‘Siberia’ 1.04 Recap: “Nothing’s Making Sense Here”

Last week, I sat down to watch my recording of NBC’s ‘Siberia’, only to discover that the episode had been preempted by a William & Kate royal baby special. This is probably not a good sign for the show’s longevity. I never expected it to get renewed for a second season, but I’d at least like to see the current season play out.

The postponed episode actually did air this week, but my DVR apparently made a unilateral decision not to record it, which forced me to wait until it became available On Demand, where I was locked out of fast-forwarding through the (seemingly dozens) of commercials. Is the show really worth this much effort?

I’m still with it. I’m intrigued enough with its mysteries to want to see where it goes.

Episode ‘Fire in the Sky’ is filled with many strange occurrences that I’ll get to in a minute, but the big WTF revelation happens at the end when an earthquake tremor shakes the camp, which causes everyone to run outside and see that the entire sky has been lit up with a disturbing green light. Everyone freaks out, because it’s clear that an event like this is beyond the power of the producers of their Reality show to create or manipulate.

You’d think that at least one of the contestants would have heard of the aurora borealis, though. That’s visible from Siberia, right?

Other Clues and Oddities
  • One morning, a big spear is found stuck in the ground outside the girls’ cabin. It has a note attached that says “Get out” in Russian. Neeko thinks that this is just the producers playing mind games with them. Sabina, who we’re told is a former Israeli soldier, claims that the spear looks like a totally authentic native weapon to her, not a prop.
  • Esther seduces one of the show’s cameramen and makes a sex tape with him at the lake. Later, when he claims that the recording has gone missing, she tells him that she’s holding it as blackmail collateral so that he’ll have to help her cheat to win the game.
  • When Neeko goes out to take another look at the tiger carcass, it has vanished, with no evidence of drag marks on the ground. Whatever removed it must have picked it up.
  • While scavenging for food, jerkwad Johnny (who’s been living by himself in the woods because he’s still ostracized from the rest of the camp), finds a severed deer hoof in a trap. Someone or something cut off and took the rest of the body.
  • Miljan finds a weird-looking totem pole in the middle of the woods. He also finds some symbols carved into trees which lead him to a buried metal box with a journal-type book inside (all written in Russian). As he digs it up, he spots someone creeping around the edge of the clearing, watching him. He concludes that, “There are people out there.”
  • During the aurora event, Carolina (who’d been missing for a while) wanders into camp, injured and disoriented. Neeko assumes that Johnny beat her up and wants Johnny’s head, but then Johnny stumbles into camp in much the same condition. Carolina says that she doesn’t remember what happened to them, but she doesn’t think Johnny did it.
  • Annie and Natalie share some Sapphic affection.
  • Johnny tells Carolina that he knows she started the fire in the food shed and set him up to take the fall. At that moment, Daniel finally puts together where he’s seen Carolina before. She’s an actress on a TV show he’d watched. Carolina confesses that the producers planted her as a mole in the camp and had her burn the food shed to create drama, but she has no idea what’s going on with most of the other weird shit they’ve gone through lately.

Incidentally, I made the mistake of reading the show’s official character bios on the NBC web site early on in order to sort out who was whom. As a couple of episodes have progressed, I’ve realized that the page is filled with spoilers. I didn’t realize when I first read it that we weren’t supposed to know that Carolina is an actress. At least one other character is similarly outed there.

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