Dark Matter 2.4: "There's no entrance to the diner"

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, 1942

So I'll tell you my favorite scene in Dark Matter 2.4: Charlie and Daniela looking at Edward Hopper's 1942 painting "Nighthawks", hanging in an art gallery in Chicago (it hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago in our reality).   Charlie tells her we're not supposed to connect to the people in the diner, because "there's no entrance to the diner".

Science fiction is supposed to be about science, not art.  But Ray Bradbury's celebrated The Illustrated Man, an anthology in which each story tells the tale of a different one of the 18 different tattoos on William the Illustrated Man's arm, is a notable exception, and there are others.  So the first thing that grabbed me and stayed with me about this scene is: good for Blake Crouch for including it in this episode of Dark Matter.

But disconnection, the difficulty of people to connect and relate, is a hallmark of this series, and the transcendent watermark of this episode.  Everyone is cut off from people they care about -- not because they're far away physically, but far away emotionally, separated in some cases by the chasms of alternate realities.

The Dessens are the most affected and afflicted.  Daniela still can't get over shooting the version of Jason she shot to death, and who can blame her.  I mean, the guy looked and sounded like Jason, because he was a Jason, and in shooting him Daniela inevitably killed something of the man she loved -- who, as far as we know, also loved her.

So the people in Hopper's painting capture the predominant disconnection of the people in Dark Matter.  But maybe that painting holds a ray of hope for the people in this streaming series.  The viewers of the painting, anyone outside of the diner in the painting -- we don't see any in the painting --can't connect to the people in the diner.  But ... the people sitting in the diner, the couple, the man sitting alone, the counter man behind the counter -- there's no reason they can't connect, right?  And if that's possible, maybe the same is true for the characters in Dark Matter, especially the characters who come from the same reality.

I wish there was some way to get this message to Daniela.  But, as far as I know, there is no way to directly communicate with characters on the other side of the streaming screen.  Though, come to think of it, in a way, maybe there is ...

See also Dark Matter 2.1: Who's Who in the Infinite Bucket ... 2.2: Sam Spade Back in Action ... 2.3: Can Two Couples Be in Two Different Places at the Same Time?

And see also Dark Matter 1.1-1.2: Break-Neck Action and Philosophic Contemplation ... 1.3 Missing Fingers ... 1.4 The Multiverse Unveiled ... 1.5: The Lesson ... 1.6 "A Bunch of Chicagos" ... 1.7: Obama Tower ... 1.8: A Bevy Of Jasons ... 1.9: Science Fiction and Horror