With Elaine’s status deteriorating rapidly, Ben, Maddie and Ryn are faced with difficult choices. Helen and Rick are held captive by Rick’s sister, but all may not be as it seems.

True to form and the foundations being laid down last episode, this week’s instalment of Siren gives the viewer plenty to chew on as it expands ever more on the mythos and ideas of the narrative.

Elain is still in hospital and getting worse by the hour – doctors seem to believe there is nothing more that can be done to save her, and this leads to a conversation between Ben and Maddie and the military about what might be possible. When it emerges that to further Decker’s research will require harvesting of Ryn’s stem cells, the pair are faced with a dilemma. Ryn’s sister was made to suffer terribly from that procedure, and in spite of Nicole’s reassurances, how can they really know what might happen?

Inevitably, the decision is taken somewhat out of their hands, and that means a whole new set of dilemmas as Ben anxiously waits to see if he may or may not have just killed his mother by convincing her to undergo radically experimental treatment as a human guinea pig. But if he thought that a bit of soul-searching about whether his mum was going to be ok was going to be the biggest or most immediate of his problems, well, he was mistaken.

Elsewhere, Helen and Rick find that there’s more to Rick’s sibling and her large friend who kidnapped them than meets the eye. What they discover not only deepens the mythos of the show but adds a pleasing depth and nuance to the narrative. That there is more to these people than is immediately apparent is obvious, but the show cleverly keeps the viewer on a knife edge as to exactly what that might mean. This complexity of narrative, with no clear way of telling who is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ plays well against the evolving narrative of the military involvement and Nicole in particular.

And then there’s Calvin, who’s suddenly flashing a bit of cash around from ‘odd jobs’ while Xander struggles with tip money from working at the bar. Calvin’s tight-lippedness about where his money is coming from is as unusual as the fact of the money itself, and when Xander goes snooping, it leads to a confrontation between the two which lands some hard truths on Xander.

Verdict: Where most genre shows like this might be looking to start winding down in the second half of a season, Siren’s writers seem to have their eyes on season 3 setups already. Excellent stuff. 8/10

Greg D. Smith