Jane
Season 2
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Jane’s origin story delivers serious mommy issues and a major science fiction revelation.
Photo: Hulu
It’s wild to say, but we’re nearing the end of our Paradise season-two journey — it feels like only yesterday we were getting that sexy tour of Graceland. You can tell Paradise is prepping to land the plane because, for the first time all season, all of our disparate story lines feel like they’re either wrapping up or inching closer to one another. The story feels like it has a destination, even if we’re still not exactly sure where that is.
Last week, we left Xavier in a precarious spot. Our favorite wife guy is on a mission to rescue Teri from a group of dangerous people on a train — or, at least, that’s how Mailman Gary describes them. We, of course, know that the most dangerous person in this whole situation is actually Gary, whose obsession with Teri has led him to murder his best friend. Xavier is already suspicious of the guy who admitted to being in love with Teri but assured him that all he wants to do is help her and reunite her with her family.
Still, Xavier is not suspicious enough. He enacts his plan to plant a bomb near the train and set it off as a distraction so he can pull Teri out of there. He leaves Gary behind with the detonator, while he runs around the train setting the fuse and prepping the bomb. As he’s about to leave the bomb and get to safety before setting it off, two things happen: He sees a group photo from the post office crew in which Gary can’t help but look at Teri and Gary, on the walkie, ominously says that all he’s ever wanted to do is keep Teri safe. Just as Xavier realizes Gary is not to be trusted, the mailman sets off the bomb. He used Xavier to figure out a way to rescue Teri and now he wants to keep her all to himself. Thankfully, Xavier is a quick thinker, and he makes a run for it with just enough time to spare. The bomb goes off, Xavier survives, and as the dust settles and the Train People come outside, he sees Teri standing right in front of him. We’ll have to wait until next week to see how their reunion goes, but for now, let me just say with my whole heart, eat shit, Gary!!
We’ll deal with him more next week — this week’s episode is focused on a different loner with attachment issues. It’s our favorite Wii-loving psychopath Jane’s turn in the hot seat. Great news: She’s even more dangerous and more psycho than we thought!
Interestingly, Paradise presents Jane as a bit of a chicken-or-egg scenario. Back in 1997, a Circuit City employee named Don — bear with me, I beg you! — begins getting mysterious messages over email, page, and AIM, repeatedly telling him the same things: “A killer will be born on June 6 at 12:01” and “She can be stopped when it matters if you deliver this message.” Over and over. And, while it probably doesn’t mean much to Don, it should mean something to us — those messages are coming from accounts named “AlexQ” and “AlexQ*Loves*Don.” If these messages are coming from “Alex,” is quantum entanglement involved? Are these messages from another time and/or universe? I’m very sorry that Don has to get wrapped up in all of this, but he does, and the messages drive him to his own psychosis. Don waits outside the nearby hospital to find a girl born on June 6 at 12:01, and when he sees Jane’s mother and baby Jane being wheeled out, he starts screaming at her that this baby is a killer, that she needs to be stopped. It is deeply unsettling. Sure, we’ve already seen that Jane’s mother is most likely suffering from postpartum depression and also seems like a bad person, but this interaction with Don fucks her up real good.
We meet them again years later and things between mother and daughter (and daughter’s imaginary friend, Climby) are, let’s say, not great. Mom screams at Jane for being too old to have imaginary friends. Climby tells Jane to cook Mom and her boyfriend in the sauna. When Jane frees them from the sauna a few seconds later, Mom throws Jane into the sauna, locks the door on her, and tells her the man at the hospital was right and she is the worst thing to ever happen to her. So, it’s not entirely shocking when we catch up with Jane as an adult training at the CIA Farm and she clearly has mommy issues.
Jane is struggling a bit in some of the training, especially when it comes to physical exercises with people who are much bigger than she is. One of her instructors, Stacy Thomas (played by Sterling K. Brown’s wife, Ryan Michelle Bathe), takes her under her wing. She thinks Jane is special, and she thinks it’s awful no one has told her that before. I mean, she doesn’t even want to touch Jane’s psychiatric evaluation — there must be some truly weird shit in there — but Jane is one of the smartest people in the program. She needs to start fighting that way. Stacy teaches Jane meditation. The practice helps Jane get out of her head (and stop hearing voices, which is concerning that that’s a thing!!) and see situations and problems in different ways. Suddenly, she is kicking ass in her training exercises. It just took a little love and support from a female authority figure. You can see how much Jane lives and dies on Stacy’s approval. She worships this woman. And that’s even before Stacy introduces Jane to Nintendo Wii.
But because Jane is so attached to Stacy, it means she would do anything for her. Anything. When Stacy gets upset that she was passed over for a promotion that was instead given to Officer Radner, who isn’t at all qualified. When Jane, perhaps even more upset than Stacy, asks how this could happen, Stacy tells the obvious, unfortunate truth: “He has a dick, Jane.”
Jane will not stand for her mommy, er, mentor being played like that! So she pays Radner a little visit and … well, friends, she cuts his dick off. And then brings it over to Stacy in a gift bag — with tissue paper and everything — and presents it as if this was a totally normal reaction. Hey, Stacy did say he only got the job because of his dick and Jane took care of that problem for her. She executes for her mommy, er, mentor — sorry I keep doing that! — and this time she executed all over Radner’s penis. I bet Stacy wishes she didn’t gloss over those psych evals right about now!
So why is this relevant? In the present-day bunker, Jane has found a new mommy figure to attach herself to: Samantha. You see, back when she shot Sam and told her she’s no use to her if she’s dead, she didn’t mean it as a threat that she would make Sam her pawn; she meant it as in she is a weapon and she only works when there is someone to wield her. She wants that person to be Samantha. She is in awe of Sam as she slyly takes back control of the billionaire board now that President Baines is dead and makes it look like their idea. She beams every time Sam tells her she did a good job. She is so obsessed that she sits in Sam’s office just to be close to her things. She fixes her hair so it looks like a bob and pretends to be Sam, giving her praise in the mirror. When Sam gives Jane a Nintendo Switch, she might die of happiness, and she gushes to Sam’s daughter Hadley that her mom is just the best and she does it in a way that honestly makes me fear for Hadley’s life. “It’s cool we both see it, ya know?” is diabolical.
Jane holds up her end of their relationship, too. Sam sends Jane out to negotiate terms for a meeting with Link and his people (the group has now doubled in size and is heavily armed), and she uses her meditation technique to gain the upper hand. She and Link agree to a meeting with Sam in which Link can only bring five men, none of them can be armed, and also yes, she will bring him a slice of apple pie. But that was an easy task to complete. Where Jane the Weapon really comes in with her unhinged desire to protect Sam at all costs is when she’s confronted by Gabi.
Gabi, you’ll remember, bugged Sam’s office and is now furiously trying to figure out what or who the hell Alex is. She searches through old therapy recordings and finds one that must be right after Sam hired Billy to kill Henry for Alex, in which she says Alex was necessary, but she doesn’t know who she is anymore and she’s scared of who she’ll have to become. Gabi tracks down Robinson in the under-underground prison to get more intel on Sam, but Robinson, who is truly out of fucks to give at this point, tells her Sam isn’t the one to go after — she needs to take out Jane, first. When Gabi tracks down Jane, she tells her she knows exactly who she is and isn’t the least bit intimidated — she knows Samantha is up to something and she’s coming for her. “If you come for her, you come through me,” Jane tells her. I’m really into Gabi’s level of confidence here, but I’m taking Jane in this fight.
Gabi isn’t about to be the only thorn in Sam’s side: Jeremy Bradford is moving on with his “blow the fucking doors open” plan from prison. Anders is in — he seems to feel the need to atone for whatever sins he committed in helping Sam build this bunker. He informs Jeremy that if they cut off the oxygen supply, all the doors will automatically open. To do that, however, they need to get to the emergency control room, which is even deeper in this bunker, by way of some tunnel system. The two almost get caught trying to sneak into said tunnel system, but thanks to Robinson, who simply cannot help herself but wants to protect Cal’s kid even though he keeps yelling at her about being his dad’s side piece, they evade capture and leave the prison through the tunnels.
Meanwhile, Presley is up to something, too. She’s frustrated that no one is doing anything about people disappearing or the red flag about Samantha Redmond Xavier raised, and she wants answers. She doesn’t have a ton of connections, but she does have access to Hadley Redmond. One little diner booth conversation about how Hadley has no idea who her mom really is and Hadley is hungry for the truth, too. She wants to help Presley figure this all out. Between Hadley and Presley, Jeremy and Anders, Link and his crew, and Gabi’s one-woman mission to take down Sam, can the bunker hold up under all this pressure?
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