TERRA NOVA “Bylaw” Season 1 Episode 6 – Terra Nova returned this Halloween night from its baseball-forced hiatus with “Bylaw”, a pretty solid episode with a sufficiently spooky opening. We see a Terra Nova redshirt checking out a remote patrol hut only to get jumped by a “nyko”, which is basically the Terra Nova version of the velociraptor. Upon a solid five second inspection of the crime scene, Jim decides that it was a murder. I’m still a little hazy on how he so quickly came to this conclusion. He saw that the blood of a smaller animal that the nyko preys on was also found at the crime scene, and he quickly deduced that somebody threw one of these animals in to lure a nyko inside so that it would kill whatever opened the door. Why the possibility that one of those little turkey dinosaurs couldn’t have just walked into the outpost and been chased down by a nyko without the involvement of a malevolent murderer never came up was a bit confusing.
Well, it turns out his wild guess was completely correct, and the murderer happened to confess to the crime about 20 minutes into the show. Seeing how Terra Nova dealt with the first murder in its short history was an interesting predicament for the show to be facing, and I’m sure that it won’t be the last. I enjoyed seeing Jim falling back on his Chicago cop instincts, and it all took an interesting wrinkle when Jim decided to help the convicted murderer back into Terra Nova to find the real killer.
Unfortunately, all of this intrigue did not translate very well to the family life in the Shannon household. Seeing Jim and Elisabeth bickering about what’s fair, deserved, and just on Terra Nova came off feeling very forced and artificial. Jim bringing up his jail sentence for the first time in several episodes came out of nowhere and it just felt like we were forcing this family drama into the episode for no reason.
Speaking of family drama, we got our requisite scenes with Josh in his quest to bring that stupid girlfriend back from 2149. We haven’t been shown enough about his relationship with that girl to care about him getting her to Terra Nova, and he’s being a huge jerk to Skye when she’s just trying to help him (Goodness knows why). Josh telling her “You don’t know what it’s like in 2149″ was just stupid. Maybe I’m confused as to how this show works, but Skye can’t have been sent to Terra Nova that long before Josh. So maybe she doesn’t know what it’s like in 2149, but she probably knows what it’s like in 2146, or whatever year it was she went. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the hissy fit that Josh threw when his dad said he couldn’t work at the bar anymore. Here’s hoping Josh dies a horrible death soon, and hopefully he’s wearing the bad boy beanie that he donned for his final scene with Mira.
Josh aside, this was another solid episode of Terra Nova. I’m really hoping FOX decides to renew Terra Nova for a second season, as there’s some interesting overarching story lines on the show that need to be explored. With ratings still in a very ho-hum level for the show, we’re going to need to see some improvement if the show is going to stick around.
Random Thoughts:
- Wow, Stephen Lang does not really pull off the broken hearted army leader. I guess he was trying to emote when he talked about burying his soldier, but I could barely tell.
- Those whirring car sounds are driving me insane.
- This 8 year old girl came trick-or-treating to my house tonight dressed as Snooki, complete with low-cut shirt and mini skirt and her terrible mother looking on proudly from the sidewalk. I know that has nothing to do with Terra Nova, but I just wanted to write that down somewhere so I could vent. Thank you.
Please make sure to read our comment policy before posting a comment.