It's been a few months since our last Millennium recap but now we're back with a shiny new website we're happy to be reintroducing Millennium Mondays. Read after the break for our recap of "The Well-Worn Lock".
It's been a few months since our last Millennium recap but now we're back with a shiny new website we're happy to be reintroducing Millennium Mondays. Read after the break for our recap of "The Well-Worn Lock".
It's the dawning of the age of Aquarius on NBC. David Duchovny's new series premeried Thursday, May 28th at 9 p.m. EST. The series features Mr. Duchovny as Detective Sam Hodiak of the Los Angeles Police Department. It's the summer of love, 1967, and the country is changing. Hodiak is a police officer from an older generation who ends up crossing paths with notorius criminal Charles Manson. We take a look at the new series and recap and review the season premiere episodes, "Everybody's Been Burned" and "The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game."
Find out what we think after the jump.
{slider=To read our full recap, click here} Episode 1 "Everybody's Been Burned" opens in Los Angeles, 1967. It's dark and the radio is playing. A couple is arguing. A young girl, Emma Karn, slips out of the house undetected. She jumps into a car with a young man and they head to a party. But as they leave a second set of headlights flips on and a car follows them. They arrive at the party, and as the boy leaves to get a drink, Emma is left standing looking a bit out of place. As she looks around the room, we get our first look at Charles Manson. He's sitting on a couch with a few women. Eventually the women invite Emma out for a smoke while another distracts Emma's boyfriend. Once outside, Emma has her first encounter with Manson, who makes it clear he knows who she is. They're overlooking a highway which Manson calls an electric snake set to eat them all. He says he can show her how to "eat the snake" and nothing will ever hurt again. Emma looks frightened but intrigued as he touches her face and says "I'm Charlie Manson."
The sounds of a boxer hitting a heavy bag is how we meet Sam Hodiak. As Hodiak pounds on the bag the phone rings. Emma's mother Grace Karn is on the line, calling because her daughter is missing. We learn Hodiak is industrious...he can't find his keys so he simply hot wires his own car! He heads to Grace's house, where we learn Emma has been missing for four days. Emma's father Kenneth Karn doesn't seem very concerned about Emma's disappearance, saying she'll come back in a few days with some story. He asks Hodiak to keep the investigation quiet because of the upcoming election. Hodiak doesn't seem thrilled at this revelation. As Grace walks Hodiak out to his car, we learn a little more about the character. He's married, though the relationship is rocky, and has a son in the Army. We also learn Grace and Hodiak were once together. Grace breaks down over her missing daughter and Hodiak consoles her, while her husband looks on disapprovingly from the window.
We next find Hodiak at a party where he grabs Emma's boyfriend Rick. The juxtaposition of "square, old school" Hodiak with the laid back partygoers is pretty stark, and a theme we'll see throughout the episodes. Rick doesn't seem overly concerned about Emma and isn't very forthcoming with information. He even threatens Hodiak that his father will hear about this. Hodiak calls the kid's bluff and roughs him up a little anyway. He is able to convince Rick to tell him where the party was.
We come back to see arrested protesters being unloaded at the Hollywood police station. Hodiak is watching a television report on the Vietnam war with some concern. Shafe came in with the protesters and in the office we see him get into another fight with the officer who brought him in, much to their supervisor's chagrin. Hodiak watches the scuffle and gets an idea. Shafe, who is rather scraggly compared to the other officers because of his undercover position, could be a big help in his efforts to find Emma. He requests to have Shafe work with him and Shafe is none too pleased about it. As Hodiak explains it, either Shafe works with him or he's back to being a uniformed officer.
Manson and Emma have left the house for a street where Manson is encouraging her to steal something from a shop. This is in contrast to the lawyers at Ken Karn's firm who are discussing the situation. Ken's boss is furious that the cops are involved, and takes the phone call for Ken when Manson's parole officer calls. We see a cop pull up behind where Manson is parked and for a split second you think maybe he's going to get picked up, but no. The officer goes over to have a chat with a group smoking in front of the store. Emma is about to leave the store with something she stole but hesitates when she sees the officer out front. The hesitation is enough that the store owner grabs her and moves to call the cops. Manson walks into the store and tells Emma to bite the man to get away. Emma does so and flees. Manson turns the radio up and "Cheer Up Sleepy Jean" plays as he attacks the shop owner.
At the scene of the murder, Hodiak and Shafe discover the victim's husband Leo has brain cancer and is on a variety of drugs. They take a detour to a diner for the "best milkshake in town" to give Leo a chance to stew a little. When they return Hodiak continues to question Leo, pressing him on earlier domestic calls a neighbor had made about the couple. Shafe goes out to question the neighbors about what they saw. It's a mostly black neighborhood and the neighbors seem suspicious of the officers. We remember again that this is set during the summer of 1967, when major race riots were happening in cities across the county. It was only in June of 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional. One woman speaks to Shafe about seeing the suspect Leo at home around 7:30, but the conversation stops when a man approaches them. The man points out to Shafe that 27 black people have been murdered in the neighborhood but not one of them has been solved. Back inside Hodiak uses examples from his own marriage to try and get Leo to level with him. Shafe tells Hodiak about the interruption from the man outside, who we learn is Bunchy Carter and part of the Nation of Islam. Hodiak marches across the street as "bad cop" after telling Leo they're making an arrest in his wife's murder. Hodiak arrests Carter and they take him along to meet with Shafe's snitch Mikey.
After picking up Mikey they head back to the diner where we were first introduced to him. In the back room of the diner we again get to see Hodiak's bad cop tendencies. Shafe demands that the dealer walk back everything he said about him on his chain of command. The dealer balks and says he wants a deal in writing. Hodiak roughs him up and writes SNITCH on the man's forehead, so there's his deal in writing.
Hodiak is awakened in his apartment by a thud, to find his son Walt home from the Army. Walt is evasive when Hodiak asks how he got leave to come home. The scene quickly changes back to the police station where Hodiak is questioning Bunchy Carter. It's part of his scheme to trap Leo into confessing to the murder of his wife. Leo is very agitated when asked to ID the suspect and that's when Hodiak starts to lay it on. Leo starts threatening to call his lawyer and Hodiak shows him the neighbors who will testify as witnesses, using Leo's own racism against him. Shafe gets very agitated with this method, repeatedly asking Hodiak to step outside with him. Hodiak ends up locking Shafe out of the interrogation room. He ends up using a birthday card Leo's wife had given him, with two ballet tickets in it, to seal the deal on the confession. Just when Leo thinks he's off the hook, Hodiak arrests him saying "Cops can lie but we can't make deals. Wives can be a lot of things but we don't get to beat them to death."
Hodiak then goes to talk with Bunchy Carter as he leaves. They argue briefly with Hodiak calling him a "crook in a new costume" and Carter saying, "You are a living lie. I am the truth who will burn your world to the ground." Hodiak then finds Shafe in the locker room while they argue about Hodiak's tactics. Shafe wants to know if he would have treated Carter the same way if he was white. Hodiak says he would. Shafe then orders Hodiak to give him a ride home. Hodiak does, and we meet Shafe's wife, Kristin, and his baby daughter, Bernadette. Kristin is black, which again surprises Hodiak. Shafe says he thought Hodiak ought to know if they're going to keep looking for Emma, so he can better understand where Shafe is coming from.
After leaving Shafe's family we see Hodiak trying to understand more about his. Speaking with someone at the station he figures out there's no way his son Walt would have been sent stateside unless one of his parents is dying. Hodiak realizes his wife Opal wrote a fake letter and confronts her. He explains that the Army will come after Walt and he could go to prison. He returns to his own apartment hoping to find Walt there, but he's gone.
At the Karn's home once again, Grace and Hodiak are talking about about the call log she got from Ken's office that shows how many phone calls he got from Manson. They're talking about how she doesn't really know her husband and about their respective marriages. While they're talking we see Ken arrive at Manson's.
He gives Manson half the money for the demo, and says he can have the other half when he gets his daughter back. They talk and Manson kisses Ken. Ken eventually returns the kiss, but is startled out of it when his daughter knocks on the door. Manson dismisses "Cherry Pop" and convinces Ken to "be free" and then the episode ends. {/slider}
This month, the 24th issue of The X-Files: Season 10 starts off in New York City, at 46th street to be exact… And you know what that means. We step into the First Elder’s explanation of what the syndicate was then, and what it is now. He’s explaining this to someone, from the shadows of this familiar room. Gibson Praise has forced this new conspiracy on them. They’re serving a system that no longer cares for a hierarchy and they’re at the mercy of Gibson’s trigger happy destructive character.
For our whole recap and review of the penultimate issue of this season's The X-Files: Season 10, click on READ MORE.
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