Minority Report - Fredi / The Present - Double Review

These past two episodes of Minority Report have really surprised me. Both have been more interesting and shown a lot of improvement in their own ways. Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late. As improved as these episodes were, they still couldn’t seem to break past that mediocre threshold. Sure, there are moments where you can see the potential this show could have had, but when taken as a whole episode, they still fall incredibly short.

Fredi

In this episode, Dash has a vision of a woman being murdered. Once they get more information about who’s involved, they go to a fancy party, hosted by a man named Cayman, to try to get some clues. Dash ends up meeting the woman, Fredi, who they saw in the vision. They have a flirty thing, which turns into something more. Fredi opens up to Dash and it turns out she has a grudge against Cayman because he was involved in the death of her sister a few summers ago. Her sister overdosed and Cayman and his friends left her to die, so that they could avoid any responsibility. So, it turns out that Fredi was actually supposed to be the murderer, not the victim, in the vision. She’s a sympathetic villain though because she’s doing it all to avenge her sister. That’s the way that Dash and Vega feel as well, because they make sure that they are able to get a confession out of Cayman so that he takes some responsibility for his part in the death of Fredi’s sister. They arrest Cayman and Fredi gets off so everything worked out all right.

The main problem I’ve had with every episode so far, is that they’re very slow to get going. I want something that grabs me right away. There’s not enough time to be wasting the first 10 minutes of every episode with filler. It’s like this show is trying it’s hardest to be boring. That being said, I enjoyed this episode a lot more than any other episode so far. It threw in a bit more sexiness by giving Dash a love interest. Dash was cute with his whole flirty thing and when he asked Fredi out but overall he still feels very one dimensional. However, having a love interest really opened him up gave some life to him. Other than that, I still feel like he has no reaction to anything, and only one emotion or facial expression. I’m interested to see how his relationship with Akeela plays out. I thought they may have been laying some groundwork for that in the last episode during their Hawk Eye interview and I feel like there might be something there. Whatever does happen, it will be short-lived with only a few episodes left.

I feel like there’s something about knowing who the murder victim and murderer are at the beginning of every episode that takes away from the suspense of the show. We either know it's going to be totally opposite of what the vision shows or we know exactly what will happen. Either way, we know all the players involved upfront so it takes away some of the excitement.

The Present

I was really looking forward to this episode. There were higher stakes with Vega as the person being targeted. It’s Vega’s birthday during this episode which was kind of fun to see. I thought that Dash was actually likable and sweet when he surprised Vega with flowers. When the episode began, we learned that Vega’s dad was a cop and he was murdered just before the pre-crime program officially started. She shares a birthday with her father so she was not that excited to celebrate on her big day. She still doesn’t know who was responsible for her father’s death so she has never gotten closure. Soon, we found out that although the pre-crime program wasn’t official they were in the testing phase and Dash, Arthur, and Agatha probably saw a vision of her Dad’s death but action could not be taken. Dash has a vision of a person in a rare football jersey being killed and when they ask Akeela about it she says that she got one for Vega for her birthday. This leads them all to believe that if Vega ends up looking into her father’s death that it will lead to her murder. Vega ignores the possibility of death because she needs answers. There were no other names or faces so there’s actually some suspense this time.

Dash and Arthur attempt to remember their vision of her father’s death and because it’s from so long ago they have to use a painful machine to help trigger some memories. They eventually are able to remember and Vega tracks down the woman responsible. She used to be a drug addict back when it happened but has cleaned her life up and now has a son. Their confrontation is interrupted when her son comes into the room, wearing the same football jersey from the vision, and he’s holding a gun. It then becomes clear that Vega is not supposed to be the victim - she’s the killer. The situation is calmed down and no one dies but the woman tells Vega that she was hired that night to kill her father. She doesn’t really provide any more details but I guess this is going to be the “big” story arch of the show…it only took them five episodes to get to it. I wonder how much closure we’ll get for this now that the show has effectively been cancelled with its episode cut. Oh well, I won’t be losing too much sleep over it either way.

I was actually kind of impressed with Meagan Good’s (Vega) acting in this episode. It wasn’t Emmy worthy but it was some of the best acting I’ve seen on this show so far. I’m glad we got to see a bit more of her history and got to see the more emotional side to her character. So far all of these characters have felt very one-dimensional but I think that both this episode, and the previous one, have really helped add a little more depth and believability to at least Vega and Dash. Dash (Stark Sands) still bothers me though. He always has the same look on his face. I find that Arthur (Nick Zano) has much more presence on screen and is much more interesting to watch. Overall, I thought this episode, like most of the others, was a lot of talking and not a lot of action. This slows down the pace of the show and makes it boring. The stories themselves are interesting enough but the execution has just been really terrible.

Although there have been improvements and both of these episodes allowed us to see another side to these characters, both episodes were too slow paced. They still haven't had an episode that’s really grabbed me. Honestly, there’s just nothing special here and its mediocrity is what makes it bad. Hopefully, the last few episodes will build on these two and we can enjoy what’s left, but it feels like average is as good as we’re going to get.

What did you think of these episodes? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading!

About the Author - Kate Sidwell

Kate is a 24 year old, USA based, Psychology/Public Health Researcher - but that’s just her day job! In her spare time she is an avid TV watcher (some may even say addict!!). Some of her favorite shows are Jane the Virgin, Bates Motel, The Flash, Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, Rookie Blue, Silicon Valley, Beauty and the Beast, Sleepy Hollow, The 100, The Mindy Project, Pretty Little Liars, Once Upon a Time, The Royals, Orphan Black…so pretty much too many to count and a huge variety! She’ll give pretty much any show a chance! She also devotes a lot of time to her tumblr (eat-sleep-breathe-tv.tumblr.com) where you can find her reviewing and commenting on most of these shows and just generally fangirling! She’s excited to be writing for SpoilerTV on Complications, Baby Daddy, Proof, Switched at Birth, Secrets and Lies, and Minority Report!

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