Incorporated Review: Episode 4: "Cost Containment"

One thing I appreciate about this show is how they're able to focus both on the "present" and "past" in a way that seems natural and is easy to follow. I wasn't expecting to see this many scenes taking place before the "present" of the story, and I'm surprised at how much I like that method of telling the story.

Because Aaron spent those earlier years in the red zone, the flashbacks are also a great way to allow us as an audience to see more of what life is like within those areas. I almost feel like we see more of the red zone than we do the green zone in this episode.

Ben uses male birth control in this episode, which fascinates me endlessly. Within the green zone, we've been told that women have an IUD inserted that can only be removed when they're approved to have a kid, so my assumption would be that no one in the green zone needs any birth control other than the IUD, as the IUD is either present or they're trying for a baby. (Although there might be other methods of birth control as options and you're just required to choose one.) Aside from the fact that this world has actually bothered to create male birth control, I wonder if its primarily for use within the green or red zone. My assumption would be that it's for the red zone considering what we've seen in the green zone, but I also imagine it's very difficult to get ahold of there. That raises a lot of interesting questions to me about how often the male birth control is used and by whom.

We meet Roger's brother Mitchell, whose brain has been damaged after he had an implant that was supposed to help him. If we were going to see this in anyone's family's past, I'm not surprised that it's Roger's. I wonder if we'll see Mitchell more or if he was merely a one-shot character. I also have a lot of questions about these brain implants. Are they something frequently implanted, that rarely goes wrong, and do other characters we know have any? Or was Mitchell one of the earliest to have one inserted and that's why it was such a failure? I'm hoping we learn a little more in the future.

How is it that Spiga isn't already trying to make crops salt-tolerant like Inazagi is? I did some Googling, and this is apparently something that some scientists are working on now. When it would be so beneficial in the world of the show, I'm kind of surprised that Spiga isn't at least making attempts towards it already. Although, maybe they are and just haven't had the same breakthrough.

Theo's storyline in this episode was by far the saddest part of the episode. As soon as Spyder got excited to see him, I knew that, whichever way the story went, it was going to be incredibly sad. That final scene between them got to me more than any other scene in the show has so far.