The Terror: Infamy Review: Shatter Like a Pearl (Season 2 Episode 5)
The Terror: Infamy Season 2 Episode 5, “Shatter Like a Pearl,” is the strongest episode of the season and takes a break (for the most part) from the supernatural elements at work.
There are two concepts within The Terror: Infamy that don’t always mesh together well: It’s set against the backdrop of the Japanese-American experience during WWII, and there is a Japanese spirit haunting people. A big problem this season has had so far is that both of those sides of the show have taken too long to really gain any traction.
The concentration camp aspect of this story is being executed as well as can be expected, but a lot of the spookier parts of the show haven’t worked quite as successfully. That’s due, in large part, to the spirit being just a bit too visible through the prior episodes.
To put that into contrast, the first season’s danger came in the form of a monstrous bear that would only come out periodically to attack and make its presence known. This season, the spirit is constantly around. We see her passing through scenes and interacting with characters, and it defangs that threat to a certain degree.
The thing that will always be the truest about horror is that it’s what you don’t see, rather than what you do, that’s scary. It’s the reason something like Jaws works so well. You spend an entire movie building up this threat in your mind over what it looks like and what it does so that when you do finally see it, it feels thrilling and almost cathartic.
The bear from the first season was the same way. You didn’t see it very much, and all that time you’re wondering where it is or what it’s doing and whether this will be the moment it attacks. The spirit, however, just always feels there in a way that hasn’t made it as frightening and immediate.
Fortunately, the show makes the good move this episode of taking a step back from the spirit for the majority of the episode and instead dealing with much more human and immediate problems. While the spirit informs a lot of what happens throughout the episode, especially with Chester, it isn’t really about that; it’s more about the effects of the camp and the war.
The strength of the episode comes from how contained so much of it is. Some of the episodes prior to this one have felt a bit formless and without any kind of real identity beyond getting the story to a place that it clearly wants to get to. But this one has arcs that seem particularly singular and about something.
The episode takes a breather — Chester sitting around talking about baseball with an enemy combatant is low-key but a really good move for the episode to make. This season has never felt particularly calm, but these scenes accomplish that slowdown rather nicely.
Moreover, “Shatter Like a Pearl” is really able to interrogate the politics of what it means to be of Japanese descent during this time and the insane constraints put on you as a result of that. It’s a good, almost relaxing episode for this season — which makes the truly horrific sequence at its end feel all the more worthy of the show’s title.
What did you think of this episode of The Terror: Infamy? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Terror: Infamy airs Mondays at 9/8c on AMC.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.