"The Man in the High Castle" Recap: "Sunrise"

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

There were two key takeaways story wise that remained in my mind after watching the pilot episode for The Man in the High Castle. The first thing, is that hope was going to be a big part of the show and the power that comes with it and the second thing was that this was going to be a brutal ride that gave us a raw and visceral story that would frequently punch you in the gut.

As it turns out, I was both right and wrong when it came to these concepts. Hope evolves in the second episode of the series in twisted fashion and as it turns out, the show was holding itself back in the pilot, and episode two decided to unleash the fury so to speak, giving us an inside look into life in this new world and how horrible it has become. 

It accomplished this in two ways, first by giving us a look at the "prototypical" American family by taking us inside the walls of Obergruppenführer John Smith's home and well...it's not what you'd expect. The family has dinner in the morning like everyone in the 1960s, assembled around the table and discussing their plans for the day. There just happens to be a son dressed in a Hitler Youth uniform and father is of course in his SS garb and happy to discuss how moral decay works in his world. It was a Normal Rockwell scene with Swastikas everywhere and it's ridiculously jarring to watch.

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The other way it demonstrated how awful this world is to live in was through Frank's eyes. After being detained by the Japanese at the end of the pilot for living with Juliana and possibly knowing where she went with the film, we find out that Inspector Kito has some interesting ways of making men talk. Kito discovered that Frank is of Jewish descent and after beating him and getting nowhere he ups the ante, threatening Frank's family with death. It isn't until the crazy lady who swiped Juliana's things on the bus turns up in Japanese custody with a film reel full of nonsense (thank heavens Juliana switched the reels out) that Frank is finally freed for his "crimes" but the damage has been done...and his sister and two kids never made it out alive.  

To top it all off, the show does resolve one plot point fairly early into all of this by wrapping up the core of the Juliana and Joe storyline in Canon City. It turns out that Joe is quickly demonstrating that we have no idea where his loyalty lies since he watched the forbidden film and seems to be questioning everything about his orders. Not to mention, the kid is a good guy through and through. For while he waited for the contact to come to him, the Resistance instead made contact with Juliana by way of the Origami Man and well...this is where we learned that hope is precious and a fight to maintain because the Origami Man was a Nazi after all and made an attempt to kill Juliana before Joe stepped in long enough to distract the man for her to get the upper hand.

So now we know that the voyage to Canon City was a waste of time really, and it's fortunate that Juliana survived because clearly the Nazi's know so much about the Resistance and the film, which makes one wonder exactly why they haven't put the Resistance down completely and we also know that Frank has a new found purpose in life...revenge against the Japanese and if you don't think that's the case, go back and look at his face in the closing seconds of the show, he's ready for war. Either way, I was unprepared for how heavy this episode turned out to be and the disturbing changes to hope that the show decided to throw our way. While we don't quite know what kind of hope Juliana is still holding in her heart, we just know Frank is simply holding hope for a shot to be the man who makes Inspector Kito pay for his actions.

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