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Thursday 18 August 2016

The Whispers 1.13 "Game Over" Review

                                            Image result for the-whispers game-over photos
As children are rounded up as they believe Drill is actually in one of them, Claire (Lily Rabe) is the one who's tasked to communicate with Cassandra (Kayden Magnuson) as he's inhabiting her body now and completely taken over like he did with Elliott and so Cassandra is no more.  But still they didn't get it, the subtle clues were there underlying the story in every episode, as Drill says here, the adults leave their children alone, they play games and watch TV, yet still they don't interact with their children.  In short they're not parents and there is a message here that they didn't deserve their children either. Drill sent the message but it doesn't really tell them why.  They call it an invasion but that's not what he'd call it.  He disintegrates but Wes (Sloane) asks why Drill would kill itself and why now.  Sean (Milo Ventimiglia) calls Claire and tells her if it's the last day then she needs to be with her family together.

As Sean thinks he and Ron (John Billingsley) can find a way to decipher the first message that was sent in 1982 and maybe send one back, satellite detects a mass of rock heading towards earth. Henry (Kyle Harrison Breitkopf) and Minx (Kylie Rogers) are together and  she asks him to teach her sign language and how to say she hopes that whoever did this to her mother pays for it.  She wishes she didn't become Drill's friend then her mother would still be here, as her head falls and so do the heads of other children, they're not free of Drill and that's what Maria must've found out when she was killed.  That the part remaining in their brain was probably just a dormant piece of Drill waiting to become active when the time was right.

Frommer (David Andrews) prepares for weapons to be fired at the incoming rocks.  As Clarie goes she sees the children and when she goes after them, it's the adults who come after her and abduct her. Again they didn't get it, they found this happened in 1982 but they didn't ask what happened to other children who presumably would've been affected in the same way as their own children and what happened to them now, it didn't begin or end with just Thomas and Elliott.  Sean is also taken, as he tries to work out the signal recalling the 11215 number since it's one of his tattoos.  A brief mention of his tats too and that he has them all over his body but not much more significance than that.  Was this a date, the date that the aliens would get here, looks like a date, 2/11/15 or 11/2/15.

Jessup (Derek Webster) gets a visit from his ex wife, wanting to be with him and he actually goes with her.  Then sees Harper (Abby Ryder Fortson) at the bus stop with a woman who's not her mother.  As he talks to her she tells him she wishes he didn't see her and he finds himself locked in     the boot.  Wes finds Minx and Henry gone along with Sean and he tracks Jessup after he calls him, bringing along the journal and the computer.

The woman tells Claire and Sean that they were children when it happened and as Wes finds Jessup, he also takes a photo of a map.  He shoots his ex on the arm and Sean gets free of his ropes, as Wes shoots the woman and saves Claire.  The FBI has Henry cos they recognized him and at the office Claire asks him what's happening.  Frommer gives the go ahead for the weapons to be fired and they think it's a success.  Claire communicates to Henry with sign language and he tells them they're still here. Wes recalls the map and it forms the same symbol that the rocks were gathered in formation in, which was obvious from the map and Sean draws the x marking the spot on the screen.  Claire asks Henry if he knows where Minx is and as they rush to get there, it's revealed they are after their children, not the planet.  Again it was obvious, they're the only ones being communicated with, so why would they want the adults, they can't and don't want to invade them, but the children.  Was it their way of saving them.  Especially since once more this is the game they were playing.

Lights shine out over the city as the children are taken and Claire saves Henry by pushing him out of the way, but doesn't get out of the way herself.  Wes is too late to save Minx.  Well at least she was there and they were there as a family in the final moments.  Which did end on a cliffhanger note and left hanging too.  No great explanations or thrilling either as to what was happening and neglected children was just too flimsy a response, considering these children all had parents, two or one at least and weren't really juvenile delinquents in the system, didn't the aliens consider them.  They were all from families.  Nor was there anything on where the main adults, Sean, Clarie, Wes, Lena, were back in 1982, they too had to have been children but weren't affected or picked on by the first Drill.

There was a mention of sacrifice, Drill telling Claire through Cassandra that if they had engaged in   the concept and sacrificed the one child, he would've been weakened, probably died and wouldn't have been able to send the message back.  However here Claire learns the full meaning of sacrifice as she saves Henry and is taken instead, well here's a nice word to use, 'taken.'  That could be seen as an ultimate sacrifice after telling Henry she loves him.  We get a reversal from the pilot ep, whereas Henry was coping with losing his father, he now has lost his mother and gained his father, though in contrast Wes has lost all his family.  In some ways was that karmic comeuppance for what Lena did in shooting Thomas, she was killed herself and Minx was taken and especially after he was instrumental in getting the children into quarantine.  He loses Minx twice over.  It certainly was game over and season over too!

Think where this lost some momentum was when Sean got his memory back, it was too soon.  He was the one who had plenty to do in regaining his memories and in putting the clues and his tattoos together.  After he fell back into being a father and husband, lost his hair and beard, it just became routine for him to be a secondary character and mostly in the shadows, tasked with looking after Henry and Minx, when Claire and Wes were doing most of the work.  He had been through it all, had communication with Drill, but that was wasted in the rest of the show.  If he had retained his amnesia for longer maybe the show would've headed in a different direction and many of the eps would've been more engaging and interesting.  But you can't fault Milo in anything he appears in, he's always great to watch in any character he plays.  Sadly Sean should've remained the strong character he started out as early on!

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