One of my first thoughts when I began watching the episode, with the whole David's father imbroglio is how messed up DAvid and Olivia's relationship is. Or should I say now was, since it seems they no longer have a relationship. Anyway, I felt that whenever they were together, David's issues always dominated the conversation, and Olivia basically worked as a sounding board for David's problems.
Whenever David would have a problem, that would affect him at home, and it would be up to her to understand and support. It would almost seem as if Olivia was a stay-at-home wife who spent all her time shopping and watching soap operas and occasionally taking care of David's father. It was always David, David, David. Olivia never had problems at work, nothing to talk about really.
I think that could be a way to show how messed up their relationship was, but also could indicate bad writing, since the writers gave her a job, but never cared to do anything else with the character.
Now, however, everything changes. Maybe all of what I just described was due to the fact Olivia might have been just a façade, and never really existed. Perhaps her job was to be there for David for some criminal, nefarious purposes Rekall or someone there had. Anyway, I hope this is properly explored in the next episodes.
I, too, don't really understand what David's father was doing in the story. Perhaps it was in Anthony Zerbe's contract that he had to do one more episode, so why not here? At least Farve and Moralez worked together like a well-oiled machine (pun intended), isn't that right? Well, I couldn't tell, since they never showed them both doing anything relevant as partners. All we saw was Moralez playing second fiddle to Farve in a couple of occasions. Oh, boy, how do I miss that cool detective with a German accent that we saw in the pilot.
Anyway, back to the father, I thought it was very strange taht the father one moment would be needing nursing care in a geriatric facility, displaying paranoia, memory lapses and agitated behavior, and the next moment he was getting his own place "in the old neighborhood." Also, when the father talked about the "good old times" or something or the fact that the building was built "last century," well, that conflicts with what we know of history. I mean, events that happened 50 years before are, well, now basically. Again, the more I watch the more I feel this is an alternate reality in which events took a different direction by the end of the 20th century, so there would be enough time for this reality we see in the show to exist and have a past.
About the specific case, based on "Carol" and Brant I was wondering if Nexus was a dating service or a modeling agency. Those Canadians certainly look good. But I keep forgetting Cynthia Preston (and Michael Easton for that matter) are American. The sow is full of Canadians (everybody else), but the main couple is American. This seems to be a common practice with Canadian shows that want projection in the United States: put an easily-recognizable American face in the lead.
But I digress, and I still haven't mentioned the core of the episode, with its Earth-shattering revelation which changes everything we know about the main couple and fundamentally alters the trajectory of one of the main characters. We still have to see what all that means, so it'll be better to comment on that in the subsequent episodes. But I was left with the impression Olivia was just fine before they "removed the bullet." Sometimes you should just leave the bullet there and close the wound. I was almost expecting Olan to say something like, "It seems that by removing the implant, Olivia's situation became much worse. Oops, my bad!" she would say with a shy giggle and covering her mouth with her hand. Because frankly...
There will be more to talk about in the next few weeks. Now the show is getting to the juicy part. As for the grade, this episode deserves more than I've been giving the other episodes lately, which is usually an 8. But it's not as good as the pilot, to which I gave a 9, though perhaps I should have given it a 10. But I'm not going to give this one an 8.5, since I don't like broken numbers.
So "Paranoid" gets 9 doctors that can't be trusted, especially by paranoid old geezers who are getting their own place in a 20th century building in the old neighborhood.
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