EPISODE REVIEW: Defying Gravity: “Eve Ate The Apple” (Episode 9, Not broadcast in the US)

As anyone reading this knows, the network has more-or-less abandoned “Defying Gravity,“ and made a hokey announcement that episode 8 was the “Season Finale,“ when in fact there’s at least four more episodes in the can. I’d asked our foreign readers to pitch in, but so far no dice. In the meantime, astute Republibot-in-Training “nwkeys01” actually found the episode online. Special thanks, man (I assume). We will now all pause for 15 seconds to sing your praises.

My original intention was to review the episode for some dead space on the site in November, but as my intended content for today turned out to be illegally infringing on someone else’s property (And again, guys, sorry about that, and thanks for letting me know), I’ve had to take it down. Then I got to thinking, “Well, what the hell? Why not review it? We were damn near the only website in the ‘States bothering to cover the show before, now we can be the *only* one covering it! Woo-hoo. If you, the reader, would like to watch it *before* reading my review, go here http://www.casttv.com/shows/defying-gravity/eve-ate-the-apple/zrto7z

PLAY BY PLAY

2017 - Eve is born in New Orleans, Louisiana.

2021 - Eve, age four, picks up one of her dad’s violins and composes a song on the spot. Her dad proclaims her a prodigy - he’s a musician himself - and teaches her the classics. She continues to play her first song pretty much every day. After a short, but promising career in New Orleans, Eve is accepted to Julliard, and moves to New York as a ‘tween, she barely sees her family, but she has a bright future ahead of her.

2033 - Hurricane Ophelia strikes New Orleans and the city is devastated in pretty much the same way as it was with Katrina in 2005 and Betsy in 1965. Eve’s family is killed. Eve is devastated, and refuses to ever play violin again.

2038 - Eve is now a member of the American Crisis Corps, and she’s part of the relief efforts in Nazca, Peru, where there have been massive floods and landslides and loss of life. Meanwhile, a Bertrand Corporation radio observatory notices some focused signals coming from a specific location on Mars - Gusev Crater ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gusev_crater ) - which is being beamed specifically at Nazca, Peru. The observatory techs name the Martian source “Alpha” and the Peruvian receptor “Beta,” and quickly realize that Beta is actually responding.

Meanwhile, in Peru, Even is having a hard time adjusting to the high altitude, she’s having a hard time breathing, sleeping, eating, whatever. She’s on the edge of exhaustion. One night, while not able to sleep, she hears a violin playing *her* tune on a plateau in the distance, though no one else can hear it. She wanders off alone, climbs the plateau, then walks across the top of it to an unmarked spot where the hallucinatory sound is overwhelmingly loud, and she starts digging. At just that moment, helicopters and military-looking goons (Who may not actually be military) show up, arrest, and interrogate her. Whoever they are, they’re working for the Bertrand corporation, and they clearly don’t believe her story until she tells them about the music. Then they have her show them where the sound is coming from, and dig up “Beta” - a golden, glowing, fractal kind of blob-thing that just sorta’ hovers there. The Goonsquad commander tells Eve to go back to her camp and forget all about this, and tell no one about it, with an implicit threat in his words. She hastily retreats.

Back at camp, Eve is even worse off than before, distracted, depressed, relentlessly exhausted, unable or unwilling to eat. It becomes apparent that she’s probably dying by degrees, and she speaks of feeling like a part of herself was missing. After several days or weeks of this, the goodsquad commander shows up and asks her to come with him: “Beta” is dying, and while they don’t know what the hell it is, or why it’s dying, their eggheads suspect it’s because she’s not there with it. She goes, and from then on, she’s in the Betram corp.
2042 - A manned mission to Mars lands in Gusev crater, to retrieve “Alpha“ and bring it to earth. The crew - or at least most of them - are not informed of the true purpose of their mission. Donner, Shaw, and Goss, Donner’s girlfriend, and a red shirt are involved, and as we all know, the girlfriend and red shirt both