Fun, Games and Dinosaurs...

[alyse]

A post! A post with actual content!

So, yesterday we made plans. These plans involved moonlettuce, davechicken and alinak coming over to mine for lots of food, lots of fun and the finale of Primeval. Given the spoilers, we figured we'd need people to 'meep' with, because the episode looked scary to a complete wimp like me.

The day started off with moonlettuce and I going on a fruitless search for the Connor Temple action figure. We trekked around the Metrocentre, and even phoned Fenwick, and everyone had sold out of the action figures entirely. We pretty much had the rest (I didn't get Lester and Claire didn't get the Helen/Claudia double pack) when we were last in town, and I'd picked up the anomaly incursion set for each of us on Thursday. Claire did get a plushie Rex in Toys R Us, which was as shit a store as usual. I hate that place so much, with its crappy layout and extraordinarily poor customer service. Unfortunately, there aren't many other toy shops in the Metro Centre.

We did, however, acquire a giant cookie for the evening. We had some discussion on what to write on the cookie. For some strange reason, it ended up being Dinosaurs Made Them Do It! ::innocent look:: I'd like to point out that that was moonlettuce's suggestion. Mine had been the rather more sedate but slightly more obviously Primeval FTW!. But given the fact that we're both shippy about the show, it made sense. Also, more letters so more chocolate and vanilla icing!

On the way back to mine, we went to Tescos for some stuff I'd forgotten, and they still had Primeval action figures. Just not, unfortunately, Connor, who only came out a few days ago. Nick and Stephen were thrilled. Abby less so, until she was told she could watch.

I might have acquired a Lester. Nibble might possibly have set them all up on the living room floor in a battle formation, facing all of the monsters. We might also possibly have ordered Connor online from the manufacturer directly. But we're saying nothing incriminating.

And then davechicken and alinak turned up, and there were chips, dips, chocolate chip cookie and countdown to Primeval.

Which finally happened.

Oh, my God! It was so good. I mean, this is a show for me where I'm all flaily and happy and excited rather than analytical about, because of my love for CGI dinos and family entertainment combined (although, Dinotopia? Utter crap that not even CGI dinos could save). But it still made me happy.

Helen was deliciously devious. I love her as an antagonist. It's not that she's mindlessly evil so much as she's now so divorced from reality that she merely views the human race as one doomed to failure anyway - as all species are - and therefore we're nothing but lab rats to her. She's not insane - not even close. She's just someone who has lost touch with most of the humanity in herself. I suspect she was always manipulative and self-centred, because apart from anything else cheating on your husband does require both a deceitful nature and to be self-centred, and to do it with a 22 - 23 year old grad student for whom you're responsible just adds that extra layer of manipulation to it. But now, there's nothing to hold her back - somewhere along the way she lost herself, and she's never going to find herself again.

She's beyond redemption now, largely because she doesn't see herself as someone who needs saving and will never see herself as that. Not even when Leek turned on her and told her bluntly that she wasn't in control any more. There was a moment's shock, and then she was back to calculating the odds and working out the best strategy for herself and her aims.

Leek was interesting too. Definitely small man syndrome. Have to say, I called it that at some point his creatures would turn on him and eat him. Interesting that we heard his blood curdling screams as he was dying but nothing from Stephen.

And, oh Stephen. Have to say, I think we all saw that one coming, especially after last week's trailer. But it's been building up to this all season. Out of all of the characters who needed redemption - who needed that last minute realisation that they were on the wrong track and the heroic resolution - it was Stephen. He's had his head up his backside for most of the season, being far too keen to believe Helen and distrust Cutter, and that final realisation that he was wrong, and being wrong would result in Cutter dying - well, Stephen was never going to stand for that. I loved the fact that it was him that Cutter said goodbye to, not Helen. And I loved that Cutter didn't let him die alone - that his eyes were the last ones that Stephen's met and that Stephen knew that Cutter was there, wanted to save him. It was wrenching but again, as we always suspected, the ending did leave some ambiguity that he might come back. The timelines aren't stable, and Helen is already plotting. Whether he comes back as 'Stephen', or there's a Claudia/Jenny situation, we'll just have to wait to see.

But the whole scene was just... the way Stephen was resigned and still scared, and the way that their eyes locked through the glass, and Cutter's collapse down to the floor afterwards, when Stephen was dead, mirroring Stephen's at the beach, when Helen lied to him and told him that the whole team was dead. Stephen loved them all, in his own way - with his last words to Nick being about Connor and Abby because in a way, they're a family now and Connor and Abby are the youngsters that he and Nick look out for. It was a reminder to Nick that he needed to watch out for them now because Stephen wasn't going to be around to do so, as though Nick would need reminding. Nick loves Connor and Abby too, but he loves Stephen, even when mad as hell at him. And Stephen loves Nick most of all, and Nick's heart just broke. Just absolutely broke and mine broke along with it (although I did have a scare earlier on that maybe Abby would be the one to die, eaten by a Sabretooth in front of Connor, saving his life, even though you just know Connor would have rushed in anyway and died too, which would just have killed me).

And Nick. Oh, Nick. So canny in this one, so smart. Again, I saw straight away that his conversation in the cell with Jenny was intended for one purpose only - to manipulate Helen, who he knew was listening. I thought, however, that ITV would be more blatant about it - scanning shot up to maybe a security camera in the cell, with a red light flashing, so that you knew that Cutter knew - but for once they were subtle about it. And it worked. While Helen has lost touch with most things, she still seems to want Nick even if she no longer needs him. She obviously doesn't see anyone as more than a pawn, not even Nick and certainly not Stephen, but I think that a part of her still loves Nick even if it's a twisted kind of love that's more about 'mine!' than anything else. I don't think she ever loved Stephen, but I think that Stephen still loved her, even after everything. Nick had moved on. Stephen's tragedy seemed to be that he couldn't. Helen seems to have been the love of his life - and he was so, so young and vulnerable and she exploited that - and he was still holding a torch for the woman she might have been, eight years ago, so couldn't see her for the woman she was until it was too late.

The beach scene was suitably creepy, more so for being in bright sunshine and in a location so innocuous. Loved seeing Stephen being competent, in charge and really, really smart and devil may care for once, even though the idea that Lester would agree to him going in without any backup was rather ludicrous. And as for the future predators... they still freak me the frell out. moonlettuce, davechicken and alinak will attest that I watched those bits with my hands over my eyes. Yes, I am a huge wuss.

And talking about people finally showing their competence, I loved Jenny in this. At last a reason for those ridiculous high heels, and the way she picked up and handled that gun, nary a quiver as she used it with deadly precision. Lovely. Just lovely. And she was smart too, smart and brave and she's already working out in that brain of hers what the fact that Helen also refers to her as Claudia Brown actually means. Nick isn't crazy any more, at least not to her mind, and how will she cope with the fact that she's not the 'real' version to Nick? I think she'll cope fine, because she seems to be tougher in the Jenny persona than the Claudia incarnation, but she's already falling for Nick. Thankfully, I think that the fact that Nick tore up Claudia's picture was an indication that he's going to accept that Claudia's gone. Maybe now he'll start seeing Jenny as someone in her own right and respect her for that.

That leaves Abby and Connor. Oh, Abby and Connor. How much do I love you two? Not a lot for them to do, but I still love them to pieces. I said to temaris weeks ago, when we figured out that at some point Abby had to punch Caroline in the face (before the spoilers, in fact, which indicates what I was saying about ITV not being subtle) that Caroline was going to break Connor's heart when he found out she'd been paid to date him, but Connor's actual reaction - 'Speak for yourself, mate!' to Leek when Leek told him that the pair of them were nerds, who never got the girl - was at least as in character and demonstrates Connor's sheer resilience. And possibly wilful suspension of disbelief. When he breaks, he breaks beautifully but Connor's a lot stronger than most give him credit for, even if it's self-delusion fuelled.

So Abby beating the crap out of Caroline was - on the surface - more related to what Caroline had done to Rex than to Connor, but I still think that jealousy motivated at least part of it. Especially when Connor admitted that, yes, Caroline had kissed him. Just not when Abby was around. Connor's decision, I wonder, or Caroline's? I think Caroline is the kind of person to rub Abby's face in it, so I suspect it was more about Connor than he wanted to admit.

I loved the 'I didn't do it for you,' bit when he separated them and just kept holding on to Abby long after it was needed to stop her. And the fact that Abby mistakenly punched him in the face when he tried to interfere the first time is also very in keeping with Connor and Abby and their dynamic. I also loved the fact that even after it was revealed that Caroline was a mole, he still retained enough of his basic decency (and Connor is a very decent man) to tell Jenny to be nice and not tell Caroline to stop whining. Caroline was scared - this whole conspiracy was a revelation to her, and I'd have been freaking out too - and Connor recognised that.

In fact, I thought that the way that Abby and Connor both treated her then - Connor reining in Jenny, and Abby's gentle guiding of Caroline back into the fold when the four of them were facing the Sabretooth, arm around her waist and soothing her - was an interesting contrast to the way they treated her after Stephen died. Then they were sympathetic - pissed, yes, but still seeing her as the civilian who needed protecting and to be given some leeway, no matter what she'd done - but by the time Stephen had died, they blanked her out entirely.

I think that post Stephen's death, the pair of them have toughened up. It's not just that Stephen died, it's the way he died. It was a horrible way to go and it seems to have driven the seriousness of what they do home to Connor and Abby. It was telling that they were silent, completely grim at his funeral. The way they barely acknowledged Caroline, but watched her impassively when she tried to apologise again, maybe even repair bridges with Connor, and then turned away without a word. They've built a wall between them and the rest of the world - there's the team, and then there's everyone else. The first time I watched it, there also seemed to be a wall between the pair of them too, demonstrated by Abby's abortive attempt to reach for Connor's hand as they walked away, before they drifted apart, but when I watched it again, her fingers do actually brush his, just briefly. And they also brush against his hand at Stephen's graveside, when she steps back from laying the lily on the grave.

It was a perfect moment - they were walking away from burying a good friend and I went from thinking that maybe there was a wall between them too, the pair of them struggling to deal with Stephen's death separately, to realising that Abby and Connor often don't seem to need words. They talk a lot, yes, but there's a lot of communication going on between them even without it, with Abby's rolling eyes and Connor's looks and smiles, and that was a perfect example of it. They may not be together as boyfriend and girlfriend yet, but they're still friends and it's a solid foundation, at least in my eyes. And Abby reaching for Connor shows that she's ready to move that forward, when she's been the one holding back. Connor's already admitted that he loves her. She's starting to realise it goes both ways.

It was a very subtle indication, and from ITV who don't do subtle in this show, and I loved it all the more for it.

And then the bit with Connor and the gun at the end. I thought that was lovely too. It showed again how things have changed. In Ep 2.01, Connor saw guns as toys, as that little James Bond bit in the locker room demonstrated. (Cue Abby eyerolling, even though she loves him really.) This time he was all business. Again, still grim and he seems to know what he's going - I think that he and Abby spent at least part of the time between finding out about Stephen's death and the funeral doing weapons training. It makes sense and underlines the seriousness of their situation now. They're doing something very dangerous, and it's cost them one friend at least, two for Connor, with Tom. Tom, though, was almost collateral damage. He was a bystander who was caught up in the firing line. But Stephen died as a direct result of what they do, and it could have been any of them. As Connor said, in Season 1, until Stephen almost died as a result of the arthropleura bite, Connor hadn't appreciated that any of them could actually die because of what they did.

Now one of them has.

It's a whole new world, and one where they need to stop messing about.

Although, Abby, please. Take the gel away from Connor. He doesn't look good when he uses it. He looks like he needs to wash his hair [/shallow moment]

So, I loved the whole episode, even the angsty bits. And I'm happy. And possibly desperate for Season 3.