Silo S2E2: Order
We started with a largely wordless episode with Juliette on her own in the abandoned second silo and no sign of the main cast, so this week we check in on the original silo. That literally goes from the top down, as we begin with Tim Robbins’ Bernard Holland, the outwardly-genial IT director who secretly controls everything that goes on in his self-contained world. He not only has hidden cameras all around the silo but one in Juliette’s suit as well, so he sees what we saw last week — her leaving the perimeter of our silo, stepping over the dead bodies of a failed escape attempt, and entering the abandoned silo. He’s less concerned with Juliette herself than with the bodies. That was the result of a rebellion in that silo, and his own silo could suffer the same fate.
He consults a book titled The Order and turns to a page with an ominous heading: In the Event of a Failed Cleaning, Prepare For War. Right on cue, a siren goes off. His faithful lieutenant Sims already has every cop in the place trying to restore order, but it’s a losing battle. People lived their whole lives believing that leaving the silo was impossible, and they just saw the impossible happen.
Nowhere more than on the lower levels — Juliette’s former home — where an angry mob has formed with a tense standoff brewing. Hank, the lower-level sheriff, is at a loss to maintain calm. Knox, the head of engineering, has no love for the authority figures upstairs, but knows he and his people will be crushed if they push back. Shirl, Juliette’s tough-talking friend, wants to fight back against the people she now knows have been lying to everyone their whole lives. Most of the rest of the crowd just want answers, but none are forthcoming.
While this episode is busier than the last, with nearly every character in the show cropping up and engaging in wall-to-wall conversation, it’s got a no less singular focus. Everyone’s trying to process what just happened, and answer the unanswerable questions: is Juliette still alive, or did she just walk further than anyone else had before dying? And for everyone else still stuck in the silo, what happens now?
Most seasons of television open with a table-setting episode to reintroduce viewers to the story. After the extended cold open of last week’s episode, “Order” is effectively that episode, and it sets a good table. It reminds us of the stakes and ratchets up the tension that’s Silo‘s stock in trade.
The episode culminates in a speech by Mayor Holland, in which he cannily understands that the best lie is just a version of the truth. It keeps the crowd pacified, and order prevails. But as Holland is walking home, not wanting to violate the curfew he imposed, he sees something written on the wall that makes him wonder how long that order will last: JL. Juliette Lives.
Stray thoughts:
• It’s not a controversial statement to say Tim Robbins is a good actor, but he’s the lynchpin of this episode. He plays Holland as imperious and desperate to cling to power, but largely because he’s terrified of what happens — not just to him, but to everyone else — if that hold on power slips.
• We haven’t seen Tanya Moodie in a while as Judge Meadows, another of the silo’s morally-compromised leaders. She and Robbins share two terrific scenes where she lets him slowly realize she wants out of his corrupt power structure just as badly as the people on the bottom, but she realizes there’s nowhere else to go.
