As best I could tell, 10 years ago Ian Alpha was happily married on our side but then his wife died, so he went to the other side. The Ian Prime we watched all last season was actually Ian Alpha, and now for the past couple episodes he’s been creeping on the Wife Prime version of his dead wife, so management sent a team to put him in check. And that just happened to coincide with him finding and researching a super secret management case.
There was no amazing coincidence-- Management has dirt on him (especially his true identity) to keep him in line, and they evidently have him under surveillance as well.
The Management team in the last one or two episodes was after Emily and the comms briefcase, I believe, not Ian.
I like the show but I’m constantly having to figure out whether I’m seeing the Alpha version of a character or the Prime version or the Prime version pretending to be the Alpha version. And something in the most recent episode had me wondering if the show’s complexity (endless moles, double-cross on top of double-cross and unseen, mysterious management) is getting just too ridiculous. I began to suspect this when Peter Quayle Alpha was about to kill himself to protect the secret that his wife Clare was actually Clare Prime pretending to be Clare Alpha and was Shadow, the mole everyone was looking for. But as he’s trying to get the courage up to shoot himself, a woman (whom we haven’t seen previously?) walks in, tells him to tell them that she was Shadow, and kills herself to protect Clare Prime’s secret identity.
She was seen before, as one of Peter’s underlings. Evidently some kind of secretary, as she schedules his appointments as well as brings him coffee.
She rubs out Lambert in order to protect Clare’s identity, along with that of every other Indigo agent. However, she says she was specifically ordered to sacrifice herself as cover for Quayle as he is “important”. (OTOH, Clare was ordered to “torch” Peter herself in case they did not get to Lambert in time.)
Excellent backstory episode with nary a Howard, Emily, Peter, or Clare in sight. It’s pretty cool that they used both camera tricks and identical twins to flesh out the teams from each side. I also liked the ending; very The Matrix. The Choice is yours.
I liked that episode. It explained exactly how the parallel universes were created, who management is and why there is such antagonism on both sides. Whoever is in charge (of the show) here is really clever.
It’s a shame. In terms of world building, Counterpart is a very simple construct made complicated by the human element. There’s so much rich material to be mined by some very good actors, and the show still has great potential. I hope Amazon Prime or Neflix gobble it up.
If not, there’s one episode left to resolve everything. :mad:
Too bad–season two took off to a slow start and I let episodes accumulate unwatched, but having recently binged the last few it has improved quite a bit towards the end.
I was just wondering, though–have they shown evidence of the German government (or any government) being involved in this that I don’t remember? Because it seems like the handful of civillian “management” was all the authorty (and funding) that there was?
Management, at least most of them, had influential connections to the (East) German government in the first place. By the time the episodes are taking place, we are told “some” world leaders know about the project, and the Office is a UN agency, at least officially.
Note that, as far as authority in Germany, we see that OI agents are able to conduct all sorts of ops and order civilian police around, and no one even questions it, so they are clearly still in with the government at both local and very high levels. As for funding, I do not recall any specific figures mentioned, but it’s obvious they get a substantial amount from national governments as a UN agency, and as fruits of their legitimate activities+research (all the technology, cure for diseases, oil drilling was mentioned, etc), and they have all sorts of off-the-books dealings and black money too.
Damn, such a great show. I like how it shows that we wouldn’t be particularly kind to carbon copies of ourselves (excepting that fixer dude, who went all twinsies with it) I think that’s very realistic.
Well that’s sad. I’ve just started getting into it (watched the entire first season right before the second season started) and really enjoyed the spycraft and sci-fi. I guess it’ll be back to just paying for Starz for Outlander again.
I’ve not posted much about it lately, but I still love this show - especially now that the pieces are starting to fall into place (I’ve not seen Sunday’s episode yet). I was sad to see it cancelled but I hope this has a chance of going to Amazon or Netflix. Most of my friends that I know would like it can’t watch it because they don’t have Starz - so maybe a wider distribution will help it find some new life.
If the mad-science experiment took place in 1986 or 1987, and the modern scenes are set in 2017, that makes just about 30 years. Though they said things were more or less the same until the flu was unleashed in the early 1990s.
That sounds about right. Because in the one episode that showed the creation of the parallel worlds, it seemed to occur a few years before the reunification of Germany, and the computer hardware in the lab included CRT monitors.
I guess thirty years makes sense, but a few characters look too young to have others. The assassin, for example. Also, the woman who said she had never been kissed because her “other” never had. Did I hear that right? The actress playing that character is only nineteen. I don’t get it.
Also, why did the operator call Ian Shaw Mr. Pierce?