The Rig – Season 2 Episode 5 Recap & Review

Episode 5

Episode 5 of The Rig season 2 starts with Bremner holding Rose and Magnus up at gunpoint. Fulmer notices this, while Harish informs Easter what’s going on. Bremner believes that he’s joining the “winning side” and with all the guns gone from storage too, it would appear that Bremner may have been planning this for a while.

Lennox finds her permissions revoked from Pictor immediately, while York is obviously struggling to get through to Bremner for obvious reasons.

Cat finds herself with no other option but to keep Kasey comfortable as the hospitals are full and she can’t be moved. Cat tells Hutton that she initially set out to find her of course and has now done that. Whether she’ll go further to take out the company is still unknown.

Hutton shows to see Lennox but she more than holds her own in the face of scrutiny surrounding the missing log. It does the trick to get through to her all the same, especially when she pops into the tent and notices Cat and Kasey together. Lennox realizes what poor conditions everybody is under and decides to make some calls to help them out.

Elsewhere, Magnus and the others do find their way back to the Stac in the dark (off-screen of course) and show to try and figure out how to handle this Bremner situation. Magnus thinks they need to use the element of surprise to get the jump on him. However, they arrive too late as Bremner finds out that the data drive is actually in the lab.

In order to cause some chaos, Bremner gives a comms announcement to send everyone down to the subsea module. He does so to make sure they’re alone, and with the remaining crew onboard gone, it also gives Heather and Askel time alone to work with the signal and the samples of the Entity. They’re not in the lab though but actually in what looks like the med-bay for some reason. And they don’t have their power shut down either.

In the wake of this, Magnus and the others do get the jump on Bremner, watching him on the cameras and figuring out his location.

Unfortunately, the blast doors are shut down in the carnage and the floors locked from one another. This is a particular problem because although Rose and Cameron make it to the lab, the actual data card is down in Ore Processing. Cameron lied to buy them time and now it has backfired.

Bremner manages to switch the power so only the emergency protocols are active, and that means all the blast doors active and those personnel inside locked for the time being. With the back-ups on, it remains a tense affair in the hallways as Magnus and Fulmer work to try and hunt Bremner before it’s too late.

Bremner heads down to the lab and searches for Cameron and Rose. He doesn’t get anywhere but literally seconds later, Fulmer and Magnus arrive. They believe they’re in the clear, unaware that their foe is lurking just round the corner. Fulmer and Magnus open up the lab doors, thanks to some tinkering with the vents outside, and are all joined together.

Thankfully, the lab is really close to where Ore Processing is, and the door is open too. The gang head on inside, where Cameron brings out the data drive and hands it over to Rose. Just as he does, the power comes back on again.

Heather and Askel are oblivious to everything going on outside the doors though, and as they talk, they discuss the signal and the sample. It would appear the signal is not one of anger but actually a cry for help. This would explain how they managed to get back off the ice; using a signal to guide them to the Stac once more.

Meanwhile, Lennox calls in some favours and brings in some medication for everyone. Not sure why she didn’t do this before but she hands over a USB drive that has all the data on and Hutton is going with Lennox to resolve some “unfinished business”.

With the Subsea Module stuck for now, the rest of the crew end up in the loading dock. Bremner holds Harish up at gunpoint and bargains with the others.

Unfortunately in the scuffle to try and stop him, Rose ends up shot in the stomach. Bremner gets away with the data drive, but the others are shocked as it appears Rose has passed away.

The Episode Review

So the penultimate episode of this season sees Rose’s life hanging in the balance, potentially dead but likely just passed out from the loss of blood. However, we do see that Lennox isn’t such a bad guy after all, despite working for a company profiting off mining natural resources and just generally making people’s lives miserable. I’m still not sure exactly how Lennox didn’t pull some strings beforehand to help out those in the tents, given it would have helped Pictor’s public image, but there we go.

Instead, we get some drama over in the Stac to keep things ticking by, this time a cat and mouse chase with Bremner looking for the data drive. And despite all the power shutting off, I guess it’s lucky that Askel and Heather are not just away from the action but also not in the lab, despite doing laboratory work, but there we go.

The story itself has been pretty contrived and relies heavily on the most basic levels of drama. While better than season 1, that’s definitely not a high bar to hit and at this point, it seems nigh-on impossible to actually resolve everything before the finale.