Snowpiercer

Episode Reviews

Jan. 24, 2022: “The Tortoise and the Hare”

Layton and his crew race to find evidence that the world is thawing while Wilford devotes limited resources to hunting them down.

While delivering a message, a child takes a shortcut through a strip club where women are scantily clad and adults drink and smoke. Couples kiss. Several women wear revealing outfits. A woman pulls a cigarette out of her brassiere. We see a woman in a bath from the shoulders up. A man mentions his husband.

A man attacks Layton with a bat, but Layton fights back and overpowers him. A woman hits a man in the head with a wrench. Another woman kicks a trapdoor shut on another woman’s head and threatens to shock several people with a taser. A man falls through the roof of a building (he is OK but nearly runs out of oxygen before being rescued). We see blood on the wall of a nuclear facility. A man has several cuts on his face from a dog attack. Someone wants to “cull” the population to conserve resources.

We learn that Wilford is forcing people to work in freezing conditions to make the train move faster as he hunts for Layton. He decommissions the first-class cars to help conserve energy but refuses to get rid of the cars (even though the action would speed things along) because he still wants to return society to its class system.

When two people are caught taking hot baths, they are subjected to a public “defiling” as punishment for stealing resources. (Passengers throw buckets of feces on them.)

Several people plot mutiny. A black-market trade delivers medicine to workers to keep them alive. We hear uses of the s-word, “h—,” “bloody” and “p-ss.” God’s and Christ’s names are also abused.

Jan. 25, 2021: “The Time of Two Engines”

Mr. Wilford has hooked his retrofitted supply train, Big Alice, to the tail of Snowpiercer in an effort to regain control. See, if either train stops for long, it’ll quickly freeze in place, with everyone inside freezing, too. Big Alice can act as an anchor: If Wilford doesn’t get his way, he’ll stop Snowpiercer, kill the passengers, take a few spins around the track and re-hook Big Alice to the 994-car train in due time. But Melanie (who wrested control of Snowpiercer from Wilford in the first place) and Layton (who leads Snowpiercer’s population) have ideas of their own.

Snowpiercer residents attack part of Big Alice (which has 40 cars itself). People are stabbed and hacked and shot with crossbow bolts, sometimes accompanied by little sprays of blood. Melanie, working on part of the stopped train from the outside, suffers frostbite when her protective suit rips. (The injury looks pretty gross, and doctors fiddle with the dead, sticky skin with tweezers.) People suffer from sudden cold (we see one man’s arm freeze and wither). A man dies in battle and falls on top of another combatant: We see the dead man’s blood drizzle over her.

A couple of guys jostle Zarah, Layton’s pregnant girlfriend. (And it’s subtly implied that the child’s patrimony is in question.) Ruth, Snowpiercer’s head of hospitality, whisks Layton and Zarah off to a plush luxury apartment on the train, noting that the previous owners committed suicide shortly before. We hear that Melanie’s parents died in the cold. As mentioned, Wilford plans to kill everyone aboard the Snowpiercer in order to get his train back.

Melanie suffers a disinfecting shower. (We see her from the shoulders up.) Train inhabitants trade fruit for a bag of marijuana: A man smokes a blunt—his first, he tells us, in seven years. (There’s also talk of negotiating for other drugs, too.) We learn that the Snowpiercer’s supply of morphine is all gone, but that the train manufactures its own aspirin.

Characters say the s-word seven times. We also hear “a–,” “h—” and the British profanity “bloody,” as well as seven misuses of God’s name. Someone makes an obscene gesture.

July 12, 2020: “The Train Demanded Blood”

In the first season’s penultimate episode, the revolution nearly ends before it begins. Melanie, who’s revealed as “Mr. Wilford” after lo these many years, is imprisoned and about to be executed. Nolan Grey is set to gas both the rebels and the innocent in the back part of the train. And the rebel leader Layton is given a choice: Give yourself up for execution, and the back end of the train will be saved; or keep fighting, and everyone will die. Layton’s inclined to keep fighting until he learns that a woman named Zarah is carrying his child.

The aftermath of the rebellion’s first push (which we hear killed at least 37 people) is pretty evident. Lots of the survivors are left bloodied, and some of the captured are being executed by the “lung of ice.” We see one suffer such a fate: A mask is strapped to the condemned man’s face and air from the outside is pumped in—freezing his lungs (and part of his face) in the process. A fracas takes place between several combatants, leaving many severely bloodied. (One nearly unconscious man seems to have had his nose broken.) Layton is beaten by vengeful security men. A man threatens (by way of hyperbole) to cut a boy “into little pieces and put you in the composting toilet.” Someone cuts open their hand or wrist—painfully and bloodily—to extract a device of some kind.

A man says he’ll pray for one of the condemned. Someone vomits. A couple kisses passionately as they plot their own train takeover. Characters say the s-word twice, the British profanity “bloody” twice, as well as using the word “h—” and the f-word stand-in “freaking.” God’s name is misused twice (once with the word “d–n”), and Jesus’ name is abused once.

[Spoiler Warning] Seven cars at the center of the train are decoupled from the rest and sent down another track, dooming all of those aboard to an icy death.

May 17, 2020: “First, the Weather Changed”

The Tail’s plans to take over several cars in Snowpiercer are derailed when one of the community’s leaders, Andre Layton, is called forward. He’s given a grilled cheese sandwich and some tomato soup—treasures he thought were long-distant memories—and learns that Mr. Wilford, the train’s mysterious creator, wants him to find out who murdered one of the passengers. But the revolt, while postponed momentarily, won’t be stopped. Other leaders, assuming that Andre has turned his back on them, argue for an attack.

The suicide of a Tailer becomes the catalyst. An elderly resident of the Tail hangs himself with an electrical cord on his birthday. Tailers attack the security team after it enters to remove the body. The frenetic, close-quarter battle leaves several people dead (one of whom had an arm literally ripped off by a strong Tailer, and whose hand was used to open another car door) and a host of others injured and bleeding. Andre is also viciously beaten when he seems reluctant to take the case.

In flashback, we see how Tailers came to board the train originally (despite not having tickets). They invaded the end of the train in, again, another bloody, vicious battle. People are clubbed and kicked repeatedly. Elsewhere, Andre inspects the corpse of a murder victim: the man’s nude (we see portions of the corpse briefly), and there’s a black spot/hole where his genitals should be.

Andre questions suspects in a section of the train essentially taken over by, in the words of the brakebman escorting Andre, “young people, living and screwing in groups. Bunch of freaks, if you ask me.” One was apparently a former lover of Andre’s, and she kisses her female lover goodbye (and simply says goodbye to her male lover) before being questioned. Back in the Tail, Andre’s current lover is propositioned/threatened by another male resident. The insinuation is that without Andre there to protect her, she needs to find a new lover/protector to keep her and her children safe.

A woman swims naked in what would seem to be an aquarium car. (We see her rear clearly, and most of the rest of her body as well.) Andre is given a shower, where we briefly see a part of his buttocks. A same-sex couple chats with officials in a posh dining car. There’s some banter about a “conjugal” visit. A doctor, who supervises a car wherein convicted criminals are kept in drawers asleep, creepily grooms a female inhabitant before hastily putting her away. (He admits to “taking special care” of a suspected female murderer.) A guest complains that “Europeans” are using the sauna naked and singing boisterous songs.

People utter Christian prayers—and one holds what appears to be a Rosary—before what they assume will be a big battle. Characters drink wine, beer and other alcoholic beverages. We hear at least five uses of the s-word, along with “h—,” “a–” and “d–n.” God’s and Jesus’ names are both abused a couple of times.