Millennium – Two stark tales

“His children are far from safety; they shall be crushed at the gate without a rescuer.” — Job 5:4

What do you think? The disposition of the killer in this Millennium episode was pretty standard, not exactly up to snuff with show’s usual fare. The fact of the matter is this episode did a few things to set up and keep the creep level riding high while the viewer viewed it. And those things were everything revealed by Frank Black while the investigation was underway:

• The signs the villain Cutter (Pablo Coffey) left
• The video and audio recordings put out there to be discovered
• The ax
• The “X” beneath the doormat

Notes:

• Cutter may have been subtle in his own way, but he managed to raise the hackles on the back of my neck.
• A nice touch in this episode was to see Bletcher’s hands tied thanks to Frank regarding Patricia, the first young victim who lost her parents in the first segment.
• Wow. Cutter was doubly brazen enough to use a damned shotgun (Hello! Noisy as all get out!) on his next victim as well as calling police to the scene of the crime.
• The death of Cutter? Left me rather *meh*
  

“The Wild And The Innocent“

“O Lord, if there is a Lord
Save my soul, if I have a soul …” — Ernest Renan

This episode was unlike anything we’ve seen up to this point. Simple and direct, the tale unfolded for the first time on Millennium with a voice over — that of protagonist Maddie Haskel (Heather McComb, Prison Break, The Event) bearing her soul throughout.

Overall there was nothing that really stood out in this chapter. The story had a basic premise of longing and regret (Maddie’s hurt at her mother’s death and her want of her abandoned boy Angel) coupled with an abusive, overbearing and quick-tempered boyfriend Bobby (Jeffrey Donovan, Burn Notice) that ultimately ended in his death at Maddie’s hand of Maddie. So what made it different?

For me, it was the power of the voice over and the austere tone with which it was conveyed. It made me listen, engaged me into the story in a different manner than I was accustomed on Millennium. Hearing Maddie’s tale and watching the current events which would ultimately add to the telling gave it stark attraction despite the story’s basic premise.

Notes:

• We’ve seen Frank button his jacket when he gets to the scene of a crime time and again. When he did it this episode, it seemed a bit more forceful, purposeful.
• Maddie’s voice over eerily reminded me of Juliette Lewis‘ Mallory Knox  in Natural Born Killers

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