Maybe I judged too soon, or maybe my expectations were so low there was no way to go but up, but I must confess that I enjoyed this week’s episode of Believe. I won’t go so far as to say it’s quality improved—yet somehow its plot holes, bad dialogue and unrealistic chase scenes charmed me.
In “Beginner’s Luck,” we learn a few more tidbits about our cast of characters. Milton Winter used to work for the CIA with antagonist Roman Skouras, but kidnapped Bo to protect her. Skouras is a geneticist who turns out not to be as evil as he seemed in the first episode. He, too, wants to protect Bo, but through the government. Winter believes the government would use Bo as a weapon, so he’s taken her. This moment was where I started to give the show a second chance. Television is past the days of pure good versus pure evil. I was happy to see the antagonist, Skouras, have a legitimate perspective on why he is trying to keep Bo under the government’s protection. And when I consider how Winter sends Bo running from city to city, sleeping on the floor of public bathrooms like a homeless person, spending her days at the casino, I wonder if Winter is doing this girl any favors. Maybe it’s because I’m looking at this show through the lens of a schoolteacher, but I worry about Bo’s education. I know she has “powers,” but at the end of the day, if this has been her life, doesn’t she need to know how to read and write? Later in the episode, she helps Tate win money at a casino. He play craps, and she turns the dice to make it seven. I was relieved to see she knows simple math.
At the beginning of the episode, Tate somehow lacks the foresight to think that a fugitive from death row would be chased down, so only after his face is plastered over every TV screen does it dawn on him to change his look a little. He somehow finds a hairdresser’s electric razor and shaves his head in the bathroom. When Bo’s picture is put on every screen as a missing child, he uses similar Groucho Marx disguises by giving her a baseball cap. The episode is basically a chase scene from this point on, with various parties trying to catch Bo and Tate. Then, for some reason, Winter and his team disguise themselves as real cops, and arrest Tate and Bo. All seems lost, until Winter removes his disguise and gives Tate a “gotchya” smile. Bo finds this all very funny, and Tate is annoyed.
There are a handful of improvements with the second episode. First of all, the actress who plays Bo, Johnny Sequoyah, is pretty darn good. Second, I enjoy both bicker and banter between her and Tate. It reminds me of (a much lower quality) Paper Moon , or (a much less cool) The Professional. Both movies pair together a curmudgeon criminal with a precocious orphan girl. And as for the unrealistic moments of the show (the terrible disguises, the completely unnecessary fake cop arrest, the way random characters notice Bo’s crazy powers but just treat it as if they saw a really cool car), it does have a certain consistent cheesiness that I can get into.
Still, much of it feels very haphazard. The chase scenes are pretty uneventful. And worst of all, Bo’s abilities are inconsistent. She says (similar to the Hulk) that she can only use her powers to move big things when she’s angry, not when she’s scared. But then she uses her powers when she is scared. For example, on the bus when the cops are looking for Tate and they’re about to get caught, she distracts the cop by releasing the brake from the cop car, which sends the car rolling down the highway.
Another problem with this show is the time slot. Sunday night at 9 has turned into the hour for high quality television. It’s when The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones air. This show’s long-term survival chances would be better in a smaller pond—say a Tuesday—and in an earlier time slot.
Lessons learned from this episode: If the CIA ever chases you down, just buy a hat.
Madina Papadopoulos is a New York-based freelance writer and regular contributor to Paste. You can follow her on Twitter.