[Silo Review w/ Joe Lipsett] "The Dive" Destroys Tension With Its Constant Cutting Between Silos

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 / 2.05 / 2.06

 Spoilers follow for Silo S02E07 “The Dive”: Lukas is assigned a mission. Mechanical sends a powerful message. Juliette embarks on a perilous descent-and confronts a new danger.

TERRY

So it turns out that the small dive back in episode 4 was merely a precursor, Joe. The appropriately named “The Dive” returns to putting Jules (Rebecca Ferguson) in watery danger and I’m of two minds about it. 

On one hand, for an episode entitled “The Dive”, I really expected her sojourn in the depths to be a bigger part of the episode, especially since we barely saw Jules or Silo 17 at all in the previous episode. I thought that this episode would be mostly about Jules, her treacherous descent, and that this would be a more dangerous mission with complications. 

The way Solo (Steve Zahn) put up so many warnings suggested that, at the very least. Take his discussion of how people swam in the Before Times, for example. Or his advice about the bends and how divers would have to pause so that they don’t get decompression sickness and potentially die. 

So many warnings and moments of foreshadowing, including a particular look from Solo that suggested he might not be trustworthy…but none of it really plays out. Sure, Jules had to briefly pause in her ascent. Sure, her lifeline and breathing apparatus suddenly stopped working. But it all felt just a bit too easy. 

So that’s the negative side of it. 

On the positive side, “The Harmonium” put a thought into our heads that Solo would turn on Jules or get sidetracked. So when the moment came that her rope was cut, I immediately thought, “well, duh.” That Solo got what he needed out of her and left her to drown. But Silo smartly subverted that expectation with the ultimate reveal of a hatchet, a broken arrow and blood. Solo didn’t leave her to die.

The truth is that Jules and Solo aren’t alone in Silo 17. 

I found this to be a great reveal, honestly. But I have two predictions after this episode, Joe. The first is that the reveal of additional people in the silo is a good way to introduce Solo’s past, further making me believe that we will get a flashback episode about how Solo came to be…well, Solo. 

The other prediction is that Martha (Harriet Walter) is going to sacrifice herself to save Carla (Clare Perkins). I’m basing this on how determined Martha has become to make-up for the past. Multiple times in the last few episodes, she’s talked about how she failed their relationship: that she’s the reason they broke up 25 years ago. And in “The Dive”, Martha specifically talks about how she didn’t do enough and that she’ll be damned if she doesn’t do enough now. That’s self-sacrificing dialogue if I’ve heard it. 

The rest of the episode deals with fallout from “Barricades”, starting with a missile that sends up bunches of paper telling people to not trust IT and Bernard (Tim Robbins) and following up with the power going out…except in IT. Sure, Bernard, always thinking on his feet, comes up with a somewhat plausible story that Mechanical controls where power goes and that they specifically kept the power on in IT…but it’s obvious that doubt is swimming in the minds of the silo’s citizens. 

“The Dive” also offers some resolution to the political intrigue, specifically by putting Bernard and Sims (Common) on a collision course, fueled by Camille (Alexandria Riley) and her politicking. Meanwhile the Listener who poisoned Mechanical’s food and put out a fake hit on Shirley (Remmie Milner) and Knox (Shane McCrae) is revealed to be Maeve (Maria Teresa Creasey) who warned everyone about the poisoned food originally. 

Some of this worked for me, some of it didn’t. But I’m curious what you thought of the episode, Joe? Were you equally disappointed in the titular dive? Are you happy that Camille’s plans are in the open? What about Lukas (Avi Nash) and The Wizard of Oz? And, finally, what did you make of the reveal at the end that Solo and Jules aren’t alone? 

JOE

Full confession, Terry: I watched “The Dive” during the day. So it’s either fully on me for watching when it was light out…or director Michael Dinner’s latest effort is so damn dark that I could barely even make out the hatchet. I had to watch the episode a second time to figure out that it wasn’t Solo who had severed Juliette’s rope, so the cliffhanger started off as a bit of a fail for me.

As for the episode on the whole? I, too, thought the underwater stuff was going to be more complicated. The lead-up, especially all of Solo’s panicked advice, definitely set-up something far more challenging and dramatic than what we actually get. I have to hope that Jules will suffer a bit from the bends in the next episode; otherwise her speedy ascent - while exciting to watch - will make all of this feel like little more than lip-service.

To be honest, though, the main reason this didn’t entirely work for me is because each time I really started to invest in Jules’ struggle, from her initial inability to turn on the pump to the loss of the rope and her desperate swim, we could cut back to the other silo and all of the tension would be diffused. 

Dedicating a whole episode solely to this, or even half an episode, would have been better than the back and forth. I think the escalation of stakes in one storyline is meant to amp up the other, but it had the opposite effect on me as a viewer. Each time we returned to Bernard, or Knox and Shirley, or Camille, I felt my heart sink because I just don’t care as much!

In part it’s because a lot of these characters are playing catch-up. We see early on that Clara is being held/threatened by Bernard in Seclusion, but Martha spends the episode fretting about it. Ditto Lukas: it’s inevitable that he’ll figure out the type of code and the moment that he mentions it’s a book cipher, there’s only one possible option. 

The most exciting development (arguably the only one that truly works in the episode) is the unexpected confetti of hand-drawn notes that Mechanical explodes on the upper floors. Between trying to decipher what they were setting off, how turning off the power contributed to that, and the “fuck yeah” moment of seeing IT lit up like a beacon for everyone to notice, it’s a genuinely great sequence.

Now, do I question how Mechanical knew that IT has its own power supply? Yes (Isn’t that something that Jules learned in her solo journeys? Where/when did Knox and Shirley learn that?)

But that’s hardly the point. Especially in a ho-hum episode filled with other meh moments. I had forgotten that Sims didn’t know Camille let Knox and Shirley go, but it’s a shrug-worthy moment. We learn that Maeve poisoned the food, but also felt bad enough to tell people so no one got hurt, so that’s a non-starter. 

And don’t even talk to me about how stupid the Martha stuff is because her sudden fatalistic decision-making process feels like it came out of nowhere ~two episodes ago. It should be sweet, heartfelt, and tragic; instead it just makes a previously smart character look like a moron.

I dunno, Terry. I’m still grouchy about some of S02’s character assassination and ham-fisted narrative developments. Silo hasn’t become unwatchable by any means…but I’m not in love with it the way I was in S01. That makes me sad.

Perhaps this mysterious figure in Silo 17 will make up for it in episode 8? 

Until then, however, I’ll kick it back to you: what did you make of the room full of relics that Bernard shows Lukas, which includes an AI tablet? Did you like the use of the F word when Bernard goes toe-to-toe with the former head of Judicial? And do you wish Billings (Chinaza Uche) and Deputy Hank (Billy Postlethwaite) had more to do? 

TERRY

I think one of the saddest aspects of this season compared to season one (aside from my thoughts that the writer's strike really botched this season) is how quickly Silo dropped the neo-noir storytelling to focus on action and the mystery surrounding Solo and, to a lesser degree, Silo 17. It actually wasn't until you just brought up the lack of things for Billings and Hank to do that it hit me. 

Shows need to have forward momentum and I’m not opposed to series changing directions or tone from season to season. Heck, Search Party, a show we both loved and covered together, did that every single season, moving from searching for a person to Hitchcockian paranoia to legal thriller and, eventually, zombie apocalypse. But there was a consistent throughline to keep us moored to the characters and their stories. 

Here, it feels rushed and reckless. It’s left us with characters who have nothing to do but react to the latest action set piece or plot turn. 

That feeling of agency with the characters digging into the mysteries surrounding the silo, where the conflict comes from them exploring the truth of the silo has turned into a by-the-books narrative of a dystopian leader clamoring to hold onto their vague sense of power. What I liked about the first season is how it deftly sidestepped comparisons to other post-apocalyptic, oftentimes YA, affairs. But season two feels very much indebted to the Hunger Games or Divergent or *insert X post apocalyptic story adaptation released post-Hunger Games*. 

As you said, it doesn’t make the show unwatchable. And I think audiences might be kinder to it on a binge level, where the episodes flow into one like some amorphous blob of storytelling where the rough edges have been sanded away by…blobbiness? I’m afraid my metaphor got away from me. 

Regardless, the excellent pacing, superb character studies (and character arcs!) have given away to rote action set pieces that lack the precision and tension of some of season one’s greatest. 

Sorry, I didn’t answer most of your questions…but at this point I’m just hoping the show can continue to reorient itself after last week’s decent episode. We just learned that Silo has been renewed for two more seasons, so hopefully the showrunner knows what he’s doing as we rush towards the halfway point of the series.

Onto next week’s episode where we’ll be back at Queer.Horror.Movies for episode 8.