Lara Means

Lara Means is a character on Millennium, who was played by actress Kristen Cloke.

She is a forensic psychologist, who appeared in the series's second season, as another potential candidate for the Millennium Group, like the show's lead character, Frank Black, and she partnered with him during several investigations throughout the season.

Their relationship was refreshingly devoid of the sexual tension or competition that seems to be forced onto most partnerships between female characters and male characters on television. They became friends and respected each other greatly as colleagues, coming to rely on each other in times of crisis, and as the only people able to understand each other's unique situation.

Like Frank Black, Lara has a "gift", which allows her a unique insight into criminal investigations, although hers is different from his. Since childhood, she has received angelic visions that warn her of imminent danger and impending deaths, which she considers a curse more than a blessing.

Lara Means, speaking about her angel, from the episode "Monster":

He should be a comfort, but his appearance always frightens me. Not as a symptom of insanity, because I believe in him, but when he appears it's always a portent of evil.

Frank Black looked to Lara for advice concerning his own young daughter, Jordan Black, who also showed signs of being gifted. From "Midnight of the Century":

Lara, I think Jordan sees the way you do. I know we just can't somehow wish it away, that we can't stop from seeing. But I need to know what's going to happen to my daughter.

Lara Means worked alongside Catherine Black, Frank's wife, in the episode "Anamnesis, in which Frank does not appear, and although she had a different agenda from Catherine, their characters were able to cooperate and discuss their mutual responsabilities.

Lara Means is a complex and admirable character: very intelligent, educated, courageous and no-nonsense, as well as possessed of a cynical sense of humour, whose knowledge of evil tested her strengths.

She appeared in the following Millennium episodes:

• 2x04: "Monster" (17 October 1997)
• 2x07: "19:19" (7 November 1997)
• 2x10: "Midnight of the Century" (19 December 1997)
• 2x11: "Goodbye Charlie" (9 January 1998)
• 2x15: "Owls" (6 March 1998)
• 2x16: "Roosters" (13 March 1998)
• 2x17: "Siren" (20 March 1998)
• 2x19: "Anamnesis" (17 April 1998)
• 2x22: "The Fourth Horseman" (8 May 1998)
• 2x23: "The Time Is Now" (15 May 1998)

A less positive note to Lara Means's character concerns her fate, at the end of the second season. She was intended by the then-showrunners, Glen Morgan and James Wong, to be a parallel to Frank Black, showing what might become of him if he joined the Millennium Group: when Lara Means is inducted into the group, in the episode "The Fourth Horseman", the knowledge she gains leads her to a mental breakdown in the following episode, the season finale "The Time Is Now". This use of a female character as a narrative accessory to a male character's journey is often a symptom of women's exploitation within a sexist framework. It is tempered here by the respect and integrity otherwise accorded to the character.

From the Millennial Abyss website:

Glen Morgan and James Wong were rightfully concerned that the new character, like many of their second season changes, might be regarded as a reaction to the success of The X-Files. "My biggest worry was that people would think we were trying to make them like Mulder and Scully," Morgan explained. Lara's purpose on the series, and the arc concerning her character, were decided from the start, however. "We wanted somebody with an incredible gift to counter Frank. Right from the beginning, the idea was to have Lara see these visions and know what the Millennium Group was saying was true. Knowing that would drive her crazy because if the world is ending, what's the point of going on? Coupled with that, we had the Millennium Group saying, 'We not only have the responsibility of knowing; we have the responsibility of doing something about it.' The knowledge overloads her, and she goes insane. By seeing that, Frank Black will have a person to compare and contrast himself to: 'This is my potential fate.' And that took him back to the yellow house. Lara is a possibility of what Frank could be. If you're going through the forest, you could be eaten by a troll, or you could get out. Lara did not get out of her dark forest. When the Millennium Group says to Frank, 'Do you want to become an initiated member? You're ready to move up a rank,' he can look at Lara and say, 'I don't know.' And yet, he believes in what she sees and that what the Group is after is right. It's such an extraordinary responsibility."

Lara Means's final appearance in the series shows her in restraints on a hospital bed, catatonic. However, the character's importance is underlined by the scale of her descent: one whole act of the season finale is devoted to her mental breakdown sequence, in a complex montage showing her actions and visions, set against the song "Land" by Patti Smith, for its entire length of nearly ten minutes. Furthermore, before losing her lucidity, Lara Means also had the forethought to leave her dose of a rare vaccine given only to members or candiates for the Millennium Group to Frank (who had already been vaccinated himself), which saved his daughter's life from the deadly epidemic anticipated by the Millennium Group.

And it is equally important to note that Frank Black himself had suffered a mental breakdown prior to the series's start (which had led him to resign from the FBI), and had several psychiatric episodes throughout its run, ending the second season in a similarly catatonic state in a cabin in the woods.

(Millennium's contentious third season reset the series's continuity, to a certain degree, mitigating the impact of the epidemic in order to re-establish Frank Black as a protagonist, and introduced a new female character to the series: Special Agent Emma Hollis.)