Truth Is Not A Business - Revolution, Season 2, Episode 6

I would like to start today’s recap with a literature lesson (suck it up).  Last night, we heard the full name Miles has been using in Willoughby:  Stu Redman.  The name sounded familiar to me, and it was.  Stu Redman is the name of a major character from Stephen King’s apocalyptic novel, The Stand.  Long (extremely long) story short:  Stu Redman is one of the extremely few survivors of a ‘super flu’ that leaves the scraps of humanity left to be the pawns in a battle of supernatural good and evil represented by an elderly woman and a drifter.  It ends with a nuclear explosion in Las Vegas that kills most of Stu’s friends, even though he makes it out and back to the woman he loves.  He goes on to live a quiet life with her, both happily ever after.    Parallels?  Well, Miles is one of the survivors of the Great Blackout, comes out of the Tower that launched nuclear strikes against Philly and Atlanta, after participating in battles for basically the control of the East Coast.  He then brings his girl back home to Texas, and settles down to live the life of quiet, fairly well-behaved alcoholism near her. 

Sadly, this Stu Redman spends a frantic night setting up a crime scene so there will be trouble between the Texas Rangers and the Patriots.  We see some very shadowy scenes that are meant to convey that Monroe and Miles set up the Patriot to be Fry’s killer, which for some reason includes putting someone’s body in the river.  The Texas Rangers find the scene and the body just as Monroe and Miles want them too, and the two seem pleased, until the next day when Miles finds that Monroe just couldn’t help himself and had to kidnap/torture/interrogate/kill a Patriot, and has tons of intel (hint: like Chekhov’s gun, it will have to be used) on the Patriots.  The two are sure that any minute now, the Texas Rangers will open up a can of Patriot whoopass.

We flashback, suddenly, to a camp scene about 13 years prior.  Only then, it’s Miles that wants to raid some neighbors for a cut of their cattle and goods, and disappear as ghosts.  Monroe tells him to get a girlfriend.  Monroe then checks on Shelly(?), pregnant, and they rhapsodize over their impending parenthood.

Aaron returns to town, and Rachel brings Charlie back to her dad’s place, who is ecstatic to see his granddaughter.  But he’s angrily asked where Rachel was, and Rachel and Charlie’s polite routine the next morning isn’t fooling him.  Rachel decides her dad’s place it totally lame, and goes to Miles’ place in town.  Miles and Rachel snap at each other over Monroe.  Miles, showing Rachel all the intel Monroe got that very morning, has resigned himself to, once again, witnessing Monroe’s psychopathic behavior and benefitting from it.  Rachel, like the mother of a teenager, tells Miles that he really shouldn’t hang around with guys who torture. 

Monroe is finally laying low as he was told, cooking something in anticipation of the bloodshed show to come by nightfall, when a grenade explodes in his shack.  Dazed and disoriented, he half-decently tries to fight his way out of a combination of Patriot and Texas forces, but fails.  Miles, Rachel, Charlie, and Aaron watch him being brought into Willoughby, by an honor guard that includes Ed Truman and General Carver, President of Texas.  They announce that they will bring justice to the war criminal Sebastian Monroe.  Rachel can barely contain her glee.   In Carver’s press corps is Bonnie, a former reporter for Forbes, who recognizes Aaron as he is reading an old comic about someone who can make fire, doodling a symbol he’s seeing in a comic supposedly from the public library (dude, respect library property!).  They chat a bit, and Bonnie says enough for Aaron to realize there will definitely not be any war between Texas and the US, and wonder why they are now so buddy buddy.  Aaron also realizes his cover is officially blown.  Bonnie is all cynical and jaded, writing only what politicians want to read about themselves “The truth is not my business,” she tells Aaron.

And… we move to an area about 2 hours’ walking from the Patriots’ East Coast re-education camp. Allenford says she’s not getting any closer.  She’s totally freaked out about being this close, but Neville is clear that she’s in it for the duration (well, until Neville can actually see his son).  They discover a campsite with inhabitants that have recently been brutally murdered, and Allenford is convinced  that it was by subjects from the re-ed camp, and that they’ve stumbled on training grounds, where re-ed ‘cadets’ learn how to viciously kill strangers.  She is now even more frightened.  With reason, because three cadets start shooting at them.  Neville and Allenford make a dash for it, and manage to hide in an abandoned building, right after Neville realizes one of the cadets is Boy Band himself.  Come on, Tom.  Do you really think Boy Band needs the excuse of re-ed conditioning to want to kill you?

Justice is pretty swift for Monroe; the judge pronounces the verdict and sentence (death, duh, it’s Texas), while Miles and Charlie get the bright idea to really get in some trouble by breaking Monroe out, but he is moved to the bank and it’s vault at the last minute.  Miles and Rachel snap at each other again, as she was the one who advised the Patriots to make the change.  She’s right, of course:  why should she lose her man and her daughter saving such a psychopath?  Charlie thinks Monroe’s saving her in the Plains Nation partially redeems him.  Rachel dismisses all arguments; Monroe is evil, despite being their best shot at confronting the Patriots, and a savior to her daughter.  Let justice happen.

Allenford and Neville confab a bit.  We learn that Allenford witnessed her own son’s “re-education”, and suffered her own husband’s indifference to it.  She’s more frightened of the Patriots than loyal to them.  She’s also convinced this is going to end with either Tom or Jason dead.  Oh, Allenford, don’t you know that Tom and Boy Band’s tense relationship is one of the show’s biggest draws?  Neville shows that he’s still got it: while Allenford cowers behind a grille, Nevile kills Boy Band’s drummer and rhythm guitarist, leaving only Boy Band.  It goes badly for Neville, as his own son gets the jump on him and is beating Neville senseless when Allenford knocks Boy Band out.

Flashback to the camp scene.  Shelley’s birth goes badly.  Miles grabs an innocent looking man we will come to know as the asshole second only to Monroe to get water, and we see Monroe come out with his hands covered in blood and losing his shit.

Back to Willoughby: Miles is ‘escorted’ to Monroe’s cell, to find out that Monroe asked to see him and that the Patriots know who “Stu” really is.  Miles shakes Monroes hand a little too long and turns to leave, when Monroe tells Miles that he has a son by Emma, a woman they both loved once.  Miles returns the favor, informing Monroe that he hid Monroe’s son and that the kid will always be safe from Monroe.  Monroe is pissy about this.  But there’s not much for Monroe to do, as he’s escorted shortly to his death chamber.   Carver and Truman exchange tidbits like tweenies at a school assembly.  Aaron is definitely freaked out by all this, as he can only see events happening as potential dangers to him.    Rachel’s dad will actually inject Monroe with poison, and he’s more than happy to do it:  Danny was his grandson, after all.  Rachel is assisting, and this definitely has her stamp of approval.  Monroe apologizes to Rachel’s dad, but it really is too late for all this, and we see Monroe twitch, his eyes go blank in the open position, and Rachel’s dad pronouncing him dead.

Boy Band wakes up in handcuffs with Neville telling him he’s going to deprogram him.  Boy Band is not cooperating, telling his dad he knew about Mom’s affair with one of Monroe’s colonels.  Between a father never home and an unfaithful mother, it’s not a big surprise that Boy Band is fairly disgusted with his parents and has no loyalty left to them.  Working for the Patriots, his dad’s sworn enemy, was probably not a hard choice for him.  But Neville informs his son in no uncertain terms that Neville has worked, plotted, and killed for his family and what’s left of it will respect and obey him, dammit. 

Flashback again:  Monroe is drinking and laughing with some buds in the campsite thirteen years ago.  A clueless Miles enters, wondering why Monroe is in such a groovy mood after losing both Shelley and the baby.  Monroe tells him that they raided the neighbors Miles wanted to just steal from, killed everyone, and took whatever they wanted.  Miles, who kind of gave Monroe the idea, is horrified as Monroe tells him he was just doing what Miles wanted. 

Back in Willoughby, “Stu” is drinking, and Charlie comes to give him some moral support.  Miles is convinced that someone must have given Monroe away, but doesn’t know who.  We see four new developments, all bad:  turns out Dr. Rachel’s Dad tipped off the Patriots about Monroe, and is working them, although he’s pretty clear with Ed Truman that he’s in charge of how much he cooperates, not Ed; Bonnie, after reminding Aaron that the truth is not her business, drunkenly tells Aaron that the US and Texas have agreed that Willoughby will be an island of the US in Texas, with the Patriots totally running Willoughby now; we see a strangely familiar man ride into town, and Aaron sees a box on the guy’s wagon with the symbol he’s been doodling in the comic;  and we see Rachel digging up Monroe’s grave.