Resident Evil – Episode 2 “The Devil You Know” Recap & Review

The Devil You Know

Episode 2 of Resident Evil returns to that cliffhanger, as Jade jumps to her doom into the horde of zombies. She lands hard on the roof of a car but somehow survives without breaking both her legs. With barely a scratch on her, she proceeds to stand up and sprint. Thankfully, some deus ex machina saves the day – again – as an armored car breaks through and Jade bags a lift from the driver.

Jade promises this survivor to help him get away from Umbrella. Unfortunately he’s attacked by approaching zombies. However, this also gives Jade time to drive this car herself deep into a cave. This comes out into another settlement, in Dover, this time with Jade donning her hood and evading contact from the authorities who are on patrol. Her target is a contact known as Barry.

When Jade shows up at his door though, she learns Barry is out. Her only point of contact here is Melinda, his wife. She points out that Umbrella are all over the city with cameras and patrols. She’s pretty happy about that though, pointing out that the place has been completely free of infection since then. It turns out this stronghold is actually in Dover.

Jade manages to call Arjun, who pleads with her to get Across the Channel to Calais somehow. It’s still dangerous but apparently France is “brotherhood” territory.

Melinda overhears the call and everything goes awry. It turns out Barry is not away for work after all. He’s actually chained up in the bathroom as he’s infected. Jade demands Melinda’s help. In exchange for keeping her secret, she wants a way out and to cross the channel.

However, the only solution here is to get a notepad that lists Barry’s contacts – which are all inside his pocket. So naturally, Jade conducts a ridiculous mission to take this from Barry. It doesn’t end well. Barry breaks free, charges at Melinda, prompting Jade to kill the zombie.

Jade is completely nonchalant to the whole affair and eventually leaves Melinda to grieve her husband, Barry’s notebook in hand. Jade works to try and get a lift over to Calais but unfortunately, Baxter shows up right in the middle of all this.

In 2022, Billie is still alive and jokes how she’s “not a dog person anymore.” She has a pretty nasty bite up on her shoulder, and Wesker soon shows at the lab to direct traffic. He demands Jade apply pressure to the wound and take her sister away. As for Wesker, he scrambles all the CCTV footage and intends to hide what’s happened in the lab.

Protecting his girls, he puts blood over him and makes it out like he was the one who stopped the mutated dog. Here, we’re introduced to our Umbrella CEO, Evelyn Marcus (take a shot every time she mentions her wife or family!)

Wesker warns that the virus has side effects and after what happened in Tijuana. Evelyn ignores all that and decides to move production across to their main HQ so they can keep an eye on the virus’ production. Evelyn also mentions her wife, Diana, whom she’s happily living with.

Anyway, Wesker hides Billie’s bite and tries to get her patched up. The infection is clearly spreading. As for Wesker, he injects himself with his serum back at the lab.

Jade meanwhile, finds a hacker guy at school called Simon, and together they research the Tijuana incident. It would appear that Umbrella are keeping some pretty big secrets, which naturally leads her to speak to Angel Rubio, an investigative reporter.

Angel points out how Umbrella are covering up the truth and how it all started with someone being bitten. And we know exactly how this goes, given Billie has also been bitten.

As the episode closes out, Billie heads out to chase down her dog, but in doing so ends up scratches a jogger who isn’t sure if she’s really the pet’s owner. This is the beginning of the end, as we have a completely inappropriate pop song playing as Billie begins to turn.

The Episode Review

It’s actually shocking how far removed this show is from the games. With the exception of the Resident Evil name and Umbrella being a shady company, this has absolutely nothing to do with it. Hell, they can’t even bring themselves to call the zombies what they are. Instead, we get them called “zeros” for some reason.

The plot itself is layered with deus ex machina, contrivances and annoying actions that are simply here to keep the plot moving forward. Why is Wesker hiding Billie’s bite? And why is she left unattended? We know that Wesker is aware of the incident in Tijuana so surely he should be keeping her isolated, right?

Meanwhile, the whole drama in 2036 is just… bad. Jade isn’t exactly a likable character and somehow she survives a massive drop onto the hood of a car without even a scratch on her. She doesn’t even limp either, she literally sprints away without a care in the world. But then the survivalist instincts she has – that have kept her alive this long – go completely out the window when she decides to get close and take Barry’s notebook.

This sort of sloppy character writing is disappointing, but again as I said in the last recap, this show has been written by people with barely any experience writing screenplays and it’s certainly showing. Let’s hope the rest of the show improves.