Containment Season 1 Episode 5 Review: Like a Sheep Among Wolves

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It's Day 7 of the cordon sanitaire and the people trapped inside are getting hungry. Containment Season 1 Episode 5 added a new layer to this struggle for survival.

While not getting sick is the ultimate goal, not dying of starvation is a pretty solid goal, too. Except the food is running out, rapidly.

The Food Drop - Containment

Was it just me or did anyone else find themselves getting pretty hungry while watching an hour of TV about how hungry fictional people are? Is that weird? Maybe that's weird. 

Anyway.

The people inside the cordon are running out of supplies. Food, maybe clean drinking water, possibly even clean clothing, and space. It's only been seven days, but the area inside the cordon is falling into a state of lawlessness and chaos rapidly.

Take the biker gang in Jana's garage, for instance. 

Are they living there? Do they ride all day long? Aren't they bored? In their spare time they must just be trashing any cars unfortunate enough to be parked there and laying waste to everything around them. 

That's sort of what it looks like everyone else is doing, too. Especially the grocery store gang who stole nearly all the rations so they can sell the free food at a significant markup.

Those guys? Ugh. I had a visceral reaction that may or may not have involved wishing Jake had a secret code word he could say where he and all his fellow cops fired at the same time and/or that the grocery store gang would all spontaneously combust, safely away from the rations, of course.

Xander's going to find a way out of this. I feel confident he will, but until then, he has a man getting sick in the shop and a due-any-day-now girlfriend to protect. 

It seems like at this point, since it's still early, we would see people being hopeful, banding together to get through this, helping their neighbors, but no. Seven days in and it's every man, woman, and child for themselves.

When the little girl dug into a chip bag and then turned up at the food drop, only to be sick and eventually dead, my heart sank. That poor girl and no one saw her or offered her any help. No shelter. I can't imagine it.

I know this is a world where people are dying because of their contact with other humans so the risk is huge to take in a stranger, but she was just a kid. A kid who died alone in a hospital and probably terrified. 

Jake's breakdown over having to incinerate her body right after incinerating the body of his fallen fellow officer was almost my breakdown. What a terrible day in a string of terrible days, which is almost exactly what he told Katie. 

That? That day takes the cake for worst day, and Katie's outburst about how difficult her day had been while she'd been trekking around the hospital on her information quest almost made me want to kick her in the shins.

Don't get me wrong. She's uncovering some vital information, and Cannerts is being dodgy as hell with his answers to her questions, but when a guy tells you he just had to burn two bodies, one of his friends and that of a child, you don't demand that your day was worse because you have questions.

But Jake, the sort-of cad, mostly nice guy, just took a breath and her information and went straight to Lex. 

Apparently, given the little we know about him, this is a huge deal. He likes Katie enough to mention her to both Jana and to Lex and feels compelled to help her even though he barely knows her.

It's sort of sweet, and I like that we're getting to see his side of this relationship a little more than we're getting to see hers. It feels interesting somehow. Different. (Or maybe I'm just really caught up in getting all this Chris Wood screen time.)

So here's what we know based on Katie's amateur detective work:

  • Dr. Sanders and her boyfriend died before Patient Zero.
  • Dr. Sanders and her boyfriend had quickies every morning after her shift ended. (Why they didn't rendezvous somewhere not the hospital is anyone's guess...)
  • Burt delivered rats to the hospital before they located Patient Zero and brought him in.
  • Cannerts is a lying liar. And a bad one at that.

Way back after the first episode, someone in the comments railed against the fact that the Middle Eastern terrorist trope had been employed, and I cautioned that there was more to our story than that.

And there's still more to discover yet.

Mees (Meece?), the officer who fell into the cordon, actually fell inside on purpose to pay back a debt and do the Police Chief's bidding.

Lex, meanwhile, gets to bear the brunt of the anger of the rest of the police force since he wouldn't break the rules and let Mees out after he fell in, which makes me wonder how long it'll be before they find out he fell in on purpose. 

Lex is a smart guy. Surely he'll figure this out, right? Probably with help from everyone's favorite internet journalist Leo Green.

What did you think of "Like a Sheep Among Wolves"? How long will it take Lex to figure out the Chief has another plan? What could the Chief want Mees to do for him on the inside? Let's chat about tonight's episode and don't forget you can watch Containment online!

Containment Season 1 Episode 6 airs next Tuesday night at 9 on The CW.

Like a Sheep Among Wolves Review

Editor Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
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User Rating:

Rating: 4.9 / 5.0 (68 Votes)

Miranda Wicker was a Staff Writer for TV Fanatic. She retired in 2017. Follow her on Twitter.

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Containment Season 1 Episode 5 Quotes

Jake: What knucklehead breaks into a quarantine?
Lex: His girlfriend’s about to give birth.
Jake: You gonna ask me to deliver the baby too?

Jake: What good’s this key gonna do her now?
Lex: It’s a little metaphor called hope, you idiot.