Review: Silo season 2 makes full use of its strong ensemble cast in "Order"

Silo season 2 is back with another episode on Apple TV+. If the premiere episode was all about Rebecca Ferguson's Juliette Nichols, then "Order" is about everybody else. The season's second episode brings us back to the original Silo, where we get to see how its residents are dealing now that Juliette has left. They don't know what happened to her — the last anyone saw of Juliette, she was walking over the hill outside the Silo and disappearing into the distance — but they do know that it changes their entire worldview, which hinges on people not being able to survive outside long enough to climb that hill.

This is a big episode with a lot of characters at play, so let's get right into it. There will be SPOILERS for "Order" in this review.

Silo Episode 202 review: "Order"

Just like the premiere episode, "Order" opens strong. We begin with Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins), the mayor of the Silo and head of its IT department, as well as the mastermind behind keeping the Silo's citizens compliant. We find out in these opening minutes that there was a camera in the helmet of Juliette's suit; Bernard watches in horror as she enters the Silo she discovered in "The Engineer," climbing over thousands of dead bodies as she makes her way through its outer hatch.

"Order" is all about the fallout of Juliette's fateful journey, and it does a really fantastic job considering how many characters it has to juggle. Bernard is a highlight whenever he's onscreen, as is Judge Meadows, played by Tanya Moodie. They're both excellent actors, and play off one another really well.

Meanwhile, Robert Sims (Common) tries to do Bernard's dirty work to tamp down the unrest from all the people who want to know how Juliette survived, all while also sucking up to Bernard. We learn a lot more about his motives in this episode: he wants to become Bernard's "shadow," or apprentice. Sims seems like the obvious choice...but that's because he doesn't realize that Meadows already held the position once and resigned. Bernard doesn't know why Meadows quit all those years ago, and it's always nagged at him because she's the one person he truly listened to. A lot of Bernard's machinations in this episode revolve around getting her to help him again, so that the Silo can survive the crisis.

Meadows didn't receive a ton of focus in Silo's first season, but I'm really glad she's getting more now. She's been an alcoholic for 25 years, drowning her guilt over the secrets she knows about the Silo. In this episode, she quits cold turkey the minute she finds out that Juliette actually left the Silo and made it over the hill. She ultimately agrees to help Bernard, in exchange for him saving her some of the "good tape" so that she can have a functional suit to go outside herself once the crisis is over.

The tape is a lie

We also spend a lot of time in this episode with the residents of the Down Deep, aka the bottom levels of the Silo where the engineers and mechanics live. Just like the small schisms with Bernard, Meadows, and Sims, the Down Deep characters are not a monolith; there are competing interests that keep things interesting. The major players here are Shirley (Remmie Milner), Juliette's childhood friend who is eager to expose IT for making faulty suits that got people killed for years; Knox (Shane McRae), the leader of Mechanical who also wants answers but who wants to keep everyone from rioting long enough to get them; and Martha Walker (Harriet Walter) and Carla McLain (Clare Perkins), the elder engineer and head of Supply, respectively. Walker and McLain were the ones who orchestrated getting Juliette better tape for her environment suit, which is what allowed her to survive outside.

The episode makes it seem like McLain and Walker are about to suffer consequences for that gambit, but in reality they're jailed just long enough for Bernard to make a surprising power play. He assembles all the people of the Silo, and rather than try to make excuses for how Juliette survived, he owns it, claiming that it was in fact IT who created a new kind of tape which sealed her suit better and allowed her to live long enough to climb the hill and go exploring. I thought this was a really smart turn of events, and Robbins ate this scene up. I especially liked how he had Sims plant hecklers in the crowd who badmouthed Juliette, so that he could defend her and win points with the people. There's a feeling that when he talks about respecting her, he's actually being genuine. Then Meadows steps in and gives him some surprise support, which we see later on has Sims a little concerned she might be making a play for the job he wants. It's just a great scene all-around.

It does bring up one thing that makes me chuckle, though: the tape. In case you're a little confused by the constant mentions of tape in this episode, essentially IT was building environment suits with faulty heat tape so people would die shortly after they went outside. Early in Silo season 1, Juliette managed to get her hands on a roll of good tape, which the Supply department had been repeatedly denying requests for from Engineering. After Bernard had Juliette put outside (remember, she didn't actually say she wanted to go out, that was all Bernard and Sims), Walker worked with McLain to put a little extra TLC into Juliette's suit, replacing the bad heat tape with the good tape.

In Silo as in life, duct tape solves everything. And it's a cool little sci-fi detail to work around, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't chuckle a little listening to Tim Robbins make dramatic proclamations about tape to thousands of people.

All told, "Order" is another really solid episode of Silo. I missed seeing Rebecca Ferguson a little, but not too much because the rest of the cast is also great and there was a lot to catch up on in the Silo. Hopefully future episodes balance the two storylines a little more evenly, but for now, it was great to catch up with the rest of the show's ensemble cast. And it should go without saying that the sets, the costuming, and the design on this show all remain just as excellent as they were in season 1. If I've overlooked talking about them more, it's because they're so well-executed that Silo feels like a real other world. It's great to be back in it, even as unrest begins turning it into a powder keg waiting to go off.

Silo Bullet Points

• We got a very brief scene near the start of this episode with Dr. Pete Nichols, Juliette's father played by Game of Thrones star Iain Glen. It's understandable he wasn't in the episode more, but it's nice to get a reminder he's in the show.
• This whole time, Bernard has been following a rule book left behind by the Founders on how to keep the people of the Silo in order. But there are no provisions for what to do if someone successfully leaves. He's in uncharted territory; it's exciting to see him legitimately frightened because the situation could easily get out of control.
• Graffiti is appearing all over the Silo: "JL" for "Juliette Lives." Bernard told everyone she had likely died, and it seems most people, including Walker, agree. After all, regardless of what good tape she had, her suit only had so much oxygen in it. But Shirley isn't giving up hope. Whenever Juliette makes it back, it's going to be a big moment.
• Walker and McLain talk about the tape in their holding cell, wondering how Bernard and IT figured out they were behind it. We then get a brief shot of a camera in a vent. Remember, there are cameras everywhere in the Silo, and few people outside of IT, Juliette, and her father know about them.
• Huge shoutout to Shirley's Spartacus moment, where a guard asks her name while trying to arrest her for calling out Bernard's lies and she claps back with "Juliette Nichols." I'm really excited to see more of her this season.

Verdict

"Order" is very different from the season premiere of Silo, which was a largely quiet episode that was all about Juliette's eerie journey into a neighboring Silo. That episode emphasized the mood and Juliette's character journey, but with "Order," Silo needed to prove it could actually take its myriad plot threads and weave them into something compelling and comprehensible. It succeeded pretty much flawlessly at that. Consider me hooked and waiting eagerly for next week.

Episode grade: A-

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