On this episodes we get more of the action promised from the trailer, Citadel tries to be a full James Bond style tv series with all kind of tech gadgets at their disposal, translucent touch screens as monitors, agents under cover and a lot of shooting also average villain but its expected, I'm not saying the series is bad but its hard to get actors that can be great bad guys like Heath Ledger to give an example, most of the times actors on espionage movies or tv series are not that good and Citadel is not the exception, I find the character of Dahlia Archer not so good as the main Manticore agent, the actress Lesley Manville is not convincing on this role same go for her goons with the exception of Anders Silje but just because he has a good actions scenes, not so convincing as a villain but better than her.
The episode starts with a scene where they are torturing Bernard that for me is very irrelevant, very dull, how bad villains are on this tv series make me uncomfortable, on every scene they come up I just want to skip forward to any other scene but at least Nadia and Mason save the day, they both are running away from Manticore and are now hiding on a Citadel safe house in Spain, Mason got shot and Nadia is taking care of him, its fun because he is still Mason inside so his subconscious still have some of the old Mason behaviors for example he ask Nadia if he can trust her and its not the first time he has done it, she start to remember many of their moments together. Nadia gets some interest into Mason's life after the train incident at Italy, even ask him about his family, may be she is a bit jealous she is not the one with him but with their old life style it would be very hard for them to raise a family after all Manticore almost destroy Citadel so its a good thing they didn't stay together and had a family, kids, because there is a chance they had been hurt during that time.
On my previous post from today referring to the Tv Series Class of 09 where they implement technology that in the past looked like Sci Fi although now days most of it is real, we got this translucent big screens as monitors on a meeting room, they do a good job at implementing them with their own interface design, a touch that I like and feel its not over the top, this episodes also brings agent Carter Spence who in actual time is still alive but Mason and Nadia haven't communicate with him and they also introduce Sandra who looks like the Citadel Director, Bernard is the geek of the team not the boss.
Here one of the actions scenes form the trailer, this is the second mayor action scene on the series after the opener of episode one when they had this big fight inside the train that then explodes leaving Mason and Nadia close to death and without memories, in my opinion a very entertaining scene, only thing is that Mason run a bit funny to me but over all I give this action scene a 8/10, its the main attractive of this series so far, watch Nadia and Mason shooting, kicking and fighting. This is when Nadia and Mason are introduce, she was working as an undercover agent and Mason don't know when or where she will appear to help extract him.
This part makes me laugh hard, Mason playing the fool with his wife but this is total cliché, spy loose his memory and then find out he had a girl before the accident, calls the wife to check her and when Abby actual Mason wife ask how things doing, how he is getting along with Nadia he answers seems she didn't know Mason that much, Abby is like WTF do you think I'm stupid jajajaja, but from another perspective one may say he answer this to avoid getting her involve more than she needs and keep them away from the danger that surrounds him and Nadia.
With Bernard capture by Manticore the next only option to understand what the hell happen while they were away, Nadia and Kane decided to rescue agent Carter Spence who has been transmitting help videos through the Citadel network, to do this they would need to hack a mobster phone to get the access codes but access codes for what? I guess to enter the facility where they might have Carter, that part of the script got a bit lost, I guess sometimes writers like to put together the words hack, steal, access codes and what ever comes to their mind to get viewers interested but they have to do better this time because it doesn't make that much sense but lets buy it steal the access codes to either locate Carter or enter where they got him. Problem is Nadia cant get close to Balduino the mobster running the place where Carter is because she is the one doing the hacking so Mason has to be the old Citadel Spy Mason to pull this off, he actually beg Nadia to teach him how to be Mason at the end it still inside him and it looks like he loves it and lets face it Nadia is very hot so probably he wants part of his old life back, during the meeting Balduino try to brainwash Mason telling him Nadia is the one who snitch Citadel and sold them to Manticore, this confuse Mason since he wants to recover his old life but cant fully trust Nadia.
To top it off in everyone forgot who they are, Bernard is about to pull an Ace of Spades he have been saving to get himself free, Mason and Abby both met at a hospital when they were doing therapy because she also forgot her memories after an accident, they haven't give any specifics but it looks like after all it was Citadel who recover both on purpose even though they didn't, but how come they met at the same hospital and now turns out Silje ex girlfriend is Abby whose real name is Brielle, Bernard show Silje a picture of here and tells him she is now married to Mason, this is all too much coincidence, Bernard made a deal with Silje to help him get free in exchange of Brielle info probably location not sure because the episodes ends there.
This episode was very good, still getting those nice actions scenes but part of the script sometimes doesn't make too much sense plus the entire Bernard kidnap/interrogatory/torture sux, that aspect of the episode is very bad, only thing keeping this boat at float is Nadia and Mason, I hope villain actors get better after a couple of episodes, also some times it felt like other than the action scenes the rest was there just to feel empty space, probably taking things a bit slower work better for the series, not everything has to be action scenes, Im sure there will be some episodes that will slow down and give more context to the story, even the Mandalorian that had action on almost every episode during the last season had a few slow episodes so Im hoping they do the same with Citadel, its like they trying to recover their old life and memories too fast, I get that they have to if not they will get caught or killed by Manticore, lets see how much context Carter brings to the story when they rescue him. When the episode ends there is a coming soon kind of trailer that in my opinion spoil the next episode so my advice is that when credits pop up just stop it right there, trailers on this tv series in my opinion reveal too much before the next episode.
- Episode 1: @skiptvads/citadel-the-human-enigma-season
- Episode 2: @skiptvads/citadel-spies-appear-in-night
