Silo – Season 1 Episode 5 “The Janitor’s Boy” Recap & Review

The Janitor’s Boy

Episode 5 of Silo begins with Juliette looking through George’s file. There are transcripts of his conversation with the police, along with various documents, but nothing untoward at first glance. Juliette is insure why Holston has hidden all of this.

However, she’s distracted by news filtering in of Deputy Marnes’ death, His body isn’t even cold and Sims is there to announce there’s a new deputy sheriff in Paul Billings who’s coming in to fill the spot. He’s the guy whom Bernard and Sims wanted to take Juliette’s position originally, so naturally there’s a level of distrust there.

When Juliette checks over Marnes’ body, she finds a slip of paper with “Doris” circled. After taking it, believing it to be another clue that links back to earlier episodes, she heads back to the management group (Sims, Paul and Bernard) with the latter deciding that they should do a double-funeral for both Marnes and Jahns.

Bernard deduces that they can spin the story of them being forbidden lovers. Bernard also believes a “Race to the Top” could be a good way of celebrating Ruth’s tenure as Mayor, despite her ironically hating this idea while in office.

The funeral goes ahead, with each person taking a bite of an apple in this makeshift orchard and throwing it in alongside the bodies. When Juliette returns to her office, she finds Hank staring at the Holding 3 door. He got an invite to the burial but he decided not to go with everyone else. Martha and Shirley sent him up to check on Juliette and make sure she’s okay.

She confirms to him that she is, but Sandy comes up with a proposition. She’ll help Juliette get what she wants in exchange for figuring out who killed Marnes. And not via the official channels either. Sandy knows how things work and warns that things could get disorderly quickly, to get Billings in and to frame some poor innocent guy for these murders.

Juliette and Billings head out to try and get some answers. After speaking to Charles Martin, Juliette ditches Billings and heads back to see Patrick Kennedy. As we know, Doris was his wife before she passed away and there’s no love lost between him and Marnes.

With the sheriff badge in hand, Juliette breaks in and decides to look around. While we don’t see this on-screen, we do learn later on that there’s planted evidence in his place. As a result, Juliette decides to find Patrick and put him “somewhere safe”.

Billings returns to Judicial rather than heading home for lunch, where he finds a guy called Doug is working to be Sims’ shadow. The chatter is cryptic but Billings does return to Juliette and admit where he’s been. Apparently Judicial get reports from people who don’t officially exist but they’ve come up with a name, suggesting Ralf Melby is the guy whom they’re looking at to arrest.

Now, all of this is an elaborate ruse to oust Juliette as a disgrace, having arrested the wrong guy, while the planted evidence in Kennedy’s apartment would be “found” and then him declared the killer. Juliette would then be sent back to Mechanical and things would return to the status quo.

Juliette nods thoughtfully… then decides to arrest Kennedy instead.

Juliette returns and finds Doug outside the building, wanting to try and get in. Juliette susses out that he’s the man responsible for planting evidence and she gives chase through the Silo.

Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done given it occurs right in the midst of the Race to the Top. Doug and Juliette spiral down until the latter ends up hanging on for dear life. She manages to stop Doug, breaking his finger in the process. Juliette is thankfully saved and she returns to her office.

Doug returns to Sims, with the latter deciding that he’s going to be his shadow from this moment forward. He knows the guy has made a lot of mistakes, especially with George Wilkins and now Marnes. After reciting the words… Sims pushes Doug off the edge of the Silo.

Juliette heads to see Judge Meadows with news of what occurred between Marnes and Jahns, including how Doug was on the run and took his own life with his arrest imminent. Meadows is incredulous over this but realizes it will quell the conspiracy theories and should be enough to put the issue to bed for good.

Back at the office, Juliette learns that Sandy has been reassigned, voluntarily, so she can be closer to her family. She actually didn’t know that Juliette would solve the Marnes murder so quickly – if at all – but she gives a surprise compliment to Juliette for her good work. Sandy also points out that she’s glad to be going back down, given she feels she’s being watched.

Juliette heads back to see Martha that night to catch up. She knows Juliette was hanging from the railing earlier on and urges her to speak up. Juliette won’t, wanting to protect her, but she does point out that there’s nothing in the Wilkins file.

Martha also points out that there are two big mysteries regarding the Pact. First of all, they stipulate that one can’t mechanize the way they go up and down in the Silo and two, there’s no magnification beyond a certain power.

Juliette believes that she’s managed to gain Bernard’s trust after solving these two murders, and wants to use Judicial and management to figure out what happened to George Wilkins, properly. In order to do that, she needs to use the right bait and that comes from the Pez dispenser.

The Episode Review

There’s clearly more than meets the eye here and Juliette is getting dangerously close to the snakes in Judicial, who are desperate to take a bite and slowly grind her down. I don’t for one second believe Bernard is trustworthy, nor is Sims for that matter as we see him get rid of Doug after messing up and flying too close to the sun.

This episode does show that Judicial have clearly framed people for murder before, while Billings is still a bit of a wildcard at the moment and it’s difficult to know if he’s really trustworthy or not.

The series does do a good job of building up the tension though and the mystery has been palpable and well written through much of this first season. The ending certainly hints that the upcoming episodes are going to tighten the screw, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens next!