Saturday, September 14, 2013

(Spoilers) Hell on Wheels: S3E7 "Cholera" Impressions

***SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers may be found in the post below about VARIOUS ITEMS. And I'm going to add in a bit of filler text here to limit how much of the main article gets shown in a preview. That should take care of most of it. Hopefully. And away we go. SPOILER WARNING. ***

Did it. I finally did it. I remembered that this show was on Saturday night. Anyways, great start to the episode. Confusing, but great.

Overview
The episode starts with Bohannon sick and in the middle of a field with furniture. He runs into the boy from the family, Ezra, that The Swede killed. It's later revealed that this is a flash-forward scene.

Back at Hell on Wheels at an earlier time, Bohannon figures out that cholera is making him and the rest of the camp sick. In Omaha, Durant kills his business associate/friend (Metcalf) and blames it on Sean -- he was fired by Bohannon in the last episode. Workers are dying and "deserting", so Bohannon goes off to find fresh water. We eventually catch up to the opening scene and Ezra shows him the location of a spring. Workers set up a well with a windmill to pump, water problem is solved.

Sean goes to Mickey for help and he agrees to help both him and Durant. They end up getting rid of the body in the mass cremation at Hell on Wheels. Eva decides to give the baby away to the brother of O'Toole who is returning to New York. The Swede impersonates the father/husband of the family he murdered in the last episode with Mormon missionaries.

Highlights
Bohannon knows to look for contamination in the water tanks. He finds a rat and notes that drinking clean water is the cure. According to Mr. Google (I have better sources, but ya know), the breakthrough on cholera by Jon Snow in London was in 1854. This takes place after the American Civil War, so there should have been about a decade for news to travel. It's sad that all they may have had to do was boil the water -- no idea if they knew about water treatment in this basic form yet.

Impressions
Big development on Elam and Eva's story with the "loss" of the baby. Considering how much worth Elam's put into the kid, this can't possibly go over well when he finds out.

Just realized that there is a lot this season about Mormons. There is the Mormon family in the second episode, The Swede's Mormon family, and talk about a nearby Mormon fort. Something going down with the Mormon fort later in the season?

Entertaining episode. The flash-forward is a bit weird. I don't remember off the top of my head if that's ever been done before with Hell on Wheels. Doesn't really seem necessary, but oh well. Very interesting to see the convergence of the Bohannon and Swede storylines. Now, THAT will not go down well.


Related
Hell on Wheels: Season 3, started Aug. 9/13
Hell on Wheels: S3E3 "Range War" Impressions
Hell on Wheels: S3E4: The Game Impressions
Hell on Wheels: S3E5 "Searchers" Impressions

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