Take Three: Brave New World

Brave New World: Season 1, Episode 3 “Everybody Happy Now!” (B)

This episode felt like an all-too-typical frantic survival hour, one that didn’t really need to be stretched out so much and is going to lead to far more interesting things after the three main characters made it back to a place with more restrictions on intellectual freedom but less outright deadly violence. Though John didn’t want Lenina and Bernard to die, he didn’t have too much interest in putting his own life on the line to save them, especially after his mother killed Madison to save them. I wasn’t sure how involved Demi Moore was going to be in this show as Linda, and she stuck around long enough to make sure that John believed that he would be able to get to this mythical place he had heard of so that he might be able to have a better life. He definitely wasn’t certain that it was going to work, but he didn’t have much of a choice when he was being chased by guns and the potential of salvation was waiting on the other side of that barrier. Seeing the four of them sit so far apart on the plane was so different than the voyage there, and John noticing that Linda wasn’t responding was a somber way to enter into a new world of possibility. In his delirium, Bernard told Lenina that he wanted to be monogamous with her if they survived, and we’ll see if, after he’s healed, he’ll still feel quite as inspired to break the rules. I neglected to mention the intriguing addition of actress Nina Sosanya from “Killing Eve” as Mustafa in the previous episode, and she seemed to have a fascinating perspective and story just waiting to be told.