silo

The Book of Quinn

Season 2

Episode 8

Editor’s Rating

3 stars

***

Photo: Apple TV+

I blame myself. From the moment I saw it was there silo episode titled “The Book of Quinn” – after so many episodes in which the name of the mysterious Salvador Quinn was dropped with a mixture of awe and fear – I began to expect a flashback episode that took us into the distant past from Silo 18 and brings us some long-awaited answers to the history of the silo. And really, wouldn’t this have been a good time to look back? Wouldn’t it have been nice to have a little breather and a little backstory, since the tension is high in both Silo 18 and Silo 17 and there are still two episodes left after this one?

Unfortunately, that silo Authors had other ideas, and I confess that my disappointed expectations may have spoiled my feelings. Or it could be that the episode is pretty mediocre on its own. Compared to this season’s recent action-packed, plot-oriented chapters, “The Book of Quinn” falters quite a bit, jumping back and forth between a half-dozen plot threads without advancing many of them in a particularly exciting way.

In fact, the title of the episode refers to a book that Luke tracks down as part of what turns out to be this week’s richest plot. As he attempts to crack Quinn’s complicated code, Luke begins a multi-silo-level investigation, starting at the home of the late Judge Meadows and then at the home of Quinn’s direct descendants. These descendants eventually tell Luke that Judge Meadows visited them before her death and traded some printed relics for Quinn’s personal, annotated copy of The Pact – the actual “Book of Quinn,” so to speak.

The Luke scenes are not exciting per se, but they are revealing in that Luke’s attempts to exercise his new power as Bernard’s shadow reveal the limits of that power. Judge Sims and his judicial thugs don’t have much respect for the Shadow’s blue badge – especially considering the thugs had planned to ransack Meadows’ apartment before Lukas got there – and they let him know that although Bernard officially did Says, The people the mayor relies on to do his dirty work are the ones who really decide who gets the favors and who gets the punishment. (To make the point, Sims casually remarks that he knows where Luke’s mother lives and works.)

While we don’t get a full flashback to Quinn in this episode, we do learn more about him. Bernard tells Lukas that everything the residents of the silo have been taught about Quinn – that he failed to put down an uprising that ended with the burning or erasure of all important historical records – is misleading. According to Bernard, Quinn was a genius for destroying the tradition, because before that there were rebellions about every 20 years, and since Quinn there has been peace for 140 years.

That certainly seems like a plausible explanation. But when Luke uses Quinn’s copy of The Pact To decipher his secret message, he reads these words: “If you’ve come this far, you already know the game is rigged.” Could Bernard’s secret history of Quinn be another trick?

One of the more interesting questions this episode raises is whether the game is even worth playing, even if people are running it knowledge it is manipulated. Sheriff Billings wrestles with it this week as Shirley tries to convince him to ignore it The Pactsince it is very likely that the founders of the silo were liars. The sheriff’s heated counterargument is that without him the entire social order would collapse some a kind of organizing principle. You might as well trust the process established by the founders, even if their reasons remain obscure.

This debate never has much of a chance to gain traction or develop because there are too many other characters involved in too many other storylines. Some scenes this week barely last a minute before we’re taken to another part of the silo for another scene that barely gets going before we’re ripped away again, and so on. This isn’t like the climax of an adventure story, where deliberate overlap between daring deeds creates tension. This feels more like trying to follow half a dozen conversations that keep getting interrupted.

Two of these storylines – the one with actually Action – suffer from diffusion. First, down in Mechanical, Knox plans to rob the supply because looters are blocking the stairs and her supply ally Carla is still locked up, so Down Deep is running out of essentials. Walker disagrees, arguing that they should focus more on getting Carla back. When Bernard calls Walker for a secret meeting, he offers her a deal: he’ll let her check if her ex-wife is okay, and in return he’ll get information about what the Mechanical rebels are up to.

The end result of all this backroom planning is that the rebels’ heist turns into an ambush as they charge straight into a room full of robbers. The whole caper sequence should be more exciting, but since we’ve already seen Walker’s betrayal, one of the episode’s only action sequences falls flat into “Something else happened here.”

This leveling effect is even more disturbing when it comes to what’s going on in Silo 17. We left Juliette last week in a dramatic moment after she quickly ascended through the flooded levels of the silo only to discover a trail of blood and a missing Solo. At the start of this episode, she’s suffering physical pain from the bends – just as Solo had warned – and trying to stay out of sight while she figures out who might have kidnapped or killed the silo’s sole occupant.

The Juliette sequences are creepy and unsettling, but frustratingly short. In total, the half-dozen or so scenes in “Silo 17” span about eight minutes spread throughout the episode, which isn’t enough time to feel as involved as it should be.

Still, the Juliette parts of this episode end up being surprising and promising. Her attempts to sneak around prove unsuccessful as she is shot through the shoulder with an arrow by a shadowy figure who warns, “I killed him, and I will kill you too!” Juliette is later found with a shield and a Knife a corpse on the ground and check to see if it might be Solo’s body. It turns out that it is another attacker. After some hand-to-hand combat, Juliette is cornered by a total of three people, all of whom seem to be quite young.

Who are these invaders and how did they get here? Did they actually kill Solo? We hope to get these answers faster and in more detail next week.

• Among the relics in Judge Meadows’ apartment: an Etch-a-Sketch stored under glass.

• Shirley paints a name on Down Deep’s secret memorial wall, adding “Cooper” to the Mechanical’s list of martyred rebels.

• Both Knox and Shirley were recurring characters in the first season, but neither had enough screen time to make a strong impression. It was a difficult adjustment at times to see her treated as A-story worthy in the second season, although it was positive that Remmie Milner showed more personality as Shirley. For Shirley, the conversation with Billings in the cafeteria is not just a way to express her skepticism The Pact. It also gives her a moment to poke fun at some rock-hard cookies and generally develop a sense of her place in the history and culture of Silo 18’s lower levels.

• Billings’ wife Kathleen is injured when she brings Patrick Kennedy a meal and learns from him that her husband is carrying a picture of the Blue Ridge Mountains, taken from the banned children’s book we first saw in the first season have. Billings claims he didn’t show it to Kathleen because it was “dangerous,” but she demands to see it anyway. And why not? Perhaps the only way to save this silo is to stop keeping secrets.