Emergence Review: Fatal Exception (Season 1 Episode 7)
Emergence Season 1 Episode 7, “Fatal Exception,” demonstrates the kind of threat that Emily is shaping up to be.
The most effective types of villains are the ones where their motivations are so entirely understandable that, while being despicable, it makes the audience have a level of sympathy for them. How that character is going about achieving their ultimate goal is bad, but you kind of appreciate the essence of what they want.
DONALD FAISON, ALEXA SWINTON
With Emily, virtually every single thing that she does throughout “Fatal Exception” is awful and duplicitous, but there’s this element to what drives her that’s somewhat sympathetic. Granted, she’s a person that is substantially far off of the deep end, but the episode is also really good at articulating how truly damaged she is.
“Fatal Exception” draws a portrait of Emily as someone that simultaneously doesn’t understand love and affection and is also deeply desperate for it. This builds off of what we already know about her, which is that she’s severely mistrusting of people and would probably never get close enough to someone to have a child of her own to love her.
It should go without saying that people without children can live full, enriching lives without ever being a parent but the episode makes it clear that Emily does not think that. She needs that; something she can mold to give her the thing that she’s always been missing.
Given the options, she did the only thing she could: she created Piper.
CLANCY BROWN
What makes Emily a sympathetic character is also what makes her dangerous. Her wants are so simple, to be loved by Piper, that almost anything is possible for her to achieve that goal. There’s no price that’s too big for her because her goals are as fundamental to her as anything else.
That makes her unpredictable and lethal. She’s able to kill off her own father as a means to advance her agenda because nothing is off the board for her. If someone crosses her, or even might be a liability to her, she’ll act swiftly and without mercy.
Again, what she desires makes a modicum of sense, in her own deranged way, but it’s what she does that’s objectional and heinous.
DONALD FAISON
This begins and ends in her actions to essentially gaslight Piper into believing that all of the memories she has of Jo are actually of Emily. It’s a gross, violating intrusion of Piper’s interiority and sense of self and is appropriately treated as such during the episode.
The ensuing standoff is so small in terms of sci-fi climaxes but it has this enormous weight to them in terms of both plot and themes. It’s so utterly fascinating in that it presents this idea that, even if Piper is an AI, there’s a certain core to a person that can’t be undone.
They want to be a certain way and will fight to be that. Now, the argument could be made that this is little more than Piper’s code demanding to be the way that it has been throughout the series, but Piper has proven multiple times that she is more than just a simple synthetic personality. She can learn to love and choose who it is she wants to love.
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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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.