Entertainment

'The Tomorrow People': Advice Stephen Needs

by Kayleigh Roberts

This week, The Tomorrow People continued its trudge toward near-certain cancellation with, "Modus Vivendi," an episode jam-packed with everything they can't save for Season 2. It culminated in the almost-reanimation of Stephen's long-frozen TP dad, Roger. We'll have to wait until next week to find out if the weird, Frankenstein-ian operation to bring him back was a success, but let's just assume that it is. What will that mean for the show? Hopefully, a lot of much-needed fatherly advice for Stephen. Here are 5 bits of wisdom Roger should sit down and impart on his oldest son, STAT. We only have a few more episodes to make this right, if every TV analyst on the Internet is right about TTP's future.

1. Don't change for a girl.

Sure, Stephen is officially only a teenager. But he looks like he's 35. And he's working full-time as a double agent. (Seriously, when is the last time he even pretended to go to high school?) And with great power comes great responsibility, according to Uncle Ben. Throughout the series, Stephen has stayed true to his age in one very obvious way: He's a slave to a certain body part. Early on, it was an infatuation with Cara that was over as soon as it began. Now, he's doubling back on his double agentry thanks to his tryst with Hillary from Ultra. Before the show bows out for good, Stephen needs to learn to think for himself and to stop letting his crush of the week shape who he is in big ways.

2. Make decisions.

Maybe it's flip-flopping for the sake of love, but even when girls aren't playing a big part in his life, Stephen has a hard time making up his mind. He's not being thoughtful or carefully considering the evidence, so much as he's siding with literally whoever has talked to him last. That's not a way to lead a whole race of people, or even to live a single life.

3. Get your priorities straight.

Stephen has spent Season 1 splitting his "professional" attentions between Ultra and the Tomorrow People, but his personal life is even messier. He's barely home. He endangers his BFF every single time he talks to her (which isn't often — talk about a suffering friendship), and he ignored his family almost completely until his mom revealed that she, too, was a TP. Now he just ignores his little brother and Astrid because… normal people are boring? If the show ends with Stephen losing his powers to Ultra's anti-TP serum, who will even want to hang out with him?

4. Get some sleep.

Is it just me, or has Stephen aged at least a decade since the beginning of the season?

5. Invest in a moral compass.

And then there's the issue of Roger's reanimation. Stephen's driving quest this season, no matter which side he swayed toward, has been to find and rescue his father. Now that Roger is found and in the process of what Stephen considers a "rescue," it's the perfect time to ask: Why? It's established that even if Roger's body makes it through the unfreezing and even if our heroes are able to successfully remove the bullet that threatens to kill him when the freeze is lifted, he might be a vegetable. Is it fair that Jed froze him? Is it fair that Stephen insists of "saving" him, even though Roger has tried time and again to talk him out of it in the limbo space? So many questions. If only Roger would really address them all next week.

Image: The CW