Debris Review: Asalah (Season 1 Episode 11)
Debris Season 1 Episode 11, “Asalah,” is, in many ways, a serious decline in quality following the rather well done two-parter that preceded this. The only thing that really gives it a pass is it sheds some light on Bryan and picks up threads that have been dangling around him all season.
In large part, this is a flashback episode done in the style that many genre fans will be familiar with. On a new case, Bryan and Finola encounter a woman — who has a name but it doesn’t matter because the episode doesn’t actually care about her — who knows Bryan’s name and his past.
Soon after, she puts him into a coma where he is forced to relive a rather painful memory from his time in the military.
Like we said, this is a really worn trope. Forcing a character to relive something by way of something supernatural or otherworldly has been done time-and-time again. That part’s fine, if somewhat uninteresting as a singular episode goes.
There’s a kind of give and take here. On the one hand, it makes sense to put a bow on all things Bryan since this is something it has been working up to for many episodes. It’s even better to do all of that in one fell swoop and be able to move on from this for the most part.
The problem exists with the kind of content that we’re receiving with these flashbacks and the militaristic stance that it’s obviously providing us with. To the episode’s credit, it does try to walk a decent line but so much of this particular and pretty much everything surrounding Asalah is steeped in this white (and male) savior complex.
Again, the show does its best to interrogate that and actually ask questions about the military’s presence in places like Afghanistan and Iraq but that can really only go so far. Ultimately, it’s still offering charitable points-of-view from and about the military and that’s pretty inescapable.
Ten or fifteen years, an episode like this would be pretty easy to swallow — or, at least, easier — but there’s just not much patience or goodwill for narratives that are jingoistic by their very nature. The show can try to walk it back as much as it can, and it does, but that’s something with diminishing returns.
It’s hard to say in one breath that Bryan is one of our main characters who we should really like and at the same time say that he is, by the very definition, a war criminal. Those are difficult things to divorce from each other.
It’s only made worse by the two female figures that are leading him through this episode — both real-time and during the flashback — end up dying to serve Bryan and his story. That leaves a bad taste in our mouth and it feels vaguely patriarchal for a show that hasn’t made much of a habit at that.
What did you think of this episode of Debris? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Debris airs Mondays at 10/9c on NBC.
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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.
One thought on “Debris Review: Asalah (Season 1 Episode 11)”
Decline? Did you watch the same ep? Lol
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