Moment Of Silence
Episode 2 of The Premise begins with a man named Chase Milbrandt applying for a PR job. Given his history, the interviewer buckles and hires him.
Chase quickly makes a new friend in the form of a guy called Aaron, who shows him around the office.
They play games together, shoot at the gun range in the basement and even drink at the bar together. However, Chase has a dark history. It turns out his daughter was killed thanks to gun violence.
At work, Chase makes an impassioned plea both for and against gun laws, going off on a tirade and impressing his boss. Away from work though, Chase continues to hang with Aaron, who encourages him to go on a hot air balloon ride with him.
Chase struggles to open up, painfully smiling through a family reunion back home. As Aaron embraces his niece, Chase is reminded of what he’s lost.
As Chase begins to unravel, he encourages Aaron to leave work and go hiking. He does no such thing though, watching from afar as Chase prepares for a live broadcast.
Quick as a flash though, he suddenly stands up, reaching for something in his coat. The security are on him in a flash, shooting several times and killing the man in cold blood. As Aaron steps over, he notices the item is a picture of his daughter.
The Episode Review
Jon Bernthal is an absolute beast when it comes to portraying mentally damaged characters. Here, he plays a grieving father mourning the loss of his daughter. The entire episode is set-up as a switch and bait, believing Chase is going to gun down the whole office, only to find out he’s just an ordinary guy and struggling with grief.
The shocking climax is something that’s designed to make a statement, and a larger message about gun violence across the US. As a Brit, I can’t begin to talk about this, given I haven’t grown up with these laws, but from a personal perspective the “right to bear arms” has been completely misconstrued by some people.
Still, this episode works a lot more effectively than the first, with very little comedy and a clever inclusion of violent videogames into the discourse. This helps to make for a really topical and important chapter. While “If Anything Happens I Love You” is still a lot stronger and poignant, this is a much better episode compared to the tepid first chapter.
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Episode Rating
(3.5)
It did exactly what it intended.
To make a watcher stop. No way was this episode intending to make one laugh or bring to groups around a table for an alls fair in love or war discussion. It felt like an opportunity to introduce an audience to how a shooting incident feels. Unsure what the outcome will be, harrowing and tense. I don’t have my own experience to work with here but one of parents. And that felt like everything they described. The ending for me was it’s finesse. At the end when guns are drawn someone will very likely die. All the arguments in the world wont make that any less true. The true brilliance of this episode was to tell the punchline before it ended. A line from Chase about the safety of the building and the staff attitude told us all we needed to know. The Aristotle underline, a very simple tragedy. He just needed to prove his argument with one single moment. He is so determined to meet it, he’s more than happy to die. The fatal flaw? It may have changed absolutely nothing.
I agree with the comment prior to mine in some degrees. The first episode shed light on dual takes from each side benefiting one another, while one man gets fifteen years of freedom, the other now will suffer possibly another fifteen of humiliation for trying to help despite not being the person he said he was. They are truly not comparable when it comes to being in prison and innocent. I did like seeing both sides and an upbeat mood to the episode while a serious note continues to keep you open minded. The second episode left me a little she’ll shocked. At first I thought about the fact that if he had a gun, multiple lives were saved, but then we find out he does not have a gun and a man died. It felt a little driven towards anti gun beliefs, but I did like that they ending gave me two sides to see.
This was a story, not an essay. But it actually did contain essays expressing both sides – as part of the story. The ending was like a good M. Night Shyamalan ending – where you suddenly view the whole story in a different light. The acting was terrific.
I honestly think it’s hilarious that I see the exact opposite of everyone who seems to be blogging about this show. The first episode forced you to laugh and face two sides of an issue – the injustice faced by black people AND the invalidation felt by many white people who would consider themselves to be helping. It shat on everybody, praised both sides’ efforts at morality, and left everybody in the room uncomfortable…. Episode two failed to do that, and miserably. I had high hopes of seeing another pair of polarized groups being empathized with and put in their place for their audacity to forego nuance, and instead I got a petty and incomllete jab at pro-gun culture with no attempt at forcing a grin through my grimace. I am both upset that Novak might be failing to produce the abrasive social satire hinted at in the first episode and that everybody watching seems to be completely missing the utterly basic and laid-out point of dual responsibility and fault in favor of their political feels and wokesies.