Summary
The Institute still feels a little dramatically inert in Episode 3, which is mostly setup for later, but hopefully we’re moving in the right direction.
I get that prison breaks are a pretty complex undertaking, but The Institute needs to speed things up. If we’ve already had the introductory mystery and then the beginnings of the idea to escape, it would stand to reason that Episode 3, “Graduation”, would gather a little bit more forward momentum. But no dice. There isn’t a great deal that happens here, at least not that’s new. Nicky and Luke continue to plot an escape, emboldened by the convenient arrival of all-powerful Avery, the Institute’s leadership continues to fight among themselves, someone else graduates to the Back Half, and in Dennison, Tim gets closer and closer to actually becoming involved in the main plot. If you didn’t know better, I could be describing the second episode there.
I’m being harsh, I know. A slow-burn show needs these kinds of episodes to set up multiple concurrent but eventually interlocking storylines for later, but that does little for us in the meantime, especially given that the moment-to-moment drama isn’t especially compelling. And I’m cautious of the fact that I clearly don’t care as much as I’m supposed to. “Graduation” has an extended sequence of Luke being “tested”, which is indistinguishable from being tortured, but there’s something about his demeanour and the show’s wider framework that doesn’t quite communicate the seriousness of what we’re seeing.
Luke is essentially martyring himself for the group at this stage. Given his genius-level intellect alongside his proclivity for TK, he’s of particular interest to the Institute’s leadership, although, of course, we don’t yet know why. But as soon as the full breadth of his powers is awakened through the “testing”, he’ll be shipped off the Back Half, again for purposes we don’t yet understand. That lends a helpful ticking-clock to the prison-escape stuff, but it also means that Luke has to endure an inordinate amount of punishment from Tony, who seems to take altogether too much pleasure in thwacking teenagers with a cattle prod.
This makes me think about Avery, because the fact that he’s only ten suggests to me that the show wouldn’t dare visit too much of this kind of thing on him, even though Avery is markedly more powerful than everyone else. Avery is so nifty, in fact, that his very presence in the Institute seems inauthentic. His skill set is ideally tuned to filling the gaps in Luke and Nicky’s escape plan. He can read minds to determine who among the staff can be trusted – Maureen is the most viable candidate, but she’s also reporting back to Sigsby, so perhaps not – and what they’re really up, he can plant thoughts in people’s heads, inhabit the brains of dogs, and he can even tap in to what’s going on in the Back Half, albeit without much clarity.
These elements are rubbing up against each other a bit, if you ask me. The show needed someone talented enough to solve a bunch of plot problems, but there’s no way that a ten-year-old kid can be subjected to the same degree of misfortune as the protagonist, who’s pretty smart himself, so Avery feels weirdly insulated from the Institute’s darker ideas. I could be totally wrong, and as early as next week, Tony could be slapping him up and down the corridors, but I take leave to doubt it.
As with Episode 2, the big tragedy of The Institute Episode 3 is another graduation party, but this time for Kalisha, who wasn’t able to withstand the spot-the-dot exercise like Luke was. This is a bigger deal than Iris getting shipped off, since Kalisha is a fundamental part of the escape plot, but it’s intended to highlight the idea that everything’s happening on a stringent timer and that nobody is really safe from the leadership. Avery attempts to follow Kalisha’s path through the hallways by inhabiting her mind, but it leads to nothing tangible.
Joe Freeman in The Institute | Image via MGM+
Here, “Graduation” makes the senior staff at the Institute seem less-than-useless, but we also know that their infighting is likely going to lead to serious problems. Sigsby is deeply suspicious of Stackhouse’s motivations after overhearing his conversation with Hendricks in the previous episode, but when she tries to raise this to the higher-ups, it’s implied that Stackhouse has made similar claims about her own untrustworthiness, and without evidence, her attempts to expose him only lend credence to the accusations against her. It seems like Stackhouse is working on a significant coup, and Sigsby is, for now, powerless to stop it.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of The Institute Episode 3 is that it finally sees the shady happenings at the facility reach all the way to Dennison. The two are obviously connected anyway – Avery can hear a humming that reaches from one to the other – but it’s nice to have more direct confirmation, especially since it keeps Tim busy. But poor Annie has to pay the price. Such is the fate of being the only person in town who seems to pay any attention whatsoever.
Last week’s episode, and all the parts of this one that involve Tim giving useless Drew credit for saving the store clerk during the shooting, was about establishing Tim’s moral baseline. He’s a good guy, so while he wants to keep his nose clean because of his own trauma, he can’t look the other way when something egregious happens in front of his face. The Institute, working through Kate, the fake journalist double-agent who executed Michelle in the premiere, isn’t anticipating someone like Tim getting involved, so murdering Annie for getting too close to the truth should pass by without notice.
But not quite. Annie turns up dead, apparently by overdose, mere scenes after she told Tim that she’s completely sober, and Tim confided in Kate about Annie’s theories of mind control. It doesn’t take Hercule Poirot to put things together here. Annie was killed because of what Tim said, inadvertently proving her accusations and making him directly culpable. There’s no way a man of his staunch moral character will be letting that go. And it’s perhaps just as well, since this show really needs to get moving.
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