Summary
“Control”, has the theme of family protection which slightly edges on boring but brings some important messages.
Tales from the Loop Episode 5 is more about a father’s grief than about his desire to ensure his family is properly protected.
At the start of Episode 5, Ed is using one of the robots at work – it’s rather silent. He sees a broken bird egg on the floor. His son Danny is still in the hospital. At home, the electricity box is still breaking, and he is afraid to ask for an advance at work. The breaking point in Ed’s head is when Lucas explains that someone is trespassing into people’s homes.
With his son in an indefinite coma, Ed’s actions for the rest of the episode are representative of that fact. He’s grieving.
In the middle of the night, Ed believes someone is breaking into the house, so he walks around with a hammer. The trespasser also approached his daughter, so he and his wife asked her questions about what the man looked like. The police aren’t very helpful, so the next day, Ed plucks up the courage to ask for an advance, and he buys a robot for protection that he controls by wearing a glove.
He stays out all night with the robot to ensure his family’s safety, despite reservations from his wife.
The next night, he continues to use the robot to protect the house, but things go from bad to worse with the electricity box breaking down for good. His wife insists he has to fix it. Ed’s wife suggests selling the robot to fix the electricity, but Ed is against that idea.
The next day, the police approach Ed and his daughter about the safety issues surrounding his daughter. In the middle of the night, Ed thinks he has found someone hiding in one of the cabins – he attacks the cabin and finds his daughter inside; his wife is understandably angry. The next day, Ed’s family moved out and left him to dwell with the robot.
Ed continues to protect the house in Episode 5, but becomes fed up with protecting the house on his own. He visits his son again and apologizes for letting him down. There’s a weird sequence that shows the broken egg at the beginning of the episode, where it pieces itself back together and rises in the air. I think this was metaphoric: “fix what is broken”. Ed gives the robot back and fixes the electrical box.
“Control” ends with Ed’s wife and daughter returning home; he shows them that he has fixed the electricity and that the robot is gone. His family returns for good.
At the end of the day, Ed thought that by buying a robot, he would protect his family, but it was actually doing the opposite. His response to the grieving process was to initiate unnecessary actions that were harmful – the electricity needed to be fixed. That’s it.
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