Dark Matter Recap: The Wrong Door

Dark Matter
Stars, Hide Your Fires
Season 2 Episode 4
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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One of the lingering flaws with Dark Matter from the beginning is that it hasn’t quite known what to do with Jennifer Connelly, which is a problem because she’s the most famous and accomplished actor in the cast and surely deserves better. Yet the mechanics of the plot have neutralized Connelly, because Daniela has had to sit in the passenger seat while various forms of Jason have been behind the wheel. Daniela mainly reacts to a range of situations that have been foisted upon her because her own destiny has been hijacked by Jason No. 2, who swooped in and stole her pleasant life in Chicago, and now she’s facing a reality with Jason No. 1 that’s discomforting and more than a little removed from the relationship they had before the box changed everything. Granted, Dark Matter is not particularly good at writing characters with much personality — though the two Ryan Holders, for as long as we have them, are a treat this week — but Connelly has gotten the short end of the stick on this front, and the show seems intent on finally making amends.

Last week’s episode ended with Leighton No. 2 surfacing in the analog world where Jason No. 1 and his family are trying to establish themselves. Though this leads to a confrontation on the street between the two men — among other things, this Jason is furious that his arduous attempt to dismantle the box proved to be for naught — there isn’t necessarily a specific threat coming from Leighton here. In fact, Leighton apologizes to Jason and assures him that he “chose the wrong door” that day, which is the best he can do to diffuse the threat. Yet the die has been cast: Jason has learned that he cannot (at least for now) destroy the box and secure their current location, and now the entire family is facing the likelihood that no world exists where they can ever feel it is fully theirs. They are now dimensional nomads, constantly prepared to leave their home for another if their identities are questioned or if new imposters emerge from the box. 

Though this week’s episode includes faux-action sequences where both Jason No. 1 and Daniela confront strangers who they believe to be imposter Jasons, it’s more concerned with the psychological and philosophical impact all this upheaval and trauma is having on the Dessens. To his credit, Charlie reads the situation well and puts his foot down when his dad demands that all of them pack up their things and hide out somewhere else, because Leighton’s appearance has blown their cover. And what he says to his dad sets the tone for the rest of the episode: “I’m done with your box bullshit,” he tells him. “I know you didn’t build the box, but some piece-of-shit version of you did. And I lost everything. And then another piece-of-shit version of you came and fucked my life just as I was starting to figure things out.” Charlie has done better than his parents at finding his way in Analog Chicago, and he’s about to enter college with good pals, a steady girlfriend, and even a nice gig flipping burgers. Why should he have to give that up? 

All parents struggle in some way to adjust to life as empty nesters, but Charlie leaves his mom and dad in a somber, reflective state that casts a heavy pall over an episode that drifts toward the turgid. The one Big Idea that Dark Matter explores here is that a person’s identity is not fixed but context-dependent, which is, of course, how Jason No. 2 is our antagonist and Jason No. 1 is our hero, despite being built of the same stuff. From Daniela’s perspective, the man she loves may have proved his devotion by scraping and clawing his way back to her and doing everything he can to secure some kind of home for the family, but he is not the same guy that she knew before Jason No. 2 came barreling through the box. As their situation keeps changing, often radically, so too do they change and potentially drift away from each other.

Though Jason No. 1 proved loyal enough to Daniela to follow through on his original plan to destroy the box rather than modify it, he can’t completely deactivate the Jason No. 2-esque part of himself that has broken down this scientific wonder and found much to admire about it. Even as he vows to find a different way to shut the box down, Daniela doesn’t fully trust that his curiosity won’t lead him away from her. At the same time, all of this upheaval has changed her, too, and increased the distance between them. The episode does not suggest her mindset with a great deal of elegance: First, it plants her in front of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” at the Art Institute in Chicago, where her eye drifts toward the unknown and empty storefront across the street from the painting’s diner while Charlie points out that the diner (like their lives!) has no door and its patrons are trapped inside of it. Then, all of Daniela’s traumas are packaged in a jogging montage that deposits her at her father’s old bakery, where she perhaps imagines another path through life.

Yet no path is assured, which is another hard lesson learned elsewhere in this episode as Jason No. 2, Amanda No. 2, and Ryan No. 1 take the box that leads to the Chicago where they can drop off the other Ryan. Once again, the two Ryans are such a delightful comic team that it’s a shame they ever have to part. They even get the bartenders at Village Tap to buy some ridiculous story about how they’re long-lost identical twins who have found each other. (When one mentions the made-up woman who kidnapped/raised him, the other deadpans, “She has a name. It’s Joyce.”) There’s a juicy conversation, too, because this Jason and Amanda, who are not unlike Jason No. 1 and Daniela this episode, in that they’ve shared an intimate partnership that was blown apart by the box. Just as Jason No. 1 seems to be discovering the curiosity and ambition of Jason No. 2, his counterpart is starting to get in touch with a humbler side of himself that feels remorse over the steep price of his selfishness. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, either, and so he ends the episode as Daniela does, as a seeker striking out to some unknown destination.

As for Amanda No. 2 and Ryan No. 1, they appear at first to have quietly zipped their way back to “polite sex world,” but they’re startled to be ambushed by the authorities, who detain them for breaking quarantine and curfew. Have they come to the right place? Did a utopia become a dystopia during the stretch where they were away? Dark Matter lets those questions hang in the air, but it’s a reminder that dimensional travel puts the adventurer in a vulnerable spot, whether they land in a police state or simply discover, over time, that their worlds have changed so dramatically that they don’t know each other — or themselves.

Infinite Jasons

• Leighton No. 2 gets the cold open this episode as he visits his father on life support in one world while nearly getting nabbed by Mitchel MacNamara, who has staked out the box in Jason No. 1’s world with the intention of detaining anyone who pops out of it. Amanda No. 2 and Ryan No. 1 were not so lucky. 

• “Amanda, what’s the most dangerous world you’ve been to? I really think we need to drop this guy off.” One unifying sentiment is that everybody is furious at Jason No. 2 for ruining their lives. Sorry ain’t gonna cut it, mister! 

• The Ryans bro-ing out one last time: “Hey, whatever world you end up in, you are gonna fucking crush it, man.” 

• Can’t help as a Chicagoan but to feel a bit of civic pride over characters swooning over our art museum. Yes, we do have Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” and it is indeed MFA-thesis-worthy. Come visit our city! 

• It’s a little funny that Amanda No. 2 and Ryan No. 1 are trading digs about “scrapbooking” in “polite sex world” just before they’re mobbed by uniformed goons. Not such a wimpy place after all, is it?