Containment Season 1 Episode 11 Review: Nothing Gold Can Stay
Miranda Wicker
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It's taken me over half an hour to begin processing my thoughts after that final scene of Containment Season 1 Episode 11, and quite frankly, I'm just not sure I'm even capable of writing anything profound or witty or smart.
I'm just sad. Super, super sad.
I have about .03% of hope remaining that maybe that ending wasn't what we all thought it was, but mostly I'm just...ugh. Damn.
So Katie's probably, most likely dead. Cannerts' cure didn't work. In fact, it may have made her die more quickly and more painfully than if the virus had taken its course.
We haven't seen too many deaths by the virus, but Katie's was, by far, the most brutal and gut-wrenching and not just because of her relationship to Jake and the fact that she left a son behind.
It was viscerally hard to watch someone die like that, and I found myself thankful that I have no firsthand knowledge of what it's like when someone dies from a deadly virus like this one while also feeling terrible for those people who do.
One of David Gyasi's repeated comments in our pre-Containment interviews was the ways in which it's our humanity that leads to the spread of these terrible illnesses. We see someone suffering and instinctively we want to reach out to console them, to offer comfort as they pass.
But that just spreads the virus even further, so what has to happen in order for these viruses which are absent a cure to die out is for there to be no contact between sick and healthy individuals. To kill the virus we have to be willing to watch as our sick loved ones die what may be excruciating deaths.
Most of us can't do that. Jake couldn't do that.
He had the benefit of a clean suit, but he couldn't sit by as Katie died alone in that room. He knew he needed to be inside, to hold her while she passed, so he found a way to make it happen, and in doing so he was able to tell her that he loved her.
The rest of us had our hearts ripped out while we watched it all happen.
Spoiler alert: the Belgian version of Katie died, too. I had hoped that perhaps, maybe, Julie Plec would change her story slightly. That she would bring Katie to the brink of death and then return her to us with the cure taking effect in the final moments.
I suppose there's still a miniscule chance that could happen and what we saw as Jake and Katie kissed in the shower wasn't her final thought. Maybe it was just the thought she had as she clutched his space suit and passed out to sleep off the narcotics that didn't seem to be working at all while her body started to heal itself.
But that's wishful thinking and I know it. I've known since she coughed last week that she'd be dead. Probably since she cut her head on the van and held Mary's dead body in the streets.
On a show like this one, someone in your inner circle is going to die.
That's just how it goes. The people at Bitscan are insulated, only leaving when it's an absolute necessity and using the vacuum room when they reenter. They're not the ones who are going to die.
We don't really know enough about Bert and Micheline to care very much about their outcomes, though either of them dying would be sad because both of them would probably die and then Teresa and Xander would really be all alone in the middle of this.
But still. Their deaths don't carry the emotional gravitas of either Jake or Katie's death. Or of the deaths of any of the children trapped in the hospital.
It had to be Katie. Even if I didn't want it to be Katie.
I'm just really bummed out by this, y'all, to the point that I don't even know if I want to continue watching. I mean, I will because I can't stop now when Containment Season 1 Episode 12 is the penultimate of the series, but man. What a sad, sad ending for Jake.
He fell in love with a woman who made him want to stay and then he lost her.
Sure, that's how life happens sometimes, but this is fiction and when I'm watching fiction, I want to believe in happy endings. Right now I just don't.
Even if Cannerts finds a cure, it's too late. Hundreds of people are already dead and the virus is on its way to choking itself out.
What he really needs to do is figure out how to clear his name and restore his integrity. But then maybe that's the path Leo has set Lex on with his pizza/key delivery.
Maybe there's still a way for Lex to blow the lid off of this thing yet, and I, for one, sincerely hope so. Maybe then Katie's death won't have been in vain.
Scale of 1 to 10, how heartbreaking was Katie's death? (Did Julie Plec REALLY kill her??? WHY?) What's behind the key Leo sent Lex (and don't spoil it if you've seen the Belgian series, please!)? Sound off in the comments below and don't forget you can watch Containment online!
Miranda Wicker was a Staff Writer for TV Fanatic. She retired in 2017. Follow her on Twitter.
