Each week Joe and Terry discuss Apple TV’s Silo Season 3, alternating between our respective sites.
Spoilers follow for Silo S03E03.
- 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 / 2.07 / 2.08 / 2.09 / 2.10
- Catch up on Season 3: 3.01 / 3.02
S03E03 “A Dark Web”: Juliette takes control of her recovery process. Helen suffers consequences of her investigation.
JOE
Alright Terry, we’re making our way past the ⅓ mark of the season and I’m becoming increasingly nervous about the pacing of the Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson)/amnesia stuff in the past. I know it’s only one episode after I admitted I would cut the show some slack, but outside of the “fumigation” sequence when Camille (Alexandria Riley) orders the mines be dosed in an effort to get rid of Avi Nash’s Lukas Kyle (who returns! Finally!), a lot of the Silo timeline is feeling a little too repetitive.
Camille plots with the Algorithm, which warns her that everyone needs their memory wiped with Vitamin D+ and if attempts are made to tunnel horizontally to reach other Silos, an immediate “Safeguard” (ie: mass casualty event) will be initiated.
We don’t actually know if this is where Lukas Kyle has been for the last months; if anything the show has been using him as something of a symbol (of the rebellion) or a cypher (since his existence necessitates Camille and the Algorithm keep plotting). Now that he’s back, I’m hopeful that we’ll actually do something more than hint at waking people up to the truth.
For the time being, however, Jules is back out of commission. She gets caught in the fumigation cloud and has to be rescued by Lukas, who will presumably be hidden away by Danny (Will Merrick), and Sandy (Chipo Chung) since they found him before the armed guards.
There’s other intriguing stuff floating around in this timeline, such as the fact that Sims (Common) is seemingly aware of the threat of Vitamin D+, though his push to spend personal time with Charlotte and son Anthony – in part because he saw that Jules’ father died and she doesn’t even remember him – doesn’t really hit the way the show maybe hopes it has.
Even Camille being questioned by the Algorithm about why she allowed Juliette to survive, especially after the former Mechanical worker held Camille and Anthony hostage last season, feels like it should pack a bit more “oophm”. I think that Riley imbues the line “I wanted to see what she found out. I realize now it was a mistake” with a good amount of regret and admiration, but I can’t help but feel that Camille’s powerplay storyline is starting to feel too repetitive.
Meanwhile, in the Before Times, Helen (Jessica Henwick) has been fired from her reporter job, so she and Daniel (Ashley Zuckerman) track down a guy from the Dark Web who allegedly has a copy of the mission communications that were briefly uploaded online. Both parties listen to it, but when they return to visit Steve a second time his place has been ransacked and the man is now gone.
Obviously this is very “political conspiracy thriller”-coded (as we discussed last week with episode 3.02), but this timeline doesn’t get as much screentime to breathe, so it feels quite brief. I didn’t mind it, though I don’t know how much new information we’ve learned from these interactions (though increasingly in a day and age where everyone and everything is recording us to train AI and take our jobs, Steve’s refrain that “I only fuck with analog if I can help it” feels very a propros.
Over to you Terry: are you having the same pacing issues as me? Were you surprised by some of the smaller character beats, like the discovery that Knox (Shane McCrae) and Shirley (Remmie Milner) are sleeping together? Are you surprised that Orla Kent’s body has apparently been found? And were you excited to see disabled manufacturing workshop employee Mark Chambers (George Robinson) again?
TERRY
Back when we were covering Season 2, Joe, one of the areas that constantly annoyed me to the point I called it out in our recap of Episode 8 was the choppy editing. It was the kind of editing where we’d get a brief, almost insignificant scene in one of the silos before cutting back to the other silo, and vice versa. That episode, in particular, was the breaking point for me because of how sloppily it was constructed; it relegated interesting moments to a quick 10-15 second scene while drawing out other, less interesting sequences.
When I take my notes while watching, I will headline each section with “PAST” or “PRESENT” to help give me a structure I can follow as I write my parts of the recap. I won’t say that “A Dark Web” is as atrocious as that episode. But when I started breaking down the sections, there were a few times where I wrote “PAST” and then…had nothing to write because we were immediately back to the silo timeline.
You mentioned that the past didn’t get as much screentime to breathe and you’re absolutely right. I was so annoyed when Daniel and Helen left their Dark Web contact, only for a quick car scene to cause them to decide to go back. At that moment, I wrote “Steve’s place is going to be ransacked.” Cut to…the pair discovering Steve’s place was ransacked. It feels like lazy writing that’s more interested in moving the plot along than giving us characterizations and building tension.
Screenwriter Aric Avelino wrote the Season 2 finale (which we were a bit divided on), as well as one episode in the first season. In the Season 2 finale, he was given the unenviable task of trying to take everything that came before and find some way to satisfactorily pay it off. Here, though, I can’t give him as much slack. I was hoping that the huge gulf of quality in the writing between Season 1 and Season 2 had more to do with the writer’s strike and less the direction the show was heading, but “A Dark Web” suggests that’s not the case.
I wanted to dig in a little more on what you said about Camille’s storyline feeling lacking and repetitive. I agree and I think the reason it’s not working for me is because the mystery and the motivations are laid too clear. The Algorithm dispels any mystery and answers basically everything for us.
Why is Camille doing this? Well, because of her son.
Why is she going along with the Algorithm? Well, because it’s better than the alternative.
Why does she think that killing/martyring Jules will help? Well, because the Algorithm told her.
This plot device lays out everything for the viewer. Sure, the Algorithm allows us to see inside Camille’s head in a medium where, unlike a novel, it’s difficult to show internalized thought. But by having a data-driven all-seeing AI machine literally tell us what we need to know, it takes away our ability to think and come up with our own conclusions. I could, I suppose, say that it adds a metatextual layer as a comment about how generative AI – which, let’s be honest, The Algorithm is certainly a stand-in for – but, more importantly, it strips the audience of our own curiosity. (But that may be too generous given the rest of the episode).
Too much is just said instead of implied. And that lessens Camille’s rise to power. Sure, it adds a little complexity to her character…she’s not just a Lady MacBeth ascending to power, she’s doing it for her son. It’s just not that interesting.
Likewise the reintroduction of Lukas: The moment Jules collapses in the mines from the fumigation, I knew that Lukas would swoop in and save her. I’m happy Lukas is back, but what a pedestrian way to bring him back. It’s not interesting.
I think that kind of answers your questions to me, unfortunately, Joe. Am I surprised? No. No I’m not. The only pseudo-surprise I had was finding Knox and Shirley together. I say pseudo because part of me wondered if we already knew that and the other part of me was disappointed because the tension between Shirley and Jules seemed more than just best friends.
Orla’s body – who I didn’t realize was dead until you wrote they found her body – is potentially interesting. I initially wrote in my notes, “Okay, I guess the mystery of the missing person was solved right after introducing it.” The discovery potentially diminishes Sheriff Billings (Chinaza Uche)’s role. He interviews Orla’s parents and sister and then…well, surprise! She’s been found. I’m hoping there’s something more to her dead body, though.
The episode’s only real surprise for me was Mark showing back up for a brief, snarky scene, though I wish he had more to do.
Every time Silo pulls me back in, it does something to push me back out. I don’t know, Joe. Are we being too harsh on the show? Did the remarkable first season set too high of a bar that the rest of the series couldn’t possibly live up to?
Let’s focus on the positives for a moment, though. I’m going to ignore the fact that the sequence of events and timing between Jules deciding to head to the mines, Camille ordering the fumigation and then the fumigation starting immediately felt a bit wonky and, instead mention that the actual fumigation sequence was pretty fantastic, don’t you think? Are you as doom and gloom as I feel about the pacing of this season? Do you see a roadmap to get us back on track for the next seven episodes? Do you have any thoughts on the drama between Shirley and Jules, particularly with Jules going to her for help? Finally, now that Lukas has returned, do you have any thoughts on where the show goes next?
JOE
Yeah, I’ll confess I was a bit annoyed by Shirley. Perhaps this is where the time jump isn’t helping, but it feels like Shirley reacts too strongly considering it’s not Jules’ fault that she can’t remember. The strength of this reaction speaks to the fact that we both see queer coding in this relationship!
All of this may also be a byproduct of the pacing, which feels like Silo taking ages to ramp back up. Again, we obviously need to be patient after the show’s soft reset, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling a bit anxious for things to, you know, get going. The fumigation sequence is a step in the right direction because it was exciting and dangerous and it felt…immediate? (for lack of a better term). Like this will change things or upend the status quo. It has to, right?
Hopefully between the fall-out of that incident and now that Lukas is back, we can break this whole conspiracy wide open and really kickstart the season into gear. I’m ready, Terry!
We’ll know soon when we hop back to Gayly Dreadful to discuss episode 3.04, “Whatever You Do, Don’t Go Home.”
Silo airs Fridays on Apple TV