Stitchers second season blasts out of the gate with 2.0 and the premiere episode shows a great many things not known before. One of which is a new Cameron (Cameron 2.0 Kirsten calls Goodkin) and he is not the only one who has changed since the season one finale.
The episode picks up right where the finale ended. Cameron unresponsive to treatment and Kirsten sobbing over his prone body. Kristen begs to have Goodkin shocked again and when there is no response she falls sobbing onto his chest. Cameron raises one arm slowly.
He is alive.
Cameron is also incredibly focussed as his first words are:
“Did you get the license plate.”
Later, Dr. Goodkin lays in bed recovering under the watchful eyes of Kirsten. Linus and Camille discuss the changes in the stitch girl. Both agree that before the Cameron stitch, Kirsten was, emotionally “b*tchy.” As Camille points out, Kirsten’s new emotions are not residual.
Kirsten does not tell Cameron about all those memories she encountered while stitched into his brain that were about her acting more emotional. It is interesting that Goodkin has stored all those scenes of touching moments where Kirsten was not exhibiting her temporal dysplasia but was “wearing” the emotions from her latest stitch.
Maggie, after coming across as a bit of a baddie in the first season lets her true colors shine through when she rips into Les Turner (Oded Fehr) for allowing Cameron to kill himself. Telling Turner that she would kill one person to save 19, the total of her lab “family.” The remark comes back to haunt Maggie later.
At the hospital Cameron survives his ordeal with a newfound sense of energy and enthusiasm for life and tells Kirsten the doctors have said he is good to go:
“Apparently death agrees with me.”
Linus enters and tells Cameron about Kirsten’s feeling a little “emotionally raw” after the stitch, in other words she is now feeling emotions. Linus reveals that Fisher is awake and wants to talk before to Kirsten. Camille is in the room already and Cameron thanks Quincy for pushing him out of the way at the restaurant.
Fisher explains that he is sure that Turner killed Ed Clark. A furious Kirsten goes to confront the man and discovers that Les had been murdered. The death of Turner puts the NSA facility into lockdown and a security detail has been assigned to the lab.
The leader of the detail is pushy and Linus calls the man a “high school dropout.” Upon seeing Kirsten, the head of security; Lee (Geoffrey Kennedy) says bluntly:
“You must be Clark. The one who strips and gets in the water. “
Linus has pointed out that there is something wrong with the mind map of the murdered Turner, calling it wonky. Maggie asserts herself and forces Captain Stamperson to back off. Cameron and Linus introduce Kirsten to a new stitch suit. The benefits of the suit as mainly psychological.
When asked how she feels in the suit, Kirsten replies, “slightly bada**.” Cameron then says the new suit is working. Cue a Linus and Cameron fist bump and then Kirsten prepares for the stitch.
Lee, the security captain asks Maggie if Kirsten will eat part of Turner’s brain (the man is obviously a fan of iZombie) and the lab head says no, “She’s not a zombie, this is science.” The captain mutters a heartfelt “Thank God.”
As the countdown begins Cameron says “Open the pod bay doors please Hal,” and the captain correctly identifies this as a 2001: A Space Odyssey quote. Maggie is not impressed. Turner’s mind map is, as Linus said earlier, “wonky” the thing is all over the place and being in the stitch makes Kirsten nauseous.
In the stitch Kirsten says she can smell incense. After she bounces from the stitch Kirsten throws up. This sense memory is new and Kirsten says she saw something in Les’ apartment that she wants to check out. A security detail follows. Cameron and Kirsten find a panic room in the apartment, after she works out the combination
Once inside the room they find a destroyed computer and Cameron texts the control sticker number to Camille. After providing much needed intel they learn where the computer came from . Goodkin locks the two escorts in the panic room and Kirsten is impressed.
“Wow, look at the testicles on Cameron 2.0.”
Following clues, the team take the next step in working out who killed Les but not without issues. Kirsten and Cameron get arrested, but only after being tased. Ironically the reason for the tasers was that neither of them have badges. (Either that or neither of the security guards liked Cameron’s “stinkin’ badges” quote from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Maggie rescues the two from the police station and gives them their own NSA badges. Both are excited and Linus wants to know when he will be getting his. Kirsten tells him she thinks he may have to get arrested first.
Kirsten goes back into Turner’s memory. (At one point Cameron calls Kirsten “Agent Carter” a clear nod to the Marvel verse.) She enters the memory where Maggie and Turner are arguing, smelling incense again, and she sees Maggie kill Les. Things get tense and Kirsten believes that Maggie shot Turner.
Maggie overpowers a security guard and the team focus to keep Kirsten in the stitch. Linus saves the day by taking charge and having Camille take over from Cameron and making Goodkin take over at Tim’s piloting device “You break it you buy it,” Tim (Cameron Britton) says as Cameron grabs the controls. Linus then orchestrates a “save.” This allows Kirsten to work out that Maggie did not kill Les.
After the stitch Camille and Kirsten head up the elevator and discover a secret room. Ed Clark’s dead body is in the room and Kirsten demand sanother chance to stitch her stepfather’s memory. In the stitch she sees someone fighting.
Kirsten sees the death of Ed, and she smells the incense again. Before he is shot, Clark shouts that he will not let the shooter hurt “her” again. Kirsten cuts it very close with the bounce; before she leaves the stitch she sees Ed’s life begin flashing by.
Afterward, Cameron is angry that Kirsten does not appear to trust him and she says everyone has their secrets. He asks about what she saw in his memory and she opts to not tell him.
Back at her house, Kirsten grabs a coffee mug and it prompts a memory of her father. In the flashback, he has shaving cream just behind his ear. He takes a bit and puts on the young Kirsten’s nose and she asks about the smell. Her father tells her it is sandalwood.
Modern day Kirsten makes the connection. She now realizes that she did not smell incense, but her father in the stitches.
The season has started off brilliantly with everyone affected by the death of Cameron. Goodkin is indeed like a leveled up version of himself after being brought back from the dead and Kirsten’s emotions are now, apparently, normal. Although not having had any before makes it odd for her and the rest of the team.
Maggie is clearly the authority figure of the group and one heck of a bada**. There also appears to be a new member in the lab, a Brit named Chelsea. Before Les was murdered he trotted out a hint at what is possibly behind the Stitchers program, saying something about saving 9 billion people and human evolution.
It appears that Kirsten’s father may have gone off the rails after that fateful stitch where it appeared that her mother died, when dad tried to pull his wife out of a coma, or the sandalwood aroma is a coincidence. Camille seems to be gravitating toward Quincy Fisher and Linus has decided he will grow up.
Stitchers season two has taken the tone a bit darker, a murder in the ranks of the program, and Les Turner no less, has made the whole thing a bit more tense. The pop culture references of Dr Goodkin are still in the show and It seems that Maggie’s moment at the end of the “Mexican standoff” could well be a homage to The Thing.
In the 1982 John Carpenter film, after the protagonists undergo a test to see who is human and who is not, the last man on the couch angrily asks to be untied . After Kirsten reveals that it was not Maggie who shot Les the team all congratulate one another on a job well done and their leader, in a very sharp and angry tone asks if they are done screwing around if they will find out who shot Les.
Maggie’s delivery of the line is not exactly the same but it evokes that image perfectly. Just another example of the brilliant writing behind the show. It should also be pointed out that none of the humor has been left behind from season one.
Stitchers airs Tuesdays on Freeform. Do not miss this cracking series.
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