Falling Water: Calling the Vasty Deep – Purity of the Data (Review)

The second episode of Falling Water “Calling the Vasty Deep” continues the shared dream storyline. Not just with the group Tess has joined in Bill Boerg’s organization but with Taka and Burton as well. The dreams continue to bleed into real life and the little blond boy, Tess’ son, appears to the players outside of their dream state.

Burton continues to dream of the restaurant and the bartender (Hammond) reacts to Burton talking about his date being kidnapped. “No, that was a dream, this, is a dream,” the bartender says.

Tess continues to search for her son with Bill’s help and she finds a charge of $10 in a hospital, for the epidural, but the place has no records for her there.  Taka takes evidence from the crime scene where the 12 people killed themselves and brings it home.

He buys an album by the artist who drew the picture of the boy. At home Taka shoves his feet into the green trainers and turns on the vinyl  record. The music to the song sounds odd, like it is being played backwards and it is oddly catching.

He dreams about the blonde boy and seeing his mother attacking an art piece. When he wakes, Taka opens the album and sees his mother on the middle cover art. He visits her and spies a girl in green trainers (sneakers). He  follows her but is told to leave the room.

Tess dreams with the group for Bill but only connect with Levon in the dream. The connect outside of the experiment as well although they are not supposed to “for the purity of the data.” Later Bill catches Tess leaving Levon’s place but does not kick her out of the group.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to spot the dream sequences. Sometimes is is easy, as when the water drops fall up or when movements are clearly backward.  (There is short scene where Burton caresses a woman’s hair and the move is actually filmed in reverse. It jars and feels out of place.)

The emphasis in this episode was on water. Burton walks through water that is spreading across the bar floor. Tess and Levon play in water on the roof and she walks through patches of the stuff later on.

The sharing of dreams continues.  When Tess’ son runs away from the faceless men in the dream, he ends up in Taka’s dream. All the scenes feel dreamlike, with the exception of Bill and Tess’ encounter toward the end of the episode.

Taka and Burton both seem to be constantly in some sort of dream state. The detective moves through his dreams and Burton mainly  watches everything happening in his.

Tess’ son moves through both worlds easily, the dream state and the waking one. Those blue sheets of paper with his face on and the phrase “his name is” is in both places.

Falling Water continues the weird disjointed feeling associated with some dreams and it is still difficult to tell when things are real.  The scene where Levon comes to pound on Tess’ door was one such segment.

As he beats on the door to be let in, Tess flings open the door only to find no-one on the other side.  This scene, like most in the episode feels like a dream that has intruded into the real wold

Falling Water airs Wednesdays on USA.  Tune in and learn the significance of the boy in the series and see if they can break him out .

Cast:

• David Ajala  –  Burton
• Lizzie Brocheré  – Tess
• Will Yun Lee  –  Taka
• Zak Orth  –  Bill Boerg 
• Shiloh Fernandez  –  Levon
• Kai Lennox  –  Woody Hammond