After each episode I usually have something to say, but after watching "Pain," I was filled with a general sense of boredom and complacency brought on by what can only be described as a terrible episode. The largely plotless filler episode was spent trying to ratchet up some kind of tension which never appeared. There were several facts that, based on previous episodes, I could take to heart, negating any feelings of anticipation I would have. 1) No one would be seriously injured. 2) There would be no lasting consequences. As it turns out, both were correct.
The cause of the hallucinations, ticks, was about as simplistic as it gets, and no one even thought to bring a doctor or scientist to, you know, find out exactly what the tick does and if it could be useful. Instead, everyone assumes the tick has a toxin that is causing these hallucinations, pull out the ticks, and squash them. Problem solved.
What exactly are these hallucinations? There's no uniformity to what they cause the people to do, so they ended up showing part of each affected character whether it be positive, negative, or flat out crazy. And really, what the hallucinations showed weren't complex either. Chloe misses her father, Scott has issues with his son, Rush has issues with his previous captivity, James pines over Scott (more female weakness), Volker has claustrophobia, another guy has problems with snakes, and Greer just goes wild.
By putting most of the blame on the ticks, the writers allowed Greer to once again do his angry black man routine, thinking that Wray and Rush are staging another coup. He hunts down Wray and shoots her below a team comes and stops him. Even if the ticks were the prime cause of his behavior, there's part of Greer that is completely insane and unredeemable.
There are only three episodes left in the season and from the descriptions, it looks like they'll be related to the future of the crew. I hope they're better.
Score: 7.7/10
