Gen V Review – S1 Ep 4 aka There’s More Than One Version of the Truth

Gen V Season 1 Episode 4

The Whole Truth

AKA – There’s more than one version of the truth

Or Information is Power

Recap:

We open with light shining into a dark opening. Also, we hear squishy sounds.  It’s the hole in the guard’s brain that Emma had burrowed through in the last episode. Shetty is inspecting the damage and talking to Dr. Cardosa.  They are trying to figure out what happened.  Shetty calls the dead guard by the wrong name, but Cardosa corrects her.  Shetty orders Cardosa to find Sam or they will all be in trouble.  She uses Cardosa’s pen to pick up a tiny object from the drain in the floor – it’s a small plastic shoe.  When she walks out, the hallway is filled with bodies and blood.  

Andre, Marie, Jordan and Cate are out looking for Emma.  They are exploring a crater in the ground, and Marie finds the tracker that had been attached to Emma’s bag.  They are at a loss.  They don’t know where to look, and they begin arguing.  Marie is blaming Andre for involving Emma at all, Cate is pointing out that they are in over their heads.  In the middle of the arguments, their phones buzz – new rankings are out.  Andre and Marie are first and second, Jordan is still five, and right now the only one worried about rankings.

Emma and Sam have found a place to lie low.  It’s an old drive-in movie place that Sam knew from his childhood.  Emma is lying on a counter, blood-streaked from head to toe.  Emma is starting to react to the night’s events.  “I killed that guy.  . . What if he had kids?”  Sam is not as affected.  He wasn’t a nice guy, he tells Emma.  He adds, “You saved me, Emma. You did.”  Emma wants to look for a phone and call for help.  Sam insists that Luke is the only one who can help them.  Emma quietly confesses that Luke is dead.  Sam refuses to believe her at first, but Emma tells him that Luke killed himself.  Sam yells, punching a popcorn machine, and then himself.  Emma approaches him.  “I’m here, Sam.”  She promises Sam that she won’t leave him.

In the halls of Godolkin, a film crew is recording – it’s Tek Knight.  His show is in the vein of Dateline or Unsolved Mysteries and he has come to Godolkin to find out what happened to Golden Boy. His show is called The Whole Truth.

Tek Knight has a conversation with Shetty in her office.  This is an opportunity to show his powers; he can pick up on physical cues to crack his witnesses, such as a bead of sweat, an increased heartbeat, or adrenaline.  The conversation with Shetty reveals that TekKnight is aware of the Woods, and he knows that Luke killed Brink to try to rescue his brother.  His job is going to be pinning the blame on someone else.  “Find a patsy and destroy their life,” he says.  Shetty tells him to stay away from the top five.  TekKnight asks about campus surveillance tapes and he also asks to talk to Sam.  Shetty refuses to let him speak to Sam, telling TekKnight that Sam is far too dangerous.  Shetty is cool and calm while TekKnight is in her office, but his visit rattles her. When he leaves, she runs her hands through her hair and curses.

After giving up on their search for Emma, Andre shows up at Cate’s room.  He is feeling guilty about Emma, but that is not all that’s on his mind.  He tells Cate that his dad knew about the Woods  “A-a-and he told me to drop it.”  This revelation has really shaken Andre’s faith in his dad.  “All I wanted was to be like him, he just . . .this whole time, he was mixed up in all this.  He’s not the man that I thought he was.” Andre also references the “made of steel” quote that Marie used in previous episodes.

Meanwhile, Marie decides to try to find Emma in a different way.  She approaches Rufus, (who we’ve briefly seen before, receiving the brunt of Cate’s suggestive powers) and asks for his help as a psychic.  Rufus is less than straightforward with Marie, trying to flirt as much as listen to Marie.  She starts to turn away, frustrated, but Rufus says that he can see her friend.  Marie reluctantly sits down beside him on the bench, only to abruptly wake up somewhere different.  She opens her eyes, confused.  She’s in someone’s dorm room, lying on the floor.  There’s banging on the door.  As Marie starts to take in her surroundings, she sees a figure in front of her.  It’s Rufus, wearing a robe which is hanging open.  Marie puts her hands up in front of her face.  She explodes Rufus’s penis just as Jordan knocks down the door.  Jordan pulls Marie to her feet and they walk down the hallway, with Rufus’s groans following them.  Jordan berates Marie for asking Rufus for help, and also tells Marie that she could be jeopardizing her ranking if she keeps looking for Emma.  Jordan also tells Marie that TekKnight is on campus, and more than just her ranking could be at stake- he could take Marie’s freedom.  Marie says that she won’t give up on her friend.  

Tek Knight interviews Andre, Jordan, and Cate.  He asks them about being jealous of Golden Boy, about being angry at him, and about the last thing that Golden Boy said to them.  When TekKnight brings up Andre sleeping with Cate (remember Tek Knight’s special heightened powers), Andre gets angry and storms out.   

Later, Andre is walking around the campus.  He stops in front of the statue of his father.  He raises his hand and clenches his fist.  The head of the statue crumples with a metallic groan.  A tear rolls down Andre’s face. Cate walks up behind him and asks if he’s okay.  Andre stumbles into her arms and hugs her.  “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he says.

Back at the Stardust Drive-In, Emma is normal-sized, munching on a box of popcorn.  She’s wearing a souvenir T-shirt and she is much cleaner. Sam has changed into a pair of gray coveralls.  Sam is feeling intimidated at being out in the world, and missing his brother.  Emma again tells him that she will be with him.  Sam has trouble believing her.  He says that everyone always leaves him.  Sam gets up to find himself some food, but as he goes to the back of the building, odd, off-key music plays.  Sam looks around, muttering, “Please, s-s-stop!”

Sam looks around the building, checking the windows. He’s starting to feel paranoid.  He looks up at a monitor and sees a puppet version of the Deep, next to a human.  The characters taunt him.  “They’re gonna find you. And hurt you again.”  “Only this time, they’ll hurt her, too.”  Sam tries to resist his vision, angrily yelling, “Just leave me alone, television’s Jason Ritter!”  but the characters on the screen are unrelenting.  Even the gills on the puppet version of the Deep are talking. Sam knows who hurt him, it was Dr. Cordosa. And there is only one way to make sure that he and Emma remain safe.  “You have to kill him!” says television’s Jason Ritter, smiling and clapping.  Sam sinks to the floor, begging them to shut up.  Emma comes looking for Sam and asks him who he’s talking to.  Sam has become unhinged.  He’s talking about danger and not being left alone.  Emma tries to get through to Sam, but he jumps up, runs outside and makes a huge leap over the movie screen outside.  Sam is gone.

Marie goes to Shetty’s class.  Shetty approaches her to mention that she didn’t show up for lunch.  Marie is evasive, she didn’t think that she had to.  Shetty laughs, it’s just that Marie had been coming for lunch, so she expected to see her.  Then she asks about Marie’s roommate.  “She’s the one who gets small?”  Marie tells a lie about Emma spending her nights with a boy.  Moments later, class starts, and Shetty announces that they have a real treat.  It’s a visit from Tek Knight.  Tek Knight chooses Marie to join him at the front of the room.  He starts out non-threatening, and asks Marie to take him through the day Golden Boy died.  The easy questions don’t last long.  Tek Knight begins to insult Marie about her powers, and says that Brink never would have admitted her to his class.  Marie stays calm for a little while, but she quickly breaks down under his questions.  She admits that she didn’t fight Luke, that it was Jordan.  “Jordan’s the hero, not me,” she says.  TekKnight is triumphant.  “And that is how you break a witness, folks,” he says, arms outstretched.  Marie gets up, shoves her chair back, and walks out.  After the class, Shetty speaks with TekKnight again.  She reminds him that she had told him to leave the top five alone.  TekKnight admits that he was just toying with the kids.  Shetty is going to be his real target.  He’s going to make her take the fall.  He doesn’t expect Shetty to be able to get out of this, because she’s let Sam escape from the Woods. 

Later, we see Tek Knight walking down a path in the woods – actual outside woods.  He walks up to where Shetty is waiting.  Tek Knight doesn’t have his camera crew, and Shetty says that she wanted them away from the campus security cameras as well.  Shetty shows Tek Knight some brain scans that she has acquired.  He has a brain tumor that is eventually going to be fatal.  This brain tumor is also the cause of Tek Knight’s “unusual proclivity.”  She proceeds to show various clips of Tek Knight “despoiling every hole you come across.”  He swallows, but says nothing.  Shetty offers him a deal.  Leave campus by the end of the day.  Tell Vought he found nothing.  And she will keep her video off of Instagram.  She walks away, leaving a frozen Tek Knight behind her.

Tek Knight does record a summary for his show, saying that “Golden Boy simply snapped.”  He then goes into the trees by himself to visit a tree with an intriguing knot-hole.

In the dorms, Jordan stops by to see Marie.  Marie is afraid that her confession to TekKnight will get her expelled. 

Jordan: I didn’t ask you to do that.
Marie: Yeah. You did. Like . . several f’ing times, actually.
Jordan: But I didn’t want you to bury yourself in the process.  You keep doing the dumb thing.

Their conversation continues, and they draw close to each other.  Jordan changes into a male and kisses Marie.  Marie steps back, looking confused.  Jordan apologizes, but then Marie grabs his neck and starts to kiss him.  They are still kissing deeply when Emma bursts into the room.  “Holy sh–,” Emma exclaims, “a lot is happening!”  Emma tells Marie and Jordan that Sam is going after Dr. Cordosa and they have to stop him.  Jordan knows where he lives, because Cordosa used to work with Brink.

On a suburban street, a car pulls into a driveway.  The doctor from the Woods walks through the house, where everything looks quietly domestic.  Until the doctor walks into the kitchen.  There, another man is shielding a child.  Cordosa turns his head to see Sam in his house.  The doctor throws his hand up and tries to reason with Sam.  He begs Sam to let his family go.  Sam is still distracted, hearing voices.  “He can’t have her,” Sam yells, and shatters the granite countertop.  Sam is approaching Cordosa when he is hit by a refrigerator sliding across the floor.  Andre has arrived and is trying to stop him.  Sam continues yelling, and Marie takes out her knife to cut open her hand, but Emma stops her.  Emma asks Sam to let her help him again.  Sam looks at her, but is distracted by Andre, which sets him off again.  He sends Andre flying across the room.  Marie shoots out two ropes of blood which wind around Sam’s neck.  Emma runs into the dining room and starts shoveling spaghetti into her mouth with her hands.

Jordan, Marie and Andre continue to battle Sam, eventually moving outside the house after sending Sam through a set of glass doors.  They are about to start fighting again, when Emma yells, “Sam!”  Emma squeezes out through the ruined wall.  She’s huge (think Attack of the 50-Foot Woman) and she’s naked.  Emma grabs Sam and pushes him to the ground.  She talks quietly to him. “Sam, you’re all right.  I’m here.  You’re okay.”  

Marie tries to talk to Sam as well.  “Sam.  We’re gonna make this right.  I promise.  We pr-”

The screen goes to black.

We fade in to Marie in bed.  It’s dark.  She rolls over and frowns.  Jordan is in bed with her, asleep.  She shifts her arm on Marie’s shoulder.  Marie’s eyes open wide as Jordan snuggles into her.

End credits.

(Okay.  What just happened?)

Reaction:

I think that I felt more sympathetic toward Sam the first time that I watched.  I mean, he has been hurt and held captive, and he can be awkwardly sweet, but rewatching, I feel a little less sympathetic.  He’s very violent.  The carnage in the hallway that Shetty walks through in the beginning of the episode was a lot.

Sam from this show has several parallels with Sam Winchester.  I’ve had the thought occasionally that Sam from GenV might be close to how Kripke wanted to portray Sam in Supernatural.  (As far as unleashing his destructive tendencies.)  I’m really glad that Sam Winchester was never taken quite so far.

In Sam’s room in the Woods, the animals in the murals have their eyes scratched out.  This made me think of Homelander and his “bad room” in Season 4.  Also, Cordosa says of Sam, “I don’t know how to contain someone like that.”  Which is also a problem that Vought has with Homelander.

Shetty not knowing the guard’s name stuck out to me.  She only cares about the people who can increase her power.  She doesn’t care about the little people.  Also, she calls the dead guard “Bob,” (when his name is actually Greg).  Now, when I see that, I think about the Thunderbolts movie, and Yelena saying, “Bob.”

Tek Knight has a habit of picking up objects – cups, bagels, etc., and tracing a circle with his finger.  The first time I watched, I thought that it was going to turn out that he was doing it to hypnotize people, but, no. 

And apparently his “proclivity” is comic-accurate.

The first time that I watched, when Marie exploded the penis, I thought to myself, ‘who else do we know who can explode body parts?’ I just want to note that.

Sam and Emma had their meet-cute in the last episode, when Emma was in his cell in the Woods.  So this was kind of their first date. 

I do have a question about how much time has passed in this episode.  It seems to follow right on from the end of the Brink gala in the last episode, but when Shetty questions Marie about Emma, she tells Marie that Emma has been missing classes, so that would seem like it’s been more than just a day or two.

Shetty takes back the power with her information about TekKnight.  How does she come up with those scans and the videos?

Sam talking to his manifestations, and calling one “television’s Jason Ritter” just strikes me as hilarious for some reason. And Jason Ritter was cheerfully homicidal.

Sam seeing puppets kind of parallels with original Black Noir from the Boys seeing cartoon characters.

This episode, and the previous one, are fairly short – only about 45 minutes.  And the main point of this one seemed to be introducing Tek Knight, who doesn’t stay around.

I loved Emma at the end – running through the dining room and spying the bowl of spaghetti, and then shoveling it into her mouth with her hands.  I also loved big Emma coming out and taking charge.

Note: We see Jordan, Andre and Marie fighting Sam, and Emma is eating spaghetti in the house.  Where’s Cate?

This episode marks the halfway point of the first season.  The characters have been established, and they are starting to unravel the mystery.