Emergence – Season 1 Episode 10 Recap & Review

The Hunt For Piper

Out of all the shows stopping for a winter break, Emergence feels like the one that needed it the most. While I’m sure this series has been mapped out from the beginning, Emergence has often given off vibes that it’s winging it. Between the different antagonistic threats, the questionable plot twists and eventual reveal last time out about the androids, Emergence finally feels like a show that’s settled down this week and focused on one plot, bringing with it a lot more clarity around the direction of the show going forward.

Episode 10 of Emergence begins with Jo teaming up with Agent Brooks, intent on finding Benny and Piper. With her missing now for 8 hours, we skip ahead again 4 weeks after a fruitless raid to see Jo continuing to look tirelessly into finding Piper. In the middle of the night, she speaks to Mia who sadly mutters, “She must be so scared”, before Jo lies down and reassures her daughter.

In the morning, Chris tries his best to get Jo’s mind off the Piper crisis, before Agent Brooks arrives and gives her the bad news – he’s being taken off the case. Even worse, Jo learns that a detective in the Bronx has a body that matches Piper’s description. Picking up the phone, our police chief takes a deep breath and prepares herself for the worst. As harrowing as the photo is that she receives, the body is not Piper’s.

Just as all hope seems lost, at home that evening Jo’s TV begins blinking with hypnotically psychedelic lights. Realizing this may be Piper communicating, her renewed vigor helps spur her on to see Agent Brooks the next day. After explaining what happened, she convinces him to investigate the power surge. As it turns out, it was actually a satellite signal – a signal that originates from Pennsylvania. With the satellite now destroyed, Jo and Brooks hit the road while Chris holds down the fort.

In Pennsylvania, Jo and Brooks head to a diner where they learn the owner actually saw Benny, who came in and asked for directions. As they sit down with him, they notice he’s acting shifty and eventually a chase ensues, resulting in Charlie hit by a car. Blinking out and showing himself to be an android, he eventually scrambles away in a car, leaving our pair of officers scrambling for clues.

As they start to piece the evidence together, Jo deduces that Benny is an android and realizes that anyone could be too, hiding in plain sight. After testing each other, they get a call about the car while Alex and Chris discover a strange, electromagnetic orb onboard a boat. Back at the station, Chris reveals he left his phone aboard and they remotely track it down from the station.

Back home, Mia uses an old frequency radio to broadcast a message for Piper, who seemingly responds in binary, while Jo catches up with the android, bleeding out on a table and unable to reveal the location of Piper. As the robot takes its last artificial breath, Jo uses some scalpels and removes the tracker in his neck. Upon doing so, she discovers a unique GPS location and they head off together to explore.

Once there, she catches up with Benny who apologizes and explains he had to take Piper. Our little robot child then comes forward from the shadows and explains the androids need help, trapping Jo inside the barn and driving off, where we leave things wide open for the remainder of the season going forward.

Emergence seems to have settled down a little during this episode and the better pacing allows the story beats to finally breathe and progress a little more organically. This late in the game though it feels like a final push to bring those audience numbers back up but for me, Emergence’s run has felt like a mish-mash of ideas that haven’t always gelled well together. There’s influences of A.I., Humans, Lost and even Stranger Things here but the show feels reluctant to fall too far into any of these categories, subsequently feeling lukewarm in both drama and sci-fi categories.

Still, the mystery should be enough to keep you coming back for more but I have my doubts over whether this will be renewed for a second season or not.

Emergence is available to watch on ABC Network. Feel free to click here to check this show out!