| BLASSREITER, Episode 9: The Meaning of Power |
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| Thursday, 05 June 2008 | |
 Colour me surprised - with this episode, BLASSREITER finally serves up one that kept my attention for the full run. Maybe there's hope for the series yet. Malek has to deal with the backwash of emotions caused by his actions last time, Amanda has time to think about where she went wrong with him, and a mysterious man appears to cause problems for Joseph.... Amanda berates herself for not being able to look out for Malek, but she's unable to do anything through official channels as Wolf removes her from active duty until the search for Malek has been completed. In an effort to save him, she joins up with Hermann to launch a separate search for him, aware that XAT aren't likely to treat an Amalgam with any compassion. Meanwhile, the injured Joseph and Malek take refuge in an abandoned church, where Malek struggles to tell the difference between justice and vengeance, while Joseph's long-standing target of pursuit shows up...   Hermann's taken an interest in Malek's plight as he feels responsible - it's likely Malek "caught" the infection from Gerd, and he was the one who took him to see Gerd in the first place. Amanda's also feeling responsible, and that her inability to devote as much time to him as she planned or wanted is also responsible - so there's a lot of anguish and flashback material to build up the emotions that these two are dealing with. It's nothing surprising, but it's quite well done and gives you a better feel for Amanda, Hermann and Malek than anything else done in the series so far. There are also some good pointers to future events - Xargin's appearance, the brief explanation of what separates him from Joseph (which leaves more questions than answers, but in a good way), and the ongoing problems Wolf is having.. all point to the series finally beginning to find its way, and not before time. If this is the beginning of BLASSREITER finally getting its act together, then I'd have to say it's been left too late - I doubt too many people will have stuck through the previous episodes to get to this point - but at least it's happening. Hopefully it's not a false dawn. BLASSREITER is slowly getting there, and this episode is one of the most enjoyable yet - although that's not really saying much. Saying that I'm looking forward to the next episode would be a bit of a stretch, but at least I'm not dreading it, and that's progress.  |
