Snowpiercer Season 3 Episode 1 Review: The Tortoise and the Hare
Snowpiercer Season 3 Episode 1
One of the strongest features of Snowpiercer is the show’s ability to figure out ways to create claustrophobia. Granted, that’s easy on a train; it’s not exactly the sort of environment in which you can spread out and social distance from your neighbors. On the last train, however, that situation is even more dire, especially if you’re in third class or stuck in the tail. The people on board Snowpiercer toil away elbow to elbow with their fellows, making clothes, breaking up ice, cooking and growing food, even entertaining in the club car. There’s not a space to be alone, unless you’re the leader of the anti-Wilford resistance, and that means you’re alone in a room the size and temperature of a meat locker.
The moments when characters are alone, conversely, feel all the more ominous in an environment like that of Snowpiercer, because if no one else is around, that means it’s probably a trap of some sort waiting to be sprung on someone. People who get in the way on Snowpiercer tend to end up suffering. As such, the show’s environment goes a long way towards creating tension; if they’re elbowing through the tunnels, trying to flee from Wilford’s guards, that’s visceral and crowded. If they’re completely alone, minding their own business (or worse, doing something outside of the train), that’s worrying because the scenes are more isolated and thus paranoid.
Whether someone is agoraphobic or claustrophobic, it seems Snowpiercer is ready to use that against them. It’s something of a tale of two trains, with Layton (Daveed Diggs) leading the smaller, faster breakaway train and Wilford (Sean Bean) grinding Snowpiercer under his boot as a result of his mania and need for control. Layton’s train is low on food and running hot, with its inhabitants half-dressed and sweating. Wilford’s train is running slow, low on power and struggling to keep the cold at bay, with its inhabitants crammed into smaller spaces with hundreds of cars shut down and winterized as Snowpiercer battles the elements to keep water flowing. Both trains are dealing with an insurgent element, both trains are struggling to maintain, and both trains seem to have the idea that once they come back together, their problems will all be over.
The between-seasons time jump, as far as those go, is a short enough chronological distance that nothing has really changed on either train, except for a settling into the new status quo, and the litany of technical issues affecting both systems. The first season of Snowpiercer firmly established that the maintenance of the train was about keeping everything in balance, and the introduction and subtraction of Big Alice and Wilford’s group into the shared ecosystem might have tipped the balance to the point where it can’t be recovered, through the anti-Wilford resistance isn’t about to give up, no matter how many times Ruth (Alison Wright) and Pike (Steven Ogg) have to scramble to stay ahead of Wilford’s jackboots.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZVslEv5BwSnowpiercer Season 3 Episode 1 Review: The Tortoise and the Hare
https://www.tvfanatic.com/2022/01/snowpiercer-season-3-episode-1-review-the-tortoise-and-the-hare/
