Warning: Spoilers for Episode 4 of Countdown!
Episode 4 is the most emotional episode yet, which in my book is a good thing. We needed a few episodes to start caring about the task force team. With an ensemble cast, it takes time to know anyone well enough to care if they live or die, so the show needed the first three episodes to establish who they are – and why we should be rooting for them. This episode is the payoff for spending some time doing that. It might have been even more effective later, but Countdown is nothing if not fast paced. The team is working against the clock, and the narrative needs something more to galvanize them. Something personal, not just ‘save the world’ – because humans actually respond more to threats to someone they know and love than to ‘do it for humanity’. Forgive the Supernatural reference, but that show was brilliant in anchoring Sam and Dean’s ‘saving people hunting things’ mantra to their own family from the jump.
This episode kicks off with the aftermath of Drew’s shocking shooting. Nothing raises the tension more than knowing that nobody is safe in a fictional show. It’s a reflection of reality – what they’re doing is dangerous, and that means in real life people get hurt and people get shot and people die. We need to know this early on so we can feel that the danger is real, instead of reassuring ourselves that “oh he’s part of the team, he’ll be okay”.
Who knows?
That realism makes the difference between a heart pounding sense of danger and a pass-the-popcorn complacency.
We already know enough about Damon (Jonathan Togo) to be rooting for him to be okay, which amps up the tension. After all, he’s lost a son and we’ve seen some of his struggle to cope with that unimaginable loss. So another tragic loss? Too much.
We see Drew’s emotional importance to the team through Mark Meachum, riding in the ambulance leaning over Damon with his hand pressed over his chest to frantically try to stop the bleeding. I’m a seasoned Supernatural fan, so I get a bad feeling when there’s that much blood – and also when a character played by Jensen Ackles keeps reassuring, “I’m right here, we’re gonna fix you up, okay? I’m right here…” Oh yes, we’ve been there before, and it usually ends up breaking my heart.
The episode doesn’t rush it too much, slowing the clock down as it were, the team waiting for news of the emergency surgery. Meachum again is our entry point for their emotions, looking devastated and lost in the hospital corridor, helpless to do something to save his friend.
Ackles has had a lot of experience portraying grief thanks to fifteen years as Dean Winchester, and he can really make you feel the gravity of it. It’s those human touches that keep Countdown from being just another procedural show with lots of car chases and shootouts.
His acute awareness of his own mortality just adds to the gravity of the moment. How long, he must be wondering, before it’s me who’s lying there fighting for my life?
I haven’t watched past episode 4, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the task force team become very important to Meachum as he continues to have more symptoms – everyone needs people who care enough to gather in the hospital waiting room and hope for you to make it. Everyone needs to feel a sense of belonging, especially in those times. Mark has pushed a lot of people away, and I wonder if the task force will fill that gap for him. I hope so.
The title card brilliantly is juxtaposed over a stricken Meachum, the letters appearing first almost like bars caging him in, as we pull out to spell out ‘Countdown’. Ackles can say more with his eyes than most people can say with an entire speech.
