Review: Silo Season 3, Episode 2: “It’s All Good”

Written by Shelley Birse Directed by Michael Dinner

The third season premiere made it pretty clear that memory, and the control of it, was going to play a large part in the narrative, past and present. As it turns out, as Juliette tries to understand what has been done to her since her return, we get further insight into the process from the flashbacks to the past.

The Outsiders are trying to help Juliette understand that her memories are false. So much of what she “remembers” from her walk outside and afterward has been fed to her, and the evidence is all over the place. Camille is clearly at the center of it, driven by her contact with the Legacy. It’s starting to unravel, as the Outsiders are taking all the evidence about the outside and the past and realizing none of what Juliette supposedly experienced is adding up. And now Juliette is beginning to recognize that, too.

Speaking of the Outsiders, I thought that one of Juliette’s groupies from the premiere would turn out to be the one with the arm wound. Instead, it turns out to be the sheriff’s wife, Kathleen. It adds a bit more friction to what Sheriff Billings is going through. It feels like he is once again caught between the various events unfolding in Silo 18. Thankfully, Billings has a lot more to do in this episode, after a somewhat disappointing set of moments in the premiere.

Camille’s strategy so far seems to have been to keep anyone who might lend doubt to Juliette’s “memories” from getting anywhere close to her. But that strategy is rapidly falling apart. Why it took three months for this to happen is not entirely clear, other than perhaps caution on the part of the Outsiders and Juliette’s former friends. But it should be interesting to find out where Lukas has been all this time.

They need to move fast, because the current plan from the Legacy is to spike the water supply with the memory-wiping drugs. Surely someone is going to catch on to the situation before it can be implemented. Will it be the Outsiders? Will it be Lukas? Even if it spreads quickly throughout the silo through the water supply (and therefore the food as well), wouldn’t it still distribute unevenly? Some people would be affected before others. How is Camille planning to manage that?

Meanwhile, Orla Kent, shadow to the head of Supply, is now missing. Much was made of her involvement with the council in the premiere, so it’s a little odd that she would go missing so quickly. The writers obviously want us to suspect the miner who opposed her during the council meeting (and after), but that’s too obvious a red herring.

Back in the past, the character dynamics continue to be explored and established. Daniel has a good rapport with Anna, Thurman’s aide. He wants to have a much better rapport with Helen, the reporter, but so far Helen is much more interested in getting information out of Daniel and Charlotte about what is really going on with the conflict with Iran. Helen is fairly driven in the pursuit of this knowledge, pushing just about every possible angle (with the exception of giving in to Daniel’s romantic interest).

But much of the time in the past was spent exploring the nature of induced memory loss. Victor Crnkovich’s work is clearly meant to inform us about how the drugs used with Juliette are supposed to work. It’s an interesting way to explore that element of the world-building, since the memory erasure is part and parcel of the overall scheme of things. It’s worked into the flashback elements of the story pretty well; now it makes total sense why they had this diversion with Charlotte that wasn’t in the source material.

Now that I have a better sense of the pacing, I have my suspicions as to how the season is going to parse out. But there have already been some pleasant surprises, so I’m open to the twists and turns surely to come.