The Kill Point: Visiting Hours

"Visiting Hours" saw The Kill Point reach the apex of one of its central storylines -- the hostages fight against the bank robbers. The plan provided plenty of action for the episode, as I also saw the outside soldiers advance their plan, establishing communication with Mr. Wolf by the end of the hour. Most everything else in the episode was fairly cheesy and felt often like scene-filler, while the resolution of the hostages vs. bank robbers face-off left quite a bit to be desired.

The hostages' plan to overthrow the bank robbers was surprisingly successful but ended rather idiotically. Their plan required a lot of things to happen at the same time... Beck's daughter seducing one guy and taking his gun, the maintenance man getting into the bathroom (and not closing the stall door?) to turn off the lights, and the others wrestling guns away from the remaining robbers. It was actually kind of impressive that they all pulled it off, with the bank robbers at the other ends of the guns.

My only question: why, oh why, would no one pick up the phone? They had to know it was the police calling -- there's no one else who can call. Couldn't one of hostages not holding a gun (like the Sabian kid) just pick up the ringing phone and mention now would be a good time to come in, since all of the robbers are disarmed? It just seems like the logical next step in their plan, but apparently their plan to take over the guns ended with "point guns at robbers." (And then what... just stand there?)

The outside soldiers launched a rather creative plan this episode, sending in one of their own to talk to Cali and plant a frequency scrambler. Their actions continue to be the most entertaining developments on the show, and it'll be interesting to see if their elaborate plan succeeds or fails in the final two episodes.

The rest of "Visiting Hours" was filled with mainly ineffective material. Cali is visited by his wife, who gives him an extremely fancy scrapbook of ultrasound pictures of their child-to-be, Teddy Sabian first begs the police and then Mr. Wolf for the release of his son, and Cali decides to use Mr. Wolf's long-lost junkie son to help break Wolf down. Cali's and Teddy's gambits both pay off, as the fatherly guilt drives Mr. Wolf to release Bobby, which he was likely also resolved to do anyway since he couldn't use the kid to communicate with Mr. Beck anymore anyway.

In the "storylines I could do without" department, there continued to be more deep thoughts from the police snipers (I'm guessing they're just setting things up for me to care about these characters but it's so not working), the artistic bank robber described the idea behind his "creepy me" comic book sketches, and Mr. Wolf continued to bond with the widow as they burned names of deceased loved ones.

The Kill Point continues to be fairly uneven, but there's enough interesting plots (Will the soldiers break the robbers out? Will the couple trapped in a closet ever come into play for the robbers?) to make the limited series worth watching for the final two episodes.