I found the seventh episode of “The Lazarus Project” (LP) to be very frustrating and excessively violent. It was poised to answer important questions about LP, such as who is in charge. But it backed away from any clear answers in what has become the classic pattern of bad screenwriting for this show.

The scene where George violently beats the younger Bryson was gratuitous. There was no need for this action and it only confirmed what I had long suspected about the mental state of this character. Why George continues to be included in the cast, supposedly one of the leads, mystifies me. He contributes nothing positive to this show.

The senselessness of this scene is further confirmed when Sarah calmly tells Wes the piece of news that got her to immediately call for a re-set. Why was Sarah waiting so long to do this? Why didn’t she use this as step one? I suppose that one could argue that it was only this brutality that put the idea of telling Wes the one thing that would make her do a re-set.

In another way, it also seemed to me to be a commentary on decision-making based on gender. George, as the man, thinks that threatening and beating others will get him to resolution. Sarah, as a woman, instead uses reasoning to accomplish this goal.

Intriguingly, it is Sarah who is the calm shooter when it needs to be done. Her character seems to be evolving into less of a bystander and more of a strategic planner.

I found it ironic that an older-style phone is used a cudgel. In addition, with the beating to the head the younger Bryson endures, he should be dead. This is part of the denial of the laws of anatomy, physiology and physics that drives me crazy when I see it.

Here too was the opportunity to let us find out who is above Wes that can do a re-set. Instead once again this doesn’t happen. I really wonder if the LP hierarchy was ever mapped out by the screenwriters. Or are they so clueless that 2 seasons in, they don’t think that fans want to know about this?

Laughably, there actually is tighter security to get into LP in the past than in the present settings which have been shown. This conundrum is undoubtedly the result of poor writing, as usual.

Dr. Samson continues to be a bright spot in terms of his comedic skills. His activity as the gate guard and in the security office show a very human character who is in over his head.

The revelation that Bryson was Wes’ son was a high point of the episode. But then that Bryson dies. Luckily there are two other Bryson’s roaming about—the older prisoner at LP and the current timeline’s younger Bryson.

I will admit that sometimes it is befuddling to me that two characters co-exist in one timeline. I often speculated on whether Star Trek’s transporters proved that there is no soul in the human body. The body gets converted to energy and then changed back into mass. So what happened to the soul, if there was one, in the transition? Ipso facto, there is no soul.

Here I wonder this but in a different context. Three Brysons occupied the same timeline before one died in the car. If each person has one soul, how is it possible for this soul to be divided among different instances of the same person? It could work in a multiverse governed by one all-powerful being, where everything is parallel. But when they travel through time, they go to one year, 2012, on the airplane, not 2012 universe 29. This implies that time is linear, and not existing in parallel threads.

Of course this only matters if you care about the possible existence of souls. It is similar to my previous comments about dying: those comments only apply if there is an afterlife.

In the new season, resolute Lazarus agent George has been left in disgrace after betraying the organization in the name of love. He is determined to redeem himself and win back the trust of his friends, colleagues, and the love of his life. But when he discovers that the cause he is fighting for is more sinister than it appears, George suspects that the only person he can really trust is himself.