Episode Report Card LuluBates: B | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT You gotta have faith-a faith-a faith
By LuluBates | Season 1 | Episode 17 | Aired on 04.23.2001
All righty, I'm starting to agree with Kim on this -- the creators of this show must have incredibly low expectations for their audience. Or perhaps they don't believe they actually have an audience. Why else would they show the freaking intro time and time again? I mean you never saw My Two Dads rehashing the here's-Nicole-here-are-her-two-Dads-her-mom-loved-them-both-and-the-peppery-judge-went-along-with-it plot before every episode. And that plot is certainly as complicated as the storyline of Dark Angel. I'm just saying.
Max barrels into the squat that she shares with Original Cindy. OC is wearing headphones and a Walkman in the house. Um, did stereos get destroyed in the Pulse and only Walkmen remain? Whatever. Maybe she's trying to block out Max's voice. I should try that. Anyway, back to the story: Max barrels into the apartment carrying a big chicken that she "scored." OC, being the strong, sensible type, wants to know what she's going to do with it. Max, being the hungry type, declares she's going to eat it. OC curls her lip in barely concealed disgust and asks her if she is seriously going to kill that cute little chicken? Max is practically drooling at the very thought and doesn't even wait for her obviously grossed-out friend to leave the room before breaking its little chicken neck. Guess the sensitivity training at Manticore was kept to a minimum. Cut to Max eating some KFC and OC, still wearing her headphones, trying to pretend she didn't see what she just saw. (Hey, Martha Stewart's cooking chicken, too! How about that.) Maybe OC will become a vegetarian. I mean, the majority of developing nations eat primarily vegetarian diets -- granted, not necessarily by choice, but if the US in 2019 is a newly-second-tier nation, perhaps they've kicked the meat habit. Hey, maybe PETA sponsored this episode! That's some pretty crafty outreach, that is. Max gets paged by the Captain and, um, blazes. OC gets off the couch, takes off her headphones now that Max is gone, and heads for the kitchen. She takes a piece of chicken with her fingers, looks at it for a minute, and then eats it. I hate it when my roommates do that -- good grief, use a fork!
Over at the Halls of Justice, the Captain breaks the news to Max that a body with a bar code was found in the woods. She examines the bar code and realizes that it's "Ben." She starts to tear up, and as the Captain calls his informant in the coroner's office to set up a "viewing" for Max, we drift to a lovely black-and-white flashback of the softer side of Camp Manticore. A time when the counselors had gone to make out behind the rec hall and the campers stayed up past curfew, making shadow puppets and telling ghost stories. A time when the campers were truly ready to be called happy campers. As Max heads to the coroner's office, Cap'n EO tells her to be careful, because something out there is strong enough to overpower an X5. Then he nods and winks, and she rolls her eyes and tells him to keep it in his pants.
At the coroner's, Max has another flashback while she waits for the doctor to meet her. In this grainy grey flashback, Ben tells the campers a scary bedtime story about the "nomalies," which is the oh-so-cute kiddie vernacular for the tongue-waving, bad-toothed, gate-rattling genetic anomalies that are bound to happen when you go mucking about in the genetic kitchen. I wonder if Dolly the Sheep has relatives like these? Anyway, the nomalies are kept locked in the basement to scare the children. 'Cause isn't fear a part of any happy and complete childhood? Anyway, Ben is frightening the campers with quasi-religious parables about what happens to good soldiers versus bad soldiers. Bad soldiers go to the nomalies. After this lovely trip down memory lane, Max goes to see Ben's body. The doctor assures Max that the utmost discretion will be taken to ensure that this case is kept under wraps. The doctor fills in the gory details for Max. It seems that Ben was killed when someone snapped his second vertebra with their bare hands. He's covered in cuts and abrasions, and the tattoo is still healing. And his teeth were surgically removed. Max is confused. But I only know that because she says, "That doesn't make any sense." Otherwise, I would have gone with "Max looks like a gas huffer." Their conversation is interrupted by a disturbance in the lobby. Max recognizes Lydecker's squeaky voice and, like a good soldier, hides her ass. Lydecker busts into the room and retrieves Ben's body. But, oh yeah, I forgot to mention, it wasn't Ben. It was a young Asian man lying in the morgue. And Ben is your typical genetically-engineered Aryan type. Huh. I would think this was strange, but I saw the preview.