Hijack Season 1 Episode 4 Review: Not Responding
Hijack Season 1 Episode 4, “Not Responding,” is a calmer episode, which sounds strange to say considering everything that happens, but the show dials down the tension and suspense in this episode. You don’t have to panic about what’s to come.
It is a relief not to be on the edge of your seat the entire episode; however, the show also doesn’t move the plot along much on “Not Responding.” We don’t learn anything new, aside from some little teasers of information.
Sam gets some snippets of information out of the injured hijacker. People on the ground are looking to get into Sam’s place and have a photo of his passport, somehow, and then the hijacker’s demands are given to the Prime Minister.
Despite the fact that not a lot of new information is learned, this is still an engaging episode. It doesn’t feel slow or drawn out. Of course, it would’ve been better to learn a couple more things, but hey, we’ll take what we can get.
At this point, the aspect I’m dying to know more about is the hijacker’s larger organization. We keep getting teased with the scope of their operations with the Dubai murders — speaking of, when will the Dubai airport realize two employees are dead? — and the people looking into Sam, but that’s really all we know.
Perhaps now that the demands have been issued, we’ll start focusing more on who is running things in this organization. Hijack needs to start giving us more information on them because we’re losing interest quickly.
It’s been a while since the murders took place on Hijack Season 1 Episode 2, “3 Degrees,” and so it’s hard to tell if we should be worried those people looking for Sam will kill his family or what their agenda will be because we know nothing about them or their goals.
It makes sense that at some point during the plane’s journey, there would be a threat of it getting shot down. However, we also know that’s not going to happen, so it’s hard to be concerned for everyone on the plane’s safety.
There are three episodes left in the season, if the plane is shot down, then the show would be over. Ok, maybe it could have taken some weird angle where the passengers survive after crashing, but that would be a very different show.
Despite the predictability, it would have been a little unrealistic if the plane didn’t encounter any issues as it makes its way to London, and through this storyline, the show is able to bring the political aspect in a bit more through the foreign secretary’s involvement.
There are too many people working the investigation on the ground, the British foreign secretary included, and the show doesn’t devote enough attention to any of them to allow us to get a sense of who everyone is and form opinions on them.
It’s a drawback to the whole setup of this series. There are too many people to try to get to know on both the plane and the ground. Hijack could have done a better job at dividing attention between characters by cutting out the focus on Sam’s family and instead using that time to further develop some other characters.
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“Not Responding” is written by Kam Odedra and George Kay.
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Hijack airs Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
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Allison Nichols
Allison is in a love affair with television that doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon. Slightly damaged fictional characters are her weakness. She loves to spend her free time curled up with a cat and a show to binge-watch. Allison is a Tomatometer-approved critic (Rotten Tomatoes).