Emergence Review: 2 MG CU BID (Season 1 Episode 3)

Emergence Season 1 Episode 3, “2 MG CU BID,” gets wrapped up in a medical mystery that reveals a big piece of the puzzle. 

With a show like Emergence, one that so strongly tries to mimic Lost, the mystery can either be its saving grace or the nail in its coffin. This becomes all the more important when the mystery is such a pivotal segment of that show. There’s certainly an argument to be made that this is true for this show, in particular. 

The natural impulse when doing a show like this would be to resist the urge to deliver any true morsels of information for as long as you can. For Lost, you put off revealing the smoke monster until the end of the season; Fringe, save the alternate universe to the second season. 

That’s what makes “2 MG CU BID” so interesting because it is so bold in the way it presents information that another show would wait a long time to deliver. It’s a big stick to swing this early in the series and time will tell if it is the right decision for this show to make but it’s laudable all the same. 

Piper is a robot. That’s the assumption we’re supposed to be left with. For a show that was built on asking what exactly is the deal with Piper, to answer that three episodes in is impressive, to say the least, and teases the possibility for a bigger world after this. 

It’s a smart move on the show’s part actually because this preemptively sidesteps the potential plot of Piper’s parents coming back into the mix. This going forward puts the ball solely in Jo’s court if she truly wants Piper as part of her family knowing what she is. If she does, there’s nothing that will stand in their way, other than corporate interference.

In that vein, this opens up a good route for them to take on how much Jo trusts Piper going forward. If Piper was acting weird before, she was a traumatized kid who might have been a human test subject. Now, she’s a creepy robot girl that might kill them all in their sleep. That kind of paranoia that it sets itself up for now is rather promising. 

That’s the thing that the show continues to get right.

The interesting thing isn’t the weird, mysterious things happening but rather the way that the characters respond to those things. It doesn’t always have to make sense but if the character’s responses sense, that’s all that matters. 

Too often a show like this tends to be about how off-kilter something is and miss the mark on relatable characters that you want to spend time with. Luckily, Emergence hasn’t made that mistake so far. 

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

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Emergence airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on ABC.

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