Avenue 5 season 2, episode 7 recap – which side of the ship will the missile hit?
The Post Avenue 5 Season 2, Episode 7 Recap – Which Side of the Ship Will the Missile Hit? It first appeared in Ready Steady Cut.
This recap of Avenue 5 season, episode 7, “I Love Judging People,” contains spoilers.
First, a few quick reminders. one, as of Episode 65th Street is about to be destroyed by a missile. And secondly, since Ryan was “democratically” elected to be the resident dictator of the ship in Episode 5Then, it falls to him to decide how to divide the passengers between the two halves, which Judd reveals the ship can separate from. He tries to argue that it’s not the dictator’s job to decide who lives and who dies, but he quickly realizes that… yeah, it’s kind of the dictator’s job to decide that.
Avenue 5 Season 2, Episode 7 Recap
The whole thing in two halves is an obvious *s-pull plot device, but “I Like to Judge People” does a good job of justifying it by explaining the idea of Judd getting a tax break. Another surprising element that hasn’t been mentioned so far is an onboard artificial intelligence that does a thorough analysis of each passenger and is able to represent their perceived value to the ship as a simple number. The theory is simple: low-ranking passengers should be moved to the rear of the ship, which is most likely to irritate the missile since it is where the engines are.
The critical flaw in this plan is that Ryan tells passengers about it—though, crucially, it’s not what the rank will ultimately decide—and the passengers all get to keep an eye on their rank via wristbands that offer a chime to get an upvote or a buzzing buzz to get a downvote . Soon, everyone starts to learn how to game the system — Iris gets around standing for cameras, telling the truth helps but lying isn’t, cold decision making gets rewarded, and so on and so forth. It makes for some funny beats like Elena and Charles having to confess their love for Ryan after discovering, thanks to the bracelets, what he’s been hiding.
But then there’s Karen. Using Ryan’s mask to fool the AI, she attempts to access the records of all the times Ryan has talked about her…and is successful. This means that she hears all the terrible things Ryan has said about her, so she sets out to destroy the ship, still wearing his mask, which leads to his rank dropping completely.
Elsewhere, Billy sees herself as second of the entire ship, which is a good situation, but she immediately begins to obsess over who might be above her.
It’s all funny. But “I like to judge people” uses this concept in a lot of clever ways to mine the real drama and pathos of many of these relationships. When it comes to the wires, Ryan switches bracelets with Elena, since he is among the top 3000, which she is not, thus saving her life. Or so he thinks, at least. At the last moment, Judd, who has also been sent to the back of the ship, leads a charge of people who rush to the front to save themselves from the missile, making him a more viable target.
By the end of the episode, we don’t know which side of the ship the missile will hit, or even if it will hit any at all, but either way, it was a distasteful strategy to separate half of the core staff like this, and it’ll be interesting to see where the idea goes.
You can watch Avenue 5 Season 2, Episode 7 exclusively HBO.
Additional reading:
- Street 5 Season 2, Episode 8 preview.
- Street 5 Explanation of the end of the second season. (You will go live when the episode airs.)
The Post Avenue 5 Season 2, Episode 7 Recap – Which Side of the Ship Will the Missile Hit? It first appeared in Ready Steady Cut.
