“Pipelines” Somehow Isn’t A Bad Magnus Episode
Let me be clear. I hated three big things about “Pipelines.” I hated the re: being repeated so many times in a row. Some of the emails are so short that it’s actually ridiculous to include those—damn any verisimilitude. Secondly, I hate that the actual horror moment, the death of a major character (sort of), was being crushed to death by pipes. Seriously? Pipes? Yes, I understand that a bunch of hot metal pipes squeezing in would be terrifying and painful for the victim, but even Buried episodes from Archives don’t rely entirely on simply being smooshed. What a terrible choice, and what a weak pun of a title. And finally, for the third thing, I hated that “Pipelines” expected me to believe someone would type out that long of emails when they were that close to death. It should’ve just been “help” sent over and over—or something similar—if there were going to be “livestream-style” emails at all.
Okay. Good. With all that vitriol out of my system, let’s talk about how cool “Pipelines” is from a lore perspective. My eyes literally widened when it was mentioned that Elias was one of the confirmed deaths in that Roman bathhouse. I sometimes forget that there are alternate-universe versions of Archives characters running around, but I should’ve known we’d find out what happened to Elias, eventually. Apparently, Jonah Magnus never took over Elias’s body in this “timeline,” but Elias was still very rich and very interested in magical stuff. I wonder what other wealthy characters, like Peter Lukas or Lietner, are up to in this world.
“Pipelines” Brings Up A Variety Of Fun Questions
We also get more hints about how alchemy works—which has still somewhat alluded me, despite many clues from the narrative already. The combining of living organisms puts me in mind of that dog in “Hard Reset,” and the building being angry reminds me of how “Restructuring” had sentient sections of land. Alchemy is clearly something that people in this universe have been successfully using to do things for a long time, but what exactly?
I obviously don’t know. But I really enjoyed how it was presented in this episode. A lot of stuff in “Pipelines” is not subtle, but the information management is—and in an engaging way.
I also—though perhaps with an air of annoyance on my part—enjoyed that Gwen making rash decisions is just going to be the catalyst for bad things happening from now on. She’s managed to piss off a bunch of Externals and then cut off the O.I.A.R. from the only people who regularly fight monsters. That way, the main characters have to deal with the problem. Maybe it’s just because I’m a writer, but I can’t help but see these strings, and I wish I didn’t.
It’s at least very within genre for this to happen, though. Turns out, Gwen’s a protagonist in a cosmic horror story who thinks she can control the cosmic horror. That always goes well (sarcasm). Hubris or curiosity are the most dangerous qualities to have in this micro-genre.
So, yeah, I had problems with “Pipelines.” Lots of them, apparently. But I was never bored listening, and I even got a few moments I enjoyed sprinkled throughout. It’s not a great episode, but I am honestly enjoying season two a lot more than I think I enjoyed season one.
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