I’m really enjoying the mood and the setting so far. Am mildly annoyed at the soap-opera-ish plot coincidences though. The governor’s husband comforting Trish? Of course, she has to walk in and see it. And Frank’s wife, of course!, walks into the room to see his interogation right as he talks about him humping Elena that night. C’mon.
I have been watching it since the first episode. I meant to make a post earlier about how they needed to use the toilet or get out of the bathroom in regards to the supernatural element and now… now I really don’t know what to think. At least they stopped showing the mammoth every episode while playing creepy sounds.
I feel like they don’t necessarily go where you expect with those coincidences, though. Like Hildur doesn’t get mad or (very) suspicious - she probably has an idea something might be up, but she doesn’t want to think about it. It’s not until Trish flat out tells her that it blows up.
The last couple of episodes have been pretty slow-going, but I’m really surprised/delighted at the direction they’re going. And I loved that they let a scientist roll out the D-word* instead of the shaman guy who made the totem.
-Tom
*The D-word
demon
I watched the entire nine eps over the last five days, after you guys and this thread shined me on to the series.
Fortitude is a disturbing show! I love it, but so creepy. Among many other things to make my skin crawl, that whole ‘feeder’ subplot freaked me out.
I can’t figure the sheriff yet. In light of the uncovered photos, the opening scene in episode one seemed to suggest an unreliable narrator. Am I right that we also still don’t know how he showed up in Stoddart’s house?
Is this a limited series with a finite episode run, or is it intended to be ongoing? Largely due to how enthralling/hypnotic it’s been, and the heavy hitting cast, I’m putting in some trust that Fortitude is not another Lost with no direction or end in sight.
Whatever the “life cycle” is, it was interrupted with Stoddard and Dr. Allerdyce when their bodies were discovered. So it looks like poor Johnny Harris’ character, Ronnie, is going to be the first one to run its course. So creepy. It strikes me that this is what a Resident Evil story would be like if Resident Evil wasn’t laughable.
Correct. We also don’t know how he discovered Dr. Allerdyce after she was attacked. We go from the attack, to Sheriff Anderssen calling the governor to report the attack.
Why do you say the opening scene had an unreliable narrator? Didn’t it show Pettigrew being mauled by the bear after presumably being torn down from his handcuffed position?
I sincerely hope it’s a one-and-done season. Since it’s a small network, surely they don’t have the resources to draw this out over multiple seasons? Surely we’re going to wrap it up after 12 episodes?
-Tom
Ah, you’re right. I didn’t notice any rig from which Pettigrew could’ve been attached to, but it’s easily explained by the notion that the bear ripped him off and dragged him around.
I just re-watched, AND the research/radio tower was right there. So never mind about the unreliable narrator bit. :/
I found some interviews w/ a producer who is aiming for ongoing seasons, and have narrative designs, but say that the murder mystery in season 1 will be resolved this season. The series hasn’t been picked up for renewal yet.
Spoilers for episode 9 ahead…
I really enjoyed the banter between Henry and Eugene. The conversation itself was good, but I also liked how Henry went from “Fuck you” to semi-regret quickly and how Eugene loses his cool over being seriously injured and complains how really unfair all this is.
I guess it’s clear that Jason attacked Ronnie (guy who initiall fled with his daughter), but I still don’t get how Ronnie ends up in that room in the hotel. He was attacked in his own home, wasn’t he? So did Jason drag him over to Elena’s place?
That’s not Elena’s place! Elena is staying with Ronnie’s daughter at Ronnie’s place. If you recall, Elena lives at the hotel. Remember when the sheriff burst in while Frank was taking a shower?
-Tom
So… I’m watching the episodes on Amazon, and I get the sense that their numbering is off? 'Cause there wasn’t a serious injury to Eugene. Maybe the first episode on broadcast was a 2 hour premiere that Amazon split in two? Spoilers…
Amazon’s episode 9 ends w/ Natalie and the skinny scientist dude suggesting tapping into Liam’s (the murder kid) spinal fluid, and then Ronnie w/ eyes glazed over stuffed into his broom closet while Elena and the daughter watch movies or some such.
It also seemed as if Liam was boarding a return flight to crazy-ville when his dumb parents went out together to deal w/ torturing/not torturing the creepy feeder prof.
Yes, you’re right. For some reason the kitchen and the daughter helping do the dishes registered as this being a part of the restaurant/bar section of the hotel for me.
Yeah, the numbering may differ depending on the source/network you’re watching on because some will consider the pilot one episode, some consider it two.
That last shot of episode 9 with the sloooow zoom into Ronnie’s mouth. Brr. I don’t know what (other than him still being some facsimile of alive) we’re meant to take from that or if it’s just pure style, but…man.
Here’s a roundup of some memorable moments from the season so far (significant spoilers if you’re not caught up but no future-episode spoilers) with commentary from the series creator, Simon Donald. A quote I particularly like:
I wanted the audience to think, “Is this sci-fi? Is this horror? Is this supernatural?” All these avenues are open, because people are watching this show thinking, “What the hell is it? Where is this? Who are these people? What genre am I in?”
Because that is exactly what he achieved and a huge part of what I dig about the show.
Well, that was utterly horrific.
So I’m not sure if we’re supposed to think all the mysteries have been solved at this point and now we just resolve the situation, or if there are still outstanding questions to be answered.
For instance, I feel like there’s more to the sheriff. I know, of course, how he came to be present at Pettigrew’s death, but how did he get to the scene so quickly when Stoddard and Dr. Allerdyce were attacked? Did I miss something about an alarm being triggered at Stoddard’s? It seems there’s still an outstanding mystery there.
Are we resolved on whether Carrie is infected? There was the scene when she and her father are trying to flee across the wilderness, and he wakes up in the morning and discovers a bloody patch in the snow outside his tent. I thought it was implying that Carrie had murdered something or fed or some such thing. But she’s not displaying any of the symptoms of the other infected characters like Liam or Jason. And wouldn’t she be just as infected as Jason, since they found the mammoth corpse?
I think I missed what was going on with Ronnie’s hand. It was obviously rotting or injured or something when he was trying to flee with Carrie. Was that just frostbite? Infection from carrying the tusk around?
Who is the black guy accompanying the Russian during the drill theft? I know we’ve seen him previously with the Russian, but I’m not sure who he is.
-Tom
Ronnie’s hand was injured when he attacked the boat rental guy way back when and it didn’t get treated so it got infected.
I don’t think Carrie is infected, no. She would have shown some sort of symptoms by now, I would think. It does mean the way one gets infected still doesn’t seem fully established. It’s most likely the mammoth, for a variety of reasons including Jason’s pilgrimage back to it, but maybe certain people are immune? There’s definitely some people that had been exposed to the mammoth who haven’t shown any sign of being infected. It did seem like maybe Ronnie was but it’s not clear how much of his symptoms were caused by his hand festering in a perfectly ordinary way, and then Jason attacked him so that seems possibly moot at this point.
Also, welp. I -thought- the flies were significant…
You said it. I thought the horrific rape was going to be the nightmare highlight of this week’s show (eclipsing the polar bear mauling, Morton bleeding out, and pulling a larvae out of a severed finger found in a dog’s carcass). Nope!
I also want to see how the sheriff arrived at Stoddart’s place.
Maybe the Russian knows about the mammoth graveyard after his drunken confab w/ Pettigrew, and he teamed up w/ the black dude from the mining company he ‘protects’ to excavate some more frozen carcasses.
The Russian almost definitely knows about the graveyard - Pettigrew told him the document was worth millions and he later stole it and would have had time to investigate it. I’m not sure if he knows the exact nature of what’s buried there (well, I don’t think anyone quite knows its true nature, but he may or may not know about the mammoths), but I can’t think of any other reason for them to steal the ice drill.
That was quite the ride. At times it reminded me of Twin Peaks, or Resident Evil, or Fargo, or a horror movie, or a black comedy. But in the end, it was entirely it’s own thing, and so unexpected from beginning to end. What a strange sullen masterpiece of Arctic gothic.
-Tom
The scene where Tucci travelled to visit the nutty Russian and they sat in the office covered exactly what the Russian knew.
What a strangle, but likeable series. And just like True Detective, it had this mid-season point where you couldn’t be absolutely sure whether it’s going to be a realistic/scientific thing or possibly demonic forces.
When I heard that Fortitude stars Stanley Tucci–whom I like very much–I wondered what kind of quasi-autistic, super-skilled detective or cop with skeletons his closet he’s going to play. Because that’s what many tv shows are gunning for these days. Turns out it was neither! And he wasn’t even the sole center point of the show, just one protagonist of many. It was still a memorable character that I really enjoyed. I liked that he–unlike in other whodunnit shows–pretty much always directly told people if he suspected them of something or wasn’t buying what they were saying. Sorta came to bite him in the ass when he confronted Henry.
Last episode: Jesus, why would Dan stay near the window as Vincent was about to blow up the room. What did he expect to happen?
General questions: I may have missed some detail: How was it that Liam, Shirley and Elena got ‘sick’, but the girl–who had been with Liam when they found the mammoth–didn’t? How did Liam get sick in the first place? Just by touching the mammoth piece? They were in the open and he surely wasn’t stung. Why were Liam or Shirley infected, but didn’t become hosts to the parasite themselves? I guess attacking people, cutting them open and then vomit onto them was somehow a way to spread the thing, but the person to vomit still had to have something in her/his own bloodstream as well instead of only being a carrier?