Breakdown and review of Silo season 1, episode 6: The Relic

On the sixth episode of Silo, Juliette unearths a breakthrough secret from the most unlikely source, while both Judicial and the new mayor try to poke holes in her investigation procedures. In a flashback, George and Juliette are in bed just basking in post-coital afterglow.

They’ve both got pretty interesting tattoos, especially Jules, who’s got some kind of overlapping line doodles on her arm. At some point, a featurette on the tat culture and designs of the folks in the Down Deep would be great, especially the mechanics.

What do they draw on their bodies and why? Especially the IT guy George who has a conch shell.

Something that would’ve been impossible for him to see IRL. Nice detail, that.

We also find out later that it was Jules who fixed the defective watch that George gave her as a gift. How?

She made the tools she needed. What an amazing woman.

Silo season 1, episode 6: Harmless curio

Flash forward to the present and Sherriff Nichols is at the dead Doug Trumbull’s unit with Deputy Billings, trying to get some key smiths to open the door. But since he was Judicial the guys say they’ll need a different set.

Impatient, Juliette just takes her trusty crowbar and pries the door open. It’s becoming a habit with her to ignore protocol.

Effective, but definitely off-book. Inside they find the pez dispenser that Jules planted.

Billings is nonplussed, but he nonetheless gets a relics bag to store the mystery item. In another George x Juliette intimacy flashback, we find out a couple of things.

First, that Juliette really liked the guy, enough that she’d cover for his proclivity to look into the super forbidden past. And second, that he really does have an unhealthy collection of illegal relics—including the watch that he gave to Jules.

Mostly he doesn’t know what they’re for, like the pez dispenser. But it hasn’t stopped him from collecting or speculating about them.

They’re kind of cute together. Especially since the beautiful Juliette is obviously so far above average George’s weight class.

Silo season 1, episode 6: Meet the judge

When Billings comes in the next day, Jules still has the pez dispenser but the 12-hour window for keeping it in her department has lapsed. Billings tells her that despite the thing being connected to a murder charge, she can only do that with approval from Judicial, aka Judge Meadows.

In fact, a lot of the sheriff’s powers, she’s finding out, are curtailed by Judicial. So, they go see Judge Meadows.

The meetings is a pure flex on how much more far ranging and literally expansive Judicial’s powers are. Sims explains many things but mostly that when it comes to relics and who they’ve been tagged or associated with, Judicial has a database spanning 140 years.

Most of it is classified even to the sheriff’s department. Well, now, isn’t that a mystery in itself?

Bottom line though, both Sims and Judge Meadows approves her investigation into the pez dispenser and illegal relics in general. The caveat being as long as Billings is there to make sure nothing in The Pact gets violated.

The fact that new Mayor Holland’s Forgiveness Day holiday is in full swing is a great coincidence, the occasion will prompt more people to give up their illegal relics without reprisal or punishment. They leave the pez dispenser with Sims and then the first person they hit up is Patrick Kennedy.

He’s less than thrilled but he does give up a name…Regina Jackson.

Silo season 1, episode 6: Forgiveness Day

There’s a brief sequence with Sims where he’s doing paperwork for the pez and we see that in a backroom he’s got plenty of documents, as well as relics, that have been tagged, bagged, and classified in literal books. I am still iffy about what exactly Forgiveness Day is but seems like an occasion the powers-that-be made up to further enhance social control.

You know, give the people something else to do while they “fix” things. Let folks travel the silo and be emotional over past slights and wrongs now exonerated.

In any case, folks are indeed visiting friends and family to work out relationship kinks. Stairways are busy.

People are hustling. At Regina Jackson’s place they find out that she was George’s ex-girlfriend.

He really didn’t do sanctioned relationships, did he? Regina clocks Juliette right away as another ex but all things considered, she takes the news pretty well that George is dead.

“When he told you he loved you, did you believe him?” Ouchie.

She couldn’t help but throw that last barb at our poor Juliette. Sherriff has bigger problems, though.

She finds that Sims and Interim Mayor Holland are in the office and have asked all her officers to leave. This meeting’s going to be an inquisition.

At the end of it though, Holland mostly sticks up for Jules. We learn two things: Holland posits, more insinuates, to Sims that it was Trumbull who got the pez dispenser from George’s apartment during their search.

And that as far as the silo public knows both Marnes and Jahns died from heart attacks. Juliette luckily gets off without any punishment and is free to continue her investigations.

Silo season 1, episode 6: The life of Billings

The following convo with Billings is less than copacetic, as he now has confirmation that Jules planted the pez for him to find, so she could enter it as evidence in the case. Juliette accuses him back of having The Syndrome.

Apparently, some kind of disease is going around the silo that mimics a degenerative loss of motor control. There’s shaking hands at the onset, (which Billings tries to hide with his hand in a pocket) and then full body tremors as it progresses.

Another interesting featurette would be about the kind of pathology that such a contained population like the silo would develop. Even with 10,000 people, it’s a small enough number for genetic variety to be stunted.

I wonder from what disease this Syndrome was derived? Probably some strain of Parkinsonism.

Unable to get through to Jules, Billings goes home and we find out he has a wife and a baby. His right hand does shake something fierce.

Silo season 1, episode 6: Jules hit the jackpot

That night, Juliette dreams of George and she takes a walk. On her walkie talkie she converses with her mentor Martha Walker, confessing that it may be time she turn in the badge and go home to the Down Deep.

Martha convinces Jules to stay. On a whim Jules goes to Regina’s apartment and accuses her of being the rat that gave up George, the one who got him killed.

Regina’s panicked, not by her visit but by the people who are listening, by “the man who knows everything.” She turns on a fan to mask their convo.

Apparently, she’s been visited before by mysterious agents and threatened. Though she was terrified and gave up the name of every relic dealer she knew, one thing they didn’t find when they tossed her apartment though is a relic, a book hidden inside the floor rug.

Jules takes it back to her apartment and opens it. It’s a children’s book titled Amazing Adventures Georgia, A Travel Guide for Kids.

It was a treasured heirloom from George’s mother. On the inside front cover are a few names, then George’s name written in pencil.

Regina was right. This was from way before the silo.

Yes, this will also definitely get Juliette killed. As she reads about deciduous forests and sandy beaches, dolphins and river rafting, national parks and nautilus shells, the shot suddenly changes. We are in a room full of monitors that show rooms and corridors inside the silo.

In fact, it’s every room in the silo. There are cameras everywhere and on one of the screens we see Jules reading the forbidden book.

Two guys manning the surveillance are shocked and one tells the other that “he” needs to be woken up to see this. The gear we see here in the surveillance room is way more advanced and higher tech than the steampunk milieu of the silo itself.

Jules’s mind is blown at what the world was before the silo, but she has no idea what danger she’s in yet. What happens to Jules now is anybody’s guess, but it definitely won’t be good.

You can stream episodes of Silo on Apple TV+.