last episode<\/a> not only didn\u2019t take any lives but knocked out the communications with the control center, so the authorities can no longer precisely track Sam Nelson and his U-Bahn of hostages. It gives the episode most of its direct tension as the handoff between Sam and the convoy bringing John Bailey-Brown can\u2019t be as tightly controlled by the authorities.<\/p>\nThis is also an episode in which we learn more about Jess, the unwanted ally of Mr. Nelson and the woman who murdered poor Freddie. It turns out she has a way to contact her handler, an authority figure alongside Bailey-Brown in the convoy and the mystery man that Sam met in the pub the night before. Who is this guy working for? He\u2019s clearly a middleman, someone on the Bailey-Brown side of this illogically complex hostage situation, but he also has the control that comes with being able to remotely arm the bombs on the train. They kinda have to do what he says or go boom.<\/p>\n
So who is Jess? She\u2019s willing to move quickly to kill someone, although she makes a reasonable case for that decision here, arguing that they needed to kill Freddie or they\u2019d have to worry about what he knew. He was collateral damage. Wait a minute. If that\u2019s true of Freddie, isn\u2019t it also true of Otto? Jess? Sam? If the people behind this want John Bailey-Brown so badly that a passenger is that expendable, how are the perpetrators of this faux hijacking going to live? On the one hand, it seems likely that Sam\u2019s death has always been a part of their plan: They somehow get JBB in their hands, and Sam is the lone, vengeful father who takes the fall. But do Otto and Jess know that a scheme this powerful likely means they won\u2019t survive it too? Maybe not yet.<\/p>\n
Speaking of survival, \u201cJunction\u201d sacrifices a passenger in a way that felt a bit manipulative. Almost as if creators recognize that the season has been a bit light in the body-count department, they let the older woman passenger die quietly, seated next to her loving husband. While it\u2019s kinda cheap to kill an underdeveloped character like this one, at least it does seem to deepen the stakes a little. This has been a season too low on action, but the reminder that what\u2019s unfolding has led to a loss of life helps increase tension just a bit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Things are definitely tense for Marsha Nelson, who discovers rather quickly that her kindly neighbors aren\u2019t so kindly. She flees them into the woods, pausing just long enough to see that they murdered the bodyguard who was there to protect her. If Marsha could somehow get to a safe space, couldn\u2019t that derail the hijacking?\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are a few mysteries remaining that seem likely to be answered next episode before the explosive finale. First, who\u2019s behind all of this? Stuart, one of the hijackers from last season, gets a weird scene in which he learns about the explosion on the train and seems furious. He clearly knew more about what happened than he let on in the last episode. Was he upset that his plans have gone awry? And second, who gave Sam all the information about John Bailey-Brown\u2019s location in the first place? Did Stuart have email behind bars? Probably not. Faber & co. are untying that thread of this story, which will likely lead to the mastermind of the entire operation.<\/p>\n
The episode ends with the kind of suspense that one hopes could be carried through the final two hours. Sam and Jess have disembarked the train to switch tracks because they have figured out that authorities can no longer track them and that they\u2019re about to be ambushed at Bergmannstra\u00dfe. Again, it\u2019s an installment about control and how no one being completely transparent about what they\u2019re doing or why is what\u2019s setting things up for tragedy. The creators try again to leave viewers wanting more. They ended last week with a boom (for the second time). This week it\u2019s a gunshot as a soldier gets the jump on Sam and Jess. We\u2019ll have to wait a week to see if he hit his target.<\/p>\n
Stray observations<\/p>\n
\u2022 The look on Faber\u2019s face when he sees that Olivia has 12,697 unopened emails represents all of us zero-inbox people. I had a small panic attack just thinking about it.
\n\u2022 The episode closes with a banger, the great \u201cAin\u2019t It A Sin<\/a>\u201d by Charles Bradley.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Here\u2019s a deep-cut great train movie: Brad Anderson\u2019s excellent TransSiberian. Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer play an American couple who get caught up in a crime aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway. It\u2019s way more Hitchcock than Hijack.
\n\u2022 Two episodes to go! I\u2019ve talked a lot here about lack of momentum this season and that nagging feeling that this is a great two-hour action movie stuck in an eight-episode format, but the final pair seem like they have to get to the good stuff. We should get some answers, get some action, and maybe even get to a place where I can forgive where this season has disappointed.<\/p>\nBrian Tallerico is a contributor to The A.V. Club.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cJunction\u201d is an episode that every action series reaches, one in which both the good and bad guys…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-289882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}