In what was easily the best episode of the season, “10Broad36” brought to light a lot of the
Clarke family’s lingering issues and had Cameron and crew struggle to fend off the evil Joe McMillian.
This episode was great from top to bottom. It started with the mutiny crew discovering Cameron and Tom’s romance and ended with Joe wanting to acquire Mutiny. And even the detached Gordon scenes felt in place and worth the time spent on them. They were quick and pushed a very tightly knit story together for Gordon to combat. Donna dealt with her pregnancy and work life, Gordon is trying to wrap his head around brain damage, Joe seems to want the best for Mutiny, but he also wishes to impress Jacob. And Bosworth is being Bosworth. Each important character had a scene to shine, and some of them got more than one to do it.
Starting with Joe, with his fiance gone but not forgotten it was nice to see him still obviously caring for her because a lot of this episode is spent from the “working” Joe point of view, cold maniacal and surgical. Showing up in the Mutiny house while Cameron is putting on clothes was a strikingly remarkable scene especially since the zoom in on his face that this show doesn’t do very often. But some of his best stuff was saved for his scenes with James Cromwell. He argued for a lower rate for the Mutiny gang, and when he got it, he held his cards back during negotiations it was genius. And it worked out even better when Donna lost her mind all over Joe – more on that scene in a bit – but once she came groveling back we got to see good old trickster Joe back at work. Holding all the leverage making Donna jump through hoops to get what is most likely the only option for this little company. And him sniffing out the fake computer later on was also a great moment for him, Joe is sometimes played for a fool when it comes to computers in fact it kind of happened in this episode with his interaction with Tom but he could smell blood in the water once he tried playing chess.
As for Cameron she covered the gambit this week in terms of emotions, when she freaked out on Joe, Donna tried to calm her down and then once she did Calm down and stayed quiet for the entire interview, Donna then lost it. Her relationship with Tom continues to be a bright spot, not just romantically watching them try and rig a fake computer was pretty awesome. Even when I thought to myself that just doing the work itself would be the better thing in the long run they worked really hard on something that only dug their hole deeper, you have to hand it to those nerds. And after that came a scene that ultimately meant more to Donna than it did Cameron but her driving Donna to the planned parenthood clinic was very nice. Talking about her reasoning and if she wanted to back out she could, it was a softer side to Cameron and you could tell that she felt empathy if nothing else.
Gordon and the kids jumped over to wherever Gordon’s brother lived, and things went fine at first but eventually turned sour at the end. While I love where his story ends in a hotel room with his kids. His story line did feel a bit paint by numbers in the sense that he goes back to his old stomping grounds, and his brother is a drunk who is jealous. His childhood crush is there as the sultry bartender, and then he cheats on his wife with her. And his final scene with the girls was certainly more about Donna than Gordon. But Gordon did have a lovely moment after having relations with his old ‘friend’ Jewels,just dumping all this sadness and frustration on her as if she can do anything about it. He’s a very selfish character not only for cheating on his wife but also laying all his shit at this woman’s front door.
Saving the best for last is Donna, this was in a few ways her episode, even though a bunch of other things went on in this episode it all played towards and ended with her, Cameron has to build the fake PC because Donna lost control during negotiation with Joe. Gordon calls Donna after a rough day to make sure the kids go to sleep. And Cameron takes Donna to the Clinic after all’s said and done. Her freaking out as Joe was Amazing, Kerry Bishe is usually very calm and relaxed in every situation but to watch her break and cry was something, and then she started throwing stuff. It was crazy even Joe and Cameron were speechless. But after she tried to fix that situation she put on her engineer hat and built a broadband connection in the mid-80’s! Of course, she had help but a lot of those scenes were filled with her spouting jargon about how this could work. And after it all falls apart Donna realizes that you can’t half-ass this type of thing and has Cameron drive her to the planned parenthood clinic. Which was just a beautifully structured scene by itself, never showing where they are driving until the absolute end, and Cameron gets out of the truck to join her. But as much as that scene was about both of them, Cameron and Donna the scene of her singing to her daughters was beautiful and heartbreaking. Even the small touches like the screen going black, so all we can do is listen to her sing a lullaby, hauntingly beautiful.
With all the major moments for the big characters, people like Bosworth and Tom got some great moments as well. In fact, every scene Bosworth was in was fantastic, yelling at Cameron to calm down and then telling her “Donna acted once like you act every day” was priceless. And then his sage advice to the Mutiny group about just building what Joe wants and not trying to fight it. All great moments. I hope he becomes an ever bigger part of this company as the episodes move along. Tom confronting Joe to a certain extent was always a fun look at the past and present for Cameron. Joe’s quote “There comes a time when vision meets ingenuity, you hire people.” sticks out in my mind as a great scene. This season has ebbed and flowed with what’s come after the last episode but after being disappointed last week and interest overall warning, this episode reminded me why I fell in love with season one.
