Reverie Review: Pas de Deux (Season 1 Episode 6)

Upon first glance, Reverie Season 1 Episode 6, “Pas de Deux” seems as though it’s going to follow a certain formula we’re all pretty familiar with. A dancer experiences a devastating life trauma, and loses herself in a reverie to escape it. Mara must go in after her, and save the day. Easy, right?

Well, not exactly.

Yes, the end of this episode is as saccharine as anything we might have expected.

Mara ultimately rescues said dancer with the power of love and human connection. And Holly rebounds from what is a truly dark emotional state with ridiculous ease. We’ve all learned to just roll with this kind of thing by now, probably.

But what’s really interesting about this episode is how close it gets to, well, not being that.

“Pas de Deux” is Reverie’s best attempt yet at really diving into some of the messy, dark complications this virtual technology would obviously spawn. It doesn’t stick the landing, and that’s a shame, but it’s still a solid effort.

The episode deals with issues of depression, loss, and suicide in a thoughtful and thought-provoking way. It actually leaves you guessing until the very last act about which way the story will go.

And most importantly, it proves that this show is at its best and most relevant when it veers away from overly sappy stories.

Yes, Mara’s empathy is an important element of Reverie. And it makes her a more likeable and relatable character. But this show has the potential for deeper, more complex stories and I’d like to see it get there.

It feels so close, sometimes!

“Pas de Deux” tells the story of Holly, a brilliant dancer who becomes paralyzed after a bad fall. Not only does her accident mean she’ll never dance again, it also causes her to lose the pregnancy she hadn’t even had the chance to tell anyone about yet.

Holly’s decision to barricade herself in reveries is deeply sad, but completely understandable. Confined to a wheelchair and with no hope of ever having children of her own, she feels the real world has nothing left to offer her.

Even when she’s told that if she doesn’t exit her reverie — where she’s a dancer again and has built a life with a virtual world with the daughter she lost — she’ll die, Holly is okay with it. And for moment, it seems as though Reverie will allow that to happen.

For a brief scene, Paul, Mara and Alexis debate whether they have the right to tell her not to do so or if a client’s death-by-virtual-reality is something they just have to accept.

Though the group is divided on the issue — Paul seems okay with reverie-assisted suicide, while Alexis stridently opposes it — they’re saved from having to make a real decision by Mara’s astute people skills.

She figures out that Holly’s sister’s hidden illness will be enough to bring her back to the real world, and Reverie doesn’t return to the question of suicide again.

Yet, it’s somewhat disappointing that the show chooses to drop the complicated, thorny questions brought up by Holly’s decision in favor of pat platitudes like “Some people are worth sticking around for”.  Especially when you factor in the almost immediate erasure of her depression once she realizes she can just…teach someone else’s children ballet.

To be honest: That’s kind of ridiculous. No matter whether Holly decided to return to the real world or not, that decision wouldn’t suddenly erase all her other problems.

A moment of catharsis in a virtual world is not the same as healing.

Reverie has edged around difficult issues of morality and consent before, most notably in “Altum Somnum” (Season 1 Episode 5) when Mara must enter the reverie of a coma patient without her consent.

Here, the questions swirl around how much the Onira Tech team is required to respect the wishes of a user who wishes to die in the program. Again, I’m forced to wonder how there are no previously tested failsafes for this sort of situation.

If Alexis is so adamant that she didn’t build a suicide machine – or, rather, that she doesn’t want to take responsibility for users who use her technology to help end their own lives – shouldn’t she have, oh, written that into her company’s terms of use?

It makes sense that Onira Tech doesn’t want to be open to that kind of liability, either from letting someone die in their virtual world or from the brain damaged that might be caused by a forced removal.

What doesn’t make sense is that apparently zero people involved with this extremely invasive technology or the successful business it’s fueled ever thought of this stuff.

Reverie has the potential to tackle a lot of really complex moral and ethical issues about consent, life, death, choice and consequences. At some point, it’s going to have to address those issues, rather than constantly run away from them as soon as they get hard.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• I have no idea how we’re supposed to feel about Ray — the brother in law who murdered Mara’s sister and niece — still being alive. I think we all know that Mara’s never going to go full dark no stars and kill him, and since he appears to be in a fairly permanent coma I’m not sure what we should expect from all this. For Mara’s sake, I’d like to see her get some closure, but unless it involves her basically beating this guy back into the coma he’s already in, I don’t know what that looks like.
• They just introduced Mara’s ex so Paul could be jealous, right? Right.
• Ugh, I love Mara and Paul.
• To be honest, I liked Chris too. Well, except for the horrible mustache. I don’t know that I completely believe Mara just completely ghosted on him after her family was killed, but I guess grief makes you do weird things.
• Holly’s final dance with her daughter was beautiful. I may not always love Reverie’s tendency toward schlock, but it’s often gorgeous to watch.

What did you think of this episode of Reverie? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Reverie airs Wednesdays at 10pm on NBC.

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