"The truth is like the sun. The more you look, the more it blinds." [SPOILERS AHEAD]
The deep dive into alien territory and government coverups continues this week with "Foo Fighters", marking the halfway point for this season of Project Blue Book. History Channel pulls out all the stops in this episode, diverging slightly from the actual history of the events it attempts to portray. The dramatic events of the Air Force, per last week's flying saucer, are looking more corrupt and questionable than we previously suspected and go so far as to portray them as the real villain in the series.
We begin with Fuller, the ex Air Force pilot who's scrambled brains took him to the Hynek's home to confront Mimi. He went on the run after that encounter, and successfully escaped capture by law enforcement. The government is after him though, presumably for something he knows which cannot be made public. The government as the antagonist seems to be the direction things are going, but it's getting there with the usual trope of government conspiracy.
With Hynek learning of the numbers Fuller mumbled half coherently as he escaped, he matches them to the note of numbers and symbols he made from watching that creepy movie in the abandoned amusement park in episode 1. He deciphers them as a radio frequency and tunes in to the signal immediately. What plays on a loop in a male voice is someone saying "the arrival is upon us". This is ominous enough on it's own, but coupled with the bizarre location of the signal being broadcast from a photographer's studio anonymously, it just keeps piling on the conspiracy factor pretty heavily.
Finding the source of the broadcast to be a group of ex Air Force pilots all having seen or experienced UFO encounters while flying in WWII, Quinn and Hynek are further led into government surreptitiousness. The men claim they were used as the antennas for communication with something otherworldly; the aliens, the "other". They were all discharged from the Air Force and were never the same since their encounters. All of them claim to have heard, and continue to intermittently hear, particular songs playing from stations in their home towns. They've even devised a way to communicate with the aliens, via a home made radio dish. Hynek informs them that the Foo Fighters they believe they're communicating with may just be an illusion of car lights in fog, and like most of their encounters with local townsfolk, Hynek and Quinn are impolitely asked to skedaddle.
We didn't think we'd see those symbols and numbers from Hynek's notes again for a while, but it's making more sense now. Previously, Dr. Hynek hadn't spoken of his encounter with the Men in (Hats) Black, and finally divulges to Quinn about the projector reel and his weird information from that night in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Of all places, of course it takes place in spooky Iowa.) With Quinn on board to try and get to the truth more recently, they head to Cedar Rapids to investigate. This is not before, of course, we see a direct line to a hookup between Susie (now deserving of sympathy after her Russian counterpart's violent lack of mercy with her police involvement), and Quinn. His questioning of her, and her misdirection through seduction, is a somewhat predictable but entertaining story line.
After Hynek and Quinn find an empty room at the amusement park where the projector was, they walk out of the place and drift apart. Here's where the info bombs drop, just before the episode ends, as usual. Fuller is found sitting on a bench, his only visible possession a gas can at his side. The former pilot professes his involvement with what he believes to be the government's covert use of him as a soldier, and proceeds with suicide through self immolation upon viewing the symbol of triangles and circles Hynek holds out to him and asks about. Is mind control truly at work here? Is Fuller having a breakdown because of something done to him or something otherworldly? Or is this something the government had been working on all along? We notice the way he goes down in flames (forgive my pun, I had to), it appears almost robotic and inhuman of him to stand akimbo and burn alive like that. This was an intense scene for this show as a departure from its consistent UFO and alien portrayals to a more earthy horror.
General Harding is seen mentioning that Hynek might have "turned him off" at the end of the episode when he learns of what happened. Are the big bosses at the scary eagle table of the Pentagon truly in charge of what our boys are experiencing, and in turn what the civilians are reporting? We're getting closer to finding out where this will culminate, even if it's heading toward more dramatic storytelling and character subplots than portraying historical events. The real Foo Fighter accounts from actual WWII pilots differ slightly from what we're shown in this episode, but I believe they chose a more broad UFO encounter to expand upon their characters in this episode. The high drama is a welcome development to the plot, and as usual, it thickens.
🛸 Project Blue Book airs every Tuesday night at 9pm EST
on the History Channel.
I'll be reviewing each episode of Project Blue Book after it airs every week. If you liked this review, please subscribe to the blog to be notified of new posts. A like or share goes a long way!
