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Episode 7: Brainwashed
"Once again, Jose, I am... disappointed..."
A moderately high amount of editing on this week's show, some of which really makes me wonder. Fox also had the red color knob cranked up to "11" this time. You can try shifting your TV tint a few notches toward the green end, but it doesn't help much since skintones start to become too orange.
The opening scene felt rushed because Fox chopped out a couple of dramatic lead-in shots. (Cut footage is italicized below.)
Title screen exterior on house.
Cut to interior longshot of Jose typing at computer console.
Cut to close-up of Jose's hands typing.
Cut to medium-close front on Jose, still typing, his face in shadow... A reflective glare rolls across his glasses as he slowly leans in toward the light, a wicked grin on his lips.
(Cut back to the long establishing shot...)
The market scene:
Detective Enrique: "Get the feeling that guy's missing something?"
Julian:"Yeah -- A brain!"
Cut to low-angle close on Det. Enrique: "In addition to that..."
Julian shamefully produces a wallet (lifted without our noticing) and calls after the punk thug: "Hey!"
The confused punk turns around and Julian tosses the wallet to him. The punk hastily pats his pockets, surprised at its return.
Det. Enrique (to Julian): "So, staying out of trouble?"
...
-- Now why do you suppose Fox cut this walllet-snatching bit out?  This was what Cybersix was referring to when she later tells Julian, "It sounds like he's giving you good advice."
At night, when the rain clears, there is a shot of the moon through parting clouds. A stray raindrop knifes into frame, and the moon becomes a series of white ripples, revealing that this image is in fact a puddle reflection. We pull back a bit as Julian's shoe stomps through the broken reflection. (Then cut to longshot of Julian, C6 & D7...)
-- Submit your theories as to why the last three seconds of this moon shot was trimmed. Does Fox think kids are too dumb to understand that kind of artsy visual storytelling?
Going into the first commercial break, when Detective Enrique has Cybersix in his gunsight, Fox has pasted in some dialogue where there should be only music. They've looped in Julian saying "About time!", and C6 laughing.
When Cybersix and Data-7 discover Julian bound to the antenna, there is an animated rotation of them standing on the nearby tower. Fox chopped out the first half of this impressive craning shot: it begins high behind her and sweeps down around to the front.
After Cybersix smashes free of her bug jar, there was an AKIRA-esque shot of one of the tech hoses whipping about, spewing steam across the surface of the rolling floodwater. (Jose then leaps onto his chair to avoid it.)
Another instance of Fox blacking out some boot-to-the-head merriment where Cybersix fights the Fixed Ideas -- they used a red screen-flash this time. Don't know why, since they left a subsequent head-kick perfectly intact.
A cool layered-motion shot that I knew would be cut: Jose observes the skirmish, springing restlessly on top of his chair, while shadows of Cybersix sparring with a Fixed Idea wrap over the scene and onto the wall behind Jose. "Get her! Destroy her!" he demands, making a harsh throat-slashing gesture. 
Way to go! Fox has completely removed a shot that is key to the story's outcome. The police chief (really one of Von Reichter's Techno servants) was knee-high in the water and therefore found himself violently electrocuted, exploding in a blue flash, with rivers of smoke wisping from his suddenly-empty suit (which then collapses in upon itself and falls to the water where he once stood, all in a single unbroken shot).
It was not described here, but "Technos" are clone creations that are more human in appearance than the oafish Fixed Ideas. Von Reichter uses them to infiltrate positions of power in Meridiana, such as the police chief we saw in this episode, or the news anchor in Blue Birds of Horror.
Addressing Von Reichter afterwards, Jose despondently offers remains of the Techno's shredded clothing as explanation. Where Jose blinks, Fox has added a "plink" sound-effect for comic-relief.
And in the final scene with C6 and Data7 watching Julian in the restaurant window, Fox has again creatively pasted in that same "About time!" dialogue - despite the fact that Julian is indoors and clearly too far away to be heard.
This seemingly harmless edit gives an especially troublesome indication of future sound-editing trends: the final episode of the series has an emotionally-wrenching scene that plays solely to music, with all of the dialogue muted out (though we can plainly see characters speaking to one another). If Fox stupidly inserts looped dialogue here, the scene, the episode, and the whole series could wither to a flat and passionless conclusion. -- For the love of...PLEASE, NoOoOooOooo!!!!! 
"Wanna see a neat trick?" Now you see what I meant in my reviews by the plot resolution on this one. Julian used a similar bit of dunce ex machina to escape at the end of episode 4, where it wasn't quite as groan-inducing. That episode also had Julian confronting Jose in a very pivotal way, which would better explain why Jose recognized him this time around.
One part of this week's episode that really stands out is the beautifully shaded apartment rendezvous between Lucas and Cybersix. Pretty music. Thankfully, this scene was not edited.
Anyway, if you're all queasy from Jose's recent bouncy stupidity, the good news is that this was the last of the goofy interchangeable middle stories, as the last half of the series begins to move in the more serious direction of the first two episodes. (Translation: Fox will get back to some heavy chopping in the weeks ahead.)
Next week : No preview again, so it looks like Fox
 will repeat episode 2, chop-chop!
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