Millennium

I have been renting the Millennium TV series through Netflix. This is that series by the Chris Carter, the creator of the X-Files, and starring Lance Henriksen. I only think it lasted two or three seasons, but it should have gone longer. It’s great.

And then I get to the Season Two Premiere. It was a cliffhanger that Frank Black’s wife, Catherine, was kidnapped. I didn’t get it until the next day. Frank crossed the line. The episode was average but I think the implications from it are deep and far-reaching.

Frank Black in effect stalks the kidnapper. There is something deeper going on with the entire Millennium group thing. The kidnapper only does this because the Millennium group wants Frank Black. And Frank’s liaison to the group, the same actor who plays Locke on Lost, still doesn’t tell Frank absolutely everything. But in order to save his wife (whose kidnapper the Millennium group mysteriously knows absolutely everything about already), Frank has to find her. And when he does, he doesn’t just stop and arrest him, but he kills him. No, be specific. First, he stops him in a knife fight, but then keeps stabbing him. That’s an important distinction. He was stopped, but Frank, all worried about the family, keeps stabbing the kidnapper to death.

It seemed like a silly thing for Catherine to leave Frank for. I think my wife would be pretty happy if I stabbed her kidnapper to death to save her. But she sees something, the fact that he doesn’t stop stabbing. “You crossed the line,” she said. This isn’t the Frank that she knows. He loses his gift a little after this episode, evident only in the next episode about dogs and boundaries—a weird one, and then Catherine and him separate. This is far-reaching because Frank made a point in the first season to tell them how they were the light in this dark world he lives in to catch these really bad guys.