Episode of Sanctuary

Tonight’s episode of Sanctuary appears to have borrowed its plot from a real-life tragedy: the February 2009 mauling of Charla Nash by a domesticated, 200-pound chimpanzee named Travis. The opening scene of “Fragments” does a great job of evoking the horror of this kind of incident, particularly because Henry hears the attack happening over the phone.

Although we know Helen Magnus has other employees besides the series regulars, I believe this episode marks our first opportunity to meet a couple of them. The introduction of Henry’s friend Rachel comes out of the blue, but once you know who she is, it’s easy enough to accept that she’s always been around. Rachel is played by Anne Marie DeLuise, the wife of Stargate writer/director Peter DeLuise. Colin Cunningham (who plays Major Davis within the Stargate franchise) puts in a great performance as Rachel’s distraught husband Gerald.

Jack, the abnormal that Rachel was attempting to domesticate, looks like a classic Trek lizard alien and sounds like the tomatoes from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, but his species’ deadly spores are always lethal, we are told. Thus, Magnus struggles to keep Rachel alive, leaving Henry to deal with Gerald.

Will and Kate discover that Rachel was administering a drug to Jack to lower his adrenal levels. This is yet another parallel to the case of Travis the chimp (whose aggressive behavior was attributed to the Xanax in his system).

I don’t know about you, but I was surprised by the revelation that Gerald had been feeding Jack tainted food to make him aggressive so that he would attack Henry (who was supposed to look after Jack while Gerald and Rachel were away). I wasn’t surprised that it was Gerald — I was surprised that his goal was to kill Henry. I get that Gerald is a jealous husband, but that’s just extreme. How does a crazy guy like that work at the Sanctuary?

The story became a bit melodramatic when Gerald pulled the knife on Henry. Thankfully, a great, subtle scene between Henry and Rachel brought the episode back to where it should be.

Henry is such a noble guy. Even after Rachel admits that she loves him, he tells her they can’t be together because “Gerald is my friend.” That’s amazing loyalty.

A few more random thoughts about “Fragments”:

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