Photo Credit: SyFy
While it seemed like an eternity ago (almost a year, in fact!), season 1 of Alphas ended with Dr. Rosen (David Strathairn) revealing before a Congressional panel, as well as the rest of the world, that Alphas do exist, and it’s time for the government to acknowledge and accept them. As bold as it was, we knew there would be consequences, but until tonight’s season 2 premiere, we weren’t quite sure how severe they would be.
The episode opens with the discovery that Dr. Rosen has been institutionalized for the past 8 months, his mental health questioned, his work discredited, and his team disbanded and left to roam. Bill (Malik Yoba), Cameron (Warren Christie), and Gary (Ryan Cartwright) continue working for the government, trying to prove to them that they still have value. However, Gary doesn’t adapt to the change very well, and ends up in Binghamton after punching someone at the NSA. In the meantime, Nina (Laura Mennell) goes back to her old ways of “pushing” people for profit and her own personal needs, and poor Rachel (Azita Ghanizada) shuts herself up in her bedroom, refusing to talk to anyone but Dr. Rosen. All in all, the rest of the team is a mess, but at least it’s better than them all being institutionalized, which is what I had originally predicted last year.
However, after a visit from his daughter, Danielle (Kathleen Munroe), who is worried that her father may never be released, Dr. Rosen makes the prophetic remark that eventually there will be some “event’ – something that will make the government realize just how much they need him and his team. And, with that statement almost acting as an omen, we can predict that some big-ass catastrophe is about to erupt. Yes, this was quite predictable, as I don’t think it would be much of a show if Dr. Rosen and all of the members of his team were not together. But this lack of surprise can be overlooked with the action-packed scenes that come next.
The big “event” turns out to be a prison break in the infamous Building 7 of Binghamton. We all may recall that Building 7 is where they house the “worse of the worse” of Alphas, the ones who are real threats to society. Among these Alphas are a fire-starter, an alpha that can whisper in your ear and cause you to kill yourself, and a badass who calls himself Scipio and can cause your skin to sizzle with his touch. Dr. Rosen is called in to negotiate a deal after the initial prison assault, but the inmates get the upper hand and escape anyways. The scenes leading up to the escape are top-notch and very well choreographed. They are not the second-rate type of action scenes that we are so familiar with from a good deal of science fiction movies or TV shows – they are top quality. And, from that alone, I give this episode very high marks.
The one thing I didn’t like about this episode is the lack of Gary Bell. In past episodes, he has been a sort of comic relief for the show, and I could watch some of his dialogue for hours. In the episode, he is in a catatonic state, and he has only a few lines throughout the entire episode. Luckily for us, at the end, Gary is close to being back to his old self after the ordeal at Binghamton. According to what was said at the Alphas Comic-Con panel, there are going to be some big changes for Gary in the upcoming season, including his moving out of his mother’s house and into Alphas headquarters. I’m sure all of Gary’s fans out there will be looking forward to that, as will I.
The episode ends with the escapees meeting up with Stanton Parish (John Pyper-Ferguson), as well as Dr. Rosen’s daughter, Danielle. We don’t know for sure yet, but we assume Parish’s Alpha skill is the inability to age, but just looking at him, you have to wonder how he has become the de-facto leader of Red Flag. He doesn’t seem tough, he doesn’t even seem charismatic, but we know there is more there than we can see, because Anna from Season 1 was afraid of him, as are many other Alphas. With this standoff between Good vs. Evil and Stanton Parish leading the Evil brigade, it should make for a very interesting season.
