'Emergence' writers make Jo do some unrealistic badassery and were those even necessary?
ABC’s fantasy thriller ‘Emergence’ opened to a great response when it aired in September. With the ‘Lost’ actress Allison Tolman playing the protagonist, the television series created by Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters has already aired six episodes and, awaits the release of episode 7 ‘Fatal Exception’, which has been pushed to next week.
Jo Evans (Allison Tolman) is a sheriff from North Fork of Long Island, who lives with her father (Clancy Brown) and daughter Mia (Ashley Aufderheide), following her divorce from Alex (Donald Faison). The pilot episode briefly introduces us to Allison’s character, focusing on her knack for solving cases and other aspects of her professional and personal life.
Until this point, Jo is portrayed as a sharp-witted diligent lady cop, who has drawn a fine line differentiating her professional integrity from the priorities on the personal front. She doesn’t mind getting dressed and heading to work in the middle of the night, as it serves good to the spirit of inquiry.
But her character begins to flip when she finds an estranged girl hiding behind a dune, during her investigation at the crash site, which occurs in the pilot episode. Allison Tolman’s role, which was until this moment well-defined, starts to crumble when the lost child enters her life.
As we near the end of the first episode, we can’t help but wonder what was on Jo’s mind when she decided to provide shelter to an unidentified human, despite being aware of her unlawful actions. Well, it wasn’t a big deal, as we were only in the first episode, and continued to hope that the writers had better plans to make her character look smarter in the following episodes, after the idiocy her choice reflected.
However, the second episode onwards Jo dwells so deep in the investigation that she surprises herself by going great lengths to find any possible detail about Piper, who is amnesiac and doesn’t recollect anything from her past. We could sympathize with Jo for all her efforts, at least to help the young girl who is thoroughly lost.
By now, Jo is aware that creepy men are driving around in their black SUVs looking for Piper. Yet, she chooses to let Piper stay at her home, along with her family with zero security. Wow! Upon watching we could only wince at Jo’s heroic actions prompted by her hidden motives, which only made her look weak and vulnerable.
In the third episode, Jo through Emily learns that Piper is an AI, who has a mind of her own. But, Jo finds it hard to come to terms with it and continues to be associated with Piper. Her unreasonableness at this point is cringe-worthy. We do not know if it was her motherly instincts playing against or she was simply fooling herself, by being obtuse about the dangers an AI could pose.
The 30-something lady cop later breaks into an offsite facility to find a cure to an illness that’s killing the AI. She single-handedly fights the robot dogs, putting her life (which is real) at risk to save a computer programmed human which was never alive.
Jo’s ever-increasing greed to shine a light on the unknown forces against the AI is simply absurd. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so if she wasn’t aware of Piper’s identity. But no, even that couldn’t stop Sheriff Jo.
In the later episodes, she’s seen fighting armed goons in the presence of her family, who are unarmed and clueless about what is happening. She arrests, releases and re-arrests one of the most powerful men, Augur Industries’ founder Kindred. And, watches her own daughter emotionally attach herself to Piper, only to realize how dangerous an AI could be after Piper accidentally hurts Mia.
Frankly, most of Jo’s actions are unrealistic and are causing immense damage to her character. The writers could have gone with more depth to Allison’s role as a police officer, than as a demented guardian of an AI, who is nothing but a humongous magnet that can make things float.
