All of Them Witches

Millennium Season 2 Episode 2
Words in the Opening Credits: This. Is. Who we are. The time is near.
Days remaining: 826

• The comet is still in the sky, the portent is ever-present. Things are happening.
• This episode brings right back to one of the most frightening TV shows I saw as a child, an episode of In Search Of where three men in an RV are harassed by Bigfoot. I remember finding that terrifying and also unable to wait for the next episode. In this case, a retired couple parking their RV in a new town is savaged by a pack of wild dogs.
• The town is, of course, beset by a rash of dogs attacks and the townspeople all know more than they’re saying. It’s another stranger-comes-to-town episode, much like last season’s Covenant. But whereas that episode kept up with Season 1’s existentialist concern by being about why the sheriff would kill his family, this episode is very much a Season 2 story: it’s about what. What’s happening? What are the machinations?
• Season 1 was about questions that could never truly be answered, mysteries that could never completely be revealed. Season 2, a more conventional but also more rewarding body of work, is about things that can be discovered and understood. It will offer answers—and it’s more compelling as a result.
• The townspeople talk about how there is a resident who used to be able to control the dogs, but he can’t anymore. Their town is overrun by a wild, uncontrollable threat. The same is true for Frank and Catherine. Frank used to be able to control the darkness and evil around them, but starting with Det. Bletcher being murdered in their house, he can’t anymore. The wild and dangerous world is impinging.
• Frank tracks the dogs into the woods and finds a mysterious cabin, in which a mysterious, wise mountain man lives. The mountain man, it turns out, is a Millennium Group member and meeting him is the real reason the Group wanted Frank on this assignment. The man knows about the Group, it knows it’s mission and agenda: “The reason you’re here is to learn about The Event.” This is a journey of knowledge for Frank.
• The mountain man tells Frank that the Group’s real purpose is to maintain equilibrium between good and evil in the world, and that they’re losing balance (unsaid, but implied, is that the Group can do evil, not just good, in the name of balance). Frank’s gift, he says, and his role is to help fight the evil and re-establish equilibrium. FInally! Finally we have a real, actual mission statement for Frank, something he lacked all of last season.
• This is another in a line of creepy, knowledge-filled cabins, a la the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks and Jacob’s cabin in Lost. What is it with that image/concept that people like so much?
• Just another fantastic Morgan/Wong episode. There’s been more action, more tantalizing mystery and promise in these two episodes than in all of Season 1.

Millennium Season 2 Episode 1
Words in the Opening Credits: This. Is. Who we are. The time is near.
Days remaining: 833

• The first seconds of the second season open in space, which is just the first of many coming signs that this season is going to be very, very different. Last season was about reason and facts, things grounded in Earthly reality, empiricism. As this scene announces, not Season 2.
• Season 2 is far and away my favorite Millennium season. Where last season was full of dragging, logy, awkward episodes, this season has much more forward propulsion, more intrigue, less endless dwelling on the grimmest aspects of the human psyche. Not only does the tone change substantially, so does the subject matter, as we’ll see. All of these changes are down to the change in show runners. Gone is Chris Cater, back to work on the X-Files, and in his place as writers Glen Morgan and James Wong (who wrote a number of Season 1 episodes). I remember from the Season 3 DVD extras that maybe their tenure wasn’t as popular among the cast and crew, but I love it.
• There’s no opening quote here, just the title of the episode.
• There’s a comet in the sky, a sign and portent, “the prophecy of extraordinary events,” according to Frank’s opening voiceover. The killer who has abducted Catherine turns out to have an agenda that goes well beyond vengeance on Frank. He sees great meaning in the impending millennium (though I bet this is a Morgan/Wong-introduced change. There was no hint of it before).
• The killer, by the way, is played by Doug Hutchison, the douchey guy married to Courtney Stodden and who played Horace on Lost.
• Even halfway into this episode, the feel of the show is palpably different. There’s less rain, less gloom, much more tension and action, much more engaging for the audience.
• In just one scene in this episode, Terry O’Quinn gets more meaty material than he did in all of Season 1. In him telling Frank the story of his fruitless, self-torturing search for the killer of a child, we see the first blushes of the talent and skills—especially in line readings—that made O’Quinn so fresh and compelling as John Locke on Lost.
• Another thrilling development here comes from getting a clearer sense of what The Millennium Group does. They don’t just consult on crime to the FBI. Peter Watts is mysterious about what, exactly, their agenda is, but it’s big and Frank plays a key role. With just one scene, the Group is suddenly 1000% more interesting and the possibilities for the series have greatly expanded. Now we’ve got intrigue and mystery coming from multiple directions, not just killers. This is reminiscent of the forces circling around Frank from Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions, but much more interesting. It gives the viewer a sense that the writers have a real plan about where they’re going with this show, that they have a purpose. You never got that sense from Carter (or ever do in any of his shows). He never seems to have a long-term plan or vision.
• When Frank rescues Catherine, the killer manages to stab him once, but then Frank wrestles the knife away and stabs the hell out of him. Five or six quick strikes. We’ve seen Frank hold back so many times, cling tightly to his humanitarian values. He’s never killed, he’s lived his moral truth, and now he’s violated it. A man who has been against the death penalty has himself killed someone. As per the title, it’s the end of his old morality, the beginning of a new phase in his life.
• It’s also a major change to his family. Catherine, while grateful, is disturbed by what he did, unsure whether it was wrong. She plans to move out for a little while, but Frank does instead, driving away from yellow house.

Millennium Season 1 Episode 22
Words in the Opening Credits: Wait. Worry. Who Cares?

• This whole season, Millennium has dwelt and wallowed in the icky, sticky realities of the human body. Those details have generally been gross, but also somewhat illuminating. We’re right back to that obsession in the opening sequence here, which finds a man stalking a housewife as she leaves the supermarket and drives home. We cut inside his dingy van to find him driving around in nothing but his tight whities. Except then, of course, he shows up in her house with no more clothes on, but now a leather butcher’s apron, too. I’m not sure how that combination of sartorial choices became a short-hand for disgusting dudes that kill, but I feel like I’ve seen it dozens of times across TV, movies, and comics.
• The quote opening comes from early 20th century American poet William Rose Benet. Tomorrow.
• Some things will be coming to a head in this episode. That becomes clear when the man who has been stalking Frank’s family and sending pictures of them follows them to Maryland where they’re visiting Catherine’s family. Frank has flown thousands of miles across the country and yet evil, the darkness of the world, has followed him. He can’t escape it, but does he attract it, too?
• Frank’s expertise travels, too. Rather than just having a quiet family visit, Catherine’s dad wants him to talk to a family friend who’s son has been convicted of murdering his wife. The friend is convinced and wants to let his son rot in jail, while the mother is sure her son is innocent.
• Which leads to the most awkward existential conversation in the entire season, in which some FBI agents ask Frank about The Millennium Group and whether some members believe that violence is increasing in society because there’s greater evil in the world. Terribly tone deaf bit of dialogue.
• The family friend’s kid, of course, didn’t actually kill his wife. Instead, she was a victim of the Big Woodsman (which is a pretty wonderful name for a serial killer), who was talking the woman in the opening, too. In keeping with Millennium’s emphasis on gore this season, we get a pretty explicit description of how the wife was killed: The Big Woodsman cut out her larynx, but left her alive and bleeding, so she couldn’t speak at all, could only sort of wheeze and die when her husband found her. That—as a thing that might happen to a person, and as a scenario to write—is shockingly horrifying.
• Another moment of great creepiness from the Woodsman comes when he find out what he does: he’s an in-home nurse for the elderly. In one scene, he’s detailing his crimes to an old woman so far gone in dementia that she not only doesn’t remember, she doesn’t understand him. That horror happening around unknowing people reminded me of the American Horror Story scene when the ghost of the maid stands right next to the house’s new owners as they make out.
• The Big Woodsman is working with the killer who’s been taking pictures of Frank’s family. For all of his insight, all of his intuition about how people and the world work, his sense in recent episodes of something supernatural, Frank completely fails to see the real, tangible, human threat that’s stalking him and his family. And he fails to see that it’s about to strike when they return home to Seattle. Frank and Jordan go to get the car, while Catherine waits for the bags. When Frank comes back, she’s gone. Disappeared. Abducted.
• Smash cut to black. That’s the end of Season 1 and one hell of a months-long cliffhanger.

Millennium Season 1 Episode 21
Words in the Opening Credits: Wait. Worry. Who Cares?

• Another TV show using a tea-life disaster/tragedy for plot fodder. In this case, the Chernobyl disaster. I’ve had mixed reactions to this in the past—sometimes it’s really bothered me, other times (usually due to historical distance) it’s felt less problematic. In this case, it doesn’t bother me, but it’s been so long since Chernobyl. I wonder if I would have felt differently if I had seen the episode when it aired?
• Anyway, this episode posits that Chernobyl was caused by a legendary Russian boogeyman, Yaponchik. (There was a Russian organized crime figure with that name, but Google doesn’t immediately turn up a legend under that name.) Yaponchik eventually shows up in the U.S., killing his way towards a religious relic.
• Breaking again from the Bible, the opening quote comes from the Book of Habbakuk, the 8th book of the Hebrew Bible. It goes up tomorrow.
• Frank and a Moscow PD (operating in the U.S.? Really?) cop are working the case together. This is a required element of any cop show dealing with an ethnic subculture, right? We always have to have a cop that’s a member of that subculture to both interpret it for the gringos and also to have some conflicted loyalties that we can then tease as a source of potential uncertainty or betrayal. You can be sure that every single cliched note of fear of The Other is played in this episode.
• This episode was just no good. Between the cliche just noted, the slow pace, the relatively unthreatening menace of Yaponchik, and the lack of a clear connection to the more interesting plot hinted at a few episodes ago, there’s very little to like here.

Millennium Season 1 Episode 20
Words in the Opening Credits: Wait. Worry. Who Cares?

• After two engrossing episodes, we return to the old Millennium formula: the serial killer of the week. In a somewhat interesting twist, this subject hasn’t actually killed a human yet and Frank is racing to stop him.
• At a North Dakota horse farm, a woman takes her horse into a barn where it gets very spooked. She should be spooked, too, since there’s a man in the barn with a cattle prod. He shocks her and pulls out a knife. Cut to credits.
• This episode’s quote is an awfully fitting one, from Nietzsche. It goes up on Monday.
• As often happens when Frank arrives on the scene, the local cops don’t really want his help. They think they’re dealing with an isolated case. Frank points out that there have been 21 horse attacks in the region. “We’re witnessing the birth of a psycho-sexual killer,” he says, noting that they still have time to prevent him.
• Along with being back to serial killers, we’re also back to the bodily-functions-obsessed details. Having power over a human for the first time “excited and terrified him,” says Frank. In the stall next to where the injured woman was found, the proto-killer has killed the horse and masturbated due to the excitement.
• This episode is sort of a class on the development of this kind of sexual killer. Frank details the stages that this man is going through, from being just a strange guy to a full-blown killer. He moves through fantasies, confronting and accepting himself, escalating his behavior, all the way to killing. Which, in some ways, is pretty darn interesting. But in how it’s executed here, it just doesn’t quite enthrall. It’s a slow chase between Frank and the killer, but also between the killer and his own nature. Which sounds way more interesting, when I describe it that way.
• It feels odd to be back to serial killers. This episode was broadcast in production order, but I wonder if it was always planned for the 20th episode? Perhaps they couldn’t fit it in earlier in the season, or maybe it was intended as a palette cleanser before the final pair of episodes which, as I recall, return to the more apocalyptic, mystical concerns that will come to dominate Season 2.

Millennium Season 1 Episode 19
Words in the Opening Credits: Wait. Worry. Who cares?

• Another terrific episode, so dense with information and action and portent.
• In the parking lot of a suburban supermarket, a grungy-looking kid approaches a businessman and speaks: “I, Samael, bound by his will, command you depart.” The man seems to recognize the kid. The kid then raises a gun and shoots him, though Frank, who’s just run into the lot, sees it as a bolt of lightning. (Though Samael is an archangel, his Wikipedia entry is interesting reading: he’s not clearly good or evil.)
• Tomorrow’s opening quote is from Charles Manson.
• The investigation begins four days earlier with a ritualistic crime, a person killed on an altar. Frank is asked to come back to consult. Even though he says he’s not ready, Catherine convinces him that he has to return to work.
• As the investigation proceeds, a man kills a babysitter in broad daylight. When caught, the knife used to kill the babysitter turns out to have been used to kill the man on the altar. The man’s attorney (fantastically smarmy, in a 90s big glasses, big lapels, shaggy hair kind of way) turns out to be the businessman we saw killed by Samael in the opening.
• Too many coincidences. Things are converging and someone is pulling strings. Another Millennium Group consultant is called onto the case without Frank and Peter’s knowledge, evidence disappears, eye witnesses suddenly can’t recognize the killer, bloodstained jackets turn up clean.
• In one instance, the killer’s fingerprints have been wiped from a murder weapon that’s already in the evidence locker. When Frank asks why, another Millennium Group consultant replies, “Most people would be asking ‘how’?” Which is the exact difference between Frank and almost everyone else in the world of Millennium. His quest is one of understanding, of meaning, not of simple mechanics.
• This yearning for knowledge appears again when Frank becomes convinced that the lawyer—Alistair Pepper—is involved in the strangeness. Pepper offers Frank a job at his firm as an investigator. Pepper promises that he can keep Frank’s family safe, make the killer plead guilty, answer Frank’s every question. To which Frank simply asks “why?” Pepper smirks: “Except that one.” Which is, of course, the only question Frank really cares about.
• Later, when Pepper again tries to tempt Frank, Frank says “You’ve come to me before.” In different guises, of course, but Frank recognizes that there’s something inside Pepper that endures. Frank seems to literally be understanding Pepper to be a demon, the Devil.
• Which means we’re completely in a magical world now. For most of the season, the world was largely composed of logic and evidence, proof and rational understanding, but after the last episode, reality is now supernatural.
• The chase that brings Frank to the opening scene is through the supermarket, trying to catch the kid who reveals himself to be Samael. In that supermarket, Frank sees the kid, Pepper, Lucy Butler (from the last episode). There’s a clear sense that forces are gathering around Frank, that he’s important to them. He has an intimation of that happening but isn’t certain.
• After Samael kills Pepper, Frank catches him. While interrogating him, Frank delivers the line that sums up his entire character: “All along, my question has never been how or who, but ‘why’?”