"The Man in the High Castle" Recap: "The Illustrated Woman"

Written by John Edward Betancourt

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

Well, I have to say that this was an extremely difficult episode of The Man in the High Castle to think about and recap for one particular reason...it's absolutely brutal. There is little about this particular portion of the story that leaves you feeling good or happy in any form or fashion and I applaud the show for doing that.

This is after all, an occupied America, one wrought with despair and to do anything outside of giving us dark and powerful stories would be an injustice and what made this particular episode of the show so unforgiving is the fact that our characters are basically on their own. There's no police to run to, no safe place to hide, just their attempts at finding a better life with the Japanese forces and Nazis all around them.  

This go round we saw a lot of the breakdown that Frank is now suffering immediately following his release from the Kempeitai facility and well, this was perhaps the saddest portion of this episode. Frank was devastated and rightfully so. He has to identify the bodies of his family, hear how they are not going to be buried thanks to their "crimes against the state" and he even has to be the one to deliver the bad news to his late sister's husband and man...you really feel for the guy in this episode. No one around him cares, save for maybe his buddy Ed, but neither Ed or anyone else will do anything so they don't get in trouble but where all of this headed for Frank appears to be scary, more on that in a moment.

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Because in the meantime, we cannot forget about Juliana's adventures in Canon City. Immediately following the murder of the Origami Man, Joe lets Juliana know it's probably high time they get the hell out of town but she wants to stay a little longer to not raise suspicion, a choice that everyone quickly regrets when Joe meets The Marshal, a bounty hunter who is as brutal as they come. He is quick to hit, quick to draw a gun and was expecting to meet the Origami Man this morning as well. It takes little time to discover how ruthless and evil this man is since he heads into the bookstore where Juliana bought the Bible and discovered the shop keeper is a Jewish man who escaped the New Berlin Concentration Camp many years ago, so he promptly kills the man and strings him up in the middle of town. 

While he was going all Boba Fett in town, Juliana and Joe hid the body and the car to make sure he had no idea what went down at the dam. Along the way they discovered where Origami Man was taking the members of the Resistance to, an abandoned cave where he clearly tortured and murdered folks and left behind a list of crossed off names with only two left on the list...Trudy and Juliana's boss at the diner.  Of course, the bigger problem for Juliana, the picture she lost led to the Marshal finally knowing what she looked like and upon their return to town a shootout ensued leaving us with a big time cliffhanger as the Marshal hunts her down and to top it off, it's clear now that Frank is ready to do something rash, like say try to kill the visiting Japanese royalty as vengeance for the death of his family. 

If anything, this episode was simply breathtaking, moving at an incredible pace minute by minute and not letting up one bit. I mean come on, our final shot is the Marshal kicking down the door where Juliana is hiding before we fade to black. Once the end credits rolled, I just sat there, trying to process all the horrors that I just saw. Between Frank getting ready to commit to an assassination attempt and that poor Book keeper being strung up for all to see, just wow. Heck it was so intense the torture scenes were the only welcome break this go round and well...I loved every second of it and I can't wait to see how Juliana gets out of this mess and how far Frank is going to go...until next time.

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