Respect Your Purpose
A distraught Alice arrives at the safe house as episode 6 of Utopia begins. Jessica starts cycling through the panels for Utopia, cursing the direction of the story and what’s going to transpire. With Becky and Wilson leading the charge (wait, didn’t Samantha get killed for that before?) they lay out the various panels on the floor and decide to try and solve the puzzle. The panels of Utopia depict a traumatic past for Jessica including being gassed in her room and hurt by bad men. In order to find the “ending”, Jessica needs to find a place called Home with the monster and kill Mr. Rabbit. As Wilson looks to the others for approval, it turns out they’ve fallen asleep. Things move rapidly in the quarantine zone as Michael watches helplessly. Scientists start tearing down the makeshift tents and the quarantine is lifted. As he heads outside the hot zone, Dale and Lily are the ones who get all the plaudits as interested reporters gobble up their story. Dale is concerned though, as Lily takes charge of the situation and allows Michael to enter their house later in the day. Back at the safe house, Wilson starts sifting through the panels and finds a connection between Peru (or the flu in Peru to be precise) and what’s currently going on nationally. Only, he’s obviously being used as a red herring to hide Dr Kevin. Becky realizes that Michael is not Mr. Rabbit; he’s actually the llama being ridden by Mr. Rabbit. That means the real Mr. Rabbit is either Kevin or Thomas Christie. Speaking of which, Arby returns to Kevin and Thomas and reveals that he found Utopia. Only, he’s given it to Jessica instead after seeing what’s inside. Arby is a product of “Home” and another of those experimented on alongside Jessica. Could he be one of the boys inside the boxes? Or is he another “special” case? Meanwhile, Michael awakens back home and sees that the virus is continuing to spread. Dale’s abrupt suicide has reporters swarming all over the story. Given he was an inside man, this leads Thomas to bring another focus group to the foreground. They need to concoct a story to cover for Dale and Lily. The group continue to follow Jessica but Alice wants to leave. Jessica however is having none of it and starts hurting Alice, eventually holding a gun up to her head. Grant stands in the way though and pleads with her not to. Eventually he takes her upstairs and handcuffs the girl to the bed. Grant apologises on behalf of Jessica, as Alice tells him to cut off her hair. Back downstairs, Wilson goes through the asylum photo again and notices Michael also happened to be there. Believing now that Mike is Mr. Rabbit, Becky suddenly has a panic attack. Thankfully they manage to save her but not before Jessica slices a hole in Becky’s throat and nonchalantly leaves her for dead. When Becky eventually starts breathing again, she shrugs off the incident like it’s nothing. But not before handing over a scarf for her scar of course. Michael starts looking deeper into Dale’s suicide, looking him up online and trying to find information that correlates with what he’s learned. He realizes that Dale and the others are killing children intentionally. This is backed up by the various people Dale allegedly knew sharing their stories word for word. This eventually leads Michael to a petting zoo that may hold the clue to what’s going on. As he heads downstairs he sees that the FDA have approved a vaccine on TV. Michael is convinced that something is very wrong and eventually that comes to fruition. Colleen turns on her husband and knocks him out, preventing him from revealing the truth surrounding what’s happening. It seems now that she’s in on this whole scandal.
The Episode Review
I know I sound like a broken record but the humour and tonal shifts are so distracting. So Alice’s Mum has just died and Alice is traumatized. Yet, she still finds time to suddenly fall asleep with the others while Wilson is reading out about the panels. I don’t understand what this scene is supposed to showcase. The actual plot itself continues to push this pandemic narrative and another twist in the tale comes in the form of Michael’s wife Colleen being in on this. Given she’s had very little screen-time up until this point, I can’t help but feel the big reveal could have been much more impactful. Then again, consistency is one of the biggest issues here, with Samantha’s death rendering her scenes prior pointless. The actual story is decent though but the tonal shifts kill any sort of momentum with this one. It’s a shame for sure but this is certainly more dystopia than Utopia right now.
