[S2E10] Where Do We Go From Here High Quality

The man deserved to die. There's no getting away from that. He was a horrible, horrible person who was using the group of women for his advantage. Rachel wants to be good, but if she can't stop parts of her powers going into objects or people, then that is a huge risk.

[S2E10] Where Do We Go From Here

Going into Power Season 2 Episode 10, we were all speculating where things would wind up. Would Angela go through with bringing Ghost down? Would Ghost and Tommy finally bring Kanan down? Things where pretty much going as I suspected through much of the beginning, until multiple curveballs were thrown our way, and now we're left wondering, what the hell happens next?

Elsewhere, Ghost met with Proctor and mentioned for the hundredth time his desire to go legit. We've heard it so many times before, I didn't think much of it, although my ears did perk up when Proctor told Ghost what it would take to really leave the "business" behind.

Following the somewhat lengthy recap that covers the events of the whole of the season, we're right back where we left off last week, with our peppy band of timeline polluters at Château Picard pondering their next move after Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), who is now more or less fully integrated with the Borg Queen, stole La Sirena and took off, leaving everyone else stranded in La Barre, eastern France, in 2024. But not for long.

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), Raffi (Michelle Hurd) and Cristóbal Rios (Santiago Cabrera) are able to track Jurati's movements from before she stole La Sirena and they beam to Dr. Adam Soong's (Brent Spiner) home, expecting to find him there, except he's at the Europa launch site. Uh oh. Instead however, they find his "plan B" for preventing the launch, which is basically a drone attack. And thus begins one of the weakest story elements in this season finale. It also conveniently provides a ticking clock for the Renée Picard sub-plot.

That's handled by Tallinn and she enters the astronaut building in a stolen uniform and is forced to confront Renée directly. It also fulfills the cryptic prophecy that the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) foretold when she said, "There must be two Renées." And in all fairness, it's not handled too badly. Soong is at the site and getting into a tantrum about not being allowed into the complex despite being a very generous donor to ... the mission? Exactly what, or who, Soong has been making generous donations to, is glossed over. Nevertheless, he's eventually able to catch up with Renée and poisons her by way of a rather nice, peel-away skin graft-of-sorts from his hand that contains a powerful neurotoxin, which he was able to transmit when he shook her hand.

Then comes the biggest twist, by far. Kore has been sitting in a library while she hacks in and mercilessly deletes all of her father's work. Having completed her task and exacted her revenge, she collects her stuff, packs it into her bag and casually makes her way outside into the late afternoon sunshine where she's greeted by ... of all peopl ... Wesley Crusher.

So, here's what we know. In "The Next Generation" episode "Where No One Has Gone Before" (S01, E06) experimental engine modifications throw the Enterprise to the edge of the known universe. A mysterious alien, known as the Traveler from another plane of existence, is making his way through our galaxy, peacefully observing all lifeforms. By disguising himself as a human, he is able to get passage on different starships and in this instance, onboard the USS Enterprise. During this escapade, the Traveler and Wesley become good friends.

Cordell arrives at the Side Step, where he talks to Geri about Cassie. Geri talks some sense into Cordell, saying he said he did the same thing to Stan that Cassie did to Cordell. Cordell tells Geri she always knows what to say.

Homeland's greatest success may be its complete and utter emotional manipulation of its viewers to the point where only afterwards and after much consideration does one realize how completely ridiculous what just happened was. Does anyone get through episodes of Homeland without getting close to hyperventilation? The suspense, the jump cuts, the unsteady cam, the music -- everything builds to an unholy tremor of excitement and emotion, and we're whipped around from place to place without time to even finish a game of Hearts with Chris! It's all too much. But hit the jump to look at some of the cold, hard truths of Homeland once that emotion starts to wear away.

But then there was Brody. Oh Brody. Flop terrorist. Needs a magnifying glass to read serial numbers. Shouts the name of the number one terrorist target of his government repeatedly in areas where there's lots of security. But it wasn't Nazir video chatting with Brody on Brody's government-issued Blackberry (something that phone can't do) with his iPhone (did he stand in line for it?), no I think I wrote "game over" at the point when I saw the bubbly Skype font in the lower corner and realized that Nazir has a Skype account. He does realize that when he eradicates America that there will be no more of all that, right?

Brody did keep his word and swore on the soul of Issa, but does this free him from Nazir? And if so, where do we go from here? Brody's family has all but disavowed him at this point, and once Nazir is captured or no longer needs him, his usefulness to the government is through. He and Carrie can't ride off into the sunset, but what aspect of the domestic scene have we not explored yet? Brody and Jess' relationship has already taken so many turns and been explored from so many angles, where is there left to go?

I will say without question that I loved "Broken Hearts" as I watched it, but after I calmed down for a bit the plot holes and absurdities began creeping in around the edges of my otherwise starry-eyed view. Homeland is an incredibly entertaining show, but it set a bar for itself (and had one set for it after the Emmys this year) that it may not be able to live up to in quite the way we expect. That may just be the nature of the choices it made in the first season and the corners it painted itself into, but it doesn't diminish from the fact that it's still a fun ride. And with only two episodes left in this season, we're close to finding out where it all ends up.

[00:01:20:00] RAMON BUENO: Well, I arrived in San Juan in January of 1963 from Miami, where I had moved in the summer of '61 when I left Cuba. So it was a two phase move. It was after the Bay of Pigs. Confrontation with the US was escalating out of every month. And the missile crisis was the next year while I was in Miami. So it's that extremely high pitch Cold War era.

[00:02:16:24] RAMON BUENO: Yeah. I mean, where to even begin? Most people have probably seen a lot of the reporting and images and photos and videos. It's a kind of devastation that is not frequently seen, except sometimes in smaller islands where a storm can go through and just devastate everything.

[00:03:11:14] But you have a situation where you're in an extremely difficult financial situation, and all of sudden, you get total devastation of your economy. So you don't have to see too much more. But then you see all the photos, the stories.

[00:03:58:12] But there had been other journalists there from around the Caribbean. And I remember eventually talking to someone from the British Virgin Islands. And how are you? He said, I'm fine. But I'm glad we went to a shelter, because our place was blown away and that sort of thing.

[00:05:49:18] There are other places, smaller towns-- and this is all over the island, whether it's in the northeast, south where a higher percentage of people are poorer. The construction is flimsier, zinc roofs, wood, this and that. Those things cannot withstand 150 mile an hour winds for hours and hours on end.

[00:06:11:11] So there have been gripping photographs where you see someone sitting with a couple of chairs on the floor of their house, because there's nothing else left, and saying it was calming to be there, because that's the only thing that's left.

[00:11:27:09] But the thing is what's expensive is all compared to what. Electricity costs in Puerto Rico are at least twice the average in the US and several times what low cost states. So a solution that in an efficient energy system state in the US might be costly, because you have such cheaper power, in a situation like that, but especially in a situation where the system has collapsed and it's likely to keep collapsing, it's actually a pretty good investment, I would say.

[00:12:23:16] RAMON BUENO: I think there's a chance in the sense that, aside from all the political and ideological things, there's a growing discussion in places like FEMA and all that. It has been happening for example with flooding and all that. There's a growing consensus of, it doesn't make any sense to repeatedly build somebody's house that refuses to prepare it for higher sea levels and all that kind of stuff. At some point people say, enough is enough. This is wasted taxpayer money.

[00:13:43:26] So I reached out and got in touch with the Puerto Rican Students Association at MIT who were getting very organized. And we've created some nice relationship there. In terms of discussions, what helps, what doesn't help, they've got a lot going on. They're also coordinating with similar efforts at Harvard. And the two brought in people from other institutions around here. So that's been very nice.

[00:14:10:08] At the same time, through them, I learned and get connected with a network of MIT alumni, professionals. Some of them have been working for a long time, others more recent graduates, who have formed sort of an electronic group focused a lot on where do we go from here and especially on the energy front. And that's one of the areas where I was surprised also how quickly the consensus developed into--

[00:15:06:16] For example, there's a foundation for Puerto Rico founded by alums from MIT who have had some collaboration and some projects. And they're functioning right now. They've put aside their plans for development in the island which were doing quite well at and just focusing on coordinating efforts. And there are people from different levels of government and outside of government who have been participating in some of these discussions, developing the framework and ideas of what is the direction that should be going. 041b061a72