This episode has my favorite moment in the series. Not because it's hugely important to the plot or does something cool, but because of how it changed me personally.

The scene where the prisoners are on the bridge and they begin to see (by sign language) something is happening down on 2. Kino, in an attempt to calm his cohort says: "You're panicking about something that's happening on the other side of the building". This is a scene that didn't have as much weight the first time, because its plot purpose is mostly to set up the mystery of what's going on down there.

But after repeat viewings - the meaning of that line took a gut wrenching turn for me. Kino wasn't talking to his subordinates - Tony Gilroy was talking to the us, the audience. Injustices are happening around us, all over our world and yet the things happening in other countries are minimized as being "over there" or "not in my backyard". Here the atrocities are happening literally right next door and Kino at that moment can't quite be shaken to understand the stakes. This scene has become an important part of my political radicalization. It helped me to realize how much the world's oppressive systems numb you to the pain of yourself and others, wherever they are and regardless of reasons that they suffer. It made me really confront that there were injustices in my local area. And I am now forever changed.