The second season of “Millennium” (1997-98, Fox) is some sort of flawed masterpiece. Given heft by the performances of Lance Henriksen (as Frank Black), Terry O’Quinn (as Peter Watts) and Kristen Cloke (as Lara Means), “Millennium” clearly establishes itself here as a cut above all those other sort-of-“X-Files” shows from the 1990s.
A nightmare reality
Now, I’m not saying that the ongoing storyline should be taken more seriously than any of those other shows — not on the surface, anyway. But there’s a certain nightmare/dream reality to the vague, moody dealings of the Millennium Group, which sends the aforementioned trio on cases even as it argues amongst itself about the possible End of the World.
Oh, and even though it fights Evil, it might be corrupt itself. Making all of this nonsense work are those three totally committed actors, the great Vancouver visuals, Mark Snow’s score and — above all — the fact that “Millennium” works as a horror piece. That’s something I can’t say about any other TV show, at least not with this degree of consistency.
“Millennium” Season 2 (1997-98)
Fox, 23 episodes
Creator: Chris Carter
Stars: Lance Henriksen, Megan Gallagher, Terry O’Quinn
Season 1 firmly showed us that there’s no relief from the darkness on this show, and although Season 2 adds humor to the mix — notably, Darin Morgan contributes two bizarre and pretty great episodes — we understand that there’s no turning away from the horror here.
So when in the season finale, a family is enjoying a happy reunion dinner and the camera keeps cutting to the plate of chicken, we know that they are all going to die horribly because the previous scene showed an infected bird. On a pseudo-horror show, this sequence would play as tragic or morbid; on “Millennium” it is horrific and affecting. And, as fans of this strange hour of TV know, it gets even more horrifying when Catherine is infected later in the episode.
Heading for the basement
Further proving that “Millennium” doesn’t pull its punches (even if it swings wildly), in the “Owl”/”Roosters” two-parter, it features yet another murder in Frank’s basement (Frank’s best friend Bob Bletcher was killed there in Season 1, by the Devil herself).
The basement of the yellow house looks like all of our basements (creepiness factor No. 1), and the house is empty because it’s up for sale (creepiness factor No. 2). And speaking of the Devil woman, Lucy Butler (played with a mix of sexiness and scariness by Sarah-Jane Redmond): She keeps teenagers trapped in rooms playing repeated elevator music in “A Room with No View,” which I never want to see again yet can’t quite forget.
With Glen Morgan and James Wong taking the reins from the overworked Chris Carter in Season 2, “Millennium” goes from being too anthologized to being too serialized. When reviewing Season 1, I lamented that there was too much sameness in the Serial Killer of the Week hours. I have the opposite complaint about Season 2: Sometimes it gets so weird that I longed for a simple throwback episode just to catch my breath.
The dark loner
My other major complaint is that Frank and Catherine split up after Frank kills a man to save her in the first episode, “The Beginning and the End”; she says she doesn’t want that darkness in her house. The breakup comes out of nowhere and doesn’t jibe at all with the loving family we saw in Season 1. While the execution is poor, I understand what the writers were going for: In Carter’s Season 1, the idea was to show the contrast between Frank’s gloomy job and the brightness of his wife, his daughter and their yellow house.
In Morgan and Wong’s Season 2, the idea is to show Frank as a dark loner consumed by his job, numbly intoning “Soylent green is people” to get into his Millennium database; without his family as a safety net, there’s a real danger of him plummeting into darkness. (Side note: I love how Lara says “Open the pod bay doors, Hal” for her intranet connection; it paints her as a female Frank and makes me think I could watch a show about her, too.)
Overall, I was held in the thrall of the great-looking, great-sounding, wonderfully acted Season 2 of “Millennium.” I’m still trying to figure out what it was all about, but I don’t entirely mean that in a bad way. While I’ve given up on other ambitious-but-flawed TV shows, “Millennium” has the opposite effect on me: I might rewatch these episodes again someday.
Here are my top 10 of Season 2’s 23 episodes:
1. “Luminary” (episode 12, written by Chip Johannessen)
It features the most beautiful use of the British Columbia wilderness of any Ten Thirteen show as Frank ventures into the Alaska woods in search of a boy who disappeared. It borrows unapologetically from the real-life “Into the Wild” story, but it beat that movie to the screen by a decade, so it gets a free pass. Unlike the real story, this episode has a happy ending, and that’s especially satisfying on a show where you don’t expect it.
2. “Jose Chung’s Doomsday Defense” (9, Darin Morgan)
I actually like this Darin Morgan episode better than “The X-Files’ ” “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” because it cuts down on the weirdness and focuses more on the kindly, opinionated loner of an author, played by Charles Nelson Reilly. Plus, the sequence where Frank tries a Self-osophy technique for “How Not to Be Dark” but ends up seeing flashes of all the dark imagery from the show’s first 30 episodes is an instant classic.
3. “The Mikado” (13, Michael R. Perry)
Aside from the fact that they are working in the Millennium Group’s high-tech computer lab, this is the closest we get to a Season 1 SKOTW throwback as Frank, Peter and Roedecker (the one-man Lone Gunman who is an unsung hero of the season) track a killer who dispatches his victims online when his website reaches a certain number of hits. It has an intense finale as Peter and Roedecker follow Frank’s pursuit of the baddie on a slowly refreshing web page (this was back in 1998, after all).
4. “Midnight of the Century” (10, Erin Maher and Kay Reindl)
Darren McGavin, the Night Stalker himself, is more celebrated for his turn as Arthur Dales on the “X-Files,” but he gets a meatier role here as Frank’s estranged dad in this stylish flashback-heavy tale of what happened to Frank’s vision-haunted mom. “Millennium’s” first season wouldn’t have touched such a personal yarn with a 10-foot pole, but after watching Henrickson and McGavin sell this stuff, it seems the change is mostly for the better.
5 and 6. “The Fourth Horseman” (22, Glen Morgan and James Wong)/“The Time is Now” (23, Morgan and Wong)
I wouldn’t want all my “Millennium” episodes to be this extremely weird, what with the music-video-esque montage of Lara going crazy from her visions and the final sequence that cuts repeatedly to a snowed-out TV screen and ultimately shows Frank with inexplicably white hair. Still, it’s hard to turn away from this horrifying and personal two-parter where a plague ushers in the end of the world. “The X-Files” is a better show overall, but it never dared play its endgame card as brashly as “Millennium” does here.
7. “The Curse of Frank Black” (6, Glen Morgan and Wong)
Similar to that “Angel” episode where Angel doesn’t say a single word, this one follows Frank on a personal journey that takes him to the basement of the yellow house (yep, there’s that basement again) where he scares the hell out of a bunch of partying kids. There’s no such thing as ghosts, this episode states, and that makes the fact that Frank is haunted all the more melancholy.
8. “Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me” (21, Darin Morgan)
You have to admire the sheer audacity of this Darin Morgan entry that finds four devils sitting in a coffee shop lamenting how humans have made their jobs superfluous by bringing so much misery on themselves. The sequence showing a guy working a repetitive job who calmly jumps out of his window, only to discover joyous freedom as he’s falling to his death, is a slice of funny/sad beauty.
9. “Anemnesis” (19, Erin Maher and Kay Reindl)
I generally don’t like episodes that give Frank short shrift, but Lara is a worthy fill-in, and it’s nice to see Catherine contribute as well. Plus, this is a tasty yarn where a Christian girl is persecuted for having visions that contradict the Bible (as it was approved at the Council of Nicaea, at least). This being “Millennium,” the girl’s visions are real, and it parallels nicely with Lara’s lifelong curse of seeing angels.
10. “Beware of the Dog” (2, Glen Morgan and Wong)
It introduces The Old Man, who vaguely fills Frank in on the history and purpose of the Millennium Group. The episode sets the stage for this mood- and metaphor-heavy season with a story about dogs that hound a man into leaving the cabin he built on sacred ground.
Honorable mention: “Siren” (17, Glen Morgan and Wong)
This episode, along with a couple others, could totally be an X-File, as it features a mysterious woman who appears to men as what they want to see. Before I embarked on my “Millennium”-watching project, I thought the series was the same as “The X-Files,” only with Lance Henriksen, darker cinematography and more brooding.
Generally, it’s not similar to “The X-Files,” but I’m glad a few episodes are. Besides, it fits that there should be some supernatural yarns on “Millennium” since: 1, Frank and his daughter, Jordan — not to mention Lara — have supernatural abilities, and 2, the series are part of the same larger universe, as shown by the “X-Files” Season 7 crossover episode and the two Jose Chung yarns.
What are your favorite episodes of “Millennium’s” second season? Share your thoughts below. Then I’ll be back with a review of the third and final season. It’s generally despised by fans — as apparently it kills the momentum of Season 2 and goes back to standalone mode — but I’m still curious to check it out.