📺 Millennium, S 2 E 04 “Monster” (1997)

Three months have passed since I last returned to Millennium. It felt necessary. I had grown used to the polish of modern television, the kind of storytelling that leaves no rough edges. Shows like True Detective set a bar so high that even Millennium, with all its haunted brilliance, feels like an artifact from a different age. It pushed against the limits of its time but could never fully escape them.

Kristen Cloke appeared in this episode. I remembered her from Space: Above and Beyond, unaware she had later starred in Final Destination and Black Christmas. She carries the same quiet intensity, the kind that belongs in Millennium’s world of terrible secrets.

Even the small details speak of another era, like Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) wearing his headphones wrong side up. Maybe he did not want to mess up his hair. When Frank smiles at a child, it feels like sunlight reaching into a cellar. In that instant, t is clear why Henriksen he is the soul of the show.

There is real fire here, too. Not the CGI bullshit we usually see in TV shows in movies these days. I was also delighted that the antagonist watch the gristly end of the original The Fly.