TV Review: Hostages Season 1 Episode 6 "Sister's Keeper"

Sister's Keeper had good intentions. They came out trying to introduce new ideas. They put characters in new situations with new twists. In the beginning, it seemed to work. Then it all went bad. Fast.

This episode revolved around Ellen and her family dealing with an unexpected visit from Ellen's sister. In the beginning, Ellen tells her family (in front of Duncan) that their last escape attempt was foolish.

They almost got Brian killed, so from now on they should just cooperate.

When Duncan leaves the room, Brian asks Ellen why she said that.

Ellen replies that it was "something I needed to say in front of him, even if I don't believe it." Cool - this is the glimmer of hope the show needed - Ellen outsmarting Duncan and his crew.

The sister drops in unexpected, and Duncan draws a gun on her. Ellen has to lie and say that Duncan is secret service watching her and her family because of the upcoming surgery. This kind of situation was new (random person dropping in) and it was a breath of fresh air.

What happens to Duncan when something he tried to control went off the rails? If someone gets into the house and figures out what's going on, will he kill that person or take another hostage? As the sister stays in the house, the group is forced to lie constantly to her.

While it started off as plausible, it quickly spiraled downward.

The bulk of this starts when the sister discovers the gun Ellen took from the neighbors because haha no one would notice her walking over and going into another house, right? The sister starts freaking out and asking why Ellen would have a gun. It's a reasonable question - Ellen and her family seem like the suburban household who wants all guns banned in the U.S. They just give off that vibe. Before Ellen can explain, Duncan comes in and freaks out at the whole situation. He gets the sister, drags her out of the room and then gags and ties her up. Why he didn't just remove the gun, explain how dangerous it was for Ellen to have it given her situation and punish Ellen later, I have no idea. Obviously the show wanted to have the sister find out what has been going on - so it decided to skip a few steps implausibly to get there.

After Duncan makes Ellen shoot a silenced gun to prove a point (people who don't know how to use guns can't hit a damn thing) Duncan comes back inside and makes Ellen call her sister's psychiatric doctor to get her recommitted. When the doctor arrives, Duncan hides so she looks crazy as she's telling the doctor and his associate about the hostage taker. All I could imagine during that scene was Brian, Jake, Ellen, the sister, the doctor and his associate all tackling Duncan and taking his gun. Would that be a horrible scene? Yes.

But it would be better (and less of a cop-out) than getting a crazy person recommitted to cover Duncan's tracks. What a huge opportunity Hostages wasted.

They could have upped the stakes and had something that propelled the series. Instead it was cowardly and reset the series to the status-quo.

What makes matters worse is that the show made the family out to look like they didn't care either way what happened. The sister kept pleading for someone to tell the truth, and they all just kept feeding the lie that she was just crazy. It was like someone googled Stockholm Syndrome and went "a-ha! This is what we'll do!". I'm no doctor or medical professional, but I promise you Hostages: that ain't it. Besides probably pissing off all the medical community watching this, it just made the family impossible to root for.

If Ellen's family doesn't care about escaping, why should we? A hostage taking scenario for a show provides so little wiggle room when it comes to errors. Sadly, Hostages has fallen down and I don't know if it can get back up.

We will hopefully see soon.

After Morgan got her pregnancy check up, the doctor noticed a scar and bruising so she called and reported a potential abuse situation.

Hopefully the next person they try and send to the house to shake things up isn't crazy so Hostages has to try and do the right thing when it comes to the story next time.

Oh yeah. Sandrine has a kid and that's why she needs the money. All I keep thinking about is how they randomly changed the name of the character to the same name as the actress so I felt extra bad when bad things happened to her thinking it's happening to her in real life.

Good thing Hostages continues to show immeasurable amounts of implausibility throughout every episode to remind me it's just a TV show. That's all we are going to remember when it's canceled. It was just some TV show.

Hopefully the show keeps the guy who plays Archer in jail. Because he deserves better, and because I don't want to have him come out and try and explain Duncan's horrible "CI" alibi.

I could go on but I have more respect for you than Hostages does. You get the idea.

Photo Credit: http://seriable.com/