Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Silo S3E6, “The Drive” (written by Sal Calleros and directed by Alrick Riley)
After last week’s episode spent nearly its entire runtime in Silo 18, I kind of hoped that this week we’d focus on what’s happening in the Before Times. Alas, Silo S3E6 barely moves things forward there once again.
Daniel (Ashley Zukerman) and Helen (Jessica Henwick) spend most of the hour trying to figure out how to get their van to stop, which they fail to do. I could go on a rant here against self-driving cars and extend it into a rant against cars with computers in them (and key fobs), but I’ll spare you. In short, the van they can’t control takes Daniel and Helen to Senator Thurman (Laura Innes), who asks them if they want to help save the world, while Henry (Reed Birney)—who still hasn’t even been named in the show itself—looks on. And that’s it.
During the car ride, we do get some details from Helen about the scandal that derailed her career. Apparently she did a story about congressional staffers doing drugs and changed their names to protect her sources, but, as heat fired up around the Speaker of the House, she lied and said she’d made one of her sources up.
I’m not sure that’s going to matter to the plot, but I believe Helen and continue to trust her (even if I raised some suspicions writing about S3E4). She’s the kind of woman I’d want to date, so I can’t blame Daniel for continuing to try to flirt. Maybe these two will even get together by the time this is over (though the presence of the Pez dispenser in Silo 18 doesn’t exactly portend well with regard to that possible future).
In the silo, Robert Sims (Common) returns to his wife, but Camille (Alexandria Riley) is now suspicious enough of her husband that she just tells him to go spend some time with their son, Anthony (Oscar Coleman), who gets in trouble at school in this episode.
Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) reconnects with Bernard (Tim Robbins), Lukas (Avi Nash), Martha (Harriet Walter), et. al. to relay what she’s remembered about disabling the Safeguard, and they piece together that it must be from a pipe that comes into Judicial.
According to Bernard, the other line from the outside that Lukas found on a diagram in Season 2 represents power to IT from Silo 1, and I do think it’s worth noting this in connection with how he said something about Silo 1 monitoring radio channels in S3E5. It’s almost in the background, but Silo is seeding the notion that Silo 1 is apart from the other silos and in some special position to oversee them. Recall also that Bernard said something last season about there being 51 silos, technically. I’m not sure why that will matter, but I’m pretty sure it will.
Regardless, Camille is on her way to catch everyone, so Juliette gives herself up to keep that from happening. She asks to talk with Camille in private. It’s not entirely clear if their ensuing conversation actually is private, but Juliette tells Camille that she remembers everything, including the kids in Silo 17, whom she promised she’d help. She demands to speak to the Algorithm about it.
Somehow, this happens, and once Juliette offers to go back on the memory-suppressing drugs (and give them to the kids, too), the Algorithm agrees that she can choose two people to send to Silo 17. She chooses Knox (Shane McRae) and Shirley (Remmie Milner), but the Algorithm says they are too important to the silo. It agrees to send Lukas and Patrick Kennedy (Rick Gomez), but after Juliette leaves the room, it informs Camille that the pair will definitely not make it to Silo 17, and encourages her to put the vitamin D+ into the water supply as soon as possible.
Camille has already done that, which raises a question as to whether everyone in Silo 18 is about to lose their memory. I’m not sure what the story would look like moving forward if that happens, but we do know that the effects here would be lesser than those Juliette was experiencing at the beginning of the season. So, what does that look like? Will it just be like everyone is drunk or something like that? I don’t quite see a narrative path to avoiding the outcome, even as I struggle to see a narrative path that embraces it.
I do, however, see a path to Kennedy and Lukas surviving, presuming they are sent out of the silo at dawn as the Algorithm says they will be. Their real mission won’t be to bring the kids back to Silo 18 so much as it is to disable the Safeguard, and maybe they’ll have good enough tape to survive whatever the Algorithm throws at them.
This might also give us new information about the poison outside, as I can’t stop thinking about Solo (Steve Zahn) saying something in Season 2 about how “the dust came.” I keep thinking that the area right outside of the silos is perhaps only toxic because someone is making it toxic, while the world at large is fine. I wonder what we might learn in relation to that.
It’s also worth noting that Shirley is apparently pregnant. I’m not terribly invested in her relationship with Knox, but Silo began with a story about a couple being denied pregnancy by the powers that be, and it’s worth remembering that we still don’t really know why.
Paul (Chinaza Uche) loops Hank (Billy Postlethwaite) in about the shortage in Critical Supply, and the two are on the case of who killed Orla Kent (Quelin Sepulveda), which seems to hang together with the question of who’s been stealing lightbulbs. They talk to everyone’s favorite minor character, Mark Chambers (George Robinson), who mentions that Knox’s father was a thief, but that feels like a bit of a dead end, as Knox discovers that his dad (whom he hated) has been dead for two years.
Paul and Hank discover an end that might be more alive, however, when they get Emerson (Florian Clare) to give them access to the surveillance room that isn’t supposed to exist. They see Glenda (Gemma Acosta) right outside of the mines, and then Glenda in Supply within a timeframe that doesn’t make sense. I’m led to wonder whether this means there is a secret pathway between the mines and Supply. I don’t know how much I suspect Glenda (she seems almost too unlikeable to be guilty, if that makes any sense), but I really have no idea who might be behind the thefts from Supply or Orla’s murder.
More than anything, I’m curious about the motive. If the thefts put the silo at risk of dying out in two years, does the person doing them know that to any degree? What are they even doing with these lightbulbs (and maybe other, unnamed things)? And does the Algorithm have any idea this has been happening? Does it care? Would it?
There’s a scene in the middle of Silo S3E6 I want to reflect on before I wrap up this week’s recap, even as it seems narratively insignificant.
Camille comes to the Algorithm flustered, insisting that it was wrong to agree to let Juliette send people to Silo 17. She’s mad at Robert, who she knows has been lying to her (even if she doesn’t know about what), mad at her kid for getting in trouble at school, and generally mad about the whole situation she finds herself in, trying to manage the silo.
The Algorithm says it’s not even going to talk to her because she’s just looking to argue. It encourages her to take a deep breath and reflect. It tells her she’s special—not everyone could do this hard job you have, Camille, and so on—and, in my opinion, it’s never been more pernicious.
I don’t know who’s behind the Algorithm, why it was set up, or how much control any human being might have over it at this point, but it’s clear that this is a manipulation machine. Sometimes it goes hard, threatening to kill everyone. Sometimes it’s softer, like in this scene with Camille, but its raison d’être is clearly always control.
I want to know why the silos were created, and I always hope with things like this that the explanation will be something I can find tenable, even if I disagree with it. I have to admit that I worry about that a bit with this show, because if the Algorithm were a person, I would punch it in the face.
See you next week.
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