The second half of La Brea’s return gives us a murder to solve, another dangerous situation, and more questions. La Brea Season 2 Episode 9 wastes no time setting the tone for the second half of the season. While we’ll still get new dangers to avoid every week, we’ll also have to deal with Scott’s decision to free Taamet and rescue Lucas. When Wyatt is found dead in La Brea Season 2 Episode 9, all signs point to Taamet and the Exiles, but is there more to the story than meets the eye? As with most things in La Brea, that’s definitely the case.
Eve reunites with Gavin and Izzy at Lazarus. Gavin has to explain what he did and why. She is not pleased, but when James informs them that there might be another way home that will not cause catastrophe on the planet, the trio set out to do his bidding. But before they can begin, they encounter a corpse. Once again the group must divide and rule.
While Eve continues to organize searches, endangering herself as usual, Gavin and his group set out to find the important Dr. Moore James about whom they told. Eve gets into trouble again when someone or something knocks her into a cave and she is temporarily unconscious. We don’t know if it was a random accident or if she was the target, but Gavin’s vision almost came true. Was it a good time for her search partner to break his slippers? Just before she fell into the cave, she saw blood on a rock and something rustling in the bushes. We don’t see what was there, so anything is possible.
Eve woke up at the bottom of the hole under a boulder. She can’t get the boulder off her leg and there’s a big animal down there with her. Her backpack popped open during the fall and the flare gun became detached from the flares. Just as Scott has an endless supply of useful ancient knowledge, Eve has boundless untapped athletic prowess and is a bottomless pit of problem solving. She manages to protect herself from the bear and uses its strength to move the boulder and free herself. She limps back to the clearing just as the rest of the group return from Dr. Moore.
Each answer leads to more questions. La Brea is like a Zelda game where every item collected leads to a new quest. James is stingy with his facts. He had Gavin talk about Dr. Moore can tell. He didn’t have Caroline’s knowledge of Moore’s whereabouts, but it would have been good to know someone was very close to solving the sinkhole problem. The group searches for this scientist who used to work with James and Caroline.
James never gives anyone the whole truth and tells Gavin to ask Caroline for help. Instead of refusing to play his games, Gavin enlists Caroline’s help and sets out to find Dr. Harold Moore, who has been missing for several years. For reasons that escape me, she agrees to let Dr. Moore to help find. Unfortunately, the group finds the scientist dead. However, through continued efforts, they were rewarded with his cave, where he had worked on his research.
James says Dr. Moore was very close to a breakthrough that would stabilize the portals and stop creating sinkholes. Caroline looks at the notes and seems to agree, but who knows if this is really true. If everyone wanted the portal stabilized, why would he have to hide in a cave? I’m still not convinced that Caroline can be trusted any more than James. Towards the end of La Brea Season 2 Episode 9, Caroline has his rudimentary notes, but hides them with Riley’s help.
She and Riley hide this from Gavin because they can’t risk James getting their hands on it until they know more. Gavin still found a key on Dr. Moore. What that unlocks, we don’t know yet. Perhaps the biggest question is, why is Dr. Moore ran away from Lazarus? Everyone is playing nice now, but how long will that last now that James has his hooks in Ty?
When the episode ended, Ty agreed to be James’ therapist in exchange for his cancer being cured. We’ve already seen one trade go bad for our group. I have no doubt this one won’t end the way he hoped either. Nothing is free with Lazarus. We’ll have to wait and see how high a price Ty has to pay. James doesn’t seem like the type to surrender his soul to a therapist, so he clearly has an agenda other than mental health. No doubt he will ask Ty for information and use him against Caroline and the cleanup group. Ty, like everyone else, will learn that secrets are dangerous and that every action has consequences. I wonder if he can live with his?
As for secrets, Scott tells Sam about his deal with Taamet when symbols are found near Wyatt’s body and on the knife he was killed with. The fractured cleanup group needs a leader to avoid the mob mentality, and Scott’s silence exacerbates this situation. Gavin’s group’s decision to potentially strand everyone in 10,000 BCE does not go down well, and everyone splits into two camps. With a killer on the loose, this only gets worse. Lucas is ready to aggressively question Virgil as he is convinced the nervous man did it. He had no alibi, a missing knife and a wound he didn’t have before Wyatt was found. While Lucas seemed overzealous at first, his instincts seemed perfect.
After Scott’s confession and the discovery of the knife points at Taamet, Sam convinces Lucas to let Virgil go and not act recklessly. Sam’s advice is sound, but it seems Lucas wasn’t wrong to be suspicious of Virgil. Nevertheless, Lucas asks Virgil’s forgiveness, and he agrees, but when Virgil is alone, he takes a leather pouch from his pocket with the same symbol as on the knife and near Wyatt’s body. Is he a spy in exile? Is he a rogue actor who is sowing the seeds of chaos? Maybe he’s a serial killer. How many more people will die before the group finds out what’s going on? May I suggest that Judah is next to go? Scott and Lucas are right. He’s annoying.
La Brea Season 2 Episode 9 was a fast-paced episode that gave us plenty of storylines to sink our teeth into for the rest of the season. This series has found its basis in the mythos of Lazarus and James. Time travel, if done well, offers many possibilities. Let’s hope La Brea is on the right track. Find all our La Brea coverage here.
As editor-in-chief of Signal Horizon, I enjoy watching and writing about genre entertainment. I grew up on old fashioned slashers, but my real passion is television and all weird and ambiguous stuff. My work can be found here and Travel Weird, where I am the editor-in-chief.
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