Millennium – Psychological creeps pervade a pair of episodes

Time of a couple rather creepy episodes of Millennium this time around, ones that set the tone in the mental arena more than anything else.

“Blood Relatives”

“This generation is a wicked generation;
it seeks for a sign, and yet no sign shall be given to it …” — Luke 11:29

In “Blood Relatives” we get a taste of Catherine Black’s job as a counselor in social services. Nice touch that her screen time in the episode was just as important as that of her husband Frank.

James Dickerson (eerily played by Sean Six, Alien Nation) is a lost child, desperately looking for acceptance, but unable to get the emotional fulfillment he needs since being rejected by his mother and raised in foster care most of his life. Instead, his acceptance and “love” come from a halfway house trustee, Conner (John Fleck, Carnivàle, Weeds), who is not only completely capable of manipulating James to his own devices, but does so selfishly.

Several things about this episode turned my crank:

• I really enjoyed the fact we got to see Catherine take a turn and getting a fair amount of screen time in the episode. Her role as a social service counselor not only compliments some of Frank’s work, but we got a better understanding of how she might deal with what Frank does, despite the fact he usually keeps the cases he’s working on secluded from her for her safety.
• Equally so, Sean Six’s role was disturbingly unsettling, right down to the prolonged hugs he doled out to mourners at the funerals he attended.
• The tone of Millennium took on hair-raising psychological aspects we hadn’t seen previously. If you were like me, some of these things just set your hair on end in a manner which touched a person to the point of uncomfortability.
• For the big twist in the hour, it’s revealed that it’s Conner doing the killing (and carving messages on the victims’ bodies), not James. James and his quirky obsession is simply used as a foil for Conner’s deep-seeded play …
• … but there’s one more element to this chapter of Millennium: The final scene were we see James back in the halfway house, free of any wrong-doing and right back at perusing his newspapers for funeral services he can attend. You have to shake your head at the fact he got off Scot-free and is back to his old tricks.

Interesting Note:

• Have we ever seen Frank enter a home in an episode so blatantly and without announcement? Granted, there was the possibility of danger, but it was a little strange for him to do so.

“The Well-Worn Lock“

“The cruelest lies are often told in silence” — Robert Louis Stevenson

Equally creepy — but with no appreciable violence in the episode — was the tale of Joe Bangs (a rather uncomfortable-looking role for veteran Paul Dooley) and his daughter Connie (Michelle Joyner) who he’s been sexually abusing for better than a generation.

Not only is the story frustratingly complicated as the hour unwinds, but the surprise reveal — that Joe’s “grandaughter” Sarah is actually the product of the abuse of Joe and his daughter Connie — is mentally horrifying.

But it doesn’t end with Bangs being caught. It takes an additional five months for him to finally appear in court at the very last to be formally indicted for his perverse crimes, something that has weighed heavily on his fragile and psychologically damaged daughter Connie. And his abuse continues in that he’s concocted a story through his wife of Connie not being his daughter at all, but that of another man his wife had relations with. Even in light of impending doom for him, he still manages to trample the frailness of Connie to the point of breaking. But with Catherine’s help, she finds the strength to take a stand against her father.

This episode, Frank takes a definite back seat to his wife in the story. The show is completely Catherine’s with just about zero physical violence and loads of mental anguish. With creator Chris Carter taking the reigns of this chapter, the story was niftily taboo and disturbing.

Clacked by Michael Noble
on Jul 04, 2012 @ 10:15 EST5EDT