Throwing in with some of his old criminal colleagues, Cade helps with a break-in that he believes will lead him to a Gua experiment. What he doesn’t realize is that he’s already in it…

Can anyone say Cube? The basic principle of this episode is a group of people moving from square room to square room trying to deal with the death traps that await them. On the other hand, by stealing from the best it’s hard to go wrong. As an exercise in character interaction and claustrophobia, this story is a big success. The criminals all (bar one) have enough screen time to show character development and we get to learn some facts about Cade’s shadier past, leading to how he met his wife.

Although equipped with the rather silly name of Harley, Monika Schnarre plays a tough but feminine person who has a lot of history to work through with Cade, and it’s their relationship that at turns almost kills but eventually saves them. Cade’s relationship with another of the crooks, one who got him sent to prison, is also well-developed in a fairly short space of time, with some real remorse showing when he kills himself. It’s a well-chosen guest cast, and they really work well together.

On top of that, the trials that Cade and the others pass through are numerous and by turns quite terrifying. The killer clown is a powerful image and although some of the other tricks performed by the rooms are the more traditional ones, the sight of Eddie hanging from the ceiling is really quite nasty.

Once again, First Wave breaks the season one formula with good effect, and if the second half of the year goes as well as this, we should all be in for a treat.

****

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