Each week Joe and Terry discuss the most recent episodes of Apple TV’s Silo Season 2, alternating between our respective sites.

Catch up on Season 1: 1.01-1.02 / 1.03 / 1.04 / 1.05 / 1.06 / 1.07 / 1.08 / 1.09 / 1.10

Catch up on Season 2: 2.01 / 2.02 / 2.03 / 2.04

Spoilers follow for Silo S02E05 “Descent”: Sims finds himself with a new position. Juliette learns Solo isn't being honest. Bernard and Lukas make an important discovery.

TERRY

Maybe it’s because last episode verged on nonsensical in its chaotic editing and scene length, but “Descent” felt like the first time Season 2 has matched some of the quality of Season 1, Joe. I’ll be curious to read your thoughts, but before that happens, there’s a lot to catch up on.

“Descent” begins where “The Harmonium” ended, with Knox (Shane McRae), Shirley (Remmie Milner), Martha (Harriet Walter) and Carla (Clare Perkins) on the run after being framed for the murder of Judge Meadows. People are rioting in the streets and that tension is increased tenfold when new head of security Amundsen (Christian Ochoa Lavernia) puts a bounty on Knox and Shirley’s head.

I say new head of security because Robert Sims (Common) gets a dubious upgrade from Judicial to Judge. Apparently the old adage of “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer” still exists in the future because Mayor Bernard (Tim Robbins) doesn’t trust Sims but knows the former security man has too much info on him to let him go.

So while Sims has been fired as Bernard’s shadow and as the head of Judicial, his promotion puts him in a very precarious position…a position that isn’t helped when his wife Camille (Alexandria Riley) attempts to Game of Thrones the situation. When Knox and Shirley realize that they are the ones with the bounty on their head, they break away from Martha and Carla to save them. Let’s ignore, for a moment, that Martha quickly bails on her ex-wife with just a kiss on the lips, so we can focus on Knox, Shirley and Camille.

Camille shows up almost as a deus ex machina to save Knox and Shirley when they’re accosted on the stairs heading down to Mechanical. Between the bounties and the hidden judicial members egging on the silo, Bernard and Amundsen have stirred up the populace to a frothing frenzy. And when it looks like it’s game over for Knox and Shirley, Camille shows up, using her position as Sims’ wife to briefly dispel the anger and take the pair to safety, under the guise of delivering them to Judicial.

I typically like this kind of backstabbing and political intrigue but one of the problems with Jenny DeArmitt-Stran’s script is that the narrative has already pushed the pedal to the metal to the point that these developments don’t have much time to really sit before we’re off with another set of characters. We know that Camille is doing this because she wants to remind Bernard that her husband is the person he should put his trust in because of a throwaway line when she’s in bed with Robert. “If you were in charge, they’d be in custody hours ago,” she whispers against his chest. This gives us the reason why she stepped in to help Knox and Shirley. It’s not altruism. But we also know that Bernard is aware of Camille’s meddling with another incredibly short scene and throwaway line where Amundsen tells Bernard point blank that Camille took the two, just a few short scenes later.

Game of Thrones-level intrigue this is not.

Then there’s Dr. Nichols (Iain Glen) who gets a moment to be an actual doctor – alongside the help of Kathleen Billings (Caitlin Zoz) who proves herself handy as a medical professional – before he’s whisked away to see Bernard. Bernard wants Dr. Nichols to have some of Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson)’s things because if he were to recycle them amongst the populace, they might become venerated icons or relics of the rebellion. He also wants Jules’ father to be a part of the solution to the problem of the rebellion, but Dr. Nichols isn’t having it. As he tells Bernard, the silo has taken everything from him, from his wife to his son to his daughter to his dignity as a medical professional. “My profession is a sham,” he tells Bernard while also warning him that he can’t control what Jules means to the people.

Moments like this hint at a far more interesting story, Joe. I have been enjoying the way Bernard has (mostly ineffectively) been politicking his way out of a rebellion and potentially the collapse of the entire silo. Tim Robbins is delivering such a constrained but manic performance as Bernard this season. Watching his eyes fill with paranoia while attempting to dissect the rebellion like an IT problem is fascinating. Watching the way his schemes are met with conflicting schemes or personality conflicts from the likes of Dr. Nichols and Camille are also fascinating.

But the sheer pace of the season doesn’t allow these moments room to grow or to sink in with the audience before we’re onto the next scene. The fact that two of the important moments of politicking are throwaway lines in really short scenes (Camille in bed; Bernard in the hall) is really disappointing.

Over to you, Joe, because there’s still the question of what’s happening in Silo 17 with Jules and (not) Solo (Steve Zahn). Jules learns a bit about the person she’s stuck with and, as someone who hasn’t really been that interested in this new character, I’m curious what you thought of these developments? Between Solo and the newly important reintroduced character of Lukas (Avi Nash), we learn that there’s an outside power source! Thoughts on that or the new discussions about the tunnels under the silo that were hinted at in Season 1? And do you think Shirley and Knox’s fall would have broken their backs?

JOE

I’m so glad you went first this week, Terry, because this episode made me feel like I was missing a whole bunch of stuff. (In my own defense, the screeners we’re watching don’t have subtitles, and I’m finding the dialogue scenes are incredibly quiet compared to the action scenes, which is not a unique or new phenomena in modern media, but it does make a show like this, and episodes like this, that extra bit challenging).

All this to say: I knew Camille Sims has been Lady MacBething her way all over this season, but it took me until I read your part to fully process why initially it seemed like she was working at cross-purposes with her husband’s agenda.

I will also admit that the switch from Sims to Judge and the replacement of a new head of Judicial did not work for me. Once again, it’s too fast and there isn’t enough opportunity for it to land. Everything is just rush, rush, rush and while that can certainly be exciting (exhibit a: Shirley and Knox’s rush back to the bottom levels of the silo), more often than not it feels like Silo is cutting narrative corners.

There’s at least two double crosses in this episode alone (Carla is betrayed by her friend Calvin on a higher level because of the bounty; then there’s Camille. And that doesn’t even factor in Billings getting swayed by Patrick Kennedy (Rick Gomez) after he’s discovered still alive and hiding near the rebellion tunnels that Shirley and Knox were visiting.

It’s a lot. So yeah, the political posturing still isn’t working for me, even if I do agree that Robbins is having a great time as Bernard desperately tries to keep all of these balls in the air, even as he conducts his own covert investigation into Jules’ hard drive.

Ah yes, the hard drive. The McGuffin of the back half of S01 has returned, along with the silo schematics *and* Lukas! (Guess I guessed the reason behind his return pretty wrong in last week’s review). I do like that both Silos 17 and 18 are zeroing in on the independent power lines that feed in from the outside to both Judicial and IT, which is another explanation for why certain people are able to remain in power despite Mechanical a) always being blamed for any uprisings and b) having control of the generator.

But that pesky bottom level tunnel that Bernard seems not to know about? Oh yeah…that’s gonna be how Jules gets back in, baby!

As for Jules…oh lord, this storyline. At least I feel rectified in my belief that Solo can’t be trusted and may in fact be trying to kill her. “Descent” confirms that he is absolutely not telling the truth about his origin or his profession, which just brings me back to episode 3 and Jules’ question about all of those recent corpses. Is her current state solely because of her infected arm wound…or is she being poisoned by the food Solo seems so desperate to feed her? (A: yes to both).

Finally, speaking of injuries, Shirley and Knox would have ABSOLUTELY been broken in half by that fall. Again, I can’t deny that watching them Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible their way around the stairwell barriers, only to have Knox get sliced and diced when Amundsen shoots the cable and throws the winch over the bannister. It’s incredibly tense and exciting. But would they have survived this fall? Oh hell no! I just recently watched an Álex de la Iglesia film called The Last Circus that featured an identical set piece in the climax and (not so spoiler alert) the person in question nearly got snapped in half.

Points for excitement. Logistically, they’re more dead than Meadows!

Terry, back to you: do you think the show would have been wiser to slow down the hand-off of Judicial to Amundsen and drawn out Shirley, Knox, Martha and Carla’s time spent hiding among various people in the upper levels? Is the Dr. Nichols storyline building to something or is it simply confirmation that even people with some power, like Nichols and Meadows, aren’t satisfy by the antiquated rules of the Pact? Do you, for even a second, believe that Billings will actually hand over Shirley and Knox? And who is Solo really?

TERRY

Lots of lingering questions there, Joe. And unfortunately I don’t really have much in the way of answers to propose. Solo obviously isn’t who he says he is and while the season teased us with how Silo 17 came to be in the current state, I think there’s probably more to it and Solo’s involvement. At this point, I would hazard a guess that Solo hid in the vault and didn’t allow any of the stragglers to get inside. It would explain why they wrote on the double doors that they’d eventually get in. He basically left them there to die, since they had no where else to go. That’s one possibility.

As for Dr. Nichols, Billings and the rest of the rebellion plot…I think his character is mostly there to show the deteriorating control that Bernard and The Founders/The Order/The Pact has on the populace. So, no I don’t believe Billings will hand over Shirley and Knox and I think Dr. Nichols is just another domino that’s toppling over in favor of the rebellion.

Finally, yes, I think the show would have been wiser–in general–to slow things down, with the hand-off and in pretty much the entire story this season. It’s going to be a very bingeable show and, on one hand, I appreciate it giving us a different tone from the first season but the pace does not allow moments to hit as hard as they did in the first season. It does feel like what initially drew you and I to the show has been kicked to the side. Whether that’s because of the writer’s strike and producers working on the scripts or whether that was an intentional choice…I doubt we’ll ever know. But while some of this season is working incredibly well, it just lacks that certain “oomph” that the first season had.

We’re in the back half of the season so hopefully the ship will right itself. Check back in with us next week as we head back to Queer.Horror.Movies to discuss “Barricades.”