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11/16/2003: Jeremiah: Deus Ex Machina
I'm way behind in watching the Jeremiah episodes, so I've just now watched 2x04 Deus Ex Machina:
I'm getting less patient with the whole Mr. Smith thing. The episode is very aptly named, I guess the title refers as much to the divine intervention via Mr. Smith, which once again was central for the plot, as to Mr. Smith seeing things or portents or whatever on these photographs, which after all come literally from a machine. (BTW, in the last scene I didn't notice anything unusual in the photographs, were we supposed to see something, and I just didn't, or does just Mr. Smith see these things?) Like I said before, I find Mr. Smith himself quite likable, but really in the long term divine interventions aren't all that great for a story.
Or maybe I'm just grouchy because I had some other problems with the episode too. One was, that while I can take some pathos with the whole "let us build a new world" thing, I'm less than enthused that Theo's motivation for supporting Marcus is that she's pregnant now and wants a "a better world for her child." The other was that the community (or gang?) Kurdy ran into left me cold. One thing I liked in season one was that with Jeremiah and Kurdy on the road we got to see all those different communities and a lot them felt quite three-dimensional and believable, but the group this week felt really flat. I mean, I have a hard time believing that their community full of sociopaths who are only together because they like to kill others would work over a longer period. The whole group felt like just another plot device.
I actually liked the somewhat strange visual effects though, especially the brief fade to black effects in that rhythm that seemed like a heartbeat during the scene with the destruction of the camp and when Mr. Smith killed that guard with the bat. I felt quite disoriented and surreal, and it seemed the "heartbeat" rhythm got faster too as the scene progressed, anyway it increased my anxiety, and I assume those were the intended effects, as they fit the scene well.
