1x12 Loin Like a Hunting Flame
Millennium (1996)
1x12 Loin Like a Hunting Flame, written by Ted Mann, directed by David Nutter.
quote
Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast.
-- Faust
We open with a warehouse rave that has retro go-go features: dancers on platforms and a mirror ball. Now with glow-sticks. Don't ask me.
Couples are being drugged, recorded during staged sex, then artistically posed in death.
No home life for Frank this time. All police work.
William Lucking is the local police, Detective Thomas. He is just great as the tough, crude, sexist cop, giving more than the standard 2D character. He is decent with bereaved parents. We get a little chuckle from his abuse of negligent swinger husbands:
quote
Thomas: So, two hours later you noticed your wives hadn't returned... I mean, did you go look for them?... Hmm? Did you call us? Did you make a report? No... You look a little nervous to me, Vic.
Vic: Look, this, this is embarrassing.
Thomas: Not to me it isn't.
He softens and over-shares with Frank in the end.
Harriet Sansom Harris is a Group consultant. She was "Eve" in The X-Files.
We briefly see Tyler Labine handing out club fliers. Last seen in Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010).
The title is a vivid phrase, a quote from Dylan Thomas.
According to the wikipedia this episode was not well-liked by some: "quite possibly one of the worst episodes of television I've ever seen", which seems a little extreme.
Another: "a prominent example of Millennium's 'social conservatism'" which is "fairly closed-off from other points-of-view than that of the character Frank Black".
They can't be objecting to catching murderers. Is it the negative view of drug raves and wife swapping? Even if so, Frank is far from "closed off"; he always tries to understand others, even the worst offenders.
"Social conservatism" is not a critique of the show I'd considered before. Perhaps this is a clue:
quote
Thomas: Something is wrong, Frank. You know, in this day and age, people are carrying on wild as ever, maybe more so. Regular folks, they're doing drugs, acting nuts.
Frank: Sex and death have commingled in one inseparable impulse. Risk feeds sensation. Sensation makes risk acceptable. We're headed toward...(sighs)
Thomas: Toward what, Frank?
Frank: Something perhaps we'd do better to avoid.
Perhaps the formula is "things are getting worse" means "things used to be better" which is social conservatism. If so it's unavoidable: in an apocalyptic story things get worse.
