Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Get Your Buzz On
By M. Giant | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 11.08.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Things are quite a mess on the island, and we're dropped right into the middle of it. Kendal finds himself bloody, the town abandoned, scores of unconscious sailors and villagers near the river, and Julian packing up in a hurry. After he discovers that two of the Navy SEALs are dead and Julian tasers him into unconsciousness, we flash back a few hours. And forward, and back, but for this recaplet, I think I'm just going to have to tell the story in sequence or I'll be as confused as Kendal.
The injured SEAL, Hopper, is getting back on his feet, but he's still not talking. Chaplin wants to get on Skype with Secretary of Defense Curry and see if he can mess with him by claiming he knows what the SEALs know, but before the plan can be put into effect, people start acting really weird. Prosser recognizes the effects of a chemical weapon called BZ, which doesn't kill but turns everyone really wiggy for several hours before dropping them into a power-nap. Chaplin, Shepard, and Prosser sail the Colorado into the harbor to wait it out while Kendal is left in charge of the island, both parties counting on getting through this with the help of antidote stores that turn out to be missing. So things start getting weird. On the sub, people start passing out when a fire breaks out, and Chaplin's the only one who can put it out. Unfortunately, he's thoroughly distracted by an hallucination of his son Jeffrey, with whom he shares a bedtime story until passing out as well, while the sub fills with smoke and carbon dioxide.
Kendal isn't faring a great deal better, contending with alternately paranoid and guilt-inducing hallucinations of his wife and Paul Wells, as well as a sailor named McClure who offers to help him wake Sophie up and get the communications back online. But it turns out McClure is part of an incursion, passing off Kendal's unfamiliarity with him as the effects of the drug. He's also the one who killed the dead SEALs, and he and the men he came with want to take King and Hopper back. And there's also something that he really wants, and although we don't find out what that is, I've got a theory. After Kendal beats the crap out of McClure in an unsuccessful attempt to learn his mission, he later returns with King to liberate the monitoring station and rescue Sophie, which is when Julian confesses that he was the one who drugged the whole island in exchange for a promise that he'd get it back when the Colorado left.
Speaking of the Colorado, Chaplin wakes up on board with an antidote needle sticking out of his chest and the air levels back to normal, but he doesn't realize until later that his nuclear launch key has been stolen from the string around his neck. And we learn after the fact that during one of Kendal's hallucinations in which he made out with his wife at home, he was actually making out with Sophie. Ooh, that's awkward.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A disoriented Sam Kendal runs through the jungle -- grimy, bloody-faced, and with a syringe in his hand over the subtitle, "3 HOURS AFTER THE CHEMICAL ATTACK," with the word CHEMICAL in bright red letters for some reason. As if suddenly spotting the needle for the first time, he more calmly walks into town, which looks as though it's been abandoned in a panic; overturned bikes, cards and money left on tables, all signs that some shit went down here, say, three hours ago. Suddenly Christine accuses, "You're never coming back, are you?" Sam turns, suddenly less bloody and inside his house, and gives his skeptical wife reassurances and a kiss before stepping out the front door and back into reality. Or whatever the current version of it is. He picks up an abandoned machete and climbs the stairs to the bar, which is equally abandoned. After getting a load of himself in the mirror and wiping some of the blood off, he goes out back to the river and finds what looks like a whole pile of bodies next to the water, sailors and locals alike. Including Sophie's employee from the monitoring station, who we finally learn tonight is named Nigel. I should have guessed that.
Kendal finds goes to Cameron, who fortunately is only asleep, so presumably all the rest of them are as well. Kendal's next distraction is the sound of music, and he follows it to where Mayor Julian is hastily packing up his car, apparently unaffected by either the chemical attack or the subtitles thereof. Realizing Kendal remembers no more of the past few hours than we the viewers do, Julian tells Kendal that he and everyone else have been drugged and he just needs to lie down and sleep it off. Kendal isn't calmed by the sight of the blood on Julian's shoes, or his promise that "your friends were already dead when I got here." Now Kendal sees the bloody tracks leading out of the house, and follows them into find two of King's SEAL buddies sporting some new bullet holes. While he's absorbing this sad sight, Julian sneaks up behind and tasers him, saying it's for his own good. "One more for luck," he adds, which is just too generous of him.
So now we flash back to "4 HOURS EARLIER," which is also "20 MINUTES BEFORE THE CHEMICAL [in red] ATTACK." King wakes up in Tani's bed, and tells her as she dresses that he hasn't slept like that in years. Maybe because she's polite enough not to eavesdrop when he talks in his sleep. Or at least that's what she tells him.
Kendal, Chaplin, King and one of the SEALs who has less than four hours to live are standing around the bedside of King's SEAL buddy Hopper, the one wounded in the moments before the pilot episode began. Chaplin alludes to the Secretary of Defense's keen interest in them, and tells them they're welcome here on the island if they don't feel safe going home. Hopper goes nuts in his bed, telling Chaplin he's dead already. People do keep saying that on this show.