Mikes Film Talk

Stitchers last week was an almost perfect blend of mystery, comedy, and clever writing. In Fire in the Hole the comic touches are still there but this episode focusses on life and death not from without but from within. Perhaps the greatest achievement of this segment is its dealing with the irony of a team that interacts with death and all it entails on a daily basis suddenly being thrust into the arena of personal mortality.

This episode looks at how each team member faces the very real possibility of their own demise, “I’m choosing to panic in my own way,” says Tim while munching on what looks like grapes, and it shows how they have all bonded. Even the engineer has been accepted by Cameron and vice versa. By the time the end credits roll, Linus and Camille are apparently a real couple, instead of what she was aiming for, Kirsten knows more of the truth, although it is doubtful that Maggie has not embellished things, this is a woman who will always “hedge her bets,” and Cameron moves that one step closer to a relationship with Clark. Liam, the “Mr. Mary Poppins” wild card is being left to wriggle on the marriage proposal hook for the time being.

The episode is all about irony, as signposted by the opening. Kirsten is in the elevator heading to the lab. She enters the facility to find flashing lights and alarms blaring while her colleagues rush here and there in a panic. Cameron spies Kirsten and rushes up to her. “Thank goodness you’re here,” he says while grabbing her arm. “We need your help,” Cameron says and drags Clark out of the main lab.

He leads Kirsten into another section yelling that they are running out of time. The two enter the room to a surprise birthday party for her. Camille, Linus, Maggie and the rest all shout surprise and Tim rises from the back of the room, cake in hand, to move forward with the “office” birthday offering. On the cake, are two brains, one is red the other blue, that have a line of led lights leading from one to the other. The room of colleagues sing happy birthday and as the song finishes, Kirsten asks, “Are those brains?”

After apologizing for her lack of reaction, “sorry guys, surprise anything doesn’t really work on me,” the party is over. The brains are taken by Linus and Camille, “At least we have cake,” and eaten. That these two were meant for each other is obvious. The alarm that sounds the death knell for the party is a new stitch arrival.

A leading lab researcher, Dr. Barmal committed suicide in her apartment and the team need to learn why. The woman worked with infectious diseases and mutated viruses so the information in her head could be of vital importance. After initial concerns that her corpse could be contaminated Maggie assures the team that there are no signs of contamination.

Barmal killed herself with sleeping pills, her body was found slumped over in under a scalding shower and the temperature in her flat was extremely high, all this information adds to the mystery of why she killed herself. The team learn that the deceased had a photographic memory and never wrote anything down. The stitch is the only way they can learn anything about what she was working on.

As they prepare for the stitch, Camille asks Kirsten about the marriage proposal. The two talk about it and Clark asks her roomie to keep the news about Liam asking her to marry him quiet. If, she says, Camille has not managed to tell the whole lab already. Looking at the comms mic by her mouth, Kirsten realizes that the entire lab has just learned of the proposal. Linus and Cameron share a look.

Maggie welcomes Fisher back from his “special” assignment for Les Turner and she reveals it “kinda sucks” being in the dark, something that the detective has complained about in the past. Fisher enjoys her discomfort. As he leaves Fisher tells Maggie to let him know if there is cake. Cameron runs through the checklist prior to the stitch and quips that comms works fine, alluding to Kirsten’s inadvertent sharing of her Liam information.

Once in the stitch, Kirsten leans that the doctor injected herself with a mutated version of the Spanish Flu and then gave herself another shot intended to counteract the effects of the virus. While Clark is still in the stitch, Maggie decides to clear the lab of all non-essential personnel.

Alarms begin to go off in the lab, just as they did when Kirsten arrived for work. This time, however, the threat is real. Barmal’s body has become symptomatic and infected the entire team. Maggie puts the facility under lockdown. Camille says, “I hate being right all the time.” She was the only person to state what a bad idea it was to bring the doctor into the lab. She is rapidly becoming the voice of reason in this verse.

After the lab has been isolated, something that Les Turner demands happen to Kirsten, each of the team members begins getting ill. Later when learning about the problem of Barmal infecting the entire team. Turner tells Maggie that Kirsten “must be protected,” and tells the stitch leader that whatever happens to anyone else is inconsequential. Her response to his order is “Yeah, good luck with that,” the same thing Kirsten says when Maggie relays the isolation demand to her.

Later, when Maggie reveals the truth to Kirsten about her mother and Ed, it appears that Clark is very special and that the stitcher program has been going on much longer than she realized. It really is beginning to look like the woman was “designed” to be a stitcher.

The team put their collective intellects together to work out a solution. It is decided that they can use the quantum computer to come up with a cure. Kirsten goes back into Barmal’s brain after having to argue her point. Clark gets off a good one with her response to arguments being made against her going back into the dead woman’s memory; “Besides, It’s my birthday and I can stitch if I want to,” she says with a cheeky grin.

Going back into the stitch, she observes the doctor writing a formula on a whiteboard. The stitch begins to collapse and she barely makes it out in time. This is beginning to become a trend with Clark; leaving it till the last minute to bounce. A signpost of bad things to come?

After Kirsten is out, she writes the formula and when she asks if anyone recognizes it, Cameron does “Bones” from Star Trek, “Dammit Jim, I’m a…” His riff is not appreciated by Maggie who tells him to focus. As he gets to business and asks Linus for input, they realize that “i heart guy” is the first of the crew to fall ill.

As the team members all begin to get sick they try to find a solution to their problems, one of which is how to get into the lab (Ayo tries and after Maggie tries an override they learn they are locked out). Camille saves the day by climbing into the medical lab through a cabling tunnel. Cue an encounter with a rat and some excellent comedic moments for Scagliotti as Camille. Also cue that look from Linus, the one that says his love and respect for this woman just reached new heights.

The two have a very touching moment and seconds later, Maggie tells them to call any loved ones. The computer has revealed that the doctor’s cure should have worked but did not. While everyone else reaches out to loved ones, except for Camille which endears her to Linus, and the audience, even more, Cameron reaches out to Kirsten, revealing more about his backstory and she in turn focusses upon finding a solution.

By the end of the show, Clark shows how much she has bonded with Cameron, Fisher and Tim the engineer save the day and the stitcher team have become more closely bonded and proven that they can work together through an emergency. Les Turner reveals that the most important part of the Stitcher program is Kirsten. We also learn much more about each main character with some peripheral ones stepping up to the fore.

Kudos to Cameron Britton, Emma Ishta, and Kyle Harris for knocking out it of the park. Ritesh Rajan and Allison Scagliotti are just brilliant in this episode and Salli Richardson-Whitfield rose to allow her character to show a touch of vulnerability. The writing was spot on, as usual, and Fisher’s line about cake was perfect.Stitchers is top of the ABC Family lineup and is not to be missed. It airs Tuesdays, mark your calendar.