Ryan Kirksey
The following recap contains spoilers for Silo S2E6, “Barricades” (written by Jeffrey Wang and directed by Michael Dinner)
Through the first six episodes of Season 2 of Silo and 16 total episodes in the series, we are all Lukas Kyle. Just as Lukas (Avi Nash) tries to work his way through a series of Caesar ciphers in this episode to uncover the mysteries of Salvador Quinn’s letter, I felt a certain kinship and empathy as I and many others in the Silo hive try to decipher the mysteries of the show week after week.
I have had these exact thoughts over the last six episodes: “What if I consider Bernard’s words this way? What does it mean?” Or perhaps, “Solo is giving us a whole bunch of information about his silo, but he wasn’t truthful about his own name in Episode 5. Can we trust him?”
I just feel like Lukas in that I’m always moving three letters ahead to try and make heads or tails of the reasons why the silo exists, but I just end up seeing the word “Allie,” and have no idea what it’s supposed to mean.
Ironically, not much mystery development or mystery uncovering was done in “Barricades” this week. Last week’s episode was full of more layers of the origins and mysteries of the silos being peeled back, but “Barricades” plays much more like an action/adventure episode.
We only spend about two minutes in silo 17, where we learn (as our podcast predicted last week) that Solo/Cole Myers/Mystery Man (Steve Zahn) has hidden Juliette’s (Rebecca Ferguson) helmet from her and will only return it when she fixes the water pump that is slowly flooding Solo’s silo. Although she protests, Solo sums it up succinctly:
“Look, you can waste time arguing with me or you can start thinking about how you’re going to fix that pump. It’s up to you.”
In a Caesar-cipher-filled show, I have come to appreciate Solo’s candidness and pragmatism. We will surely return to these two in Episode 7, entitled “The Dive.” Methinks Juliette is going to have another difficult engineering task ahead of her when we next head back to Silo 17.
Episode 6 was almost entirely devoted to Silo 18 and the impact of the simmering rebellion starting to boil over between the Raiders from up top and Mechanical in the Down Deep. Interestingly, in a series headlined by Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins, Harriet Walter, and Steve Zahn, it’s Knox (Shane McRae) and Shirley (Remmie Milner) who stole the show this week.
I found the opening shots of this episode particularly compelling, as the aggressive, ravenous mob at the barricade, who are being starved and poisoned by Bernard and Judicial, was juxtaposed against one of the few quiet moments Knox and Shirley have these days, as she cleans his wounds after his swan dive off the ledge of the silo last week while trying to avoid Raider gunfire.
Remember, these two were at each other’s throats two episodes ago, as they disagreed on how to handle the lies they were being fed by Bernard. Now, the two are sharing an intimate moment over drinks until Sheriff Buzzkill Billings (Chinaza Uche) has to come to break it up.
The quietness won’t last long, however, as Mark (George Robinson), who is up in fabrication, has finally finished the job Knox asked him to do back in Episode 2. They have made a whole cache of weapons for Mechanical: spears, swords, clubs, axes, body armor, etc. It looks like the plan is to go to war against the Raiders.
Knox, Shirley, and Walker (especially) do a fantastic job of convincing the masses that starving while fighting for freedom is always better than being lap dogs to Bernard and getting his table scraps. They rally the troops to fight, although it doesn’t hurt that Mechanical has friends up above who drop them some food down the trash chutes.
Knox and Shirley devise a truly genius plan to distract the Raiders and Amundsen from multiple fronts while other members of Mechanical use a good old winch and pulley system to pop the barricade door open, allowing Mechanical to chase them back up the silo and retake 10 floors all the way up to level 120. This specific floor was the goal because, as Bernard informs Amundsen (Christian Ochoa), there is a farm level on 122.
Can’t very well starve people into submission when they have a farm and allies sneaking them food all the time, can you Bernard?
In the first battle of the Silo 18 war, Mechanical came away with a decisive victory. They took 10 floors. They claimed a farm. Not one of their number died as far as I can tell. And unbeknownst to Mechanical, there is dissension up and down the ranks of the security and judicial system within the silo.
Camille Sims (Alexandria Riley), Robert’s wife, continues to quote the virtuous pact to Bernard out of one side of her mouth while undermining his movements on the other side. Amundsen’s security camera monitors don’t trust him, so they are confiding in Sims. Even Sheriff Billings, who “stands with the law,” won’t give away Knox and Shirley’s location to Bernard because he needs to investigate all angles first (but hey, it looks like this rare level of morality has helped heal the Syndrome he has been trying to get under control!).
With Bernard’s plan crumbling around him, he enlists Lukas Kyle to be his shadow and spends time confessing to and confiding in Judge Meadows’ corpse. I did feel that this extended monologue Bernard delivers in the morgue was indicative of some “filler” in this episode that had to be included because there wasn’t quite enough action to fill the 44 minutes.
Bernard is having second thoughts now after Meadows’ body is cold? Patrick Kennedy (Rick Gomez) repeats the same old story to Billings about how beautiful the outside world is because his partner Danny flashed it on a computer screen while Juliette was trying to escape. We know this is not true, but Billings does not. And then Kennedy actually asks him, “Is there a piece of you that wishes I hadn’t told you that?”
Dr. Nichols (Iain Glen) also finally makes his way down to Mechanical to remove a bullet from Kennedy and then have a conversation with Walker about how Juliette was really, really important to all of them. Yep, we were aware of this.
Strangely, after all the complaining I have done about the time this season has spent in Silo 17 with absolutely nothing happening, I found myself wanting more of that after the little amuse-bouche we got with the final scene where Solo ultimatums Juliette. More of that kind of intrigue and less of Kennedy telling Billings the outside is a “million times more beautiful” than what they have seen in contraband books. No, it’s not. We know it’s not.
My only hope is that when we jump in for “The Dive” next week we can get into the deep end and start really exploring more of the mysteries of Silo.
