‘The Rain’ on Netflix Season 2 Episode 2 Recap: Apocalypse Nah

I’m going to start my review of this episode of The Rain by saying some nice things about it. Why? Mostly to avoid talking about what’s going on up there 👆👆👆.

Yeah, we’ll, uh, we’ll get back to it.

Titled “The Truth Hurts,” this installment features a strong series of flashbacks to the day of the rain, in which we learn that the parents of now-dead scientist Jakob and his sister Sarah abandoned them in the quarantine zone rather than yoke themselves to their sick daughter. (Seems like she’s legit sick, not infected by the virus; the odds that she has the same ailment that the virus cured in Rasmus strike me as pretty high.) Jean and Lea spend some time flirting in their adorable sexless way as they struggle with the concept of a world in which no one knows how to grow cucumbers and the like anymore since everyone’s basically dead. Time is made for the characters to laugh together in little moments, despite it all—one of the show’s most humane touches.

The editing of the episode deserves special mention. Continuing an experiment the show began in the season premiere—likely as a way to keep the show’s distinctive storytelling speed moving at as fast a pace as possible but paying its own artistic dividends as an end, not just a means—dialogue from a conversation taking place in the present is overlaid atop images that occur in the immediate past or future. In essence, the characters will mull over a plan, articulate the plan, begin to execute the plan, and sometimes even complete the plan all in the same audiovisual breath. At times, this gives the show the elegant, impressionistic efficiency of an old-school plot-based music video.

Which provides a much-needed aesthetic boost to some pretty creaky ideas. In fact, the central plot driver of the episode is so creaky that the show takes the shopworn shortcut of having one of the characters point this fact out, as if that provides sufficient cover for the silliness of it. (This can work sometimes, but I wouldn’t bet on it.)

Here’s the deal:

With Jakob and his entire antiviral research team dead—only his maybe girlfriend Fie and his invalid sister Sarah, who for health reasons was not part of the project, survived—the crew is at a loss. Simone suggests that perhaps the project, and Rasmus’s life, could be salvaged using information on her father’s old computer. Leaving both their old friends and new allies behind at the research station, she and Martin set off for her childhood home. If they make it there, and if Apollon hasn’t staked the place out, and if the computer is still there, and if they can retrieve it, and if they make it back, and if it works, and if it has any relevant info on it, and if they can find that information, and if Fie can decipher what they find, and if she can act on what it deciphers, then maybe they can continue Jakob’s work and save Rasmus—and gosh, who knows, the world.

That chain of ifs would tangle up even the tightest writing; here, it accompanies lines like “That computer is our only hope.” (<Microsoft Office’s Clippy voice> It looks like you’re trying to summon Obi-Wan Kenobi. Would you like some help with that?) The Rain knows this, and tries to backfill by pointing out the ridiculousness itself. The requisite “Can’t you hear how insane this sounds?” task (and that’s another line I’m quoting verbatim) is awarded to resident cynic Patrick, who directs it at Martin during the beautifully edited planning and execution sequence. The problem is obvious: Yes, we can hear how insane this sounds, thanks for asking, and this only underlines the insanity when the show goes through with it anyway.

Does it help that after issuing his warning, designated skeptic Patrick spends the entire episode skulking around secret passages and hidden chambers while playing with various sci-fi devices—including some kind of electromagnetic pulse gun and an scanner that draws little unidentified subcutaneous bubbles up the length of his arm—that would look obviously dangerous even if he hadn’t found them in a room with a skull emblem spray-painted on the wall?

No, it does not.

As you might be able to tell, the real journey being taken here is one deeper into standard post-apocalypticisms. In addition to Patrick’s skull-emblazoned treasure trove of creepy tech, there’s the kindly-seeming couple Martin and Simone bump into, who invite them in for an impromptu moonshine party and discuss how best to sell them out to Apollon when they believe they’ve passed out. Simone overhears, and whaddaya know, it’s kill-or-be-killed time.

Sigh. The Rain had so deftly danced between these us-against-them raindrops before. Why go there now? Simone’s guilt following her first kill, and Patrick’s sad declaration that, unfortunately, you get used to this kind of thing, are handled well, but it’s not enough.

Anyway, they make it to the Andersens’s house, where more poorly written happenstance goes down. Apollon goons are there…but they’re only guarding the front of the house for some reason, so Simone can sneak right in. Patrick offers to distract the soldiers so Simone can find the computer…but it’s not clear from what, since as far as he can see they’re not actually monitoring the inside of the house. Patrick’s distraction…is starting a firefight against them that pits his half-loaded pistol against a pair of machine guns. He gets captured…and escapes by tossing his canteen full of moonshine at a soldier whom he’s asked to light his cigarette and setting him on fire…which only works because the guy flicks his lighter when he’s still like three feet away from the cigarette.

Kira, the Apollon security goon who killed Frederik in the premiere, has a bead on Simone through a sniper rifle…

…but refuses orders to kill her…because she convinces her boss it’s better to use a tracking device placed on the computer at some unknown point to lead them straight to their hideout…which she knows about, since she’s the person who lived in the secret skull chamber Patrick found…but which plan makes no sense because if Apollon had a tracker on the computer or a surveillance virus in the files or something it would have been idiotic for them to kill Simone and Martin as they clearly intended to do. (deep breath)

Which brings us back to this.

There’s no way around it: I do not like this development at all. I don’t like the way it makes Rasmus even more of a superhuman dark-messiah figure. I don’t like how it pushes the boundaries of plausibility established by the series up until this point. I don’t like how it looks, as a visual effect. I don’t think it fits with the show’s quick yet fundamentally gentle and restrained tone. It just…doesn’t work. Not even having it unleashed under powerful circumstances—Sarah, grieving her brother and their friends, begs Patrick to kill her, and the virus emerges when she enters his room—can salvage it. My hope is that the show itself isn’t irrevocably infected as well.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Stream The Rain Season 2 Episode 2 ("The Truth Hurts") on Netflix