Emergence Review: Applied Sciences (Season 1 Episode 11)
Emergence Season 1 Episode 11, “Applied Sciences,” continues the search for Piper with some unexpected help.
“Applied Sciences” is an episode that operates in a lot of vagueries and hand waving in order to get to wherever it is this episode leaves itself. There’s a lot of talk about Helen’s mission and how it’s really important but the show’s reluctance to spell that out in any meaningful way does itself no favors.
ALLISON TOLMAN, DONALD FAISON
The episode has so much dramatic tension around Piper’s desire to help people like Benny, illustrating more than once that he doesn’t actually want to be doing any of this, but it refuses to sufficiently tell us what his motivations actually are. We can buy that he deeply regrets betraying Jo but we need to know what is truly driving that decision.
The show expects “because it’s really important” to be a strong enough factor driving Benny and Helen but without us knowing even slightly more about what those goals are, it ends up falling flat.
Obviously, the show is waiting until the season finale to really explain what Helen’s mission is and why Benny would go along with it, which is fine, but it weakens this episode as a result.
We have to understand why Benny is so conflicted about this and why he would go along with this and the broad answers we get in that regard just aren’t cutting it.
MARIA DIZZIA, ALEXA SWINTON, DONALD FAISON
“Applied Sciences” is very clearly a transitionary episode to set the stage for the season finale and, as a result, there’s only so much that it allows itself to do or reckon with — to its determent.
For instance, Jo tries to tamper with one of the books in Piper’s mind (it’s a Mind Palace but we refuse to call it that), much in the same way that Emily did. The episode has no time to reckon with that, though, and leaves this as something for another episode to handle.
There’s no chance to really reflect on the supreme violation that this is because the episode is too focused on just getting to its endpoint of getting Piper back and safe in the house. For a show that has been so good in the past at slowing things down and dealing with consequences, this feels very out of place.
Speaking of Emily, it was nice to get her back in this episode, even if a lot of her interactions don’t totally track. Since the episode is so focused on just delivering plot, it needs to sidestep the fact that this version of Emily we get is a bit out of tempo with who Emily has been revealed to be up to this point.
MARIA DIZZIA, ALLISON TOLMAN
The episode simply needs her to be helpful to Jo in getting Piper back and, again, doesn’t have time to deal with the possibility of her trickery or manipulation. it’s a weird backpedaling on the characterization that we’ve gotten so far with her that doesn’t completely work with this episode.
Overall, this episode could have done with more time to breathe and slow down.
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.