Drama
Chicago Fire
Where’s the fire? In Chicago, it seems. But the flames outside Firehouse 51 are nothing compared to the heat generated inside.
Agents for uber-violent intelligence services rarely get a chance to grow old. So on that count, you can call Sam Fisher one of the lucky ones.
Fisher—longtime field operative for what’s now known as the 4th Echelon—has been chilling in rural Poland for a bit, chopping firewood, feeding the cows, waiting for the inevitable call.
Lately, the only calls he’s been getting have been from telemarketers. But when another operative crashes her car into his barn—followed by a bevy of very hostile hostiles—Fisher knows that the 4th Echelon needs him once again. And how can he say no?
The unexpected operative is Zinnia McKenna, who just barely escaped a passel of killers in Lithuania. She’s carrying her dead boyfriend’s tooth—not as a rather morbid memento but because the tooth holds a very, very important secret.
Or, at least, half a secret. The other half is stored inside a wristwatch stashed in her old apartment. All she and Fisher need to do is traipse over to the flat, grab the watch and head into 4th Echelon headquarters to decipher it.
Oh, if only it were that easy. The apartment will likely be swarming with enemy agents also looking for the watch. Worse yet, 4th Echelon doesn’t seem to be taking anyone’s calls. Nefarious forces have wormed their way into the intelligence agency’s network, forcing technical operations officer Anna Grímsdóttir (known as “Grim” to her few friends) to shut everything down.
Yep, it seems that if Sam Fisher wants to save the world this time, he’ll need to do it the old-fashioned way: by killing just about everyone he meets.
Splinter Cell: Deathwatch is based on a long-running stealth video game series—one rumored to be revisiting its old glories in the near future.
Those games are undeniably M-rated affairs. But they’re also based on stealth and secrecy: After all, a lot of unseemly blood spatter will undoubtedly give away your location.
The Netflix show, on the other hand, relishes all that hemoglobin: It drips on floors, splashes across computer screens and covers many a body, both alive and dead. People are killed through not-so-subtle means of knives to the forehead, scalpels to the eye and all manner of other indignities. Even the dead are not left to rest in peace: That tooth McKenna is carrying, we know from the very first episode, didn’t just drop out on its own.
Deathwatch comes with other issues, too. Characters drop strong profanities regularly (including the f- and s-words). They quaff various glasses of alcohol, sometimes while on the clock. The show even contains a bit of bathroom humor here and there. Funny: In the games, no one even has time to go to the bathroom.
While stylish and smooth—and with a good understanding of the franchise’s underpinnings—Splinter Cell: Deathwatch is, sadly, an apt name. For all its subterfuge, the show itself is really about watching people die. And die. And die.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
McKenna infiltrates a hostile interrogation facility to save a man she’s become quite close to. Alas, she’s too late—and she takes it out on the dead man’s interrogators. But McKenna is hurt in the bloodbath, and she’s forced to run before she’s caught and killed. She manages to find her way to Sam Fisher’s farmhouse. And once Sam knows the score, he throws a very 4th Echelon sort of welcome party for everyone on McKenna’s tail.
More than a dozen people die violently here: Several are dispatched with a pair of police batons. Others are stabbed or have their throats gorily sliced open. One is skewered in the eye with a surgical scalpel. Another is stabbed in the temple with a kitchen knife. Bullets take down still more. We see several bloodstained bodies, of course, and some are seriously hurt before they release their grip on the mortal coil. (One man, for instance, has his arm broken; we see and hear it snap.)
A man who was apparently tortured to death sits lifeless, tied to a chair. Someone takes out one of his teeth, post-mortem, with a pair of pliers. People are hit, kicked and headbutted. McKenna breaks into someone’s car.
References are made to toasting with vodka and bourbon. Sam keeps a bottle of whisky nearby. People smoke cigarettes. We hear the f-word and s-word three times apiece. We also hear uses of “d–n” and “h—.” And God’s name is combined with “d–n.”
Sam ferries McKenna to a safe place—a place where she might have a little time to recover from her wounds. That won’t be easy, given 4th Echelon’s own wounded status. While the agency works to get back online, Sam discovers that it’s possible his old friends at Displace International—a private paramilitary organization back in Sam’s day—may have something to do with what’s going on.
Diana Shetland, who now runs Displace, is apparently trying to steer the company away from its paramilitary past and toward a clean-energy generating future. In fact, she and her brother have just managed a corporate takeover to do just that. Or so it would seem.
A person is stabbed in the head with a knife. Another man is hung from a church bell. Several people are shot and stabbed, most of whom die. Two men plunge from a window several stories up, land on a car and still manage to fight until one is killed.
A dog urinates on a scarecrow. People smoke cigarettes. Sam fakes a passport. Characters say the f-word about six times. We also hear “h—” three times, along with one abuse of Jesus’ name.
McKenna tells Sam that she’s been working closely with a CIA operative—so closely, in fact, that the two shared an apartment in Poland. McKenna says they need to go back to that apartment to retrieve some information vital to their investigation. Unfortunately, the bad guys will be there, too. Meanwhile, 4th Echelon tries to boot back up with the help of an outsider named Thunder. And Diana Shetland, head of Displace International, gives a keynote address at a prestigious climate change conference—promising a new clean-energy future.
The body count in this episode is a little lower than normal. Only two people die—though one leaves a great deal of blood on a bedsheet.
McKenna’s relationship with the CIA agent (Lukas Kersetz) was obviously an intimate one. “Well, that’s against the rules,” Sam says, “but we’ve all been there.”
We learn that Thunder “hacked the NSA a while back.” Grim smokes on a private jet, ignoring the “no smoking” signs (and the very nervous attendant). When she stamps a cigarette out on the ground, Thunder asks her to pick it up. Sam downs two glasses of whisky before talking with his old boss. The f-word is uttered four times. We also hear the s-word,” “a–,” “b–ch” and one abuse of Jesus’ name.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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