My binge watch of Continuum continues. The first season is now behind us, and it’s on to season two.

You know the drill by now: truncated reviews and more than a few spoilers.

“Second Chances”:

The first episode of Continuum’s second season takes place a week after the events of “Endtimes.” Kiera has gone a little rogue following the blast, Alec appears to have had a minor breakdown after reading the message from his future self, and Sonya has succeeded in her coup of Liber8 — though her authority doesn’t seem absolute.

Things get moving again when the mayor of Vancouver is assassinated in broad daylight. Kiera has to get back into the saddle to investigate Liber8’s connection to the crime.

The thing I found odd about this episode is that it feels like much more than a week has passed. Many characters have visibly aged, and almost all of them have changed their look in some way.

I know there was actually a gap of likely several months to a year or more between filming the first season and the second, but they could have done a better job disguising the fact. Would it have been so hard to give Carlos the same haircut?

Even a lot of the characters’ personalities feel as if they’ve grown and evolved more than a week can account for.

The reveal of future Alec’s message was also a bit of an anticlimax after so much build-up. We still don’t know why he did what he did, or why Kiera was involved, or what present Alec is supposed to do…

With that being said, the investigation into the mayor’s death was pretty entertaining, and on the whole, this was a decent episode. I just expected better.

Overall rating: 7.1/10

“Split Second”:

The season two premiere may have left me a little underwhelmed, but it didn’t take long for them to get back into the swing of things.

“Split Second” focuses on an attempt to transfer Travis between prisons after he proves disruptive (to put it mildly) in the general prison population. But a simple prisoner transfer turns out to be anything but.

Meanwhile, Kellogg and Alec cross paths for the first time. Awesome ensues.

As I’ve come to expect from Continuum, there was no shortage of action and excitement in this episode. The chase through the wilderness was amazingly lavish and well-executed for a TV show, let alone a Canadian one.

It was also a bit less straight forward than Continuum usually is — in a good way. “Split Second” had quite a few twists, and it kept me guessing a fair bit.

I very much like the possibilities presented by this episode going forward. Everything seems to be falling to chaos in an interesting way. Kiera and Gardner are both trying to convince everyone the other is a Liber8 spy, and Liber8 has been split down the middle between the somewhat crazy terrorists, and the really crazy terrorists.

While I don’t expect this to happen soon, I think this could open the door to Sonya and Lucas winding up on Kiera’s side, or at least in a semi-neutral status a la Kellogg. Of all the people in Liber8, Sonya seems the most pure of intention. She’s a true believer in the cause, whereas Travis and Garza come across as psychopaths who hide behind ideals to justify their brutality.

And seriously, the subplot with Kellogg and Alec was brilliant.

Overall rating: 8.1/10

“Second Thoughts”:

It’s still early going, but so far I’m starting to feel like the second season of Continuum may be an improvement over the first.

“Second Thoughts” has all the fast pacing and intensity I expect from Continuum, but it’s not quite so straight forward. It’s quite a complicated plot with a lot going on, and some pretty crazy revelations.

The main plot of the episode deals with the escalating conflict between Travis and Sonya. They have made tools of Vancouver’s criminal underground, sparking a gang war that quickly sees the body count climbing. Sonya has bought their loyalty with a drug from the future, Flash, that allows people to relive memories with perfect clarity,* causing yet more chaos.

*(Reminds me…)

Alec continues to struggle to find his path after the revelations from the future. He is tempted by both Kellogg’s offer, and by what Flash offers.

And as if all that wasn’t interesting enough, Jason is back and filled with paranoia that the Freelancers are after him.

Pretty much the whole episode was great, really. I enjoyed seeing Sonya’s character finally get some serious development. My read on her as a misguided idealist seems to have been accurate. Unfortunately, I don’t think her ideals are going to end well for her.

News of the Freelancers is welcome, even if we didn’t learn much.

Alec’s plot might have been the most interesting, though. Jason is his father? Wow, did not see that coming.

Also, I was quite glad to see Magda Apanowicz again, even if she hasn’t had any dialogue yet. She’s a very talented actress, and I’m sure her presence can only enrich this show.

She looks surprisingly good with red hair.

My one complaint would be that it seemed a bit weird to only now be learning about Kiera’s junkie sister. That seems like the sort of thing that should have come up before now.

Overall rating: 8/10

“Second Skin”:

This episode features Kiera learning of another traveler from her own time: Her partner on the future police force. But she was thrown back much further in time, to the 1970s, and is now an old woman suffering from dementia.

Their reunion stirs up a great deal of emotion for Kiera, but she has little time to dwell on her memories. Her partner’s combat suit was sold at a garage sale by her son, who knew nothing of its power. Kiera and both factions of Liber8 rush to find it, but it has already been put to use by its new owner: a random nerd who got it for sci-fi themed wedding. Once he figures out that the suit makes him nearly indestructible, he does what any self-respecting nerd would in that situation: He decides to become a super hero.

Of course, chaos ensues.

“Second Skin” doesn’t do a huge amount to advance the main plot, and it isn’t on the same level of quality as the previous two episodes, but I still enjoyed it a lot. It had lots of excitement, and a decent emotional punch, too.

If I had one complaint, I would have liked a clearer resolution to the story of the poor shmuck who found the suit. I was actually rather enjoying see his arc unfold. For just a minor bit character, they managed to make him feel pretty fleshed out.

Overall rating: 7.8/10

“Second Opinion”:

Kiera is having a bad day. It’s her son’s birthday… or at least it will be, several decades into the future. This makes her sense of loss over being separated from her family cut much more keenly than usual. To make matters worse, the chief of police is fired, and the entire department find itself being investigated under suspicion of housing a Liber8 mole.

It’s all too much for Kiera, who goes off the deep end a little bit. Aside from putting her under even more scrutiny than she already was, this triggers an emergency psychiatric treatment program hidden in her software — played by Alessandro Juliani, AKA Felix Gaeta on Battlestar Galactica. If it can’t be satisfied of her mental health in an hour, it will erase her memories.

If you’ve ever wrestled with an automated phone directory, you have an idea of how well an automated shrink works.

The problem with this episode is that it focuses almost entirely on Kiera’s internal struggles, and Rachel Nichols just doesn’t have the acting chops for it. She’s good at playing the superhero; she does cool, confident, and smug very well. What she isn’t so good at is coming across as a three-dimensional human being, and “Second Opinion” is an episode devoted almost entirely to humanizing Kiera.

It was also a bit distracting that Kiera apparently hasn’t grasped that because she’s in the past, her son isn’t necessarily missing her. If she ever does find a way back, she could, theoretically, reappear in the future mere moments after she left. So all her hand-wringing over how he must go to bed every night wondering what happened to her doesn’t really have the impact it was probably meant to.

To be fair, Kiera’s grief over being cut off from her family is something that needed to be addressed sooner or later. It is an important part of her character. But it’s just not a story that plays to Continuum’s strengths, and prior to now, Continuum has been very good about sticking to what it does well and not wasting time on anything else.

Overall rating: 6.9/10

I seem to be doing an awful lot of reviews lately. I should probably work on getting some variety in my posts again some time soon.

But that day is not today.

“Play Time”:

Here we have another of those episodes where Continuum basically devolves into just another cop show.

In this episode, Kiera and Carlos investigate a series of bizarre murder/suicides. The one connection between the perpetrators is that they both worked for the same video game developer, so the weight of suspicion falls squarely on the company.

The developer is working on next generation virtual reality technology. Kiera and Betty, whose tech know-how and general geekiness have earned a her a role in the investigation, receive a demonstration of the tech, but something goes wrong, and Kiera collapses. When she awakes, her implants begin to malfunction.

All tech wizardry aside, “Play Time” is pretty much just a standard whodunnit. On the plus side, this one does reveal a connection to Liber8, but it’s still just not that interesting, and it does very little to advance the main plot.

About the only noteworthy thing to come out of this episode is that Liber8 now knows Alec is helping Kiera. That, and the hidden files in Kiera’s suit offer some intriguing possibilities. But both of these things are things that will prove interesting later — they don’t do much to add to “Play Time.”

Overall rating: 6.9/10 At least Betty geeking out was amusing.

“Family Time”:

Now that’s more like it!

This is Continuum at its best. Tense and action-packed from start to finish, with not a moment wasted.

Wait, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.

“Family Time” has Kiera and Carlos investigating a large shipment of fertilizer to a rural farm. This is supposedly standard procedure whenever someone orders a bomb-worthy quantity of fertilizer.

What Kiera doesn’t realize until she arrives is that it is the same farm where Alec and his family live. Alec’s step-father, Roland, insists he didn’t order that much fertilizer, but when they reach the burn, they discover that not only is he wrong, but it’s already been turned into a bomb by Julian.

Cue gunfire, hostage-taking, and general mayhem.

What follows is an hour of Kiera and Alec pulling some clever, Die Hard-esque badassery as they attempt to escape the clutches of Julian and his thuggish friends, who seek to make a stand for their ideals or die trying.

I have to say that Continuum is really good at making me hate villains. I have come to really, truly despise Julian. I would like to see him tied to a tree and beaten with cricket bats.

Although it was a fairly small part of the episode, I also found the vignette from the future very interesting, and I think I’m finally starting to develop some interest in Kiera as a character, not just as an action hero.

It’s fascinating to me that Kiera is what most would judge to be a good person — someone with a strong moral compass who loves those close to her and wants nothing more than to provide a good life to her family — but yet she’s done, and continues to do, some awful things. She’s propping up a corrupt regime which has robbed humanity of its liberty and dignity, and she straight up murdered Kellogg’s sister.

That was shocking to me. She killed a woman who was if not innocent then at least of no immediate threat, in cold blood.

This is something that’s chillingly true in real life: Often those we would classify as monsters are ordinary people who under most circumstances would be considered perfectly decent.

Does that make them good people who are simply misguided, or bad people whose darkness is well-hidden? Is Kiera the hero of this story, or just another villain?

Overall rating: 8.9/10 Very well done indeed.

“Endtimes” (season finale):

The finale for the first season of Continuum doesn’t feel much different from most of the episodes to date, which is as much a compliment to the rest of the series as it as a criticism of the finale.

“Endtimes” wastes absolutely no time and offers major reveals, high tension, and plenty of adventure virtually from the first shot onwards. But that’s been true of pretty much every episode to date. On the one hand, that’s made for a very fun ride up until now, but it leaves them with little room to ramp up the tension for the finale. Despite offering slightly more in the way of major revelations and higher stakes than ever, “Endtimes” pretty much feels like any other episode.

That’s still pretty good, though.

“Endtimes” sees Liber8, with the aid of a fugitive Julian, launching a massive terrorist attack on downtown Vancouver. On her way to investigate the threat, Kiera encounters a rather scruffy gentlemen (played by Ian Tracey, who did a brilliant turn as Dr. Jekyll/Adam Worth on Sanctuary) who recognizes her — from the future. He was pulled through time at the same point she was but went back even further, arriving in the 1990s. Unfortunately, his trials have left his sanity in a questionable state.

He does have some interesting revelations, though. He mentions there are other people who have traveled back in time, called “Freelancers” and led by someone called “Mr. Escher.”

Meanwhile, Alec attempts to track down Julian and is captured by Liber8 in the process, but Kagame does not react to him at all as one would expect.

I’m afraid I once again can’t help but compare to Orphan Black — last time, I promise. Whereas its season finale offered no major revelations and no closure for any plot but one, Continuum offers a flood of changes and new revelations.

There are other time travelers! Alec is the one who sent Liber8 and Kiera back in time! Kagame died and took a good chunk of Vancouver with him! Julian founded Liber8! Travis and Sonya have turned on one another!

Things be crazy.

With that being said, while “Endtimes” is vastly better than Orphan Black’s finale, it still has its issues.

As I said, because Continuum is already so fast-paced and action-packed most of the time, “Endtimes” doesn’t feel terribly special compared to the average episode. It would have taken some truly insane, “Boomer shoots Adama”-esque twists to really stand out, but while the reveals we got were good, they weren’t that good.

The question I most wanted answered is why future Alec did all this, but that’s the answer we have to wait until next season for. Although thankfully that won’t be a long wait where I’m concerned.

There were also some painfully implausible things about this episode. Apparently it takes less than 24 hours for Carlos to recover from a gunshot wound, massive blood-loss, and major surgery.

Furthermore, the aftermath of the explosion tried too hard to play on the emotion of the viewer, at the expense of logic. Those shots of the civilians caught in the blast tore me right out of the story — when the cops learned of the bomb threat, they would have evacuated the whole area. There wouldn’t have been kids around to be caught up in 9/11 North.

Still, on the whole, a worthy conclusion to a strong first season.

Overall rating: 8/10 I’m looking forward to starting on season two.