After a second episode of dialogue that seemed to be written for (and maybe by) 12-year-olds, I’m wondering if I have Terra Nova all wrong. Maybe the writing isn’t bad — maybe it’s true. Could it be that Terra Nova is a radically subversive text, a warning of the dull, blunt, nuance-less future that’s to come? Perhaps over the next 138 years we won’t just destroy the environment, we’ll also erode nuance. All of us will speak only in exposition, declaring what we’re doing even if it’s obvious, and then declaring it again for good measure.
So the stakes are set by the time Jim and Taylor drive out into the jungle to spray the new pheromone. It either works, or all of Terra Nova gets sliced. Unfortunately, the pheromone is successful, and their Warthogmobile — the trucks look like swine to you, too, right? — returns to a hero’s welcome. And so, finally, it’s time for Elisabeth to touch Jim’s rippling abdomen and get it on. But just when it’s about to get good, the episode fades to black. For a show that lets almost nothing go understated, it sure picked a peculiar time to turn shy. But maybe that’s how they do it in 2149.