What I’m Watching: The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle: Season 2, Episode 2 “The Road Less Traveled” (B)

The whole time that I was watching this episode, I was thinking that I would give it one more chance with episode three and then give up if it didn’t get any more interesting. Fortunately or unfortunately, by the end of the episode, I felt that things were headed in a more interesting direction. The fact that Inspector Kido knows who Juliana is and was able to identify her by name when he heard the description shows just how much she’s an important player in all this, and watching her walk fearlessly to the physical line that separated Japanese and Nazi territory so that she could fall on it and request asylum as an ally of Joe was intense. Hopefully that will be just the game-changer this show needs to liven itself up. It’s also pretty incredible that Frank was able to get a message to Inspector Kido to convince him to sew up the case about the Crown Prince’s assassin and get Ed released. He was in pretty bad shape, and learning that Frank, his grandfather, and everyone else who worked at the factory would still be killed even after his execution was a grim fate that didn’t even come close to being realized, which is a relief. I’m not sure what becomes of Ed now, but I suspect that Frank and his good friend Robert are going to be deeply indebted to the man who helped them get Ed released. Tagomi’s investigation into concepts like Nelson Mandela and the Cuban Missile Crisis that don’t exist in his world is intriguing, and he’s clearly moved away from the kinds of practices that are normative in his world, like targeting public buses. Let’s see how next episode plays out.