Back at the Atlas, Earl Hill is watching the news at the hotel bar. Hilariously, this briefly features effects footage of the Hoover Dam collapse lifted directly from earlier in the show, despite it not corresponding to anything anyone was in position to film. Earl then engages in conversation with Jackson, the hotel’s bartender. During this, some hanging glasses lightly clink together, a fact unnoticed by others. Perturbed, Hill lays his palm flat on the bar. Apparently being a geologist is being like an American Indian, and one can instinctively sense the Earth’s Anger.
Earl takes a regular elevator down to the underground, apparently employees-only part of the casino, which is totally unsecured. There the pipes and the very earth Speak to Him, and he becomes increasingly uneasy. He wanders into the boiler room and turns on a tap. From his reaction, I assume the water smells of sulfur. Then he times something, presumably the tremors. (The time between these is apparently important, like contractions announcing an imminent birth).
Back to USGS HQ. Ian the Asian Flunky—he’s good with computers, who would have guessed?—comes into Sam’s office and calls up a computer model he’s been working on. According to this, the entire country will within 48 hours (!!!) literally be blanketed with catastrophic seismic events. Sam immediately phones the President and his staff to share these findings.
“Ancient fracture zones and stress points,” Sam explains, “are being reawakened in the entire Central and Western United States.” The best case scenario, she continues, will be “a string of more catastrophic quakes and volcanic eruptions throughout this region.” Much more egregious, however, is the danger posed by predicted incidents in the Midwest.
Sam explains that long ago, the entire middle section of the United was in fact a “vast sea.” Should the anticipated events occurs, within two days (again, c’mon!) the entire middle third of the United States, which is “barely above sea level,” will once more be underwater, dividing the remaining North American continent into two, much diminished landmasses. “The geography of North America,” she sums up, “could be changed beyond all recognition.
Hey, since this would also affect Canada, maybe we should check to see what help they can offer. Ha, but I kid.
On the other hand, joking aside, it’s too bad that we never get a clue as to what is happening to the rest of the world. Even assuming that no other continent is facing similar seismic destruction—and I find that unlikely, since surely all the plates are moving—it’s astounding to imagine the impact on the rest of the globe should America basically cease to exist as a financial, military and political power in a span of about four or five days. Things must be getting…interesting in many a location.
With a more localized disaster looming in Las Vegas (with the show’s first night’s chapter nearly at an end, we obviously need a Bad CGI Disaster Vignette to wrap it up), Earl calls his daughter and explains that he feels tremors. However, when Sam has her staff check their Magical Super-Computers, they don’t show anything.
Still, the first 10.5 taught us that there is something even more powerful than a Magical Super-Computer: One’s Gut. “You’re staring at a bunch of machines!” her father snorts. “You’re not feeling it, Sam! You’re not feeling it in your bones!”
Seconds later, the Super-Computers confirm what Earl’s bones already knew, that tremors are starting there. He explains his quickly formulated theory, that magmatic heat or some damn thing has acidified the water conifers under the city, eating away at the sandstone bedrock. “The whole city is sitting on a crumbling slab of Swiss cheese!” he exclaims.
This statement naturally presages the climatic Bad CGI Disaster Vignette. And in the case, when I say Bad CGI, I mean it. This whole sequence, albeit brief, is horrendously cheap-looking. One shot in particular, of extras running around in front of a rear screen projection, is nothing less than laugh out loud funny. I understand that they must have run out of money at some point, but this shot is just flat out embarrassing.
Meanwhile, because it would have cost more money to animate all individual buildings crumbling to pieces (as this would have required much more intensive CGI rendering), instead the cityscape just lowers into the ground, pretty much intact, much like the buildings hijacked by the Mole Man in the first issue of The Fantastic Four.
Meanwhile, Earl, having come back up the elevator to the main floor, takes command sa rubble falls on the various extras. “OK, everybody, get down!” he yells. Yeah, good thing he was there. Nobody else would have thought of ‘everybody, get down.’ Then he rushes to pull aside a woman about to be crushed by a big neon ice cream cone. Amazingly, the woman he saves is none other than Laura. (EVERYONE IS CONNECTED.)
And so Las Vegas sinks from sight. Join us now for.…
Part 2
[Editorial Note: Thankfully (for both you and me), Part 2 proved to require rather less commentary than the first half. That’s because it’s much more consistently an action piece, with consequently less moronic exposition and ‘character’ development. There’s some of that, of course, but nowhere near what the first half delivered.]We open on the President and his advisors at Camp David, as well as the staff over at FEMA, again watching WNB news to see what’s going on. Yep, that’s reassuring. Anyway, the latest report is on the sinking of Las Vegas. In the aftermath, the newscaster explains, “five to six hundred thousand people are now buried alive beneath the desert floor.” However, we only know two of them, so screw the rest.
Soon Sam is again conferring with Hollister, leading him to recap the situation in an amazingly clunky sentence: “Then your prediction of massive flooding and separation in the Midwest with the country cut in half by these disruptions is going to come about?”
When she confirms that is so, Hollister spits, “There must be something we can do about this!” Sure, why not? It’s just the very continent ripping in half over the next day or two. How hard can that be to remedy? Sam admits, however, that she is hamstrung by the fact that the whole ‘tectonic plates snapping back together’ theory isn’t hers, but rather her father’s.
“Can he use this theory of his to guide us through this situation?” Hollister inquires. I still don’t get it. This is like asserting that if I have a theory that the sun is shortly to go supernova, that must mean therefore that I can come up with a way to stop it doing so. Well, no, see, because it’s the sun. In any case, with the potential solution to this entire fandango resting on Earl’s back, Hollister promises to mount a rescue operation.
Having received orders to this effect, Warner phones Natalie and tells her to assemble a rescue team to head to Vegas. This will require members with rock and mountain climbing experience. Shockingly, it turns out, Brad and Will have exactly those qualifications. Well, OK, this hasn’t happened yet, but I’m assuming. In addition, this will provide an opportunity for Brad to die a brave and noble death whilst in the very act of saving Will and Laura. (Oops, sorry.)
First, though, Will is seen freaking out after failing to raise Laura on her phone. Then, hearing about the Las Vegas team, the brothers race to get themselves appointed to it. Because, you know, Las Vegas is only a city, so once they are on the scene, there’s no doubt they’ll find her amongst the dozens of buried buildings and hundreds of thousands of folks interred within them.
Hey, but wait! The team is in fact being sent to locate Earl, so was known to be in the Atlas Casino…which is just where we last saw Laura! In fact, Earl was last seen shoving Laura to safety! What are the odds?! (Pretty good, actually, since EVERYONE IS CONNECTED.)
Back to Sun Valley. Amy sees Handsome Hispanic Dr. Miguel Garcia preparing to leave camp and runs to intercept him. Ascertaining that he’s part of an emergency medical team going to the Hoover Dam area, she asks to go with. He explains that the team will be very small, and won’t have room for an extra person.
She nearly breaks out in tears at this rejection, and basically goes all, “BUT YOU SAID YOU LIKED ME!! AND THAT I WAS GOOD AND STUFF!!” (Beside which, once you start giving people Liver Snaps, you have to assume they’re going to want to follow you around.) He concurs that he so praised her, yet while failing to point out the obvious distinction between someone who can keep be generally keep their head in an emergency and one who possesses the actual medical training necessary to save lives.
In the end, however, he can’t withstand her importuning, and allows her to come with. This is easily the biggest “IT ISN’T ABOUT YOU!!” moment in the movie. One can only assume that if Amy is going, then there is room for one less person with actual training. Still, paltry concerns like saving lives pale against the realization that CATASTROPHIES PROVIDE MYRIAD OPPORTUNITIES FOR PERSONAL GROWTH. In case, after he gives in, she gives Doctor Dreamboat a hug. Gaak.
Meanwhile, Brad and Will are attempting to secure a spot on the rescue team. Overachiever Brad has tons of useful qualifications, but Becker is wary following Brad’s earlier incident of rule breaking. However, knowing how important this is to Will, Brad plays it completely straight. There’s a tense pause—made, admittedly, perhaps less suspenseful by the fact that of course Will and Brad are going to end up on the team—before Natalie finally makes the call in their favor.
As helicopters fly over the buried buildings of Vegas, we cut inside the Atlas. Earl and Laura are just raising themselves up from the rubble. He asks if she’s OK, and she answers (I swear!), “I hope so. I just found out yesterday I’m pregnant.” Oh, bru-ther. For those keeping track, that’s the first laugh out loud moment of the show’s second half.
Earl also quickly locates and frees a pinned Jackson, so I guess he’s forming his own little quest party. They then determine that their cell phones won’t work. However, Earl is a scientist, and hooks a phone into, I guess, some of the hotel’s dangling fiber optic lines. “I’m going to use this whole building as an antennae,” he explains. Wow, watching all those old MacGyver episodes really paid off. He briefly gets through to 911, but as he identifies himself more of the room collapses and they are forced to flee.
They then stop to help a showgirl in full costume (not from one of the topless revues, alas) free another trapped showgirl. I have to say, quite a high percentage of people who get trapped under rubble remain essentially unharmed in this universe. Pregnant Laura springs into Nurse Action, leaving me to wonder why she didn’t do the same when Jackson was freed. It’s because he’s black, isn’t it? ISN’T IT?!
In any case, the girls join their crew, helpfully providing further cleavage.
Back at GS HQ, Sam is informed that “major tremors” are emanating in South Dakota. “South Dakota?” she gasps. I don’t know why she’s surprised, since Ian’s computer model indicated that every other square foot of the country would see such activity. Unsurprisingly, this leads to the next Bad CGI Disaster Vignette. Since movie disasters tend to target tourist attractions, we’re less than shocked to see this one decimate the presidential portraits hewn into Mt. Rushmore. Take that, Dead White Guys! Hazzah!
Meanwhile, a huge trench opens in the earth beneath the mountain, lit by an interior river of molten lava. It continues moving south, and presumably is the fissure Sam warned would divide the continent if not halted. (It’s a shame that neither mini-series led to the release on DVD of the film that each, and the second one in particular, rips-off with gusto, 1965’s proto-disaster flick Crack in the World.)
Sam informs Hollister of the fissure’s appearance and rapid progress. Even worse, this is a “rift fault,” which is “more volatile” than the regular faults they’ve been victimized by so far. This one will end up “gaining momentum as it goes.” Meanwhile, Warner pipes in to note that Earl Hill had called 911 in Las Vegas and identified himself as being in the Atlas. (Amazing in all this confusion that one piece of local data would end up reaching the head of FEMA.) The rescue team has been sent to find and retrieve him.
Then we waste some time. For instance, Hollister gives yet another purportedly heart-tugging, Churchill-esque television address. Hey, remember the weasely Presidential aide from the first movie? He’s back, I guess to provide continuity. He has, however, nary a single line in the entire show, and certainly not one of any import. Nice work if you can get it.
Probably the most notable thing here is that they establish that the first quake in Seattle, which opened the first movie, took place four days ago. The second best thing is the line, “I’m ordering the complete evacuation of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.” Oh. Is that all? Actually, I’m being a bit unfair, as Hollister does acknowledge this to be “a daunting task.”
Meanwhile, Amy and Handsome Hispanic Dr. Manuel Garcia are at work at the Hoover Dam medical camp, with Amy in nursing fatigues and handling medical equipment. Ha, those poor suckers who actually went to nursing school.
Then it’s back to the Atlas for what is probably the single funniest scene in the second mini-series. This finds Earl arguing with a casino security guard about the best way to reach safety. The security guard, assuming the building is still topside (??), believes they must dig their way out where they are. Earl, for his part, asserts that the bulk of building is now sunk beneath the earth’s surface. “The only way out of here, man, is up, not down!” he asserts.
This is such a ballsy, unabashedly naked rip-off of the exact same scene from The Poseidon Adventure that even I, who has seen more of his share of blatant imitations over the years—and I’m talking Italian genre films here!—was both appalled and grudgingly impressed.
Further following its role model, a small band of characters joins Gene Hackman’s wise but faith-shaken priest to the bottom/top of the ship…er, I mean, follow Dr. Hill to the top of the building, while a far larger collection of extras stays below and presumably meets their doom safely off-camera. (By the way, during his debate with the security guard, Hill never mentions that he is a geologist. Maybe if he had a few more people would have sided with him.)
Hill’s crew includes The Sweaty Guy Hill Beat at Poker, Sweaty Guy’s Girlfriend, Generic Guy, the Showgirls, Pregnant Laura and Jackson. Since this is Vegas, baby, let’s lay down some odds here. Hill and Pregnant Laura, obviously, will make it out. Everyone else should be at least nervous.
Sweaty Guy is the most obviously doomed, I put it at 100 to 1 against him making it out. Generic Guy is equally kaput. In fact, he’s even wearing a red shirt. (Could that actually be a joke? Did somebody on this film actually have a sense of humor?) Put down his chances of survival at a 100 to 1 against, too.
SG’s Girlfriend and the Showgirls are also probably not long for this world, although I guess one of the three might come through. Put them individually at 25 to 1 against surviving. Jackson’s a black sidekick, so by tradition he’s screwed, although these days they sometimes save the black guy instead. (As I’ve noted in the past, I’m not entirely sure that saving a character because he’s black is any less ‘racist’ than killing a character because he’s black.) I’ll go five to one against him.
Oh, and odds of Will and Brad showing up, with Brad nobly dying to save Will and Pregnant Laura, are about 50 to 1 in favor.
At the Las Vegas Incident Center, the rescue team is receiving a mission run-down. Sagely, Will doesn’t pipe up during this and go, “My brother and I don’t really give a rat’s ass about saving this Dr. Hill, the person the President is counting on to save the country. We’re here to go looking for my wife.” However, because this is a movie, they’ll end up saving both, so it’s OK, I guess. Besides, after Brad’s heroic death, who’s going to be a jerk about this?
Oh, and of course the building could collapse under the pressure of the sand it’s buried beneath at any moment. Well, any moment after Will, Pregnant Laura and Earl get out of there.
We cut to a Bad CGI panorama of Sunken Vegas, before moving in on a Bad Process Shot of the rescue team standing on the yet-projecting top floors of the Atlas Casino. They cut a hole in the roof (wasn’t there rooftop access?) over an elevator shaft, and Brad and Will are lowered down via winch.
Meanwhile, the evacuation of Houston is represented by the usual mélange of traffic jam stock footage and a tightly shot ‘crowd’ of extras fleeing their homes. One child runs around with her goldfish bowl. Another drops his teddy bear. It’s poignant. Houston abandoned. Will History blame Hollister, or the earthquakes? Oh well, at least the coming inundation should kill off all the killer bees.
Also in Houston is the small home of an elderly man and his wife. He’s in a wheelchair and hooked up to an oxygen hose. Since they are evidently Hispanic, I’m assuming these will be the parents of Handsome Hispanic Dr. Manuel Garcia. (EVERYONE IS CONNECTED.) Let me shuffle through my Disaster Movie Character Flash Cardsâ„¢, and…yes. I’d say these are the People Who Stubbornly Refuse to Leave Their Land/Home in the Face of Imminent Disaster.
The phone rings, and Mama picks it up. (Again, I have to give props to the various phone companies, which service hasn’t skipped a beat during any of this.) I hope you’re sitting down, because on the other end is none other than Handsome Hispanic Dr. Manuel Garcia. It turns out that these two are none other than…his parents! Wow! What an unexpected development!
Because racial Balkanization multiculturalism is good, the entire conversation is in Spanish, accompanied by English subtitles. Miguel demands to know why they haven’t evacuated yet. Mama informs him that they’ve decided not to leave their home, even in the face of imminent disaster. “We are staying,” she explains. “Our lives, our memories, are here.” By the way, she calls her son Miguelito, and it turns out he has sisters named Carmen and Theresa. Also, Mama wears a cross on a necklace that she fingers when feeling stressed, and she mentions God a lot. Man, whoever wrote this script really did a lot of research into Hispanic-American Culture.
Brad and Will, meanwhile, are exploring the Atlas looking for Laura (with Will presumably not yet knowing she’s pregnant). Oh, and if they have time, the will also look for the guy they were sent by the President of the United States to find. The brothers, by the way, are wearing tracking units so as to allow for ludicrously advanced computer graphics as Natalie marks their progress back at the Incident Center.
Team Hill is then seen entering the hotel ballroom, a large area not at all reminiscent of the ballroom from which the survivors began their journey in The Poseidon Adventure. Alas, the staircase has collapsed, so they can’t reach the next floor landing. Luckily, a large piece of signage has earlier crashed to the floor. This is constructed of metal scaffolding that could be used as a ladder if they can somehow laboriously move it into proper place.
This is entirely different, I should add, from the ballroom’s artificial Christmas tree in The Poseidon Adventure, whose interior metal scaffolding was used as a ladder after the survivors laboriously moved it into proper place. (In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. Well, nobody can say that it was illegitimate for the scriptwriters to declare their Poseidon Adventure movie rental as a business expense.)
The question is, obviously, how to shift the huge piece of scaffolding into position. Luckily, Earl is a scientist, and so is conversant with all scientific and engineering disciplines, as all movie scientists tend to be. He first examines the triangular scaffolding. “One inch tubular aluminum, welded at 45º angles,” he muses. “Yeah, nice and solid.”
Sweaty Guy, however, declares that the ‘use the scaffolding as a ladder’ thing is suicide. (??) And, he also asks, how would they even get the scaffolding into place? Leverage, Earl answers. “A lever has three points of interest, a fulcrum, the load and the effort.” Since they only have so much ‘effort’ at hand—although actually, nine healthy and mostly young people should be more than enough—the fulcrum will need be substantial. The answer lies with one of the casino’s huge pipe-metal ‘worlds’ (such as would rest on Altas’ back). One of these is fortuitously already positioned in almost exactly the right spot.
[In The Poseidon Adventure, by the way—not that there are any similarities between that movie and this one—they need to use the giant Christmas tree because the door they are trying to reach is like thirty feet up. Here the distance to the landing seems more like twelve to fifteen feet, tops, although I think they attempt to fudge this with camera angles and such. In any case, I’d either try climbing up one of the many loose bundles of wiring hanging from the ceiling or just stack up some debris before attempting to anchor the ‘ladder’ on a large ball.]A little noodling and the end of the scaffolding is propped up right where they want it. In fact, it seems like it should be entirely stable, although I assume this won’t be the case. Cut to commercial.
Back to the movie. There’s intercutting throughout to various of the characters, including Brad and Will as they work their way through the upper floors of the hotel as ongoing tremors threaten to pancake the building, etc. We also check in with Sam, who predicts that the growing rift fault will completely bisect the nation in eighteen hours. (!!)
However, the main action right now is still in the ballroom. We cut back to find that Earl, Sweaty Guy, SG’s Girl, One Showgirl and Jackson have all reached the upper landing. That leaves Red Shirt Guy, Other Showgirl and Pregnant Laura to go. Other Showgirl is the group’s designated Panicky One. They always get kacked, and so do people who try to help them. So perhaps Red Shirt’s demise is imminent too.
Other Showgirl’s fate is sealed when Laura says she’ll go first to show it’s safe. (Uhm, haven’t like six other people, including First Showgirl, already done that?) Then, in a shocking twist, Pregnant Laura just reaches safety before the ladder shifts during a tremor, throwing Other Showgirl to the death she so feared. Oh, and Red Shirt Guy indeed dies trying to help her. In a nice piece of bad continuity, Red Shirt Guy clearly swivels away from the falling scaffolding, yet his body is shown to be pinned beneath it in the next shot. Cue another commercial break, after less than five minutes of movie.
Brad and Will continue to search as the tremors intensify. However, they find that the interior staircase (there’s only one?) has collapsed on a lower floor. They look for another route. More stuff with Team Earl. Meanwhile, Sam and her guys have flown out to Kansas to position some seismic tracking devices, since the previously stable Midwest hasn’t been seeded with them.
Really? The head of research and her top staffers for this whole thing have to fly out themselves to go this grunt work? That’s weird. Of course, maybe Sam wants to be on scene so that she can feel something in her bones, rather than just staring at machines. Still, they started from Denver and flew to Kansas in a helicopter to lay the trackers. How long would the flight and task take, and then to get back, at a juncture in which the country has eighteen hours before it largely ceases to exist?
In any case, as Ian and Roberts (who’s like in his ’60s and somewhat portly, so I’m sure he’s enjoying all the hill climbing) place the trackers, Sam and Gina walk around as Our Heroine deploys her gut. She quickly notes “a hint” of sulfur dioxide in the air. Meanwhile, Roberts, returning to the helicopter, finds that bubbling pools of steaming water have emerged from the ground. Then back to Sam, who is following her nose. That’s quite of array of tools she has: her gut, nose and bones.
She and Gina come across a small campsite. It sports a parked SUV with a tire that has melted (I guess) in a pool similar to the ones Roberts just found. “It’s volcanic acid,” Sam deduces, “seeping up from under the ground.” She runs to a nearby tent and finds two parboiled campers inside. (??) Cut to the third commercial break in the last fifteen minutes.
Back to the movie, and ‘Lost’ Vegas. (Ha! I made a funny!) As the search continues, Brad gets increasing impatient. “This is a waste of time!” he snarls. Hey, dude, tell me about it! Meanwhile, Team Earl is down another member when Sweaty Guy freaks out and gets himself kacked. I mean, c’mon, when one of the movie’s heroes tells you, “You always lose when you panic,” you’ve got to listen to him.
Back at Self-Esteem Camp, er, the Refugee Center, as we check in with Amy and Handsome Hispanic Dr. Miguel Garcia in the midst of a surgical procedure. There’s a small glitch when Amy turns out not to know medical jargon. To be fair, though, who could have possibly predicted that this sort of thing would prove a problem? Amy finally does manage to roll over the shock paddles he wanted, but the patient dies anyway. Oh, no! Will this minor incident tragically derail Amy’s Odyssey of Self-Fulfillment?! Let’s hope not!
Don’t worry. Despite the thousands of other patients requiring emergency care, Doctor Dreamboat pauses to chase after the sobbing Amy. Good thing, too, as she is the verge of giving up and going back home to her parents (lucky them). He catches up and gives her a “stand tall, Sunshine!” speech. Under his supportive coddling, she turns around and heads back to the tent. Whew! There’s one potential disaster averted! And you know, I think Amy is even stronger (we keep hearing how strong she is, despite all the contrary evidence) for having gone through this brief period of doubt. (CATASTROPHIES PROVIDE MYRIAD OPPORTUNITIES FOR PERSONAL GROWTH.)
More stuff as we intercut between our various pods of characters. Brad and Will finally come to brotherly blows and grappling over the former’s rule-breaking ways (good grief, what a pair of idiots). Things are resolves when a further tremor dislodges an elevator car that would have crushed Brad had Will let him repel down the shaft as he had insisted. Meanwhile, Team Earl sheds First Showgirl in a stairwell collapse, and Laura is trapped under some wreckage.
Meanwhile, Sam and the others are back at HQ, where she is extrapolating the remaining path of the rift fissure. Since splitting the country in half isn’t quite apocalyptic enough, they now explain that this route will bring the rift straight through the country’s largest nuclear power plant. (Nuclear power! Booo!) This will unleash untold of destruction. Past what we’ve already seen, that is. This is followed by another CGI sequence following the developing rift, as it tears through and swallows up a farm. Again, this is right out of Crack in the World.
Back from commercial, they spell out the possible nuclear holocaust scenario. The entire Southwest will be made into a radioactive No Man’s Land, and “We could lose as many as seventy-five million people!” (!!) Yeah, that sounds like a completely realistic estimate to me. Meanwhile, if that’s the result of one meltdown (albeit at the country’s biggest nuclear facility), why isn’t this happening all over the place?
The reason is particular site is so dangerous, Warner explains, is because of the tons of spent nuclear fuel stored there. This is, she continues, because “no permanent waste facility has been opened in the United States.” True. Billions have been spent to build one, but lawsuits have kept it from being used so far. Thanks, NIMBYs and ‘environmentalists’!*
[*Of course, that’s not where the filmmakers meant to affix blame. However, at least this power plant idea affords them a way to pin part of the potential disaster on Man’s Hubris, since otherwise it’s hard to blame us much for what’s been happening here.]Since there’s no feasible way to move the facility’s radioactive waste in time, Hollister opines that, “We have to stop that fault from reaching those reactors!” Yes, halting the rampaging tectonic plates of the Earth itself sounds much easier. Therefore, the search for Earl Hill, who surely can suggest a way this can be accomplished in the few hours remaining to them, remains a priority.
Back at the Atlas, Will and Brad hear Team Earl’s shouts from the floor below them, as the latter attempts to dig Pregnant Laura out. The two groups use the “beating on walls with crap” method to alerting the each other of their presence. Brad and Will cut through the floor, and find Earl, Jackson and Sweaty Guy’s Girl. Since Jackson is black and SGG is Asian, this means a heartwarming percentage of the survivors are members of discrete, insular minorities. Whew!
Meanwhile, out of the “hundreds of thousands” of people buried alive in the city, Will and Brad are now but a floor or two (admittedly, a largely collapsed floor or two) from Laura. Plus they found the exact guy they were sent to find. So I’d say they’re having a pretty successful day of it. Oh, and it’s from Hill that Will learns that Laura is now, in fact, Pregnant Laura. He should be glad, really. However unlikely it was the writers would kill off Ordinary Laura; Pregnant Laura is pretty much completely invulnerable. (Brad, on the other hand…) As things turn out, even First Showgirl, last seen tumbling down some stairs, is still alive. In fact, she’s digging Pregnant Laura out from under some stuff.
Meanwhile, Hill is flown by ‘copter to USGS HQ to meet up with Sam. In fact, he arrives there with but seven hours to go before the rift swallows up the Red Plaines reactor. Still, there are more important issues right now, like the opportunity for Sam to once more bond with her father. (CATASTROPHIES PROVIDE MYRIAD OPPORTUNITIES FOR PERSONAL GROWTH.) In any case, things are now looking up. “Let’s see what we can do about this little problem of ours, shall we?” Hill says.
Back from commercial, Hollister is beating himself up because he can’t do more to HELP THE PEOPLE during this crisis. Wow, what a humanizing scene! I sure care more about him now. Luckily, he gets some reaffirmation from his wife, and we see how much they love each other. I have to say, Melissa Sue Anderson must have just needed a paycheck. She certainly didn’t come out of retirement because this was such a rich, juicy role.
Meanwhile, Amy is providing Handsome Hispanic Dr. Manuel Garcia with a similar buck-up speech, after he explains about his apparently doomed parents. This gives her a chance to support him as he has her, as if I gave a rodent’s butt.
Back in at HQ, Earl has taken over Sam’s office (was this his old workspace there?), and Sam sits back and basks in his praise over her recent efforts. Then they pause to have a heart to heart, because, hey, it’s not like they have anything better to do. Long story short, he loves hers. And thus is Sam’s Inner Child healed, even after the death of her lover, Whatshisname. Well, no cloud without a silver lining, eh?
Back at the Atlas, a larger team is trying to dig out Laura and First Showgirl. However, they are stymied by how fragile the building is. With time short, they are provided with an alternate route from Natalie’s end. Following this, Will prepares to head down the indicated airshaft that should take him to the correct floor.
Back at GS, Earl is briefing the team. Since the rift fault is too powerful to stop directly, Earl hopes to turn it against itself, which somehow will cause it to veer off its present path. This is a load of crap, of course, but then so is the entire movie, so you can’t really complain on that front.
Earl’s scheme involves a huge natural gas field which is luckily right near the twin Red Plaines reactors. (Really? They built this dangerous facility that close to a gigantic natural gas reserve?) They will blow up the natural gas field just before the fissure hits. This will in theory create a bisecting rift that should offer a new path of least resistance for the main rift fissure, and Red Plains will be saved. Well, that sounds foolproof. (Since they used nuclear bombs in the last movie, so they can’t just use them again, because that would be lame. Hence the introduction of this fortuitous oil field.)
Sam flubs her line here by noting, “It just might work!” Surely in the script that must have read, “That’s so crazy that it just might work!” Nice job, Delaney.
Sam and Earl fly out to Red Plaines to set the explosives. At this point the fissure is but 90 minutes away. Meanwhile, Will is still trying to save Pregnant Laura and, if things work out that way, First Showgirl, as the increased tremors all but tear the Atlas apart. We largely cut back and forth between these two plots for the final twenty minutes or so (actually the final half hour, but interrupted by several lengthy commercial breaks), however let’s just deal with them one at a time.
On Will’s end, he reaches Pregnant Laura and First Showgirl. However, their route back is now itself blocked. He calls in to the Incident Center for further instructions as the building continues to fall apart around them. This provides the occasion for Natalie to redeem herself. She does by, yes, going with her gut, against the advice of others and feeding Will an unlikely alternative route. (CATASTROPHIES PROVIDE MYRIAD OPPORTUNITIES FOR PERSONAL GROWTH.)
Even so, the threesome end up trapped until Brad comes smashing through the wall to aid them. The newly exposed hole leads into the escape shaft. However, one of the two winches to the top malfunctions as the building continues to come apart. That leaves one remaining winch, but it can only carry three people at a time. So Brad sends up Pregnant Laura, Will and First Showgirl.
Three guesses what happens then.
Anyway, the survivors are flown to safety just seconds before the building disintegrates. And hey, no more arguments about Will’s obnoxious brother.
Meanwhile, at Red Plaines, the oil field charges are set by army guys. Sam gets the trigger, because she’s the series heroine. They apparently saved a bit more of the effects budget for the last hurrah. This allows for a slightly better grade of CGI effects to represent the molten lava-laden fissure approaching the plant, followed by the explosion and the formation of the new rift that saves the nuclear reactors by all of a city block or so. Indeed, even better, the new rift seems to have completely halted the old one.
Back at the Las Vegas Incident/Refugee camp, none other than Handsome Hispanic Dr. Manuel Garcia is performing field surgery (in a wall-less tent open to all the dust!) on the injured Pregnant Laura, as the not technically medically trained Amy hands him his surgical instruments and even works right there in the incision with him (!!). Needless to say, in the end both Laura and the baby are fine.
Back to Red Plaines. Looking upon the huge fissure, Sam whispers in awe, “It’s like the Earth has a mind of its own.” “It always did, baby.” Her father replies. “If I taught you anything, I taught you that.” Wow, what a complete load of crap. Tectonic plate movements are not instigated by a ‘mind,’ you idiots. Spare me your New Age babble.
Given that five minutes of running time remain at this point, we’re relatively unsurprised when the fissure suddenly kicks back up into operation and continues along its new path. This takes it straight through Houston (goodbye, Miguel’s parents), and on to the Gulf of Mexico, opening up that gigantic mid-continent waterway they promised for a big boffo finish. And everybody a’cry. Cue Hollister’s last hambone inspirational speech: “While we are divided geographically, we will not be divided spiritually…” Yada, yada.
The hilarious thing here is that we see the present fissure widening greatly as the continent now splits completely asunder. We actually see from above the new waterway cutting up the country, and it’s huge. Apparently they hoped we would just forget that the fissure just narrowly missed swallowing up the Red Plaines reactors, and that means without a doubt that the reactors were destroyed anyway.
Well, guess what? We didn’t. Morons.
And so things end. Or do they? For who knows when further catastrophes will be augured by huge, spiking numbers…on the Nielson Rating Charts?*
[*Actually, for whatever reason—the opening chapter being up against Desperate Housewives, perhaps?—although the first and at least equally dumb 10.5 scored astoundingly large ratings, the follow-up drew a much more meager viewership. Sunday night’s opening half came in third for NBC, behind ABC and CBS.]