Counterpart – The Crossing

By starrymag | January 27, 2018

By: Arlene Allen

 

 

The episode opens in a somewhat futuristic Germany with a body hurtling through the glass of an upper story, upper class hotel room. The detective on the scene is informed that the perpetrator, Baldwin (Sara Serraiocco), has left half a dozen bodies in the hotel room. The police find the bodies and a bag of cash and passports to “the other side.”  Baldwin has apparently fled and the only witness police find is a terrified young woman found hidden in the shower.

 

The police take the bag and the young woman downstairs to a waiting police van and as soon as the coast is clear the young woman pulls off her wig, grabs the bag, shoots all of the officers by the van and escapes. Baldwin has demonstrated her ability to pull off a well plotted deception and the ruthlessness of her nature.

 

Cut to Germany in the daytime where a nondescript middle aged man named Howard Silk (J. K. Simmons) is playing a game of “Go: in a park with a younger man, Andrei (Bernhard Forcher).  We follow Howard throughout his unremarkable morning. He goes to work in an office building that resembles a prison, into his cubicle that looks like a cell, where he exchanges scripted, cryptic information with a man in a similar, unremarkable suit. Apparently, Silk works for a UN agency that handles top secret information.

 

Howard has applied for a promotional job in the strategy department, but his coworkers are discouraging, especially a man named Marcel (Karim Saleh) who points out that Howard has worked there for 30 years now. He further notes that if Howard were to have gotten a promotion, he’d have gotten it long before now. Sure enough, when Howard goes upstairs to meet with his supervisor, Quayle (Harry Lloyd), he is pretty much told the exact same thing. It seems although Howard has performed exceptionally well over the past thirty years, he has aged out of the possibility of promotion. As Howard leaves the building for the day, he passes Marcel and a group of others laughing and planning an evening out of celebration. It turns out Marcel has gotten the promotion. Howard is invited to join the group, but although he harbors no ill feelings to Marcel, he declines.

 

Howard’s day ends with a visit to a hospital. He carries a bouquet of flowers. He pulls a few out to replace the existing stems in a vase at the nurses’ station before proceeding to a hospital room where a woman lies on a bed on a breathing machine. Howard replaces the flowers in a vase by her bedside with the fresh ones he just brought when in walks a man named Eric (Jamie Bamber). The woman in the bed is Emily Silk, Howard’s wife, and she has concussive trauma as a result of being hit by a car. Eric is her brother and he brings paperwork that he wants Howard to sign – paperwork that releases Emily into the care of her family, the Burtons. The family has never liked Howard and never approved of their marriage. Eric threatens Howard with a lawsuit, but Howard refuses to sign. The scene ends with Howard reading poetry to his comatose wife. It’s very clear that Howard has a sad life.

 

The next morning when Howard goes through security, his badge doesn’t work and he is pulled aside and led upstairs. He believes he is in trouble, especially when gruff, menacing main boss Aldrich (Ulrich Thomsen) starts biting his head off for inadequacies he wasn’t even aware of. Quayle is there, too, and he comes to Howard’s defense. Aldrich and Quayle start describing a “situation on the other side” and that this information is top secret and that Howard can never tell another soul. They bring in the operative from the other side – and he looks exactly like Howard!

 

It turns out that there is a parallel universe.  Quayle explains to our Howard that no one ever gets to meet their other side self. He explains that an experiment that went wrong created a passage to this other universe that is beneath and completely identical to our own.. He also shares the passageway to this universe lies within the UN building. No one is allowed to travel into or out of this universe and those that do need special “passports.” The other Howard is referred to as Prime and the only reason he has been allowed to come through and meet Howard is because of Baldwin. Baldwin has a kill list of people on this side and one of the people on her list is…Emily Silk.  Howard has absolutely no clue what is going on, what is happening or why anyone would want to kill his Emily. Prime wants to work with Aldrich and Quayle to stop Baldwin. Prime is a clandestine operative, a spy. They hatch a plan to trap Baldwin using Emily as bait. Howard is not happy about any of this as he fears the consequences for both himself and Emily if he doesn’t play along.

 

Prime returns to his universe while Howard makes his usual evening visit to Emily. We see Howard’s newly promoted coworker Marcel go into a gay club for a hookup, but he gets more than he bargained for when he’s tricked and killed by Baldwin.  We learn these killings aren’t random as there is a faction on Prime’s side who wants to control things on both sides of the universe. Prime’s Emily has died of cancer, he eventually tells Howard, and that’s why Baldwin is after Howard’s wife.

 

Prime spends time with Howard in his apartment, suiting up to look like Howard. Prime looks at photos of Howard’s Emily and they both swap stories of how Emily’s family on both sides never liked or accepted either of them.  The plan is for Prime to take Howard’s place for his regular evening visit with Emily and put an end to Baldwin if and when she shows up. It’s an incredible and emotional scene between the two; Simmons plays Prime as more confident, savvy and ruthless than Howard. Prime holds his head up and throws his shoulders back whereas Howard is sad and slouchy. Prime, over one of Howard’s ties, says he used to have the same one a long time ago, but it was lost. Howard tells Prime he can keep the tie when the setup is over.

 

Prime, Aldrich and Quayle pump Howard for the exact details of his visits to Emily. Howard tells them, but forgets to mention that he leaves a stem of flowers at the nurses’ station. He also forgets to mention Eric to Prime. At the hospital, Eric doesn’t know what has gotten into “Howard” with his new attitude as he taunts Eric to do his worst. He is in the middle of telling Eric off when Baldwin approaches the nurses’ station and sees the empty vase. Aldrich’s operatives, wearing wires, tip the agents and Prime that Baldwin is there and that they know something is wrong.

 

A gunfight and chase though the hospital follows. Baldwin does a whole lot of damage in the corridors, but is unable get to Emily. Aldrich and Quayle leave Howard in the car to assist Prime in trying to take down Baldwin. Baldwin escapes the hospital, sees Howard in the car and is about to shoot him when Prime bursts out and spots her. He is then able to wing her with a bullet, but she escapes into the night. Of course, now she knows that they know she is on this side and that she’ll be going after Emily.

 

Aldrich and Quayle go back to Howard. Aldrich is furious with Howard for leaving out a detail that has blown their operation. Quayle tells Howard that the world is just now opening up for him. Howard realizes that he is an integral part of these machinations and that they need his cooperation in order to capture Baldwin. Maybe being around Prime has emboldened him, but he tells Quayle he’ll help only if he can have the promotion that was denied him for so long. Meanwhile, Prime returns to a frightened and confused Eric and tells him to go away and never come back.

 

Howard goes back to his apartment, puts on a vinyl album on his stereo and thinks about everything that has happened to him in the past 24 hours. He stares lovingly at his wedding photo. The final sequence shows Prime walking into a bar and sitting down at a table. He orders a drink and sees a figure coming towards him. It’s a woman and she slides into the seat across from him. She lifts up her head and we see that it’s the parallel Emily – very much alive!

 

Counterpart will air its second episode on Sunday, January 28 on Starz beginning at 9PM ET!