PROJECT BLUE BOOK – Season 2 Episode 2 – SPOILERS

The evidence that Harding is working so hard to suppress turns out to be an alien autopsy video. Hynek does his usual thing and finds a way to debunk it. By the end of the episode, the Generals are having a private screening of the thing, and General Valentine (Michael Harney) tells Harding (whose support for the coverup he perceives to be wavering) “Jim, what you saw in ’47, It’s what the Soviets wanted us to see. They wanted us to panic and we didn’t. But what we found on that craft was the sick work of Dr. Mengele. What he did to those children’s bodies, disfiguring them, making them look inhuman, was unconscionable. Jim, you didn’t fall for it then, don’t fall for it now.” (One wonders what Susie would think of Valentine’s suggested Nazi/Soviet connection to UFOs.) Apparently Harding himself was never told the truth about what happened at Roswell.

In 1995, a seventeen-minute black and white film purporting to be of an alien autopsy, allegedly made by an anonymous retired military cameraman, was released, It was shown to be a hoax, and the guy behind its release, Ray Santilli, later admitted the film was not authentic, but explained that it was a staged reconstruction of actual footage he had viewed in 1992. Santilli said that by the time he had the financing he needed, the original had deteriorated to the point that it was largely unusable. He also said that a few of the original frames (he never revealed which) were embedded in his reconstruction.

When General Harding speaks proudly of the Enola Gay, Hynek, having had a couple of drinks, can no longer keep quiet, and (in Aidan Gillen’s best scene of the series so far) he tells the General exactly what he thinks of him.

HARDING: “The Enola Gay — she was based out of Roswell. Bet you didn’t know that, professor. 509th bomb squadron. I arranged to have her shipped to the Smithsonian after her service. History like that needs to be preserved.”

HYNEK: “Over 70,000 people died in Hiroshima. Shouldn’t that history be preserved as well?”

HARDING: “We were at war, professor. Many more would’ve died, American and Japanese, had we not taken the decisive action to end it.”

HYNEK: “Oh well, in that case, I’m sure it was a painfully difficult choice to make.”

HARDING: “It was the only way to protect the world from chaos. And it requires a special kind of man to do that. The kind of man who knows where the line is drawn that separates the unthinkable from the necessary. The kind of man that has a job to do and gets it done. That’s what makes a hero.”

HYNEK: “I know these are hard calls to make, General, but I also recognize the way some men call their inhumanity necessary. In my eyes that doesn’t make a hero. It makes a coward.”

HARDING: “Did you just call me a coward?”

HYNEK: “Yes I suppose I did, because deep down, that’s exactly what you are, General. You know it and you won’t do anything to try to change it. So you tell me this, between men like us. How long can you pretend to believe in something you know is not true?”

When Hynek and Quinn are driving into the desert to look for that alien buried under a dead tree, the song on the car radio is “Let Me Go Home, Whiskey” by Amos Milburn and his Aladdin Chickenshackers. The song was released in 1953. (Aladdin was the record label, and Milburn’s most popular release was the 1948 song “Chicken Shack Boogie“.)

NOTES

Craig Haas (stage manager) will be a renouncer holo in Episode 2.1 of ALTERED CARBON, titled “Phantom Lady”. (The Renouncers are believers in “Upload”, an unspeciﬁed state of total digitalization of the world.) As the second season begins, Kovacs (Anthony Mackie) finds himself recruited back to his home planet (Harlan’s World) with the promise of finding his lost love, Quellcrist Falconer. (He has been hired to investigate a series of brutal murders.) All eight episodes of ALTERED CARBON’s second season will be on Netflix Thursday, 27 February .

Hass will also be Josh in “Guilty” (Episode 2.12 of A MILLION LITTLE THINGS) in which Gary (James Roday) confronts his past; Maggie (Allison Miller) finally talks to Eric; and Regina (Christina Moses) brings adoption news to her mother, straining their relationship. (The show is about a group of friends from Boston who decide to change the way they live after one of them dies unexpectedly.) “Guilty” will air on ABC on Thursday, 6 February .

Caitlin Mitchell-Markovitch (female P.A.) will be an unnamed drug cutter in the Netflix action comedy COFFEE & KAREEM, which stars Ed Helms as a Detroit cop who reluctantly teams up with the 11-year-old son of his girlfriend (Taraji P. Henson) in an effort to bring down the city’s most ruthless criminal. Samantha Cole (Teresa Tangorra in V-WARS), and Donald Sales (Purson on CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA) are also in the cast. COFFEE & KAREEM was directed by Michael Dowse and filmed in Vancouver. No release date has been announced.







