Snowpiercer Review: Keep Hope Alive (Season 2 Episode 5)

Snowpiercer Season 2 Episode 5, “Keep Hope Alive,” has a lot of interesting pieces to it but it never feels like they come together in a satisfying fashion. 

Individually, these pieces are interesting or intriguing. There’s a many things that you could point to through this episode that work or could strike your fancy in some way. For example, Bess questioning Layton’s leadership or Audrey’s liaison with Wilford but the problem is that it isn’t focused enough on any one thing for it feel substantial. 

There’s a lot being juggled in the air but it lacks a certain kind of cohesion, which takes a bit away from the overall quality of the episode. The components are good in the moment when it’s being watched until you step back and realize that it isn’t really blending together. 

One mark against it is the show’s continued insistence that Melanie might be dead. It’s done this for the past couple of episodes and it’s at the point of it being an anti-Chekov’s Gun, where it has said it so often that there’s no possible way that it could follow through on it now. 

It’s aggravating because we all know that Melanie is not going to be dead. Aside from the fact that she’s a main character played by Jennifer Connelly and you’d have to be certifiably insane to get rid of her, killing her off-screen while she’s at some random research station is just bad writing. This show is better than that. 

At the same time, the decision to lie to the rest of the train about Melanie’s nonexistent transmissions is an oddly good one and ties back into the title of the episode for something we don’t often see in dystopian tales like this: hope. There’s a really strong emphasis on hope and anchoring it on that is really key, even if it doesn’t echo through the episode in a way we’d like.

It echoes back to Melanie’s decision to masquerade as Wilford and lie to everyone for years about who is truly in control of the train and it all having to do with a certain kind of sustaining hope for everyone, even if she went about in the worst ways possible sometimes. The episode barely touches on it while still allowing it to be somewhat subtext in a nicely deft touch. 

Audrey’s storyline with Wilford is a troubling one and there’s a certain amount of danger that we should believe that she’s in at this point but the note that the episode isn’t necessarily a dour one. Whether it’s a conscious decision on her part or not, staying with him on Big Alice is the smart move at this point. 

This is purely discerning whether this is an active act of betrayal on her part, which it seems likely that it isn’t. There’s a lot of writing on the walls that Wilford is manufacturing things to go downhill on Snowpiercer in a big way and the safest place for her is with him. It’s also a savvy decision. This way she can determine what his machinations are for herself. 

That may not be something that is occurring to her in that moment but it is valid, nonetheless, and probably something that someone as smart as Audrey will figure out in time. 

A bigger problem exists with Wilford himself, strictly as the Big Bad of this season. His motivations are still a bit too clean and simple — being a vie for power and control — and while that’s not unrealistic, it’s not entirely compelling. Compounded with that it’s the same struggle that we just got out of last season. 

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

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Snowpiercer airs Mondays at 9/8c on TNT.

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