Money Spiders

DVD, BUGS S4 (Money Spiders)

Here it is, then. After over a year of going through this series, we come to the final two-parter of its final year. I find myself a little sad to be coming to the end so 'quickly' (in relative terms), because 'BUGS' was such a highlight of life in the late-90s and carries with it memories of good times, so it's quite a moment to come to the end of that revisitation of a series that has remained in my top two or three TV series' of all my viewing experience. I wouldn't have said this episode was one of the high points, but they were still finding new ways to tell the same kinds of stories. This time it becomes a study of the psychology of certain characters, interestingly the two lesser used main characters, Jan and Alex. Alex is finding preparation for married life might suggest things are going to be more difficult than she imagined (likely a realistic reading of the situation!), with her and Adam arguing over everything from style of cutlery to who they invite to the wedding. But it's Jan's self-recrimination at the death of a civilian who'd demanded to be involved in an operation that is the real interest. We've seen so many characters offed throughout the series, most without even a backward thought to their families and those around them that may be affected, but here we actually have Jan visiting Daniel Michaelson's widow, trying to find some kind of absolution for her mistake in allowing him to put himself in danger. I'm not sure I feel entirely positive about the direction the series was going in - we'd already had far too much soap and domesticity in Season 4, and now the characters are going to second guess themselves?

Yet it also gives Jan Harvey some of her best scenes, a chance to emote and play something other than strict business or being under duress and for that I applaud them. The series may have started to become bogged down by issues of realism that could have affected how the stories were written in coming years, if there had been any, but there weren't, so any speculation is purely academic for how such story points might have changed the series. Any long-running drama needs to adapt and allow new angles in order to keep things fresh, otherwise you'd just be rehashing the same plots or scenarios (which they had done on many occasion, to be fair!), so it was good that they were trying new avenues and ways to explore characters. And Jan was a character ripe for exploration since she'd remained a mystery for most of the time, only Harvey's performance to give us the impression there was much more to her than giving out assignments. I liked that they brought back her psychologist friend Simon from 'Sacrifice To Science,' another time she was concerned about the state of others. Now she's concerned with the state of herself, believing the position has made her callous and unfeeling, nothing of the real Jan, the real Barbara, left. Rather than become self-pitying and reclusive, this drastic guilt and self-doubt manifests in a sudden desire to get involved at the coalface, go on a mission with her team, but in that state of mind it may not have been the best time for it.

As we see, the mission goes awry and right in front of Jan's eyes one of her people, Ros, is shot and collapses in Ed's arms. If there was anything that could have made Jan feel worse, that was it! But if you want to push the characters and uncover them, you have to put them through the worst stuff. I don't remember if I thought Ros would really die in the last episode, but it's a common enough trope to me now, the life of a main character thrown into the balance and leaving the audience wondering. It shows the villains are reasonably bloodthirsty, not just removed, keyboard-tappers that deal out their villainy from the anonymity of the internet. Up to that point, though, things had been quite technical - an indication Wymark is of that generation of dot-com opportunists who saw the potential in the wild west wasteland of the online world before it had fully developed into what we know it as today. But it's his hard-faced woman, Zephyr, slightly mysterious, who seems like the real skill behind it all. She had the same hard pride that Morag had in the opening two-parter and it would have been interesting to see who would have won in a fight between them! She suggests a nasty piece of work, while Wymark is more of a user happy to blackmail and extort any way he can.

I'm not sure it's really about the villains, as such, at least in this first part. Yes, we see they've got a nice thing going with their free internet service and the ability to hack into systems through the junk mail they send, a cutting edge idea in the Nineties, a bit of industrial espionage leading to blackmail. No, it's more about Michaelson and the consequences of getting him involved. The big blue computer face in the room must be dealt with first, though: was it intentional to suggest Cyberax with the blue helmet avatar the villains use to communicate with Michaelson? It seems hard to believe it wasn't, even though the design is very different, just the idea of a computer-affected voice and this sinister blue 'cartoon' as Michaelson describes it, immediately brings to mind the classic AI villain of Season 2. It's not like they don't throw in regular callbacks to things in the series' past - even in this episode the team mention Jan's recent management course from 'Jewel Control,' Jan herself recalls how she felt when Ros went missing at the end of Season 3, Beckett jokingly asks if Ed's been promoted back to Bureau Chief when he finds him using his computer, and of course there's the beginning of the culmination of The Hive being featured, Mr. Dent returning for the third time after his surprise reappearance in the third episode of Season 4. There are even special moments like Beckett meeting Dent again for the first time since he was cast out of the organisation, and gets to be in a position of accusation when, after Dent's claimed the Hive building's impregnable, Beckett reminds everyone that with his record of internal security, such assurances aren't worth a thing!

But deliberately evoking memories of Cyberax? It seems... unwise. Unless they were preparing the audience for a spectacular comeback, then it would have all been worthwhile, and one reason I use as a suggestion for the identity of the mystery man at the end of the final episode. But that's for next time. It's a risky move because those episodes were the best in the series, the top trilogy of 'The Bureau of Weapons,' 'A Cage For Satan' and 'Renegades' (quadrilogy if you include the excellent 'Schrodinger's Bomb,' quint if you want the 'prequel,' 'Pulse'!), and you're setting yourself up for unfavourable comparisons if you go down that road. But they didn't go down that road, or didn't seem to, so maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Nah! The writers had proved they knew the series very well indeed with all the minute past references they included, or stories connecting with previous characters, organisations and events, that's one of the things I love about the series and has given added depth to rewatching it. I did like that the bike helmet of whoever met Michaelson (and judging just by size and shape, not to mention I suspect she had more gall than Wymark, I'd guess Zephyr), was the same shape as the digital face, it added a bit of visual continuity. And though it'd been done before, the surprise exit of a getaway bike out the back of a van (see 'Stealth'), the stunts in this one were a bit better.

There's a bit more of a feeling of the villains being on the same kind of technological level as Ros and the gang. I'm surprised Zephyr didn't react with surprise to find the famous Ros Henderson in their office, since people like them would surely know about a technological genius like her, especially after her recent high profile, or maybe it's just the name and she's kept her face largely hidden. On the other hand it's apparently a simple matter to check up on Bureau 2, as the Brazer twins did in the previous episode, so I'm sure they'd have done the same and found out who the opposition were. There's already a rivalry there since Ros whacked Zephyr to the ground, the reason she was so eager to take the shot as Ros hangs trapped halfway down her abseil, and she seems very much the type to hold a grudge. It's fascinating to see so many technological terms in their infancy that we take for granted now. Ros using a virus to infect the digital spiders and make them visible when they infect systems; the whole idea of junk email ('the Trojan Horse of the 21st Century'!); it's amusing that old Michaelson needs technical assistance to get rid of it; then there's Adam and Alex making a digital wedding presents list - I'm sure that's as common as muck now, but did people do that in 1998 (or '99 when the episode was finally shown)? One thing that can't be good is Alex covering her computer monitor in novelty woolly sheepskin, that would trap all the heat!

Alex has greater problems than her choice of computer accessory, however, as she demonstrates quite, shall we say, eccentric tastes when it comes to decor, cutlery, tea sets... Adam's very much the traditionalist, and as if to make more of a contrast they have her going for quite outlandish designs. Still, it was funny, and lightened the mood, which helped to cover the fact that yes, we are indeed watching an episode of 'BUGS' in which the main characters are shopping. Even Beckett gets in on the act as he tries to help Christa choose a hat for the wedding, and she couldn't be more girly and irritating! Beckett shows remarkable good humour throughout, but then he is enjoying her company, inexplicable as it may be, and there's even a thoughtful realisation that he'd never done anything like that with Ros. That's because shopping is boring and Ros is much more interesting! It made a nice change to see Ros and Ed go off together to break into Wymark International at the end, just as we saw Beckett and Ros scout out the place earlier, Beckett getting to be the one to go undercover this time (from the Internet Users Council). Ros has the bluster to make a good courier and that sequence was well done as Beckett has to stall them while Ros deals with the spiders.

While it is a little galling to see wedding shops, or scenes of Adam and Alex arguing over the guest list, there was enough of a mixing in more typical locations for a visually appealing variety: Wymark's is really only offices, but they have that more colourful 'BUGS' touch to them, bringing in those neon blues and yellows again (speaking of which, things are back to normal on the clothing front, too, with Ros mostly in her bright yellow shirt and some small round silver earrings, Beckett in blue shirt and tie under his suit jacket, and Ed... yep, bland t-shirts again!), and the sinister reds when the villains accuse and manipulate Adam in a car park, then there's a nice return to The Hive (they've obviously redecorated since 'Out of The Hive' as Dent's office is very different this time), including getting to see more of it than we ever had before: the sprawling basement area where they keep their main security vault, and even a little utility entrance where Alex pops out a little way down from the main building. But the best view must go to the beautiful three-hundred-and-sixty degree view of London from the rooftop garden where Dent introduces Michaelson to Jan and the camera swings round them taking it all in. There's Tower Bridge, and oh, a tiny cameo you wouldn't have expected to see again: it's the HMS Belfast in the background, from 'Assassins Inc'!

One thing that doesn't quite ring true is how Michaelson actually died. You get his boyish enthusiasm to get involved in all this spy stuff, a foreboding of his short future, but while he is champing at the bit to do something to the people extorting him, he does hang back and do what he's told, as much as it pains him. It's only when the team fail to predict the surprise getaway and focus is drawn away from him, that he takes independent action, trying to stop the biker. Trouble is it wasn't very clear where he was in relation to the bike and how he could have toppled right over the guard rail to the lower level, but it's more an issue with the directing of that moment in the scene. Something almost as troubling is that in that moment the team are clearly trying to capture the villain, yet later on when they break into Wymark's and are discovered, once they've overpowered the pair, knocking them to the ground, rather than stop and pick up their guns to hold them hostage, or arrest them, they flee for their lives. It's been done many times on the series and I suppose it can be put down to not wanting the characters to use guns if at all possible, but it always seems a little silly when they could halt the villains there and then. On the other hand if you pick up a gun you have to be prepared to use it, and they didn't know if there were other staff in the building with which they might need to have a firefight... Another odd moment is when Adam uses Dent's card to get into the vault area, and it only gives him a few seconds to run past that red laser barrier before it comes on again - I don't see Dent sprinting anywhere!

I noticed for certain the various computers used, including the Bureau's, were operating on Windows, although Ros does go back to the old operating system that we're used to when getting round Wymark's admin password via a tiny laptop. It's another time Dent's voiceprint was misused as Adam does here - that's how the baddies put Beckett under suspicion by using Dent's voice to call him to his office in the first ever episode. And Alex seems particularly insensitive when she asks Ed to be the one to give her away at the wedding. We learn her Father's dead, and it was nice of her to say he was her best friend (although this season I'm not sure we'd seen much evidence of that - and what about her life before Bureau 2, she was a martial arts teacher don't forget, so didn't she have other close friends?), but it was a bit much to go down the route of the symbolic giving away! And what's going on - there wasn't a single explosion! Can this really be the series we knew? No, in some ways it isn't, but it's best to just breathe it in and enjoy it because after one more lonely episode the journey would be over. Forever.

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