My biggest issue with Cede Your Soul was how little the episode developed the ongoing mystery of Jane’s tattoos. I’ve made clear in my previous reviews that I think this is the main crux of the actual story, even if the characters are perhaps more important. Without developing this aspect of the series, episodes become little more than your standard fare of FBI agents going after an effectively nameless, faceless criminal. That’s a formula that can work, but not on a show like this, where things are relatively serialised and there is that ongoing mystery. Sure, Cede Your Soul played around with things a bit, having the presumed criminal-of-the-week winding up not only somewhat innocent (in her lack of complete knowledge as to what she was doing) but also requiring the FBI’s help, though that didn’t take away from how forgettable it was in terms of the larger story.
Fortunately, Sent on Tour did a solid job of making larger the small steps that the preceding episode did take to further the tattoo mystery. Learning about Jane’s dreams of a man who sported a tree tattoo was intriguing, particularly so given that it transpired at the end of the episode that he was watching Jane. The opening scene of the most recent episode gave us the biggest hint as to who is behind the tattoos since the end of the pilot episode, as we saw a flashback to the man with the tree tattoo burying the box that the team would later find and use, as per Jane’s treasure map.
It adds another intriguing layer to the story. We know now that Johnny Whitworth’s unnamed - and deceased - character wasn’t alone in causing what happened to Jane, nor does it look like he was the mastermind behind it. Instead, this new character (played by François Arnaud) appears to be the person who has constructed most of this. That might not ring true by the end of the season, but it’s certainly the way it looks at the moment, and that’s a smart thing to do at this point, particularly when combined with Jane’s gradually returning memories of him. While the arc with Carter, the CIA and Daylight is all clearly building to something, so too is Jane’s backstory in a much slower and more subtle way, and this only furthers that cause.
Cede Your Soul did do something pretty well, however: raising questions over whether or not Jane was too close to the case, leading to a debate as to whether Kurt is too close to Jane’s case. Despite how obvious the outcome to this was, it was interesting to see the considerations. It’s certainly been something that can be felt across the five previous episodes, so it was nice for the show to address it. Something else that has built over the first set of episodes is the issue of trust between the team and Jane, and that was revisited in the latest episode, courtesy of Lou Diamond Phillips’ Saul Guerrero.
It worked fine in this episode on its own - Phillips was great fun to watch as he attempted to find some way of disrupting his arresting agents - but it’s been played up so much now to the point where it has become tedious. Guerrero was simply a way of the show reminding us that yes, Jane coming into the team has disrupted the dynamic, and yes, she isn’t as trusted as the other members of the team, particularly given that they have no real idea of who she is as a person due to her lack of memory, despite knowledge of her identity.
Patterson’s story in the last episode added some much needed humour to the hour, and while she has mostly served as comic relief thus far, it was refreshing to see the story with her now ex-boyfriend get some focus. It was perhaps a little disappointing to see Patterson break up with David, but the reasoning for it was sound, and worked nicely to develop her more.
Cede Your Soul and Sent on Tour were two solid episodes that smartly refrained from a traditional format and storyline while raising some interesting questions, albeit to varying levels of success. Sent on Tour, in particular, set up some good avenues for the show to explore in the coming weeks, and things seem to be developing quite nicely.
What did you think of these episodes? Let me know in the comments below!
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