Season 1 Trapped (REWATCH)
Mar 29, 2015 17:27:43 GMT -5
anapi -season3baby :) and texasscotian like this
Post by pippin on Mar 29, 2015 17:27:43 GMT -5
This episode had one of those eye rolling lines for me when Vincent said that he would make the choice to be a beast if it meant being in Cat's life. Seriously? What about the innocent people you killed as a beast back in Afghanistan. And we are supposed to believe that Muirfield has Vanessa killed but doesn't confiscate all of her research files from the Chandler residence. I thought it would have been less silly if they had used Vincent's memory of the mother's green notebook to try and find that among any of her personal things still kept by the Dad. Muirfield would have taken the research files, but wouldn't have known about the notebook.
I remain on the fence as far as Vanessa Chandler is concerned. Vincent, himself, remembers that she was genuinely concerned about the soldiers and was working on the side effects. For all we know, she did attempt to work on a reversal process. Vincent remembers Vanessa threatening to go public regarding the experiments (and even her role in them as well) over the killing of the soldiers. From Vincent's memories, it seems like Vanessa believed she was doing the right thing. (Even Gabe said she was the only good person at Muirfield, and he adored her as she came to check on the children. Bob even knew Vanessa had gotten children out from their tormentors, and we see from Gabe's memories that Vanessa made it look like children had "died" when she had really smuggled them out to good homes.) Do supposedly, based on the memories of Vincent and Gabe, Vanessa stuck around Muirfield to try to undo the damage or help once the damage was done. What more could she have done? By remaining with Muirfield, she DID try to save some people.
I still think that what BATB was TRYING to do (emphasis on the trying) was to do a Fringe-like approach to Vanessa. She was a scientist intent on using science to "better" mankind, and then spent her remaining life and career trying to earn forgiveness for what her research was actually used for. Meaning she was disillusioned by what she saw, but she knew that simply leaving Muirfield would never undo what she had done (and just would leave others free to do further evil without any thought to ethics without anyone being the wiser).
I'm still just not sure what the writers ultimately meant to do with Vanessa. Like I said, both Vincent and Gabe insisted she was the only good one in the bunch. As Gabe goes to show, even if you THINK you are well-meaning, you often aren't and are just trying to cover up your own evil. So either Vanessa went in with good intentions, got in over her head and realized that her OWN research had been used horribly, and then Vanessa attempted to make amends by actually staying in Muirfield to attempt to help the victims live and function (or escape). Meaning she was good at heart and trying to undo or minimize the damage. I still can't see her as entirely evil or unconcerned or unconnected with what she did. Her conversations with Vincent from his memories and her conversations with Gabe's adoptive parents show a person trying to ameliorate the damage. So I see her as a grief-stricken and repentant person.
I'd love to see BATB tackle the issue of Vanessa in upcoming seasons and lay to bed the issue finally. Maybe offer Vanessa some sort of redemption/forgiveness after all.
My back story for Vanessa would have been this. As a young, gifted molecular biologist, biochemist or whatever she was supposed to be, she was recruited by Muirfield, a seemingly legitimate medical research company. Once there, she began to fear they were doing unethical, even illegal things so she went to the FBI to report them. The FBI convinced her to keep working there to gather evidence for them and assigned Bob Reynolds as her handler. She and Reynolds started a relationship, but when she brought him evidence of the company's wrong doings, including kidnapping orphans and experimenting on them, he told her that the FBI was not interested in pursuing the matter and the best thing she could do would be to make sure the project was completed successfully. She, of course, was appalled, broke up with him, and told him she would take the information to the press. He told her that there were very powerful people, including people in the FBI, military and titans of industry, who were extremely invested in the project, and if she tried to expose Muirfield, they had the power to ruin the lives of her family members or worse. When she tried to quit, she was told that she knew too much and was far too valuable to the company and would not be allowed to leave until the project was successfully completed and delivered to the investors.
Vanessa wouldn't want her sisters or parents killed, and she also knew she was pregnant with Catherine who she wanted to protect, so for the next 16 years, she worked for Muirfield under duress. She "saved" those she could, like Gabe, and used her skills to limit the collateral damage of the experiments by figuring out that only people with a certain gene could handle the serum, blah, blah, blah. Then 9/11 happens, TPTB demand the project be delivered and the results are crazy beasts going around slaughtering people.
Now here's something they could use Reynolds for in season 3 (but probably didn't). Reynolds could tell Cat that after Vincent saved Vanessa from the Colonel, Vanessa contacted him and asked him to help her get Vincent out of the country, telling him that she thinks someone tampered with the serum but she could find an antidote if she could work with Vincent and that Reynolds owed her because of above backstory. Muirfield let Vanessa return home but when they found out that she lied to them about Vincent being dead, they had her killed. So Catherine goes from worshipping her mother and feeling responsible for her death, to seeing her as Arwen fan does and feeling guilty that her parents were responsible for helping to create Vincent to learning that her mother worked 18 years for an evil company to protect her and her family and that saving Vincent got her killed. Then part of their ongoing mythology could be trying to track down who tampered with the serum in order to figure out an antidote rather than the really out there ancient beast / gem thing.
ArwenFan,
I remain on the fence as far as Vanessa Chandler is concerned. Vincent, himself, remembers that she was genuinely concerned about the soldiers and was working on the side effects. For all we know, she did attempt to work on a reversal process. Vincent remembers Vanessa threatening to go public regarding the experiments (and even her role in them as well) over the killing of the soldiers. From Vincent's memories, it seems like Vanessa believed she was doing the right thing. (Even Gabe said she was the only good person at Muirfield, and he adored her as she came to check on the children. Bob even knew Vanessa had gotten children out from their tormentors, and we see from Gabe's memories that Vanessa made it look like children had "died" when she had really smuggled them out to good homes.) Do supposedly, based on the memories of Vincent and Gabe, Vanessa stuck around Muirfield to try to undo the damage or help once the damage was done. What more could she have done? By remaining with Muirfield, she DID try to save some people.
I still think that what BATB was TRYING to do (emphasis on the trying) was to do a Fringe-like approach to Vanessa. She was a scientist intent on using science to "better" mankind, and then spent her remaining life and career trying to earn forgiveness for what her research was actually used for. Meaning she was disillusioned by what she saw, but she knew that simply leaving Muirfield would never undo what she had done (and just would leave others free to do further evil without any thought to ethics without anyone being the wiser).
I'm still just not sure what the writers ultimately meant to do with Vanessa. Like I said, both Vincent and Gabe insisted she was the only good one in the bunch. As Gabe goes to show, even if you THINK you are well-meaning, you often aren't and are just trying to cover up your own evil. So either Vanessa went in with good intentions, got in over her head and realized that her OWN research had been used horribly, and then Vanessa attempted to make amends by actually staying in Muirfield to attempt to help the victims live and function (or escape). Meaning she was good at heart and trying to undo or minimize the damage. I still can't see her as entirely evil or unconcerned or unconnected with what she did. Her conversations with Vincent from his memories and her conversations with Gabe's adoptive parents show a person trying to ameliorate the damage. So I see her as a grief-stricken and repentant person.
I'd love to see BATB tackle the issue of Vanessa in upcoming seasons and lay to bed the issue finally. Maybe offer Vanessa some sort of redemption/forgiveness after all.
My back story for Vanessa would have been this. As a young, gifted molecular biologist, biochemist or whatever she was supposed to be, she was recruited by Muirfield, a seemingly legitimate medical research company. Once there, she began to fear they were doing unethical, even illegal things so she went to the FBI to report them. The FBI convinced her to keep working there to gather evidence for them and assigned Bob Reynolds as her handler. She and Reynolds started a relationship, but when she brought him evidence of the company's wrong doings, including kidnapping orphans and experimenting on them, he told her that the FBI was not interested in pursuing the matter and the best thing she could do would be to make sure the project was completed successfully. She, of course, was appalled, broke up with him, and told him she would take the information to the press. He told her that there were very powerful people, including people in the FBI, military and titans of industry, who were extremely invested in the project, and if she tried to expose Muirfield, they had the power to ruin the lives of her family members or worse. When she tried to quit, she was told that she knew too much and was far too valuable to the company and would not be allowed to leave until the project was successfully completed and delivered to the investors.
Vanessa wouldn't want her sisters or parents killed, and she also knew she was pregnant with Catherine who she wanted to protect, so for the next 16 years, she worked for Muirfield under duress. She "saved" those she could, like Gabe, and used her skills to limit the collateral damage of the experiments by figuring out that only people with a certain gene could handle the serum, blah, blah, blah. Then 9/11 happens, TPTB demand the project be delivered and the results are crazy beasts going around slaughtering people.
Now here's something they could use Reynolds for in season 3 (but probably didn't). Reynolds could tell Cat that after Vincent saved Vanessa from the Colonel, Vanessa contacted him and asked him to help her get Vincent out of the country, telling him that she thinks someone tampered with the serum but she could find an antidote if she could work with Vincent and that Reynolds owed her because of above backstory. Muirfield let Vanessa return home but when they found out that she lied to them about Vincent being dead, they had her killed. So Catherine goes from worshipping her mother and feeling responsible for her death, to seeing her as Arwen fan does and feeling guilty that her parents were responsible for helping to create Vincent to learning that her mother worked 18 years for an evil company to protect her and her family and that saving Vincent got her killed. Then part of their ongoing mythology could be trying to track down who tampered with the serum in order to figure out an antidote rather than the really out there ancient beast / gem thing.