen Magnus.
This is going to be a lot of fun.
Helen in History: Helen knew Eliot Ness. Eliot Ness was a friend of hers. Craig Addison is no Eliot Ness.
originally written for Geek Speak Magazine
That said, this one got long again. Sorry about that, folks.
"Untouchable"
04.03
Written by: Gillian Horvath
Directed by: Steven A Adelson
US Airdate: October 21, 2011
In short: Helen Magnus has to contend with a team of UN inspectors who will decide whether the Sanctuary continues getting funding. Henry, meanwhile, has to deal with the return of his girlfriend Erika.
Recommended: YES!
"We could waste a lot of energy fighting this battle, but there's a long war ahead."
"Okay, but if you start calling me 'young grasshopper,' I'm quitting."
- Helen and Will about the UN liaison team
Following a failed mission in Jakarta, the United Nations sends a troubleshooter named Craig Addison and his team of "untouchables" to go through the Sanctuary with a fine-toothed comb to determine if they should continue receiving funding. Helen is being left out in the cold following the mission, not to mention the Hollow Earth caldera eruptions, and the near catastrophe caused by the Abnormal uprising. The team's arrival is preceded by Erika Myers, Henry's HAP girlfriend, who has some news for him: he's going to be a father! I hope it's not a litter... Fortunately, Erika is a technogeek and offers to help Henry get their systems ready for Addison and his goons.
Addison arrives with a group of his own technogeeks that he calls "the untouchables." Helen is very calm in her approach to the intrusion, leaving the ego-bruising and bristling to Will, which he does very, very well in this episode. Will is really on top of things in this episode. I liked him a lot more here than I have in the recent past. He was willing to accept Helen's behavior, but he wasn't going to lay down.
WILL: "If you call me 'sport' once more, I'm gonna knock your teeth in. Welcome to the Sanctuary!"
Once Addison's people have left with Will, Helen lets Addison have it. She points out that she knows what game he's playing, she calls him on referring to the Sanctuary as a "menagerie" and its residents as freaks and monsters. Addison leaves his cocky smile plastered on and struts through the house like he owns everything in it. He warns Helen that her days of having carte blanche with the governments of the world is over because she's gone off on her own too many times. He's a self-righteous prick, and I spent the entire episode waiting for Helen to smack him.
HELEN: There's over a hundred years of history here, Mr. Addison.
ADDISON: Any chance you'll call me Crai--
HELEN: None whatsoever.
When Addison's tour takes him to Henry's lab, where Addison's second-in-command belittles Henry's equipment. Erika immediately expresses her dislike of Addison, proving that even werewolves have good instincts when it comes to people. When he warns her of the freaks and monsters they keep in the Sanctuary, she nearly turns wolf and slams him against the wall. Henry and Helen are able to pull her back, and Erika admits that she overreacted and she couldn't stop herself. Helen and Henry take her to an isolation room to get checked out.
Helen discovers that the drug Erika's aunt was giving to her to prevent transformations also wreaked havoc with her fertility. Her cells should have locked to prevent transformation so it wouldn't harm the baby. The hormones from the pregnancy are affecting her ability to handle emotional triggers, and she could change without intending to and harm the baby. Helen runs blood work to see if she can find a treatable chemical imbalance that will make things easier and, in the meantime, she asks Erika to remain in isolation just to be safe.
After Helen leaves, the Big Guy fills her in on Addison and his team.
BIG GUY: "Addison asked for coffee."
HELEN: "Uck. Philistine."
As someone who can barely stand the smell of the stuff, I have to say I love the running thread of Helen being so anti-coffee. This scene between her and the Big Guy was so great in every way. I wanted to quote the entire thing up above, but I didn't want to make this review a transcript. Suffice to say it was a great moment between two friends who have, lest we forget, known each other for about sixty years.
Will expresses his concern with how comfortable Addison's team is, how Helen is acquiescing to their every demand without putting up even the semblance of a fight. She assures him that everything that's happening is necessary to prove they have nothing to hide. Will comments that she's being very "zen" after her "one hundred and thirteen years on the mountaintop," but he's still the same uptight guy he always was. He agrees to see it through, but he's still nervous about the outcome.
Addison finally has a sit-down with Helen and Will concerning the mission that prompted his employers to send him in. The Abnormal uprising was controlled - just barely - and everything worked out fine, despite Abnormal attacks on Lotus training camps worldwide (which Will blames on Lotus bombing one of the calderas). The straw that broke the camel's back was a recent mission to Indonesia in which Helen and Will tried to capture a Crixorum, the telepathic Abnormal who was controlling the three armies rising from the caldera (remember? I said I hoped they went back and addressed that? I should have trusted the show). The Crixorum was the hidden leader of the invasion force, coordinating attacks across the globe. Thanks to help from Kate in Hollow Earth (whoot, Kate reference!), they managed to track him down to a fish market in Jakarta.
A local informant named Wahid pointed the Crixorum out to Helen and Will. When they moved in to capture him, a troop of SWAT-like mercenaries swept in from the shadows and attacked. The Crixorum turned the soldiers against each other and tried to make his escape, but one of the soldiers got off a lucky shot and the Crixorum died in the water.
Will deduces from Addison's reaction that it was his team that botched the operation. He claims it was just a 'Plan B' they enacted because of how the Sanctuary 'dropped the ball' in the refugee camp. They were just protecting their assets. I don't understand how this became Helen's problem. She did everything right. She was prepared to counteract the Crixorum's power with headphones. She kept the majority of her team well away so they couldn't be turned on each other. She had the situation well in hand until Addison's unprepared gunmen blustered in and started blowing shit up. The only reason they found the Crixorum in the first place is because they were following Helen's team. It's like Addison threw a water balloon, and the UN is shutting Helen down because her clothes got wet.
Addison's next bombshell is that the man who was shot was pulled from the canal and dissected. Imagine their surprise when his brain was revealed to be completely normal: He wasn't the Crixorum at all. Helen insists his team made a mistake in their examination, and Addison splits her and Will up for separate interviews.
In the B-plot, Erika's hormones continue to cause problems with her biology. Her hand transforms into a claw and won't change back, and she lashes out (verbally, no evil possessed claw hand) at Henry until he's able to calm her down. Eventually she goes missing from isolation, and Henry tracks her down in his annex. She sets up a gremlin on his computers that will track errors and record his fixes, eventually learning enough that it can repair future errors on its own without his help. Henry is geeked out and turned on in equal measure. Well. Maybe not equal.
Addison warns Helen that he is the only thing standing between the Sanctuary and its continued existence. He accuses her of doing the same thing she did with Big Bertha, faking the death of a powerful Abnormal and then hiding it away. Helen refutes his allegation, and Addison reminds her of what's at stake: Her high-level allies aren't returning her calls, and people are standing around with scissors waiting to cut off her funding and freeze her assets. It's all up to him, and the decision his team makes, whether or not that happens.
ADDISON: I'm the man who can bankrupt your Sanctuary with a phone call.
Helen admits that the man who died was just a puppet being controlled by the true Crixorum: Wahid, their informant. He used the distraction to escape. Helen and Will both say they kept it out of their report because the Crixorum is far too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands, so they made sure no one else was looking for him while the Sanctuary tried to find him on their own.
Addison accuses the Sanctuary of hiding the truth to make themselves look like heroes. He mocks Will's unquestioning trust in Helen (even though, as Will points out, it was Addison's distrust of her that caused all the problems in the first place) as hero worship, claiming she's a surrogate mother in his eyes. He claims that Helen's stubborn refusal to cooperate makes sense since she's protecting her monopoly, but he compares Will's loyalty to Helen as a betrayal of "his own kind."
There's an interesting tidbit in here about Will's father. His father was never around and they never really got along, and Addison drops a mention of an indictment that came along just as Will was starting to fit in at the FBI. So apparently Will wasn't on the outskirts just because he was the kid who claimed a monster killed his mother. Very nice teasing of backstory there! Here's hoping it pans out!
In the midst of all this, there's a very cute scene between Erika and the Big Guy, chatting about Henry. The Big Guy was around the whole time Henry was growing up, and the two of them have a really great brotherly connection. Erika prods Biggie for information, but she gets interrupted when her gremlin program reveals Addison's cronies are trying to get through firewalls and into confidential areas of the mainframe: patient records, resident inventory, microfilm database, Gregory's journals, "call it everything."
Henry says that he stopped them, and Helen casually tells him there was no harm done and walks away. Henry rightly points out that it's an attack, and the audit is just a subterfuge to get their foot in the door. She agrees, but refuses to pull the plug and kick them out. There's something in her smile, the calmness in the way she took the news, that you just know she has an ace up her sleeve.
Addison finally drops his bombshell on Will: the people who hired him (the ones who run the world) are sick of Magnus playing the superhero. She keeps secrets and she lies without compunction. They know they will never be able to control her, so Addison has an alternate plan. He says that Helen's ego is threatening the Sanctuary's existence, and they need someone to keep her in check. He thinks that someone is Will. Addison says he will recommend the Sanctuary keeps its funding, but Will becomes the UN liaison and the Sanctuary is put under his management.
Last week, I expressed disbelief that Will would be offered the big chair in Helen's absence. But this way? With him as a lackey, the head of a puppet regime so that the United Nations can finally be in control of the Sanctuary? Yeah, I can totally see it playing out that way. Will is the kind of person the UN wants in charge. Helen is the kind of person who should be in charge.
Will reveals the truth of what happened in Jakarta: Helen chased Wahid down into an alley and offers him a deal. If he remains on the surface, he will eventually get captured or killed, and a lot of innocent people would die in the meantime. She offers to take him home, to the Hollow Earth being rebuilt by Kate and Garris and the other Abnormals who went back peacefully.
Addison confronts Helen with this news, claiming she sent "the Hollow Earth Osama back home to regroup." Helen calls it sending him to safety and chastises Will for giving Addison more ammunition. Will claims he was just telling the truth of what happened. She tells Addison that the Crixorum was far too unpredictable and dangerous to be utilized safely, and Addison says her actions (letting a mass murderer go free) constituted a capital crime.
Addison now controls everything: Helen's funding and access to world leaders is now controlled by him. He tells her to start being reasonable, or he'll just cut her out and move on without her. She can either close the doors of the Sanctuary immediately or accept that the global Sanctuary Network is totally and completely owned by the UN Security Council.
ADDISON: That's right. I'm your new boss.
HELEN: Get out. Right now. Take your people with you, you have ten minutes.
He claims she's signing the Sanctuary's death warrant, and Will seems stunned that she's finally fighting back. Remember when I said I wanted Helen to smack Addison?
HELEN: You knew I would never hand over my records, my residents, my friends to whatever Abnormal Guantanamo Bay you're planning. I'd sooner burn it to the ground. I have given five lifetimes to this work. I have seen everyone I love die for it. Do you really think you can begin to take that on?
ADDISON: This is insane. (to Will) Would you please talk some sense into her? (to Helen) Your research has been bought and paid for over the years by the people I work for. You turn me away now, you're out in the cold for good.
HELEN: You come near us again... and I'll arrange for you to be eaten.
Violence isn't always the answer. Sometimes it's so much more badass to knock the guy on his ass without laying a finger on him. The Big Guy "politely offers" to escort Addison out of the building, and Henry freaks out. Helen and Will congratulate each other on a job well done. Helen assures Henry that the Sanctuary will be fine; she has money in places that Addison doesn't even know exists, and there's one more secret weapon. They have the Crixorum.
They're keeping him under heavy sedation until they have a way to secure him more permanently. Helen did offer to escort him home, but he refused. Helen shot him, sedated him, and secretly moved him to the Sanctuary where he's been dozing away ever since. The interrogation by Addison was an intricate lie orchestrated by Helen and Will. The Crixorum is a vital component to the current troubles, and she wants the leverage at the Sanctuary instead of some government holding cell.
HENRY: "We're gonna need to fortify our defenses, aren't we?"
HELEN: "Very much so, my friend."
Helen spent a hundred and thirteen years planning this move. The Sanctuary needs its freedom to do what it needs to do. She can't keep catering to the paranoia of the UN or the governments of the world. Addison was partially right when he said Helen didn't care which governments rose or fell. She started her work when Britain ruled the waves. Her mission to protect Abnormals isn't something that can conform to the current administrations or balances of power. She has to be free to find solutions that work for everyone and everything.
HELEN: I've made a lot of choices in my life, some of them in haste. This was my chance to rethink the road I was on. Rethink what the Sanctuary needs to be. ... There are changes coming that the world is not ready for. So from now on, we make our own rules."
And with that, the Sanctuary is rogue, free to do whatever they want. Here's what I don't understand... is the UN really that stupid? Look at the facts of this case. Helen tracked down the most dangerous Abnormal currently running loose. She managed to contain it. The team the United Nations sent in got slaughtered, killed an innocent man, and they only got that far because they were following Helen. Cutting ties just means that the UN will now be swinging in the dark. The Sanctuary will be absolutely fine without their help. It's the UN that will have to come crawling back when the next crisis crops up.
Meanwhile, in the resolution to the subplot, Helen discovers that the medicine that prevented Erika from transforming for so long have caused problems with her reproductive system. Her body is fighting the hormones released by her pregnancy. Helen offers a treatment that will slow the pregnancy enough that her body can tolerate it. She'll still have a healthy child if everything goes right, it'll just take 22 months. So maybe Bonnie from Family Guy was a HAP! That would explain why she was pregnant for so long.
Helen tells Henry that he has to make some big decisions... the Sanctuary is heading into uncharted waters, and it's no place for a baby. He can either stay to help, or he can go be with Erika. Henry, of course, wants to go with Erika but he also knows the Sanctuary will need him. Helen promises she's fine with whatever decision he makes.
This episode was great on all counts. All of the characters had stuff to do, and all of the actors pulled it off perfectly. Even Brian Markinson as Craig Addison was just perfectly smarmy, conniving and evil. He made no attempt to hide the fact he was a snake. Not to mention Amanda Tapping as Helen Magnus. This episode was an introduction to the "new" Helen, and it revealed her new calm, zen attitude perfectly. She's spent over a century planning her next move. Her conversation with Addison about "really great plays" is even better in retrospect, when you know that she's planning a sucker punch that takes him completely off-guard. Helen is still the madwoman shown in Tempus, but now she's turned her use of that anger, hostility and... well, just plain strength into a science.
I never really liked the fact that the Sanctuary was so beholden to world governments. It explained where they got all their money, and how Helen was able to do so many things under the radar, but it seemed like they were shackled a bit. Now the shackles are off, and it's time to let the Sanctuary be what it was always meant to be. The episode title doesn't refer to Addison and his lame little Eliot Ness comparison. The title of this episode refers to the new Helen Magnus.
This is going to be a lot of fun.
Helen in History: Helen knew Eliot Ness. Eliot Ness was a friend of hers. Craig Addison is no Eliot Ness.
originally written for Geek Speak Magazine