Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Episode 1.04: Parallels and Interiors

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Parallels and Interiors

"Monarch" reaches its lowest point yet with "Parallels and Interiors." Out on the Alaskan ice, Cate, Kentaro, May, and Shaw flee from the Frost Vark. They evade the monster but not before May injures herself. Kentaro exits the quartet in search of a structure he spotted earlier during the plane ride. The other three continue on towards a light on the horizon but only end up back at the crash site where they started. That's when the ice-spewing Titan attacks again. Kentaro, meanwhile, stumbles around in the cold. He's haunted by memories of his father and his first meeting with May, a year prior on the night his art show opened.

The episode takes its title from Kentaro's in-universe gallery debut. (Which features fractured images of people's faces projected onto three dimensional structures of some kind.) He refers to the name as "pretentious" but that doesn't stop "Monarch" from attempting to grab some headier ideas for itself. Director Julian Holmes literalizes the title, by shifting the episode largely between the vast Alaskan tundra and the interiors of various rooms in Kentaro's flashback. The story goes even more interior in its last third as Kentaro, lost on the ice, begins to hallucinate visions of his father, present events and his memories blending into each other. Considering the show has struggled thus far to make Kentaro a compelling lead, making such a big leap into his inner mind comes off as hopelessly ambitious. "Monarch" has not displayed the depth necessary to pull something like this off. 

If Kentaro strikes the viewer as bland, at least he's not actively unlikable the way May is. We learn these two met when she stepped in front of a poster for his art show, just as he was taking a photo of it. She then asked him to delete the picture, taking him for a possible creep or something. Not exactly a charming meet-cute! The episode struggles to make their first night out compelling after that, suggesting that the air of mystery (or, more accurately, vagueness) around May is obscuring not much at all. In the present day scene, she falls through some ice into freezing water, slowly beginning to catch hypothermia. Which sucks, sure, but "Monarch" does the character no favors by having her constantly complain to everyone before and after this moment. Kiercy Clemmons, given nothing else to work with, plays the character as bitchy and moody. 

Somehow the show's least promising subplot involves a Monarch scientist, stationed at "Outpost 47," picking up some distressing radiation signals. This is a more obvious nod towards "The Thing," that was probably inevitable in a show that features Kurt Russell wandering around a frozen landscape. While Carpenter's classic really made you feel the freezing isolation of such an event, "Monarch" can't capture the same atmosphere. In fact, you never feel like the characters are that inconvenienced by the blowing wind, plummeting temperatures, and rough terrain they are stranded in. They hike freely over the rocky hills and ice-covered ground without a single bead of moisture on their faces. Even after May's injury or Kentaro collapsing in the snow, "Parallels and Interiors" completely fails to illustrate how challenging and life-threatening this setting is. This does a lot to deflate any tension the episode could've had. 

With little else going for it, "Parallels and Interiors" at least has the good sense to throw in some giant monster action. The Frost Vark continues to hassle the heroes, tunneling under the ice, absorbing heat sources, and spewing freezing breath. Russell's rock steady charisma makes Shaw's fight against the beastie the highlight of this episode. (Even if it's completely impossible to believe that this guy is in his 90s, as the previous episode implied.) Still, Russell attempting to blow up a sci-fi monstrosity only makes up a few minutes of an otherwise tedious hour. [5/10]