Tim Robbins is here to remind you he’s a movie star. Not through anything flashy or theatrical, mind you — just through his ability to play the most mild-mannered character on this show and still come across as the most fascinating and charismatic guy in any room he’s in.

As played by Robbins, Bernard, the new mayor of the titular Silo, is an interesting cat. From what we’ve seen from him so far, he displays both the gentle arrogance of an expert in his field (IT) and the quietude of someone unused to relating to other people in a personal way, which is another form of arrogance I suppose. His gestures at camaraderie are simultaneously ineffective and endearing: his corny joke at Mayor Jahns’s funeral about filling her very big shoes, but not literally, since her feet were actually small (you can all but see his mental note: “Pause for laughter”); his offering of a drink to the Silo’s other officials, then his silent “okay, more for me then” affect as he consolidates the glasses he’s already poured and takes a swig. 

To placate the restless masses regarding the near-simultaneous deaths of Mayor Jahns and Deputy Marnes, who it turns out was murdered in his apartment by that assailant last episode (about whom more later), he concocts a cover story — they were secretly in love — to divert the public’s interest, and in so doing actually states the truth, whether he knows it or not. (I wonder.) Despite having previously been ready to rat his new sheriff Juliette out for theft several months back, he admits she’s good at the job and even warns her against tangling with the all-powerful Judicial department, support that leaves Juliette more flummoxed than pleased. He’s an odd man, one who seems to have sanded away every foothold you could find on him in order to gain access to what he’s really thinking or feeling. He’s one to watch.

And he keeps Silo one to watch, even if this episode is less immediate impactful than its two predecessors. In some ways it feels like those episodes writ small. For example, when Juliette corners Turnbull (Henry Garrett), the Judicial goon who killed Marnes and attempted to frame an innocent man, he tries to kill her by dumping her off the stairwell in full view of hundreds of residents, gathered to watch a footrace organized by Bernard as a bread-and-circuses distraction from the other deaths. Despite the fact that we know perfectly well Juliette’s not going overboard, the vertiginous shots of her dangling above the abyss, which follow hot on the hills of a long spiraling chase down the stairs, drive home her danger anyway. It’s not the engine-room business from two episodes ago, but it’s pretty good for what it is.

Moreover, if there’s no character work done here that’s quite on the level of the flashback involving Juliette and her dad last week, there’s still the fascinating dynamic between Juliette and Sandy, her reluctant administrative assistant. Despite her dislike of Juliette, which never changes, she respects the new sheriff’s dogged insistence on getting to the bottom of the George Wilkins murder, at least partially regrets requesting a transfer before she’d realized that Juliette was on the up-and-up, and asks her for help in finding the real culprit behind Marnes’s murder in the bargain. These women have little in common besides their jobs and no real reason to work together, which is what makes their decision to do so compelling.

There’s worlduilding being done too, large-scale and small. Sims, the lead Judicial character, is apparently part of a secret police organization known alternately as the Listeners or the Friends of the Silo, a position passed on to him by his father, whose cover story was working as a janitor, to Sims’s mother’s lasting chagrin. Sims is also in on whatever’s really going on, or at least that’s what his murder of Turnbull to keep him from talking after the failed hit on Juliette would appear to indicate. And we meet both his boss, the feared Judge Meadows, and her hand-picked choice for sheriff, newly minted chief deputy Paul Billings (Chinaza Uche), whose loyalties and motives are still up in the air. 

And courtesy of “Walk,” Juliette’s mentor down in Mechanical, we learn two weird parts of the Pact that governs the Silo, at least one of which answers a question I’d had since the start: no mechanized methods of moving people or things up and down the silo, and no magnification lenses or devices beyond a certain power. It’s impressive they’ve gone this long without people really questioning why these rules are in place — but shit, we live in a country in which a six unelected fanatics in robes get to decide what rights we all have because of their imaginary interpretations of a document written in large part by slaveowners that we treat as holy writ. So who are we to judge?

But there are more poetic details that are just as important to fleshing out the nature of life in the Silo. I really liked the funeral ritual, which is much like our own, only instead of being buried in coffins six feet deep, the dead are wrapped in simple shrouds and laid in shallow graves in the Silo’s farm to serve as fertilizer for the crops; mourners toss partly eaten fruit into the grave rather than flowers to further the process. And through a second run-in with Lukas Kyle (Avi Nash), the artsy hunk who hangs out in the cafeteria just before closing, we learn that the people of the Silo literally have no idea what stars are, or even what they’re called — they’re just inexplicable lights in the sky. It’s a sad way to live, the kind of thing that makes you bristle with resentment against anyone keeping these people imprisoned when they don’t have to be.

And that’s exactly the emotion we ought to feel watching a show like this. Thanks to the writing of series creator Graham Yost (support the WGA or there’d be no show to watch!), this episode (“The Janitor’s Boy”) keeps things simple while still enriching the soil in which the show is growing. 

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.