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Minority Report
The Present
Original Air Date: Oct 19, 2015
Vincent Chia – Sr. Reviewer
vincent@thetwocentscorp.com
Since the beginning of the series, Agatha has had visions that she and the twins would be returned to a being used as pre-cogs to help see the future and prevent crime. This week’s episode reveals a tiny bit more about that possibility and also how Detective Vega might inadvertently endanger the precogs.
The episode starts with a flashback to 2048, one year before pre-crime was introduced. Detective Vega’s father is a beat cop in uniform and is shot and killed.
In the present, 2065, Agatha shows Arthur the schematics for a milkbath chamber. The Defense Intelligence Agency planned to use the pre-cogs to help with national security. The chamber is the one Agatha has been seeing in her visions.
Dash gives flowers to Vega for her birthday. She’s not into celebrating. Akeela tells Dash that Vega shared a birthday with her dad, explaining her sadness.
As luck would have it, Deputy Director Blomfeld of the DIA is visiting the police station. Blomfeld is impressed by Vega, who has a homicide clearance rate 4 times higher than the other detectives.
Dash has a new vision but he can’t see any of the faces. However, Vega spots an extremely rare vintage “Red Clouds” football jersey. I’m presuming it is the new future name of the Redskins, but because it was a rare vintage, it’s possible they tried out a new name for a brief moment and then reverted back to Redskins?? Since it’s super-rare, Vega asks Akeela to track down recent purchases. Akeela thinks Vega is teasing her and she reveals a birthday gift box for Vega. It is a Red Clouds jersey. Dash surmises that Vega is the murder victim.
While chasing down leads as to who might want to murder Vega, they go to a prison to interview a prime suspect. Coincidentally, they walk past a glass case where prisoners leave behind objects from their criminal past in order to help start a new life. Vega spots her father’s antique pocketwatch and realizes that her future murderer is likely the same person who killed her father. The ticking sound from Dash’s vision was the pocketwatch.
Vega wants to go to the DIA to see if they have stored records of the beta-testing period of the pre-crime unit. The DIA had been testing the precogs for at least a year before putting pre-crime into official operation. Dash and Wally worry that Vega’s digging into Beta Pre-crime will raise flags, since it was a classified operation and the DIA will wonder how she knew it existed. She convinces them that she’ll be careful. However, the trip turns out to be for naught, as the deputy director explains that the Supreme Court ordered all files from Beta Pre-Crime to be destroyed. To top it off, Vega may have now placed the precogs in danger, though that aspect is not discussed further in this episode. We might return to it later on in the season. The Deputy Director says that the only ones with files from Beta Pre-crime would be the precogs themselves in their own minds.
Wally says that he has a machine that can help extract memories. (You should have said so earlier, Wally! Especially when you knew Vega was going to go to the DIA HQ and try to get files!). The catch is that Wally needs Arthur to cooperate as well. Back in the beta phase, Dash and Art acted as one mind, even moreso than during the actual Pre-Crime official operation. So to get those memories, Wally needs Arthur. Dash explains to Vega why Arthur will not help. Vega approaches Arthur and convinces him that she would never betray him. For some reason, Arthur agrees to help. He says it’s only because it’s her birthday, but even in his talks with Agatha, he has expressed the opinion that Vega is trustworthy. I’m glad to see Arthur be a “good guy,” but what about the possibility that Vega accidentally tips the DIA off to the precogs whereabouts? Good intentions don’t always prevent bad things from happening.
While both Art and Dash are plugged into Wally’s memory retrieval machine, they are shown home videos of Hamilton Vega. An old vision is sparked and Vega recognizes the murderer from the twins’ vision. It is the prison warden, Deena Winters. (What a coincidence!)
Vega goes to Deena’s residence to try to force her into confessing. At one point, Vega holds Deena at gunpoint. Deena says she is sorry, but that she has turned over a new leaf and is a new person. It is consistent with her behavior at the prison, in which she has faith in the rehabilitation of the prisoners. However, Vega continues to press for her to confess her crime. Deena reveals that she was hired to shoot Vega’s father, but then suddenly, Deena’s very young son arrives on the scene holding a pistol at Vega. It is the son who is wearing the Red Clouds jersey.
Vega and Deena both talk the son into putting his gun down. Deena agrees to tell Vega everything she knows about the murder if Vega leaves Deena’s son out of the reports. Deena says that it was her former drug dealer who hired her but has no further information.
I must say, although I like the precog characters a lot and I wish them the best, this is the second episode in which I disagreed with the actions/inactions of Detective Vega and Dash. Last week, they purposely allowed Fredi to escape custody even though she was implicated in a previous murder and then attempted a second murder. This week, we went to the other end where Vega was almost vigilante-like in seeking vengeance for her father’s murder. Both events were understandable from an emotion perspective but I felt like the cops should be “better” than that.
It turns out I am far more interested in the continuing mystery around Agatha’s milkbath visions that I am about the various “criminals of the week” stories. We’ll see if that changes next week! What are your thoughts? Are you happy with the stories thus far? Do you think the series will survive the mid-season axe?