Last night's episode had fully compensated for 'Babes' sexual innuendo and then some, not to mention that it had revealed a significant chunk of the show's back story, but let's try and get it in order.
Now, the episode began with the dinosaur Pachycephalosaurus, and though it is a very interesting dinosaur in its own right, its job was just to be an engine for Evan revealing the truth, bits and pieces of it at least, and it just as easily could've been some other animal, prehistoric or futuristic, so we'll talk about it later.
Evan, now, he was the star of this episode and its main problem. Apparently (there was a lull in the action) after the dinosaur had sneezed on him, Evan began to break mentally down: he began to hallucinate, to see the dinosaur that killed his wife (Albertasaurus, the smaller, faster cousin of the T-Rex), his younger and married self alongside with his wife, and also Mac v.2 - roughly in this sequence. Some of the hallucinations, primarily those of the dinosaur, were auditory rather than visionary, so whatever the Pachy had spat on him, it was some potent sh*t!!
Pachy aside, in the episode Evan, or rather Niall Matter, released his inner badass - very impressive acting, you can honestly believe Evan's deteriorating mental condition, as he goes into a quasi-robocop mode, intent on blowing the entire Cross Photonics in order to change the time line and to save Brooke from certain death. This kind of ruthlessness was probably demonstrated only by Helen Cutter, when she intended to prevent humanity from evolving in S3 of the original series. Incidentally, this only reinforces my theory that Helen spent the rest of her screen time after Stephen's death in S2 growing more and more unbalanced - but for her, it took 10 episodes and she was always ambiguous; for Evan, who's the main hero of P:NW, it took about half an hour of screen time: guess the idea about women being tougher (more resilient) than men has some truth in it!
Evan, to make things even more tense, intended to change the future (and to kill himself and the rest of his field team) to make the world a better place, so it was really fortunate that Ange and Dylan managed to stop him before that. Otherwise, things would've changed in the future, but for the worse (or not).
Dylan, now, had less of a personality development than Evan or the rest of the CP team, not counting Lt. Leeds. Then again, considering that this case of personality development has opened new rifts in the CP team as well as re-activated old ones, this may not be so bad: one of the episode's final scenes is Evan admitting to Dylan that on this day he and his secrets have pissed every one of his friends, not counting Dylan herself. Toby, Mac and Ange may or may not jump ship of dinosaur hunters after 'Truth', but Evan will have to make it up to them somehow. A lot. And personal skills, unlike technical, are Evan's weak spot, as such episodes like 'Angry Birds' and 'Babes' have shown, so he and the others will be in a dark place for a while.
And in Mac's case it'll be particularly dark. I'm guessing that in the original time line where he didn't die fighting the dinosaur or at least managed to get back through the time anomaly, he ended up in the British army rather in Cross Photonics, and may've eventually replaced captain Becker as the head of the original ARC's security detail, or at least became a part of it. In this time line, Evan Cross intervened and Mac came to Canada, BC, and became a firearms expert instead. This, of course, probably caused more ripples in the timeline, but in Mac's case, he's most likely experiencing a case of 'what-might've-been', where he became a British dinosaur hunter and got killed at approximately the same age that he currently is. (It's kind of dicey, given that the mannequin stand-in for Mac v.2 looks exactly like what it's supposed to be - a mannequin.)
And why am I thinking this? Because the end of the very first episode of P:NW had Evan stare at the frozen corpse of who we now know to be Mac v.2 - and his uniform had an ARC logo on it. But that is something that will probably be developed more (or gotten rid off altogether) in the next episodes of P:NW.
Anyways, Mac now knows that Evan knew him before they met, sort of, and Mac isn't the sort of man to deal with unpleasant surprises easily: for him (and for many other people) springing this sort of a surprise is a definite breach of trust, and unlike Toby, he may quit CP, though it's anyone's idea where he'll go from there.
Toby, of course, will be with Mac all the way, seeing how she has rescued him from the freezer room. She may be gay or bisexual or whatever, but she now clearly counts Mac as important and close enough to save from a certain death. For a woman who's not the most trigger-happy or outdoors-savvy (that's Dylan), she can certainly think and act fast, especially if there's Evan losing his marbles and packing serious heat in the same room.
Basically, like Dylan, Toby didn't develop too much if compared to Evan or Mac in this episode. In this instance, she's the lesser half of the ship 'Moby", just as Dylan's the lesser half of ship 'Dyvan', now that the ship 'Evange' has sunk - Ange told Dylan when the gas dispersed and Evan was out cold, that she's leaving CP again.
Then again, though, even at the beginning of the episode Ange didn't appear all that keen to have a 'ship with Evan, nor did she go with him, Dylan and Mac to capture the latest time-displaced animal - guess that the woodland outing in 'Babes' provided her with enough field experience to decide that she doesn't like it. That said, she was clearly hurt (emotionally, not physically) to realize that Evan still cared for Brooke more than for her; maybe not as sharply as Emma Frost, when she realized that Scott will love Jean, first and foremost, when Jean 'the Phoenix' Grey disappeared (due to various Marvel comics time lines let's leave it at that), but still. No woman really likes to hear that she has a more favored rival, and to Ange Brooke was that rival, maybe even when she was alive (what was the relationship between the two women? Maybe we'll learn in the next episodes, who knows?).
Of course, if Ange really does leave CP, does that mean that she'll go and work for Sung (or whoever) instead? More importantly, will she stay on the show? I think that yes, she will, but I also think that this issue - will or will not Ange remain working for CP as a CFO - should be resolved quickly, rather than drag it for the rest of the S1.
Finally, there's Lt. Leeds, and I have to admit that in his case, his character appears to be developing into a more secondary character than the rest of the cast: he probably has the least amount of screen time, right alongside Ange and Toby, but even Ange and Toby had more screen time than Ken Leeds recently, and I don't really like it. Unlike 'Fear of Flying', 'Truth' showed that Leeds can stand up to Evan, at least from time to time, and to get him out of trouble too, especially legal-wise, as this episode has shown. So, maybe the good RCAF lieutenant will have his day...
Finally, the dinosaur. Well, the dinosaurs, but Albertosaurus appeared here only in flashbacks and hallucinations, so let's talk about the Pachy instead. It's a neat dinosaur, not quite belonging to any established group, save for that of its own, the Pachycephalosauria. It has several species, but at least two of them, Stygimoloch and Dracorex (featured on the original series from S3 onwards) may be Pachy's juvenile specimens, and the same situation may be with other species of pachycephalosaurids as well.
In addition, Pachycephalosaurus is a very unusual plant-eater - it may've been one of the biggest omnivorous dinosaurs (rather like the modern wild pigs than the deer or the antelopes) of its time. Considering that most of the dinosaurs can be classified as herbivores or carnivores easily enough, the Pachy's omnivory can be considered to be quite unusual.
Finally, in this episode of P:NW, the dinosaur's 'role' was strongly influenced by the 'Jurassic Park' movies franchise. It rammed the car - just as it did in 'Lost World', (where it appeared on screen for the first time) and its sneeze that launched the real conflict of the episode easily reminds of the even bigger sneeze in the first 'Jurassic Park' movie.
Thus, 'Truth' had a lot of tense, personal drama & action, had important character development in several, if not all, primary characters, and a very interesting dinosaur for a cameo, but no sexual innuendo and little humor. Ah well, you cannot have everything.
PS: This week's P:NW video featurette has plenty of humor, if you want it after watching the ep.
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