Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Episode 1.05: The Way Out

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: The Way Out

After being rescued from the Alaskan tundra, Cate, Kentaro, May, and Lee are delivered right to Monarch. While Shaw is held captive by the agency, Cate, Kentaro and May are freed. The trio is given a flight back to San Francisco. There, Cate meets up again with her mother, Caroline. Still determined to locate their missing father, Cate and Kentaro sneak into the area of the city still left in ruins by Godzilla and the M.U.T.O.'s battle the year before. This brings back painful memories of what Cate lived through during Godzilla's march through the city, how she lost the woman she loved and the students entrusted to her care. 

“Legacy of Monsters” favoring a hit-the-ground-running style of pacing means we are five episodes into the series and just know learning anything about Cate's actual backstory. We discover that she was a school teacher and was about to move in with a woman named Dani before G-Day. And, apparently, she was not faithful to her during the relationship either. This suggest why Cate carries so much guilt around. She blames herself for the kids who died under her watch, the latest in a long line of personal failures she can't forgive herself for. As much as she blames her father for abandoning her and her mom, Cate feels like she is no better. Boy, I bet we would've been a little more invested in everything this character had done up to this point had we actually known some of this information beforehand!

By the way, Cate's flashbacks to the events of 2014's “Godzilla” are the only giant monster action in this whole episode. Instead, the focus turns towards some decent world-building. While at the airport, May comments on an advertisement for luxury, kaiju-proof bunkers. The military has quarantined off the destroyed parts of the city, supposedly to discourage looting. (Though one assumes there's a deeper reason for this.) All of this shows the consequences of humans sharing the world with giant monsters now. While the Legendary films have focused mostly on the Titan-on-Titan combat, one of the benefits of a TV show is the chance to give us a more ground-level perspective on these events. Of course entire cities would be ruined in the wake of a kaiju grudge match. Obviously, capitalism would have purely mercenary response to these events. 

While “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” is clearly trying to build up its world and cast, I'm still having trouble caring all that much. Revealing that Cate cheated on her girlfriend does not make her the most likable person. Meanwhile, the show is especially struggling to make May an interesting character. We discover here that she has some sort of double identity and secrets of her own. This kind of writing – that teases viewers along with the promise of eventually revealing something relevant – is exactly what I hate about most modern genre television. It doesn't help that Kiersey Clemons is so clearly checked out by this point. She seems practically asleep in more than a few scenes. Which is really problem when the episode's emotional center revolves around her calming Cate during a PTSD flashback.

Ultimately, “The Way Out” is not one of those episodes that prove all that satisfying on their own. Instead, this is an hour devoted largely to setting up future plot points. Shaw hints at further secrets unknown even to the top officials at Monarch. There's more foreshadowing that some sort of catastrophic event, presumably another Titan emerging, is forthcoming. The heroes are still on the trail of their missing dad. Episodes like this, in-between points on the way to more exciting events, are a big problem when you plot your TV show like a ten hour long movie, instead of engineering each episode to stand on its own. Thus are the perils of modern, serialized television. [5/10]