Gettin' My Eps In: Lazarus S1E6
A mostly action-free episode has me worried about where the series is headed.
Lazarus
Season 1, Episode 6: “Heaven Is a Place on Earth”
Written by Takahiro Ozawa
Directed by Eiji Abiko
Streaming on Max
Lazarus is a series that is built on action, a sense of kinetic motion, and plenty of cool style, or at least that’s what it has been at its best. While it has an intriguing mystery plot and a quest with a ticking doomsday clock, it hasn’t had much focus on character development and unpacking why the members of the titular team behave the way they do. Everybody has been so focused on their goal that they haven’t had much time to do more than the bare minimum amount of getting to know each other. Which would generally be fine, as long as the series maintained its forward momentum and delivered cool action accompanied by memorable music.
If the show is going to take a break from what it has done well, it would ideally make it worthwhile, taking the time to explore some interesting ideas, give us some insight into the characters, or build on existing dynamics to let us know how the team is starting to gel and learn to combine their skills effectively. Unfortunately, while that may seem like the purpose of this episode, it fails pretty hard in all of those respects. It doesn’t give us what we’re looking for when we watch the series, and it doesn’t replace it with anything that would provide other types of satisfaction. It’s a surprising stumble for a series that had seemed so assured just a few episodes ago.
The plot of the episode does hint at some ideas that could provide interesting backstory and maybe add to the accumulating detail about the state of the world. The team has learned that Dr. Skinner, the genius scientist who created the “miracle drug” Hapna that is going to poison pretty much everyone in the world, visited a commune around 15 years ago, and this group is completely isolated from the rest of the world, so maybe that’s where he’s hiding now. Coincidentally, Eleina, the team’s hacker, grew up in that commune, so she can pretend that she’s returning to the fold, and Leland, the team’s other young person, can accompany her, allowing the two of them to investigate the situation.
The potentially interesting thing about the commune is that it’s actually a cult that worships a “post-singularity AI” that the members have decided is their god. Later, the team does some more research and finds out that the AI was modeled on Skinner’s brain, so accessing it could potentially provide them with some information about his whereabouts, his plans, or something that could further their quest. That’s intriguing! Maybe we’ll get an idea of Skinner’s mindset, his ideas about what progress for humanity could look like, or some sort of philosophical discussion about power and control or good and evil. There’s a lot to work with here; surely something cool will happen, right?
Sadly, no, we get none of that. There’s barely any exploration of what the cult actually believes, except for some generic platitudes about the negative influences of the outside world. Eleina and Leland’s first attempt at accessing the AI leads to them getting captured before they even interact with it, and the group’s megalomaniacal leader decides that they’re going to be burned to death before the rest of the group also sacrifices themselves to welcome in the new age or something. It’s generic cult stuff, with the closest thing to any sort of emotional conflict coming from a former friend of Eleina’s who has spent years being jealous of her ability to escape.
Why did any of this happen? What was the purpose of isolating the cult members from the outside world and then convincing them to commit suicide? We get only the vaguest of answers when, after the team shows up to save Leland and Eleina, Axel asks the AI why it did what it did, and it replies that because it had the ultimate control over these people, why not just kill them? That’s pretty generic and boring, making this whole exercise seem pointless, especially since the episode didn’t bother to provide any other insights into the characters. It could have gone into why Eleina left the cult and what her experience of reintegrating into society was like. It could have provided some depth to Leland’s character as we saw his reactions to learning about her history. It could have had the other characters display some concern, indicating that some personal connections are growing between them. But it doesn’t do any of that, leaving pretty much nothing for us to cling to as we search for any sort of meaning or purpose to what we’ve seen.
I can only hope that this episode will provide a springboard for something interesting to happen in future installments. The team has recovered at least some of the data from the AI that controlled the cult, so maybe their continuing interactions with it will provide a counterpoint to the real Skinner. While the AI is a boring, nihilistic villain, Skinner seems like he has some purpose to his actions, some philosophical reasons for his genocidal schemes. Maybe this new source of information can provide some insight that will allow for more progress in the overarching plot, or perhaps even some character development as the different team members react to what they learn.
Most of all, I’m hoping that this is not an indication that the show is leaning toward simplistic, reductive ideas about the nature of its world and the plots its characters are involved in. I’ve said before that I’m happy to have plot developments take a back seat to exciting action, but I had some faith that there was a purpose to the directions the plot was taking and that the smaller details we got to see would eventually coalesce into a more complex picture. Now I’m really hoping that my faith was not misplaced.