'Soulmates' Episode 2 Review: Loopholes in the system make a revenge plan go awry, but who really is Alison?
Spoilers for 'Soulmates' Episode 2 'The Lovers'
One of the most hard-hitting things about 'Black Mirror' that had catapulted it to the success it became was its glaring and vivid portrayal of how far we can go with our love, dependency and obsession with technology. The other side of it, the dark side was painted so accurately that it was hard to avoid or put down either, further bearing witness to our crippling affinity for things gone awry. The same proves true for AMC's latest anthology series 'Soulmates', where science is used to clinically determine one's soulmate and Episode 2: 'The Lovers' sees protagonist David's (David Costabile) neediness to believe a random stranger claiming to be his soulmate, thus getting enveloped in a revenge plan gone awry.
The plot revolves around a seemingly affluent art professor, David, a man middle-aged man married to an extremely out of his league wife. David's life as a professor is evidently being cast in the shadow of his father-in-law who happened to be the Dean of the university he teaches at and a young student who happens to be in awe of this middle-aged man. He compensates for his overly berating father-in-law's constant jibes with this sense of adoration his young student showers him with, the infatuation feeding his ego flatlined by the older man's constant emasculation. So when a random, fairly attractive woman Alison (Sonya Cassidy) shows up at his university parking lot, claiming to have hacked the system to find out they are a match via SoulConnex, David has a hard time.
His debilitating conscience isn't fixated upon cheating on his wife, whom he frankly doesn't deserve. He mentions he is married but it doesn't occur to him that a woman who can hack into the most self-proclaimed privacy oriented business, she must really have some tricks up her sleeve. Tricks that could eventually destroy him. Alison is married too, so it's not entirely difficult for David to refuse initially, but when the father-in-law gets a little too stern with granting him tenure explicitly because he's married to his daughter, David decides enough is enough. First, it's a coffee, then a chat by the lakeside, spilling sweet nothings about each other's love life so far and soon it progresses to shady motel rooms where David claims he just knew the moment he met her that he had known her his whole life.
There's this inherent need for David to believe this is a romance that will work out and not just because he needs to accelerate his career or have a steady job. He sees profit in his wife Sarah (Karima McAdams) so he can't ruin that either, but when it comes to Alison, there's no false facade to live up to her expectations. She's his soulmate, right? Where else would she go? The whole idea to find someone and get comfortable with them because of a pre-designated test result blinds David to the many red flags for information Alison drops in her journey of allowing him into her personal life. So when David is hit with the reality of it all, a sneaked photo of his junk in his class slides the next day, the infatuated student getting salacious messages from him asking her to come over and the more obvious - Alison showing up at his house, he is left perplexed.
It doesn't make one feel sorry for David and that just speaks for Costabile's expertise. We are meant to hate David for being the slimy husband he is proving to be because, despite her looks and bank, Sarah is devoted to this man clinging on to another woman. Alison's acquaintance with Sarah, pretending to not know David is the secret portal to finding out who she is. What David thought was a random admission of her sexuality proves to be a conniving revenge plan woven out of false infatuations, coercion and ultimately suicide. David, try as he might, has a twisted past where a student at his previous university had committed suicide for reporting sexual assault against him. This girl was Alison's sister and since David got away with branding her crazy and getting her expelled, Alison now wants to watch his life burn.
Messages gone to the student infatuated with him, exchanging compromising photos, asking her to come over to the motel room, etcetera is out in the university faculty and his tenure is questioned, but David has a plan. He hunts Alison down the way all seedy men hunt women down and at this point viewers are left struggling to decide whom to believe. Having looked her up online, David confronts Alison with threats, pinning her down on the bed to remind her of the potential damage he could cause to her family. That Alison backs off is a little anticlimactic, but you'd be wrong to think the story ends here.
Three months later, when David's class is celebrating his tenure - him evidently having gone scott free again - a video of him pops up in the middle of his slides. This time it's not just his junk, the camera sees David pinning down Alison on the bed with evident struggle from their confrontation the other night. The video goes to his wife too and we can see David's life falling apart, right when he had made it big. And Alison, quietly slides out of the university, jubilant in her car that justice was finally served. It's a twisted commentary on the fine lines between love and grooming impressionable teens and David serves the ultimate price, even if it was for taking Sarah granted or being gullible enough to fall for Alison's stories.
'Soulmates' airs on Mondays at 10 pm only on AMC.