Gehenna

When human ashes are found in a public garden in San Francisco, his friend Peter Watts contacts Frank and asks him to travel to meet him. Before traveling, he installs security lamps to increase the protection of Catherine and Jordan at home. He joins Watts in the investigation and meets his friend Mike Atkins, who invited him to join the Millennium Group and is worried about the polaroid photos of Catherine and Jordan. Frank tells him that he received other photos in Seattle and Mike concludes the perpetrator wants to terrify him in the moment and is not a menace for now. Soon they identify one of the victims as Eedo Bolow, the son of Russian immigrants. His parents give his last letter in Russian to Frank and his father tells how Eedo changed his behavior when he joined the company Gehenna. Frank returns to Seattle and proceeds his investigation of Gehenna. Soon he finds that the company has imported chemicals and weapons from Russia and China, but Mike is investigating the facility in San Francisco alone.

"Gehenna" is a weird episode of "Millennium". The plot about the evil behind the Gehenna is difficult to understand since the reason why the sadistic killer cremates his victims is not clear. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Gehenna"

Maybe even more so than the first episode of "Millennium", creator/writer Chris Carter and director David Nutter begin the second episode as if it could be an episode of "The X-Files".

We see a bunch of young adults joy-riding and dropping acid. They head to some abandoned buildings and isolate one of the youths, taunting him, chasing him with cars, and causing him to run into a decayed building for protection, whereupon he is attacked by a figure that perhaps via his hallucinations is part man, part gargoylish-monster.

Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) is called down to the San Francisco area to investigate, and eventually it seems that the case has to do with a cult of some kind.

But, in keeping with the different pacing and more complex multiple threads that ran through the first episode, Carter takes an intriguing turn as he defocuses the plot a bit and hints at more supernatural religious interpretation of the events (suggested by the title of episode as well), which emphasizes what seems to be the crux of Black's "Millennium Group" (we have to guess a bit at this point)--it seems that they're a diverse collection of experts who are investigating portents of the apocalypse. Later on in the episode there are some mostly implied philosophical points made about the "face of evil".

You could make a parallel with this theme and the "mythos" storyline (the overarching alien cover-up government conspiracy stuff) of "The X-Files", but the difference here is that Black's group seems to be at the top of the hierarchy--it's just that as an audience, we don't quite know what's going on yet. Another difference is that at least at this point, we don't know just how literally these apocalyptic ideas and themes will come to fruition.

In addition to all of the normal elements that are very well done here, this more complex multiple-episode bridging storyline entices you to watch more, and that's one of the major goals in creating a successful television show, which has clearly been done just a couple episodes into "Millennium".

Moves from Seattle to San Francisco but retains the same dreary, rainy and dark atmosphere. I'm expecting this to be standard for the show.

Something about that neighbour popping up all the time has me on alert. I wonder if he's involved in the stalking of Frank's family. He's weird.

The advice given to Frank that "don't worry, your family's fine" - sure.... ok. I guess he has definitely gotten over his paralysis about them being in danger and is now pretty ok about ditching them when he needs to. I guess he is off saving the world from the "bad men" and his wife understands that. Maybe he should have bought his daughter a vicious guard dog rather than that cute puppy.

Zero humour in this episode, where the pilot had a couple of jokes. Makes it a heavy watch. Unless you find the idea of a telemarketing death cult funny, which I guess it is. But I'm not really expecting humour from this show so that's ok.

Being microwaved & excessively cremated Is a pretty nasty way to go. That was a cool idea.

Using search.net to locate a company called Gehenna seemed a bit silly and convenient. Was the monster trying to get caught? Why not just call it Evil Death Cult Incorporated with the slogan "we stockpile biological weapons to destroy the world" while you're at it.

We get an indication that the show may become heavily involved in biblical prophecies and writings. It's easy to zone out during those kinds of passages.

The Creepy face Of the "monster" towards the end as he stares through the glass was genuinely disconcerting. That was well done. Is that Satan?

The episode brings up the idea of evil, whether it's a malevolent spirit that can possess and take hold of anybody, or whether it's man-made and the product of "cold hearts and weak minds". Frank seems to be leaning towards the evil spirits angle, saying that he doesn't know if the "bad man" can be caught. Perhaps he believes the EVIL will simply move on and find another vessel to work through. Makes his quest pretty impossible. I wonder how he'll come to cope with that idea.

I'm still not completely on top of The Millennium Group and what they're trying to do, but I'm hopeful this will be explained in due course. I wonder how much they know or what they think about the impending apocalypse and how they plan to deal with it.

Anyway, good atmosphere, enjoyable enough watch but nothing earth-shattering or super amazing.

Although the character had not been defined yet, Bob Wilde is a man (Ricardo Clement) who leads an odd Cult based on a Russian company that operates a Phone Bank scam. There is more to this cult than we immediately see, and more about it's the leader than we know.

This was before the "Legion" arc that started with "The Judge" (Marshall Bell in s1e4), but it ties into that arc in a menacing way.

Members of this "company" have ended up dead, they are mostly young Russian immigrants operating the credit card scam. If you do well with this company, you rise in the Cult. If not, you become fodder for a horrid creature that Frank Black is able to see with his "Vision". There are ritualistic elements shown here, involving the use of Hallucinogenic Drugs, and the Victim always vanishes - Mostly, except for things like fingernails and ashes.

But where do the Bodies go? Imagine a gigantic Industrial Microwave Oven. Frank's friend and MillenniuM Mentor "Mike Atkins" (Robin Gammell) tried to do a little detective-work, and almost gets to find out how it is to be nuked like so much uWave popcorn.

The reason I review this episode today - Is that something like this is happening in our country right now, attacks on our Election process from within and without, and nobody seems to care that much about an infringement from a foreign power, they even applaud the efforts.

And although Jesus never physically returned to this planet on the year 2000 (or 2001, the real MillenniuM), this episode is a proper prophesy for future events. Remember this was 1996, 20 years ago. And the author of this prophesy? Chris Carter wrote it.

The idea of Legion must have been in his mind, and I think Carter mostly was setting that up here. Franks "Gift" allows him to see what the Killer sees, when the Killer is human. But this episode deals a Joker into the deck that tosses the concept, "What if it is not a man, doing these things?" - At which point Franks' Gift falters. And we see evidence of supernatural interference in Human Lives, right at the start of this series.

These ideas are hard to swallow, especially for atheists, even for some believers. Nevertheless, this episode set the tone for a developing story. Personally? Believer or not, the Supernatural should not be dismissed. And Carter has set up these characters as an almost-devil influence. As CS Lewis has always said, the biggest mistakes we can make about the concept of devils, is 1) To Ignore them and 2) To give them too much attention. And this series strikes a sharp middle balance for this idea. And this is not the last episode that deals with Russian Culture in the US, the later 1st season episode "Maranatha" (Which means, "The Lord is Coming Back") Also deftly deals with this culture, the way it was in the Mid- 90's.

Bob Wilde plays "Mabus" in the 3rd season, an entity that has taken control of the MillenniuM Group and is influencing them, even at Peter' Watt's right hand. In "Skull and Bones", we see that he was the reason for the demise of Cheryl Andrews (the great character actress CCH Pounder) as a person named "Homer J Petty". So the question is, is "Homer J Petty" the same person as "Ricardo Clement"? and I think, after watching the whole series from first to last, we can safely say "yes".