OH. MY. GOD. What a heart-wrenching episode. And so much going on! Otto and Mary! Otto and Connor! Alexa and George! Lookinglass! The tank! And of course, Gracie running away, then being kidnapped, leaving behind heartbroken father and grandpa. Oh poor Duval….
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What an emotional, heart-pounding episode! Everyone’s choices are haunting them, except, of course, for Connor Graff, who truly is a sociopath.
My primary concern is for Duval and Gracie. Poor Duval–does he not have a single friend at the FBI? His daughter goes missing and, yes, he goes all Sheriff Pritchard and crosses a line, yet not one colleague has enough faith in him to give him the benefit of the doubt? Agent Adair did not appear to care for Connor’s attitude (“thanks, honey”) so hopefully the FBI won’t let this go and will come to their senses soon enough to let Duval lead the charge to find Gracie.
Earlier in the episode, I really loved Duval’s assertion to his father that to be a dad, one has to put in the hours. Gracie’s a smart girl, but she’s also young and foolish, qualities a father who pays attention would recognize. I know Jimmy was a negligent father to Duval, but I was still surprised to hear him tell Duval to “just trust her” upon learning Gracie had gone missing. She’s 17, ostensibly running away with a boy she barely knows simply because she was forbidden to see him. That alone would have any parent in a panic. But Duval suspected something more sinister, and he was right.
Duval is his father’s son, at least when it comes to protecting his daughter. Jimmy seemed proud to witness his son’s uncontrolled rage, yet he also realized that Duval’s brutality was ineffective in getting answers from a sociopath deviant like Connor Graff.
And Connor sure has emotional control of Otto. Wow. Otto’s pointing a gun at Connor one minute, sobbing in his arms the next. Make no mistake. Otto is culpable–his own human experimentation lay the foundation for Connor to take his ideas a step further. Otto’s referral to Jimmy as a “thing”, and the fact that he even attempted to regenerate humans only to throw away those he perceived as mistakes, such as Albert Lin and Alexa, suggests he is incapable of empathy to an extreme unusual for even the most socially dysfunctional. But Connor is pure evil.
I feel for Alexa because of George. He seems a man worth fighting for, and I can’t blame her for taking extreme measures. Their lives were manipulated too; fortunately for Alexa, George is/was the strong one, and his wisdom probably saved her.
I don’t know how, or even if, Jimmy will survive this situation, but I’m also starting to wonder if he wants to survive it. He’s seen the damage done when people are not allowed to live and die on their own terms. I don’t care about his and Mary’s attraction to each other. That aspect of the story is a sideshow at best, and it’s been given neither the time nor the story to develop into a relationship worth rooting for, or worth lamenting should it end. I’m more emotionally invested in his relationships with Duval and Gracie.
One more episode, apparently a series, not just season, finale, and I’m sad to see it end. Of all Tim’s television projects on which he played a regular role, I admit to preferring the others, but that said, I’ve enjoyed watching him play a FBI agent in a scientific/technological environment, and I’ve especially enjoyed the family drama. I don’t think it would matter what kind of role Tim plays, it will always be worth watching.
Wow I was such a nervous wreck after I watched that episode!!
Poor Duval, as if his life wasn’t complicated enough as it is, now they took his badge and his daughter has been kidnapped.
Gracie was really a stupid idiot running away like that. Has she really no heart that she didn’t think of the consequences for her dad?
I really hope they’re going to rescue her all in one piece. Connor’s plans are giving me the creeps, for serious.
I do find this range of villains interesting. Alexa, Otto, Connor…
Alexa isn’t really a bad person. Otto is… complicated. He’s lacking some social skills and compassion, and he has an unhealthy attachment to Mary, but he’s not a truly bad person either. He just has the bad luck to be manipulated by the true evil genuis: Connor. Now that is a really really creppy bad person. Otto has issues, but Connor is plainly aware of how wrong it is, and yet, he’s ready to torture a kid to get what he wants. Just thinking about it makes me cringe…
I do feel bad for Alexa. But George did the right thing (though I wish he had chosen a less painful way to go, I’m cringing enough as it is…). Hopefully super Alexa will now be back with the good guys.
I do feel bad for Mary too, who is punished for simply standing up to her brother. I don’t know if things can be fixed with those two, at this stage.
No one has it easy on this show…
I do like the scenes between Mary and Jimmy, but more as friends than lovers. It does bother me a little that they don’t aknowledge the age difference. I think I’d buy Mary/Jimmy a lot more easily if they just simply aknowledged it and accepted it.
I’m not sure either whether Jimmy really wants to stay. I do hope he’ll have time for a good talk with Duval, and Gracie and Helen before the end. But Connor does have plenty of tanks, and Alexa also have one. So, Jimmy isn’t necessarily condemned.
I kinda like too, that Duval doesn’t seem as good as Jimmy at going “full sheriff”. He is upset, rightly so, but he’s not enough of a bad boy to think about all the little things – not hitting the guy too much, faking a warrant…
And I *really* hope he’ll get his badge and his honor back. It would be really unfair if Duval ended “just like his father”, after having tried so hard not to.
OMG. What a thrilling episode. I hope they bring that sociopath down nicely. Make him suffer!!!
It was all very intense. Of course, Duval is besides himself. After all, it is his daughter at risk.
I’m wondering if Otto is really so cold hearted. He should be intelligent enough to understand when he’s being played. I’m hoping – even though he’s a Freak with capital F – that he has other plans.
George’s step was a final one. He got my respect for that. It certainly made Alexa think.
Well, only one episode to go I guess. I don’t understand why they took so long to build up the thrill. The first 3 episodes were lame (my opinion). They lost so many viewers those first weeks. But now it’s great. Sigh. Maybe they should have asked me how to do it 🙂
You should have kept directing and making new episodes of Whote Collar, it is a hit on Netflix but everone is sad because it has ended and theres nothing else to watch! I truly LOVED White Collar but its heartbreaking to see it end. Please keep wrighting white collar