PROJECT BLUE BOOK – Season 1 Episode 8 – SPOILERS

The show seems to be getting a bit off-topic. Hynek and Quinn are called in by The Generals to investigate what turns out to be an experiment conducted by the American government and designed to expose a platoon of rangers in Missouri to a chemical agent without their knowledge. (To be fair, it did sort of look like a bunch of UFOs at the start, and The Generals were unaware of the experiment. The pattern created by the shells that were fired that contained the chemical agent looked a lot like what Hynek saw at the nuclear testing range in “The Green Fireballs“. It seems possible that Hynek was exposed to psychotropic drugs of some sort there.

In 1950, the US Navy conducted Operation Sea-Spray, which involved the spraying of pathogens into the air off the San Francisco shore for a period of eight days (20-27 September). On the show, the fictional Secretary of Defense William Fairchild (Robert John Burke) is the guy responsible for the fictional experiment in Missouri. When Operation Sea-Spray was implemented, the actual Secretary of Defense was George C. Marshall. (Louis A. Johnson resigned from that position on 19 September 1950.)

“This would not be the last time that such ‘simulation’ experiments would be carried out on American citizens. From 1950 to 1966, the military performed open-air testing of potential terrorist weapons at least 239 times in at least eight American cities, including New York City, Key West, and Panama City, FL.”

—- Blood & Fog: The Military’s Germ Warfare Tests in San Francisco – June 2015

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, Mimi (Laura Mennell) finds out that her neighbour Donna his disappeared and tells Susie (Ksenia Solo) that she wants to get a gun for self-protection. Susie, who has just finished disposing of Donna’s body, accommodates her wishes, takes her into the woods and teaches her how to shoot. Susie seems to be developing a genuine attachment to her new friend. Mimi, perhaps unaware of gun safety protocols, keeps her new pistol in a box on her nightstand, which seems like a dangerous thing to do.

Allen (Aidan Gillen) comes home and finds Mimi obviously upset. “What? Are you smoking now?” he says. “Drinking in the middle of the day?”

MIMI: “Donna’s missing. Jack called the police. He has no idea where she is. She might’ve run off with another man.”

ALLEN: “What makes you say that?”

MIMI: “Jack. I guess they had a lot of problems. A lot of secrets. But we don’t have secrets anymore, do we?”

ALLEN: “Problems? Mimi, we are fine. I told you, I want us to be on the same page.”

MIMI: “But you still haven’t told me everything that’s going on.”

ALLEN: “Because I just — I don’t even know myself.”

MIMI: “Are we in danger? We are, aren’t we?”

ALLEN: “Not anymore. Because I’m going to fix things.”

MIMI: “Fix things where? Because home is what’s broken right now, Allen, and we can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep doing this.”

This domestic discord could pave the way for a deepening of Mimi and Susie’s relationship.

NOTES

Dion Riley (comm officer) will be Allen in three episodes of the final season of iZOMBIE, the first of which is Episode 5.3, titled “Five, Six, Seven, Ate!”, in which Liv (Rose McIver) eats the brain of a salsa dancer which leads to she and Ravi (Rahul Kohli) participating in a dance competition on national television. (They are investigating the murder of a couple who, prior to their deaths, were expected to win the contest.) The fifth and final season of iZOMBIE will premiere on the CW Thursday 2 May at 8/7c .

Thomas Carter, who directed this episode of PROJECT BLUE BOOK, will also direct Episode 1.8 of THE RED LINE, an eight-episode mini-series that follows three Chicago families in the aftermath of the accidental shooting death of a black doctor by a white cop. The eighth episode is titled “This Victory Alone is Not the Change We Seek”. THE RED LINE stars Noah Wylie, Emayatzy Corinealdi, and Noel Fisher, and will be broadcast by CBS in four weekly, two-hour installments beginning Sunday 28 April at 8pm .

Laura Mennell was asked by Gianluca Vona of The Italian Rêve about the type of research she did for her role in PROJECT BLUE BOOK: “…it was kind of funny corresponding to my character’s real life children, who are now grown up (and older than me!) and really quite accomplished in their own lives. Both Paul and Joel were amazing as a jumping off point to learn about who their mother was through their stories and pictures…they even introduced me to their older sister Roxanne who was lovely and helpful as well…I found researching women’s roles in the 50s to be particularly helpful for my preparation. There are so many educational films made for young women at the time, teaching them how to be the perfect housewives for their husbands…They seemed to predominately be teaching women to fully and completely compromise their needs for their hardworking husbands. It was a different time and it helped fill in a lot of the blanks as to some of the stagnancy my character was feeling within her realm of domestic responsibilities.”







