Aeon Flux: Short Episodes: Leisure

I have no idea why this short episode is called Leisure. It certainly wasn’t a pleasurable experience for Aeon!

The show opens with Aeon Flux breaking into a laboratory. She noses around and notices a noise coming from one of the lockers. Opening the door, she finds a rather pathetic looking geezer dressed only in a sort of thong thingy and collar and lead. He is munching an egg. He’s making a bad job of it too! He spills the erm.. ‘white’ of the egg on the floor as Aeon opens the door, then he licks it up. Aeon looks at him with a certain disdain. The peculiar geezer however is quite hospitable and offers Aeon his finger coated with the gooey stuff. He didn’t say anything, but I’d imagine that words would have been along the lines of, “hey babe, fancy a lick?”

Aeon “hmmm’s” and closes the locker door. Then steals a portable microscope and makes her escape. As she leaves the laboratory, she can see some bloke practicing manoeuvres through a sort of large box frame. He isn’t very good. He manages to get through, but trips on the last bar. Aeon shows him how it’s done (swellhead!).

Aeon Flux then runs off to another building which seems deserted. She makes her way to a place where a bunch of ‘eggs’ are placed. She crouches down and puts them in a little bag. As she rises, she seems to feel some discomfort, it’s as though she has a sore back, but I’m sure there is more significance to it than that. The wall is partially covered with a curtain, but through the cracks she can see a number of little square thingies with three legs, they seems to get excited when she holds up the eggs. She takes one out and drops it on the floor, breaking the shell. I’ve no idea why, suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time?

Inside the egg is a microscopic little creature. Aeon examines it using her microscope. It is a tiny creature with long legs and arms and demonstrates some intelligence by trying to avoid a small armature used to hold it for examination. Aeon giggles a little as she watches it writhe.

She heads off, armed with the microscope, little creature and bag of eggs. She is confronted by a gangly figure that looks like a fully-grown version of the contents of the eggs. It tries to attack her, but she nimbly grabs an egg and presents it to the creature menacingly. She gently squeezes the egg, breaking the shell and the creature backs away. Aeon runs off.

The gangly bloke ushers a lever and a huge frame appears in Aeon’s path. It looks similar to the one she negotiated while showing off earlier, but bigger. She nimbly jumps over the bars with her customary elegance and grace. The creature follows, demonstrating clearly that it is a good deal faster and more nimble. Aeon has sure met her match. The creature catches up with her in the middle of the frame and grabs her lovely, slender waist. The screen goes black and we hear an awful CRUNCH!.

Don’t you just HATE it when that happens?!

I’m not quite sure why Aeon Flux didn’t shoot the creature in the first place. Possibly it was because she didn’t want to kill it. Clearly it was the result of one of Trevor’s experiments and as such, she probably felt a certain affinity towards it. Nevertheless, it was her undoing, and our lovely heroine bites the dust – again!

Id rate this a huge (for a short episode) 37,233 out of 10.  Really unusual and thought provoking. What did you think?

The “Leisure” episode review is © 1999, 2000 Tony Fawl.
Not for reproduction without the authors express permission

Discuss this in the Aeon Flux Forum

Christine McCaskill sent some excellent thoughts on this episode: 

“My understanding, or at least my opinion, is that the episode is entitled Leisure because Aeon and others consider this to be a game.

Consider the evidence.  The guy practising on the frame… was practising in the same way that people practice tennis or golf or any other type of sport.  They do it with the intent of surviving the actual game.  Aeon’s dedication to her practice was obvious, but apparently not good enough.

A question: is this game truly held in a building? Or is it actually an alien ship?  It seems that by entering through a secret entrance, Aeon bypassed the normal security measures.  Certainly, these creatures are at least hybrids, if not completely alien. I think the entire part between entering the ship and beginning the mini-game (more on that in a moment) is basically a rite of passage designed to intimidate (that’s why the little square thingies were so agitated) and to inform others of her presence there (that’s why we saw her rip the curtain).

As far as the “plop” scenario, I suspect she was attempting to poke fun of the adult alien creature, who obviously lays the eggs.  Dropping the egg served two purposes: to release the creature inside the egg and to display disrespect at the alien mother’s expense. The microscope portion is the “game within the game”.

Aeon Flux isn’t examining the creature; she’s doing battle with it, knowing full well that the creature doesn’t stand a chance.  At the end of that segment, the creature is impaled by the microscopic hardware. The reason why Aeon didn’t shoot the creature is related to the reason why she took the eggs.  It’s all about Leisure!  The entire episode is a game to her.  She doesn’t kill the alien because where’s the sport in just shooting the creature?

She’d much rather display her skill in getting past the framework.  All part of the game.  She takes the eggs so she can challenge (and kill) each and every alien inside.  Also, how desperate would things get if several of these alien creatures were allowed to mature to adulthood?  This entire episode may be the end result of population control of these aliens.”

The Aeon Flux names, characters, pictures and everything else associated with the series are the property of Peter Chung, Chung, MTV Networks, Colossal Pictures and Liquid Television. All rights reserved.