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Alphas 2.09 “The Devil Will Drag You Under” TV REVIEW
Episode: 2.09
Writers: Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Director: Matthew Hastings
THE ONE WHERE Stanton Parish attempts mass murder; Danielle goes undercover.
VERDICT Poor Danielle, we barely knew you, and now you’re dead. Clearly the death of Rosen’s Alpha daughter was supposed to be an emotionally charged kicker, but it doesn’t really register. Some of this is due to a messy episode that rushes through multiple threats and plot threads without giving any of them much time to settle, but mostly it’s down to problems with the characterisation of Danielle.
Yes, she’s been around for a while now, but even at her death she still felt like a peripheral character. We never really got to know Danielle, to the point where even in her final episode we needed flashbacks of her happier times with Hicks and clunky reminders of her past (“I’m a junkie and a liar”) to hammer the point home. She was underdeveloped, a cardboard cut-out troubled daughter designed to ramp up Rosen and the gang’s motivations for taking down Stanton Parish.
Of course, at the end of Dani’s life, it didn’t exactly help that Nina delivered a genuine laugh out loud moment, as she attempted to push the dying woman to stay alive. Surely some basic first aid would have been more appropriate? It’s too late now, I suppose, so it’s curtains for Danielle. Goodbye, Rosen Jr, we never really knew you.
With Dani out of the picture and Stanton Parish escalating his battle against non-Alphas, Rosen and the team are going to have a lot of trouble on their hands. In theory, that should mean lots of fast-paced action sequences and enormous, city-sized threats, but on this episode’s showing, I’m not convinced that’s a good thing.
The Danielle and Hicks sub-plots welded on to Stanton Parish’s master plan combined to make this a particularly unfocussed episode. Parish’s mass murder attempt should have provided big enough stakes to keep us interested, but felt bizarrely undercooked. Considering the man is supposed to be the ingenious big bad, his electro-bomb plan felt rushed and half-arsed – surely a man of his experience and intelligence could have guessed that Gary could easily re-configure the power grid? He needs to up his game, especially now that Rosen and the team will be out for blood.
BEST LINE:
Stanton Parish: “Ashes or paradise – which would you choose?”
Rob Power
Alphas season two is currently airing in the UK on 5*, Tuesdays at 10pm
• Read our other Alphas season two reviews
