One of the biggest complaints when it comes to theHaloseries so far is that there simply hasn’t been enough action. The television show that is based on the shooter video game was expected to have all kinds of combat through the series' first run. However, so far there have been two episodes that have actually had any real fighting betweenthe UNSC and the Covenant.HaloEpisode 6 goes back to not having all that much action involved but it does replace some of the downtime with a bit of intrigue and on the whole, it suits the episode very well.
In fact,Halohas largely decided to ignore the inner workings of the UNSC for some more heavy-handed “they’re evil” scenes that show all the people involved in the situation are bad guys, but just sort of Batman villain bad guys. That includes Halsey who has mostly been shown off to be some sort of lone ranger when it comes to some of the evil deeds she did to make the Spartans. This episode colors in between quite a few lines to show just how evil some very basic rules and regulations can become in the wrong hands.
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The sixth episode ofHalopicks upwhere the previous installment left off. The UNSC is picking up the pieces after The Covenant attack and one of those pieces just happens to be what certainly seems like a sleeper agent in the form The Blessed One. It took six episodes but the audience finally learns that this character is indeed named Makee and she is once again acting as though she was a prisoner against her will of The Covenant. This particular act is similar to the one she used to take over the UNSC ship and wipe out everyone on board.
However, this timeThe Covenant plantis having to keep up her act just a little bit longer as she’s pretending that she “escaped” from the alien ship and she’s now finally safe. It’s one particular well done detail that not everyone on the ship trusts Makee at all. In fact, her guard desperately wants Master Chief to understand that she shouldn’t be trusted. It would have been easy to write the show so that the people were so ignorant in their own worldview that of course, a human escaping from the aliens had to be a victim. It seems a bit more realistic that the UNSC basically trusts no one and therefore are locking Makee away, even if there are some at Reach who have already convinced themselves that she should be recruited and brought into the fold.
At the same time that the humans are dealing with the fallout from the attack of The Covenant when it comes to Makee, there is also the dealing with the fallout by UNSC investigating just what happened and what went wrong. They are all doing a kind of show-trial of Dr. Halsey and her cloning experiments. It’s here where the rather mundane of a disciplinary hearing actually becomes interesting if for no other reason than it’s sort of surprising that the show would add that level of detail when it comes to day-to-day military lives. Theepisode ofHalogoes into rather minute detail in that regard and it works. Perhaps because the series has already showed it has no problems slowing things down for the sake of story.
One of the best parts of the evolution of the show and this episode ofHaloin particular is the relationshipbetween Master Chief and Dr. Halsey. There was a time when he trusted no one as much as he trusted the “good doctor” but his interactions with the artifacts means that he’s started to see the truth of the situation. That led to one of the best scenes of the show so far when he decides he wants to test just how far Cortana will go in order to protect her creator. While the scene is one of those where the audience likely doesn’t really think anyone is in actual danger, it shows off just how angry Master Chief is and in some regards, just how out of control he is.
It’s also the best piece of acting Pablo Schreiber has done in the series to date, and he does it by delivering an anger that is low-key enough that it is indeed hard to detect right off the bat. That means that when he does place Halsey in danger, at first it absolutely feels like a bluff, and then, it doesn’t feel like one at all. The scene also does a very good job ofshowing that Master Chiefis not some idiot who simply knows how to fire a gun. He shows off an understanding of USNC history that fills in his own character a bit more and quite frankly, makes him a bit more likable as he even shows a bit of dry humor.
This episode ofHaloalso does a job of making an interesting juxtaposition of the lack of trust Master Chief now has in Dr. Halsey and the apparent trust he seems to have far too soon when it comes to Makee. It also does show why he wants to trust this person he just met as they do have a bit of a connection. It’s still a bit of an annoyance that he seems to believe what she’s telling him, though he does in later scenes show that the trust is not total.
There is still one problem when it comes toHaloand that’s the fact that it’s still not exactly clear why the artifacts are all that important at all. The visions still seem to mostly be about memory as opposed to really doing anything that would help anyone. But that gap was filled in a bit as well. It’s still not great and that particular part of the story could use a bit more refining, but on the whole, this might have beenthe episode whereHaloreally hit its stride.
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