Gettin' My Eps In: Lazarus S1E8

The show gets back to the action basics with a fairly standard rescue mission plot.

Lazarus
Season 1, Episode 8: “Unforgettable Fire”
Written by Tsukasa Kondo
Directed by Youhei Tsuchiya
Streaming on Max

After I spent the last two episodes of Lazarus complaining about a lack of action, you would think I would be happy to see the show get back to basics. And for the most part, you would be right, although this particular episode was just generally fine on that front. However, it gets held back by what’s meant to be an emotional bit of backstory revelation for one of the characters. Instead of finding the plot moving, I felt that it was pretty shallow, with the show seeming to rely on our memories of spy-related plots we’ve seen elsewhere rather than actually making us care about what happens.

The previous episode ended with Chris, the sexy former Russian spy of the Lazarus team, running across a woman whom she used to know. In the space between episodes, she has apparently been captured and taken to an abandoned oil drilling platform in the Arctic that the Russian government uses as a base for spy operations. The woman, whose name we learn is Inga, is a former colleague of Chris, and she and the other operatives she works with intend to bring Chris in and charge her with treason. So of course, that means the rest of the team has to mount a rescue mission.

There’s a little bit of lip service paid to advancing the ongoing plot, with the team taking a moment to question their leader Dr. Hersch about her past with Dr. Skinner, the man who engineered the plot to end humanity through his drug Hapna. But that’s almost immediately forgotten, at least until the next episode, because the team has to rush to save Chris before it’s too late. We learn that if Chris doesn’t report back within three days, the bracelet she wears that tracks her location and allows her to communicate with the rest of the team will take lethal measures to keep her from falling into enemy hands. The team is only a little bit concerned about this, since they’re all wearing the same bracelets, but they get reassured that this was a special measure Chris insisted on to make sure she could be trusted as an ex-Russian spy who had defected to the United States.

That’s already a lot of detail that gets introduced but mostly ignored. We also get some infodumps about Chris’ backstory, including when we see her get interrogated by Inga and another Russian spy, Sergei (notably, all of the Russian characters speak with American accents in the English-language dub of the series, which stood out as a choice that may have been based on expediency rather than quality; I assume everyone just speaks Japanese in the original audio track). There’s some discussion about how Chris tried to fake her death during an airport disaster to escape the spy life, but since her body was never found, Inga knew she was still alive, and she was still able to recognize Chris despite plastic surgery that changed her appearance. Sergei would like to execute Chris on the spot, and he gets especially violent in his questioning, but Inga says she needs to be kept alive.

So that’s the setup for the rescue, which provides the rest of the team with the chance to really work together for the first time. With the help of the Norwegian government, they board an old tanker ship and approach the oil rig. Axel uses scuba gear to sneak on board, while Leland provides air support using a drone that’s camouflaged as a seagull. Eleina gets ready to hack into the rig’s computer systems as soon as Axel activates them, and Doug provides a distraction by crashing the tanker into the rig and setting off a series of explosions. Axel then fights his way through the Russian thugs, looking to find Chris and pull her out.

This is all generally exciting (especially a bit in which Eleina takes control of a crane on the rig and uses it to start smashing things up), but the best bit comes when Chris manages to escape on her own. She’s tied to a chair, so she goads Sergei into smacking her around in order to loosen her bonds until she can manage to break free. But she still gets some cool moves in while she’s tied up, doing some crazy flips that turn into kicks, knocking him to the floor long enough for her to escape. It’s a great showcase for the character’s resourcefulness, and while her fighting style isn’t as flashy as Axel’s, it’s still pretty effective.

Unfortunately, the show has to stop in the middle of the action for some emotional confrontations that don’t really work. Inga shows up and confronts Chris, and even though she had just gone to great effort to try to escape, she gives up and says that Inga should just kill her. The big revelation is that she and Inga were lovers, so even though she wanted to get out of the spy game (which, again, we’re never given a reason for, so we just have to assume that being a Russian spy is bad, and a person would go to great lengths to quit), she has always regretted walking away and leaving Inga behind. And in the most predictable outcome to this reunion, the two women sort of reconcile, only for Inga to be immediately killed by Sergei.

This is like an entire story arc of an espionage-related TV series or movie compressed into a few minutes, and it’s just not very compelling. Chris can’t seem to decide whether she wants to fight for her life or just give up because what she’s done in the past makes her feel worthless. Her motivations are unclear, and the developments that occur around her are trite. If the show is going to half-ass these types of revelations, it would be better if it just left the characters as enigmas with shadowy pasts and got on with its ongoing plot.

But! The action is still pretty fun. Axel gets to do more of his usual acrobatics, including a nice bit where he disarms an opponent by doing a front-flip kick. Everyone else gets to support him as well, actually acting as a team for once and demonstrating that they care about each other. It’s a promising development, and one that I hope will lead to more interesting bits of synergy as they combine their efforts in their ongoing quest. I remain ever-hopeful that the series will gel into something truly remarkable, at least for a few episodes. But I’ll also be happy enough if it can maintain this level of excitement without getting too bogged down by the elements that are proving to be increasingly unnecessary. Here’s hoping that the final stretch of the season takes us out on a high note.