Warning: Reviews of Silo season 1 will contain spoilers.

There’s a workmanlike quality to Silo that I find myself greatly appreciating, and it’s on full display this week. The show doesn’t deviate from the main storyline by tacking on tangential side plots or trivial details, instead focusing on the matter at hand. Of course, there has been some deviating material, like the unexplained “syndrome” that’s afflicting deputy Billings (Chinaza Uche), but the bulk of the show so far has revolved around Juliette’s investigations.

I know that Juliette’s primary motivation is to investigate the death/murder of George, but it really came into focus in The Flamekeepers just how many other crimes are swirling around this one simple case. We have the deaths of Jahns and Marnes; we have the requests by Holston and his wife Allison to be sent outside the Silo; we have the surveillance from Sims and his shadowy crew of everything Juliette is doing, and we have everything new that we learn this week about the Silo’s lore. It’s almost all been good stuff, but it is a lot to keep track of, especially if you happen to be watching from week to week, rather than binging it all at once.

Juliette’s SuperCop mode has been interesting to track since she took over. On the one hand, she’s laser focused on following every lead she can get to solve George’s murder, but it comes at the expense of her everyday duties to the Silo. In The Flamekeepers, she neglects to respond to a large brawl that erupts, and she blows off a meeting with Mayor Holland, in order to chase down a potential lead. She goes so far as to stalk Judge Meadows to get answers about the relics, which opens a whole new can of worms. It’s implied that Meadows has stayed quiet because of outside threats – another instance where Juliette’s instincts/paranoia come through – though the source of the threats remains a relative mystery.

The meat of the episode comes as Juliette tracks down George’s grandmother Gloria (Sophie Thompson), who we met in the pilot episode as the Silo’s fertility counselor. Things have taken an incredibly dark turn for Gloria since we last saw her, and she’s essentially been placed under state care, heavily drugged but having lucid dreams about life on the surface. It all culminates in a stunner of a scene with Juliette, after she receives some help from her father to break her out of the stupor. She reveals that she was once a member of the Flamekeepers group, a ragtag group of freedom fighters who sought to keep the memory of the pre-Silo world alive, which gives some insight into the days of the Rebellion that’s been referenced before.

The mystery of the birth control that was introduced in the pilot has been one that’s lingered far in the background, but in The Flamekeepers, it indicates it may be a clue to unraveling several present-day mysteries. But, perhaps more crucial for Juliette, is the revelation that her own father had a hand in prolonging birth control measures, though he claims he was following orders from higher up. A sci-fi property that manages to tie its mythology to the plight of its protagonist will always score points in my book, so to make the political personal to Juliette is a welcome development. She’s had a strained relationship with her father since the death of her mother – another thread that’s hinted at here – so will this new information continue to erode that trust?

Silo continues to pile on its plot threads as it nears the home stretch of its first season, and while I don’t think it’ll reach critical mass, it would certainly help to slow down. I’ve made no shortage of comparisons to Lost, and one thing that derailed that show’s potential was in the way it became overloaded in its various mythologies. Thankfully it remains focused on Juliette first and foremost without tacking on unnecessary B plots, which could easily unravel all the goodwill the show has built up already.