Critic’s Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
4.5
The Irrational Season 2 Episode 6 wasn’t your usual murder mystery, and that’s okay.
Instead of trying to find out who killed the victim of the week, Alec worked with a data expert to try to stop a train disaster.
The case resembled those math problems where you have to calculate how soon two trains coming from opposite ends of the country will pass each other, so it didn’t really seem like an FBI case, though it was interesting anyway.
(NBC/James Dittiger)
Alec Called The FBI Instead Of Them Calling Him
Marisa and Kylie’s involvement was almost an afterthought.
The story on The Irrational Season 2 Episode 6 was mostly about Alec working with this woman who believed that using data to predict disasters was like traveling in time and wanted his help preventing a projected train accident.
The FBI got involved later on because one of the major factors causing the potential crash was that someone hacked into a safety system that was supposed to automatically stop the trains if there were hazards on the track.
It seemed like a stretch to involve them, though I supposed the hacking was a cybercrime.
But it got Alec and Kylie in the same room working on this thing, and that was more important than how likely it was that the FBI would really expend a lot of energy on this.
(NBC/James Dittiger)
Before the FBI got involved, The Irrational Season 2 Episode 6 focused on this quirky forecasting company that Alec wanted to check out.
The company’s idea was to use data to make scarily accurate predictions about the future. However, the way they talked about it made it sound like they’d stepped out of an episode of Doctor Who.
Willa, the company head, even sounded like your run-of-the-mill Time Lord when she said that they couldn’t intervene in predicted disasters because changing the timeline could have dangerous consequences. Therefore, it was vital to only observe and never intervene.
I love the sci-fi concept of not knowing the consequences of changing the timeline, but that’s… not what this was.
(NBC/James Dittiger)
In reality, the company featured on The Irrational Season 2 Episode 6 was in the business of data-driven predictions, not time travel. Their predictions could be wrong or could change with new data.
One of the points of this story was that predictions, no matter how much data is behind them, are only tools, and we shouldn’t live our lives as if the predicted event was inevitable.
Laura: What if Willa’s right? We changed the timeline and now the Orlando Express is certain to crash.
Alec: The future is not written yet. Whatever happens, we will get through it together.
That message is especially important right now when many people are anxious about the future after the recent election.
It’s easy to fall into feeling helpless and hopeless when confronted with a potentially dark future that seems as impossible to stop as that freight train Alec stood in front of.
We need stories that give us hope, and The Irrational Season 2 Episode 6 did that.
(NBC/James Dittiger)
The Solution To Stopping The Train Was Silly, But It Worked
I knew Alec was going to try to stop the train by standing on the tracks because it was advertised in the commercial for The Irrational Season 2 Episode 6, so no surprise there.
However, this game of chicken that Alec played with the engineer was ridiculous.
Kylie: You keep cutting it close and surviving, but that doesn’t mean you can keep doing dangerous things.
As multiple people pointed out, there was no guarantee that Chip would stop. He had it in his head that being late was worse than possibly killing everyone on board the train, so why would he stop rather than run over a guy on the tracks?
Plus, those trains are heavy; they can’t stop on a dime. There had to have been a better solution than that!
(NBC/James Dittiger)
That scenario was supposed to show that Alec’s trauma response includes being willing to take extreme risks, which is why I’m not complaining harder about it.
Alec explained at the beginning of The Irrational Season 2 Episode 6 that the more risky things you do without ill effects, the more comfortable you become with them and the less you believe they are risky.
Something like that had happened to him as a result of his trauma.
His near-death experience made him want to live as fully as possible, and each time he did something dangerous without getting killed, he became more comfortable with extreme risks.
It’s an interesting perspective.
On the one hand, there’s something to be said for seizing the day. Life shouldn’t be lived in fear, and the people who feel most fully alive are the ones who push themselves out of their comfort zone regularly.
On the other, as Robin Willams’ character says in Dead Poets Society, “Sucking all the marrow out of life doesn’t mean choking on the bone,” and Alec was definitely in bone-choking territory with that game of railroad chicken.
(NBC/James Dittiger)
He promised Kylie at the end of The Irrational Season 2 Episode 6 that he wouldn’t take these types of risks anymore, but let’s get real. How long is that promise going to last?
That’s also why Phoebe originally left — she didn’t like these extreme risks and wanted safety, only to discover that safety wasn’t everything it was supposed to be.
Phoebe’s Subplot Was The Best Part Of The Irrational Season 2 Episode 6
I enjoyed the case despite its unconventionality, but the Phoebe story was more interesting and relatable.
(NBC/James Dittiger)
Neither Phoebe nor her colleagues knew exactly how she fit into the research team anymore.
After she left, Rizwan was given more responsibility, and Simon joined the team. The guys were used to working only with each other.
I also thought that Simon might have been feeling uncomfortable about a woman taking charge and constantly dropping knowledge that he didn’t have.
He never said directly that he was, but that was the vibe I got.
Of course, I could be misreading it; he might have only been uncomfortable with the fact that Phoebe could rattle off case studies and experiments that Simon had never heard of.
(NBC/James Dittiger)
Phoebe was the lead researcher before, while Rizwan was somewhat shy and unconfident. During The Irrational Season 1, he was scared when Alec asked him to take over a lecture and mumbled his way through it.
Since Phoebe’s departure, Rizwan has become a lot more confident and now regularly works with Alec’s students without any fear.
That change means their dynamic will not be the same now that Phoebe is back, and adding an extra person who doesn’t know Phoebe yet but has been able to bond with Rizwan creates an additional challenge.
I liked Phoebe’s suggestion at the end that they experiment with how to work together. That’s really the only way forward as they forge their new normal.
(NBC/James Dittiger)
Odds and Ends About The Irrational Season 2 Episode 6
- It was great to see The Good Doctor‘s Nicholas Gonzalez again! I was a little disappointed he turned out to be the hacker because I was so thrilled he was on-screen.
- Alec deciding not to surgically remove his scars is one of the most empowering symbolic messages for survivors yet.
- I couldn’t stop laughing at Kylie’s acronyms in her first scene.
Over to you, The Irrational Fanatics!
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The Irrational airs on NBC on Tuesdays at 10/9c and on Peacock on Wednesdays.
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