Episode Report Card Sobell: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Fickle Finger of Fate is Clearly the Middle One, Pointed Skyward
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 20 | Aired on 05.13.2010
That night, in the FBI parkling lot, Janis is putting the cap on a very long and nerve-wracking day by preparing to get in her car. Too bad for her that Mark slams the door shut. He snarls, "Who do you work for?" Janis, feigning outrage: "What?" Mark: "You're not FBI, so who signs your paychecks?" Janis looks around as if to see whether anyone else can hear Mark's very loud line of inquiry (answer: no), then concedes, "CIA. I got recruited when I was at Quantico. How did you know?" Mark tells her, "I got suspicious when you sold out Marcie as the mole. The meetings with Vogel ... the fish store, where I assume you're meeting your contact. But it was the Hellinger sting that confirmed everything."
We flash back to that: Wedeck is telling Mark, "Your assignment today goes beyond being McDow's decoy." Vogel jumps in, "Intel says they're planning to kidnap McDow en route to the safehouse ..." "So it's our best chance to capture someone of value," Janis says. Mark asks Janis, "Based on what intel?" Vogel deflects, "There's a lot of chatter," a line that Mark promptly calls out as bullshit. He notices Janis looking all uncomfortable, and realizes she's the source of the intel.
Back in the now, Mark asks Janis what possessed her to blow her cover today, and she says flatly, "Because they wanted me to kill you, Mark. I told them I would." Mark absorbs that body blow, and says only, "A lot of people are going to be wondering who you really are." Janis mutters, "I did what I had to." Getting angry now, Benford says, "'A sacrifice for the greater good.' I've tried that line. It doesn't work. Looks good on a plaque, though." Janis doesn't really appreciate Mark getting all judge-y on her right now, and points out, "I've been living in between two separate lives in this tiny space where nothing ever happens." Except Carline's frequent death threats and unnatural (for her) sex acts with Demetri. Don't those count? Anyway, we find out that Janis is very lonely, and clinging to "I was doing my job" as a defense. Mark is in a hell of a mood, so he punctures holes in that by pointing out that Janis's real job has been to lie, she's been very good at it, and from now on, that is all anyone will see. He warns, "You're on the outside now. If you sacrifice everything, be prepared to walk alone." Janis asks, "You're walking right beside me. You're about to lose your family. Is it worth it to you?" Mark replies, "I don't ask that question. Too much at stake." He stalks off, but not before agreeing to let Janis tell Demetri herself.
Cut to Janis doing exactly that. He is not exactly cool with it all, and asks -- understandably -- where she sees the pregnancy in all this. Janis then becomes the first spy in TV history to use the mommy track as her strategy for coming in out of the cold. She then non-apologizes with, "You're my friend, and I should have done better by you, but this baby is the most important thing to ever happen to me." Demetri points out that it didn't just happen to Janis; he's got a stake too: "Every little decision you make leads to something else, and now we're all connected. You, and me, and Zoey --" "No, we're not! There's me and my baby, and then there's you and Zoey. Don't let this situation ruin your life. You don't need to be part of the mess I made." Demetri's face crumples for a moment before he composes himself and says, "I already am." Then he stalks off. You know, if I were Janis, I'd be a little nervous about coming into work the next day; once Vogel finds out that Mark and Demetri are on to Janis, he's not going to be happy.
We then go to Gabriel watching cartoons in his safehouse. Demetri comes in and asks if he can sit down. They bond over the cartoon -- Dr. Ramjet and Dr. Evilkisser -- and Demetri asks, "In all the futures you saw, was I in any of them?" Gabriel blithely says, "No, you died. It was sad. Very sad." Demetri nods, then asks, "What do you think happens when the future you saw changes?" Gabriel, munching popcorn, explains, "That's not possible. It's like trying to find a different path. You wind up in the same place, always, always. Like fate. Fate! Like Lloyd and Olivia. Everyone is ending up where they're supposed to be." Gabriel steals a nervous glimpse of Demetri's face and says, "Even you." I feel so bad for poor Demetri. Imagine being told, repeatedly, that the universe wants to off you. It is enough to give a man a complex.
As if we needed confirmation that apparently, fate will happen no matter how hard we fight against it, we're back in Afghanistan, and Aaron walks into the exact circumstances he saw in his flashforward.
And then -- zip! -- we're back in Los Angeles. Janis is entering her darkened apartment (only the fish tank is alight, in a nice nod to her cover) and her bad day is STILL not over, because guess who's waiting for her? It's Simon. And he's got a gun. The very last words of the episode: "I need your help."
Lisa Schmeiser needs help too, but she would prefer it to be of the dark chocolate variety. Follow her on Twitter at lschmeiser.