CANAAN - Episode 9

As CANAAN progresses as a series, so it seems more and more like one of those shows the progresses and develops in waves, with a run-of-the-mill and uninteresting episode one week followed by something with far more meat upon its complex bones the next. After last week provided (to my mind) one of those rather dull instalments, so episode nine manages to ramp things up again while solidly progressing the plot into the bargain.

After some oddly enjoyable comic relief thanks to the reappearance of Yun-Yun (that girl really does get around), we soon find out that she is in fact headed in the same direction as Maria and company, looking to return to the village where she was born so that she can die there too as her Borner medication looks set to run out. No sooner has she explained this (and been convinced that she needs to live rather than die by Canaan of all people) the group are attacked, but the normally reliable Canaan finds herself out of sorts without her synesthesia to fall back on.


Anyhow, with this danger out of the way the group's destination is reached, as they arrive at the now abandoned village that was the scene of the propogation of the Ua virus in the first place. We then get to learn from Santana just how this virus came about - A story which takes in conspiracy theories which implicate both the Snakes and the CIA in the US.

All of this is set against a backdrop of an increasingly maniacal Liang Qi, who is herself being hunted down by Alphard while simultaneously trying to hunt down the "other" Canaan for vengeance herself. This leads us on to another one of this show's fine action sequences, complete with helicopters and missiles, before Alphard comes face to face with an incapacitated Canaan before announcing her immediate intentions to the rest of the trailing group.

Compared to the last episode, this ninth instalment certainly managed to hit a lot more of the right notes - The comedy was brief and appropriate, the various inter-relationships between characters felt far better grounded, and most importantly of all the various threads of the series which looked too much like a tangle of randomness are finally being brought together into a coherent and more interesting structure which bodes well for the final four episodes of the series. Let's just hope that the next episode breaks that cycle of intermingling BB gun pellets with the real thing, and fires both barrels to keep my interest alive.