The Kill Point: The Great Ape Escape

The Kill Point is a very frustrating limited series to watch. The idea of it had great potential, but nothing being done in the show is very original. And the unoriginal ideas are being executed poorly, with plenty of "Why don't they just do this?" moments. "The Great Ape Escape" stayed in the same vein as the episodes before it, with plenty of pseudo-tension and ideas that went nowhere.

The episode began incredibly slowly, with much exposition from our bank robbers as they settled down from the near takeover of their unit by the scheming hostages. None of it really mattered much since it did little in the way of giving me new insight into any of these characters. But the action started to pick up a bit when Mr. Wolf was informed that the extraction plan was underway and they would be out in less than two hours. This is what I've been waiting for -- the platoon members on the outside were finally ready to put their plan into action. Unfortunately, it wasn't worth the wait.

Their plan -- the one they've been meticulously preparing for almost from the start of the hostage situation -- was to enter the building next door to the bank and hammer out a hole in the wall. Wow. How creative. In their way were two SWAT members stationed in the adjacent building. This could have been a great opportunity to witness a rarely seen military tactic, but instead, Mr. Wolf gave a speech as a distraction while his men tip-toed up behind the SWAT guys and grabbed them. Sure, Wolf's speech was probably supposed to be a very stirring, impassioned plea for the rights of the soldiers caught in the war (and it was pretty powerful to see what appeared to be actual veterans displaying their real-life amputated arms and scarred bellies), but the monologue was a far cry from anything Emmy-worthy.

Things get a bit silly from there. When the men finally break through the wall, I got to watch five minutes of everybody greeting everyone. Seriously? Shut up and just get out of there already. As unamazing as this plan turned out to be, it was actually about to work and set these men free. Of course, that can't happen. There's more show to deliver. So the writers decided to put one-armed Leon in a car with a headset not 20 feet away from all the SWAT guys surrounding the bank. This is what I can't stand about the show. The characters do (or don't do) things simply to move the plot along. Last week, the hostages got the guns, but Ashley couldn't pull the trigger. She claimed this week that she just couldn't kill the guy. Well, fine -- fire off a round at his legs and get out of there. And now, for no reason whatsoever, Leon is in the exact position he needs to be to allow the cops to get clued in to the escape plan. It's ridiculous.

But now that the SWAT team was aware of where they were heading, maybe I'd get a climactic shootout to bring the episode to a close. Nope, wrong again. Like much of The Kill Point, it was a lot of build up to nothing. The gunfight lasted for quite sometime, but it was the most straightforward battle I've ever seen. And how only two people got hit I'll never know.

The end result? Everyone is back in the bank. The once tight unit ended the episode at odds, with Mike unable to take anymore of it. He wandered out of the bank, unarmed, with Mr. Wolf pleading with him to go back inside. In an unsuccessful attempt to build tension, the scene dragged on forever until finally ending with what sounded like a gunshot. Was somebody hit? Who fired the weapon? At this point, I hardly care.