Mikes Film Talk

“Stitchers: The Two Deaths of Jamie B” is about more than grey goo, aka nanobots. It is about the further evolution of Kirsten (Emma Ishta), Cameron (Kyle Harris), Camille (Allison Scagliotti) and Linus (Ritesh Rajan). The rest of the team are also changing but not as rapidly or dramatically as the core group.  

Kyle has become an action man figure; more physical but no less cerebral, Kirsten emotional and witty, without the sarcasm, Linus moving out to assert his independence and Camille learning self-defense and itching to get out in the field.

The death of a  grocery market bagger starts the team on their most challenging, and interesting stitch to date.  Jamie B. was a bag boy at a small market who was tortured and beaten to death.  The corpse’s fingerprints are burnt off and in the initial stitch Kirsten experiences one of Jamie’s deaths.

Later, in the same stitch, she finds that Jamie actually died twice, the first time by drowning.  Going in the second time, she finds that Jamie B. was not always a bag boy, before the market he was a scientist working for the MeriCorp  oil company.  The man developed nanobots to eat hydro-carbon.

In the stitch it  is revealed that the bots were programmed incorrectly to eat carbon. If the nanobots were released they would eat every living thing.  Camille relays this information along with the fact that she used to date an oil worker named Dirk and then dated his sister.

Linus is surprised at this information.

On the personal front, Linus stops a “moment” between Kirsten and Cameron and out of frustration, Goodkin leave the apartment. He stops by a comic book store and meets Nina (Jasmin Savoy Brown) a fellow comic book nerd who works at the business. The two “click” and she offers to save him a Hulk 102. 

Pop Culture Reference:

The Hulk 102, Volume one, was a continuation from “Tales to Astonish” #101 and this second issue features the first time the big guy with the anger management issues was green. The two comic book “nerds” also talk about “Tales to Astonish”  and who their favorite characters were.

Back to the Episode:

It looks like, with the awkwardness between Kirsten and Cameron, that Nina may become a new romantic interest for Goodkin. Kirsten goes to MeriCorp to track down Jamie B. and his backstory and learns he was Dr. Stephen Bennett and that Jamie B. was a girlfriend.

Camille gets permission from Maggie (Salli Richardson-Whitfield) to sort out Theo and get Linus’ things back.  Kirsten made a deal with the blonde woman from Jamie’s stitch and Millie takes control of her errant big brother by smacking his head into the table and throwing him back to the floor. 

The former trailer park girl from Bakersfield also gets the line of the episode. Before Theo lays gasping on the floor he asks his card playing pal just who his sister thinks she is. As Theo lays prone n the floor, she places her foot on his throat. Camille  then pulls her NSA badge and says:

“Who do I think I am? I think I’m NSA, b*tch.”

Things continue to be a bit awkward between Kirsten and Cameron. They end up at the coffee dispenser trying to give each other the final caramel flavored coffee. As they disagree on who should get it, Tim from engineering (Cameron Britton) comes up, grabs the caramel flavor coffee syrup and makes a coffee.

Linus and Camille connect at Cameron’s apartment and when Goodkin comes home, he gets the Hulk comic delivered by Nina. Cameron then takes his new friend to dinner.

The Daniel Stinger Clue:

Kirsten finds a tux jacket that was tailored  by Nardini’s of Beverly Hills.  She chases down the clue but it is a dead end. As she talks to Quincy (Damon Dayoub) about it she finds something in the jacket pocket. It is a wedding napkin that says “The wedding of Daniel and Elizabeth Stinger.”

Kirsten: “Elisabeth? My mother’s name is Jacqueline.”

Things of Note:

As promised, by way of the interviews with Jeff Schechter and the cast , things have gotten darker.  This episode had less in the way of pop culture references and more in the escalation of the stitchers program and the show’s villains.

Kirsten fails to bounce before Jamie B. dies the first time. Her vision blacks out, in the stitch and she says, “he died.” The presumption has always been that this would be bad thing, not quite as serious as “crossing the streams” but it could have resulted in severe damage to the stitcher if not death. At least that was the belief.

That little chap in the red ball cap has shown up again. Clearly this is something being inserted into the stitch from without and not within. Mike’s Film Talk has an idea, based on the events being filmed during the set visit, but we cannot say just yet who, or what, may be inserting the lad with cap in Kirsten’s stitches.

(If indeed, he is being inserted. Once again, the disappearance of the temporal dysplasia has left Kirsten open to a number of issues, not least of which could be glitch in her own brain. This could be manifesting itself as the kid in the red cap…)

Ms. Clark is, apparently, being affected differently after the stitches now that she has lost her temporal dysplasia.  On top of all these new emotions flooding in, she acts differently in the stitch.  The question arises as to whether she can continue in the program now that she has lost her special “gift.” The reason she could stitch so well before was because of the dysplasia.

As mentioned in the interview with Allison Scagliotti, we have now learned that Camille is bi-sexual.  She is also becoming more involved outside  the lab and no longer  just “holding a tablet” and Maggie is pleased to let Camille be more active outside that tablet.

Conclusion:

This season is darker by far, this episode of “Stitchers”  proves it. The villains of the piece, the blond boss and her bearded henchman, were prepared to cold-bloodedly dispatch both Kirsten and the real Jamie B. (Christine Garver) via nanobots (and turn them both into a pile of grey goo) even though the release of the bots could destroy all carbon based lifeforms. 

Stinger, it seems,  is not a nice chap and he has a lot of secrets. And…who is Elizabeth? Kirsten’s real dad had some sort of agenda that included a lot more than trying to pull his wife from a coma. The show continues to be a brilliant blend of writing and character evolution and is just as addictive in the second season as the first.

“Stitchers” airs Tuesdays on Freeform. Watch this science fiction mystery thriller because it does not get much better than this.