Helix in a Nutshell
If you enjoy perusing the murky depths of Netflix’s Scifi category, as one does, then you’ve probably spotted Helix lurking in the corner, its primary image both attention-grabbing and curiosity-inducing. The show had its problems, but their ad imagery was really top-notch.
The show ran for two seasons on SyFy and was fueled by both character drama and a decent amount of worldbuilding. it begins with the CDC flying to a remote laboratory complex in the Arctic Circle, where one of the many diseases on campus has gotten loose and threatens to become a full-blown epidemic. To make matters more complicated and give them a personal stake, Patient Zero of this outbreak is the main character’s brother.
Layered within this basic storyline is a series of complex relationships that effectively drive the first half of season one. Alan is dating Sarah, but has never mentioned his ex-wife Julia. They divorced after Alan caught her in bed with Peter, the very brother who’s infected with a mysterious disease. Of course Julia’s accompanying them on the trip because she also happens to be a kick-ass CDC doctor.
The personal drama and solid backstory of the CDC doctors is complimented by more personal drama and solid backstory from the characters at the Arctic Base, which is funded by the mysterious Ilaria Corporation. Here we meet Dr. Hatake, lead researcher with a LOT to hide, Major Balleseros, a soldier who is working toward his own ends, and Daniel, Hatake’s adopted son who serves as his loyal security guard but whose loyalty has its limits. Later in the season we meet Constance Sutton, a powerful and dangerous Ilaria executive ably played by veteran scifi actress Jeri Ryan.
I have to give Helix points for solid characterization. Alan is a friggin’ hero – he has fought the spread of disease all over the world, he believes in finding peaceful solutions to resolving conflict, and he consistently cares for his loved ones even when they do things that piss him off. Because she has inoperable spinal cancer, Sarah is trying to do the most good she can with her life while she’s still alive and although she is in love with Alan, her relationship to him does not define her as a character near as much as her love of using science to show compassion. Julia is a badass scientist who is not afraid to put herself in danger for the sake of others.
What Went Wrong?
The big story of season one is bonkersville, but it’s not completely terrible. The show takes us through a labyrinthine series of interlocking secrets which point to the Ilaria Corporation purposefully developing a virus that turns people into raging hell-monster zombies. However, like many shows whose central conceit orbits a vast conspiracy (Castle, Prison Break, Alias), the story gets crushed under the sheer weight of inevitable viewer skepticism. The Ilaria Corporation are not merely a group of corporate douchebags bent on profiting from the downfall of humankind, they’re also immortals.
This could have been somewhat interesting except that these immortals have no sense of self-preservation. Constance Sutton is constantly throwing herself into dangerous situations that could get her killed, and her idiot son seems to have about the same level of common sense. On top of this, some of the biggest reveals were surprising only for the characters. By the time Hatake revealed that he is Julia’s biological father, for example, the viewers had most likely figured that out three episodes before. Later episodes rely on cheap Shyamalan sleight-of-hand tricks that create short-term tension that deflates in seconds.
On top of this, the characters periodically act with all of the logical faculties of a drunk baboon. Near the end of season one, Hatake is faced with an impossible, terrible choice: he must decide between saving the life of Julia, his biological daughter, or Daniel, his adopted son. He agonizes over this until finally Daniel kills himself to spare his father the guilt, believing that Hatake would choose Julia in the end. This scene was touching and tragic, but it was ruined two seconds later when Alan, Balleseros, and Peter broke into the room and captured the villain responsible for the whole scenario. They were with Hatake the whole time- what the hell they were doing waiting outside the door until somebody died? Since Daniel had just reunited with his Inuit family, this death felt like little more than cheap emotional manipulation and this character deserved better than that.
The only effective plot twist of season one was Peter’s betrayal, which took me completely by surprise but absolutely made sense. It fit with his character, the clues were all there, but I really didn’t see it until it unfolded. Bravo, Helix, you done good. However, the show completely fails to follow-up on Peter’s act and the consequences thereof, so the one interesting piece of character drama was ruined by sheer indifference.
Season one had its flaws, but the climax was dramatic and heart-wrenching and damn-near perfect. Julia is on an Ilaria Helicopter and Alan is trying to untie her. The man who just murdered her mother is coming, blade in his hand no doubt meant for Alan’s neck. She shouts at him, “Find me!” and then kicks him out of the copter with her free leg. He yells and cries as she is taken away. Great drama, solid ending.
I feel like I’ve gotta ask, why didn’t season two start from that point?
Season Two: How Bad Could It Be?
Make no mistake: if you elect to watch season two of Helix, you do so at your own risk. It makes as much sense as a methed-out Kangaroo performing Kabuki in the middle of a freeway. Less, in fact.
From minute one, this season made it clear that it wasn’t going to fill in the fifteen-month gap between this season and its predecessor right away. I thought there would be deep, expository Lost-style flashbacks. Haha, nope! I watched the whole thing and now I regret that decision.
We start with a CDC team being dispatched to an island off the coast of Oregon where there’s a mysterious and deadly disease. This time, however, it is Peter who leads the team, composed of himself, Sarah, and a new character named Kyle Sommer. I thought it might be interesting to see Peter in the new hero doctor role. Where’s Alan, you ask? Great question. Alan has apparently become a terrorist and blew up Ilaria’s main headquarters in Paris.
Wait… what?
Yes, gentle reader, apparently the compassionate hero doctor who could barely even touch a gun during the first season has become a full-on militant terrorist fighting against the secret immortals who designed the awful disease from season one. We’re left to fill in the blanks as to how that transformation exactly occurred. My guess is aliens.
The island was a good setting for this season and helped carry over the feeling of isolation from the world that was central to so much of season one. The locals are all part of some bizarre cult that revolves around the personality of one man: Brother Michael.
We catch up with Julia, who is also on the island… thirty years in the future! She reveals that the disease which began on that small isle has mutated and can now infect immortals. How does she know? Well, because she’s infected!
Splitting the timeline between our heroes in the present and Julia’s island adventure thirty years in the future could have been an interesting decision but – surprise! – it was handled so ham-fistedly that the future scenes just felt like padding and had the effect of assuring the viewers that when Julia did show up in the “present,” that she was in no mortal danger whatsoever. Plus, Julia’s reunion with Hatake was handled badly, at one point inspiring a battle between the two in which Hatake expertly handled a samurai sword. An Asian character with a heretofore unmentioned intimate familiarity with traditional martial arts? Not exactly breaking new ground here, Helix.
Couple all of this with the disturbing revelations of the cultists and their more secretive practices, and you have a recipe for a train wreck. Epidemics mesh pretty well with other horror elements, but this was not the claustrophobic nightmare of the “black rain” scene from season one. This was closer to something from a Saw movie, which was jarring and unnecessary.
All of season two feels like a long, drawn out slap in the face. It’s like a 70’s horror movie, with every character doing exactly what they should not be doing at almost any given moment. People wander into dangerous areas completely heedless of any warnings, others fall into traps that could only be more obvious if the villains had rented a friggin’ billboard, and characters make decisions that move the story forward but make absolutely no sense for those characters! This show isn’t plot-driven so much as plot-steamrolled.
Peter Farragut has long lived in the shadow of his older brother Alan and hates it. At the end of season one, however, we find out that he was working for Ilaria the whole time and even helped smuggle the deadly NARVIK virus off-base so they could test it in Puerto Rico. To me, these seem like the actions of a person who has decided they no longer care about not measuring up to a more successful sibling and are going to be their own person, even if that means being a terrible person. However, at the beginning of season two, we see Peter still constantly asking himself what would Alan do? in nearly every situation as though his brother is his own personal Jesus. And on top of that, he’s still working for Ilaria!
Then we have Sarah, the up-and-coming scientist whose cancer was cured thanks to a blood transfusion with Julia in season one. This has caused some complications because she was pregnant at the time of the procedure, making both herself and her unborn child immortal. This sounds pretty great until it’s revealed that the immortalization process freezes the subject’s age, meaning her bouncing fetus is still only three months old. She’s been living in the vomity, taste-sensitive, mood-swingy first trimester for the last fifteen months, a fate which I honestly would not wish on my worst enemy. Not a lot honestly happens with Sarah in this season, but a lot happens to that tiny developing human and it defines her existence in a way that is outdated and boring.
Kyle is a generic whitebread character whom the show continually tries and fails to make interesting. Unlike the others, Kyle had the foresight to bring a gun and so I’ll give him a few points for cleverness. However, once it was revealed that he was secretly working with the FBI to capture the terrorist Alan Farragut, I had a moment of ugh comparable to the scene in The Fast and the Furious when it was revealed that the protagonist was actually an undercover cop. With every other character working toward some self-interested objective, it would have been nice to have at least one who was at the island actually trying to stop an epidemic.
The only other show that I’ve seen change its actors’ roles so dramatically between seasons is American Horror Story. Helix season two assures us that these are allegedly the same characters.we were following from last season, but they have as much in common with one another as Kit Walker has with Tate Langdon.
A Show Cannot Live on WTF Alone
The best parts of Helix reminded me of the early seasons of Alias and Lost, while the worst parts reminded me of the later seasons of Alias and Lost. The show was clearly eager to surprise its viewers, for which I will give it credit for not playing it safe. However, a story needs more than surprise – it needs interesting, relatable characters who are on a journey that changes them.
Let’s take Doctor Alan Farragut for example. In the third episode of season one, it’s already been established that the good doctor detests the idea of killing anyone for any reason. However, a situation arises where Julia’s life is placed in danger by an infected person who has become dangerously psychotic. Alan grabs a gun and kills the attacker, saving Julia but compromising his morals in a way that deeply affects him. Check the screenshot:
Now, contrast this Alan with the one we see only in flashbacks during season 2 – the one running all over the globe and murdering immortals execution-style. While it’s true that Alan uses weapons against enemies toward the end of the season, there’s a huge difference between defending yourself from armed foes and straight up blowing their gray matter all over a wall as they sit bound and weeping before you. That’s some cold-blooded assassination right there.
I totally believe that even a good man like Alan, one who routinely places his own life in danger purely out of a desire to save others, could be pressed into performing such executions under the right circumstances. However, in Helix we aren’t allowed to see those circumstances beyond their very primordial stages. At the end of season one, Julia is taken away by an Ilaria operative. However, I have to believe that Alan tried a few different tactics before settling on I’ll assassinate every immortal I can find until they tell me how to find Julia. Again, I’m not saying he couldn’t be pushed into that state of mind, but the steps he took to transform from compassionate doctor to Cyrus the Virus are very important for us to see. Instead, we’re just kind of told that Jonas Salk became the Zodiac Killer and it’s expected we’ll just go along with it.
Everything about the ending of Season 2 indicated that any third season would have similar drastic changes among the characters and we’d be expected to just nod our heads and pretend it all makes sense. Thankfully, we’ll never know for sure what was coming next because the show was cancelled. And we don’t need some overly-complex conspiracy to explain why.
(Addendum: apparently, the caption-writer for the recap photos on SyFy’s site hates this show even more than I do. Check out the snarktacular comments for yourself!)