Lazarus – Episode 03

Episode Synopsis:

With hacker(s) protecting Skinner from being spotted on surveillance cameras, the team is forced to follow up on whatever leads seem plausible in person.  Half the team heads to Skinner’s house to see if they can find some clues there, the other half heads to a homeless encampment to track down one of Skinner’s former colleagues.  This culminates in a trip to Istanbul to visit Skinner’s grandmother.  The team learns some interesting tidbits about Skinner but seems no closer to finding him.

Episode Review:

This is a real whirlwind of an episode; it’s impressive how much ground the show can cover.  Even more impressive is that while this rapid pace does a good job getting across the feeling of the characters racing against the clock, the show itself doesn’t feel rushed.  I don’t feel bombarded with new information too quickly to keep up.  Thinking about it, I think the very high level of visual detail in the backgrounds is helping a lot.  For example, there is an establishing shot of Istanbul as the characters arrive.  The downwards pan starts here:

And ends here:

The shot itself probably lasts all of ten seconds, but already I’ve learned a lot about where we are.  The city is growing, it’s a mixture of old and new, there are large slums away from the gleaming city center, and the slums are where our characters are going.  Also, the level of detail on display is very impressive, just look at that shot above – that is a very lived-in space.  There’s a similar level of detail in Skinner’s grandmother Belinda’s house:

I could go on and on with images like this, but suffice to say that Lazarus is a real treat for the eyes.

In another part of the episode, the team is in a homeless encampment looking for Jerry, the person Axel knows is a leader around here.  It takes them a while to find Jerry, and the reason soon becomes apparent:

What’s notable to me is that neither Axel nor the show makes a big deal out of this.

For anyone that has watched a lot of anime, there is often a fascination with / implied mockery of transgender or crossdressing characters when they appear at all, so it was remarkable just how normally Lazarus chooses to display this subject. 

Lastly, I wanted to call out a specific scene for attention.  When inspecting Skinner’s house, Christine finds a pill in a couch cushion, but it isn’t Hapna.

The characters briefly speculate on whether it could be the cure, but decide against it.  As they’re leaving, Christine pockets the pill, and no more mention of it is made during the episode.  Something to keep an eye on here…

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