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You knew it was just a matter of time before mysterious numbers were introduced, right? A sniper named Ernest Cobb goes missing from Alcatraz 50 years ago, shows up in 2012 and picks up right where he left off. As he picks out his seemingly random targets, he chants something like "the picket fence has 47 slots... 1, 2, 3, 4..." Back in the day, Ernest was a prisoner at another facility and shot a guard for the sole purpose of getting himself transferred to Alcatraz. He's desperate to have a cell all to himself. When even that affords him too much human interaction, he gets himself sent off to solitary confinement. Peace at last! Except the warden figures out what he's doing and buddies him up with a ceaselessly babbling inmate as punishment.
Over the years, nobody's been able to figure out a pattern to his crimes, but Rebecca Madsen looks at the case for half a minute and realizes there's always a teen girl among his victims. Dr. Soto finds out that Cobb had a sister who would have been a teen the last time he saw her. They figure he's angry because his mother gave him up for adoption but raised the girl. Hauser sends them to track down Cobb before he can kill again. He also sends a young woman named Lucy, who's been working with him on the Alcatraz mystery for some time. Cobb shoots Lucy, nearly killing her. This doesn't fit his "pattern," so Madsen dismisses the act as a clue to his past.
The team eventually catches Cobb and sends him off to the Hole in the Woods. A flashback shows the warden trying to work out what makes Cobb tick. To that end, he introduces him to a doctor. And who should it be but young Lucy, looking exactly the same in 1963 as she does in 2012. Dun dun DUN! There are also scenes where Hauser tries to get info from Jack Sylvane, but he either doesn't know or doesn't want to say. Stay tuned for the full weecap where I'll try to make some sense of things.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We start the week with a blast from the past. Deputy Tiller and two guards lead a skinny guy into the cell block. He's naked except for his glasses and carries his folded uniform over his naughty bits. Tiller says that Warden James wants to see him before he's taken to his cell. He takes a key that looks like the one Jack Sylvane stole from Barclay Flynn and oh my God this is already getting complicated with the names and the plots and we're only 30 seconds into the second episode. Anyway, Tiller opens a heavy metal door that leads to the blustery cold night outside. The warden is having a bit of target practice and not doing well. He commends the naked prisoner for being a far better shot, having killed some sixteen people. James wonders how the prisoner picks his targets, but he has nothing more to say than that it's "a feeling." The prisoner made himself a single-shot gun at the last prison he was in, shot a guard in the leg so he could be transferred to Alcatraz. He wanted a private cell and was willing to go to Alcatraz to get it. James calls the prisoner "Mr. Cobb" and asks for shooting tips. "Drop your shoulder," Cobb says. James tries it and hits his target with ease. He makes a face like, "Effective advice? Terrifying!"
Present day. The privacy-loving Cobb sets up a nice picnic for himself on a sunny hill in San Francisco. After he enjoys his lunch, he takes a sniper scope from his picnic basket and focuses on an amusement park far below. "There are 47 slats in the picket fence... 1, 2, 3, 4..."
Soto's comic book shop. It is the tidiest comic book shop I've ever seen. He tells his young employee -- the one with whom he was arguing about video games in the last episode -- that he has a new gig with a "task force" that he's not supposed to talk about. He does mention, though, that he'll be working with the FBI and police and also that it's super cool. Madsen comes in to chat with Soto, so the kid scrams. She tells him she's now read his book. She says her grandfather, Tommy Madsen, was in jail for murdering his wife. Would that be her grandmother? Because you can't tell one way or the other with her non-reaction. She wonders why there's so little in the book about Tommy and Soto says it's all he could find. He's a bit weirded out that Madsen was chasing after her own grandpa and didn't even know it, but she's just like the embodiment of, "Eh, whatever." They wonder who's .
Hilltop. Cobb attaches the scope to a rifle and screws on a silencer. Again with the "One, two, three, four," and so on. He shoots a grown man, then a teen boy and girl. Soon after, Madsen and Soto arrive at the crime scene to investigate. A FunDunkers booth in the amusement park reveals the show's Vancouver bones under its San Francisco skin. Cops tell her that they've got teams checking an area 750 yards away, since it was a sniper. Just because you have a gun that can shoot 750 yards doesn't mean you'd be that far, right? Anyway, Soto is disturbed by the sight of dead bodies and tries to hold it together. They meet up with Hauser and Lucy, already on the scene. Hauser points out a few dead crows lying around. This means something to Soto: "Ernest Cobb, the Wichita Sniper, got his start killing crows for farmers." Historically, he makes three killings in three days, then goes underground. Lucy says Cobb's victims were always random. Madsen scoffs at that, then goes to chat with Soto.
They figure out that if Cobb was using his weapon of choice, an old Winchester, then he'd be no more than 500 yards away. This leads them to the hilltop, where Madsen proceeds to find a shell casing and handle it with her bare hands. If they'd been wrong and it wasn't Cobb, that really would have screwed with their evidence. Not that Little Miss Picture-Stealer would care about that. She catches sight of Alcatraz from the hilltop. "Another killer back from the Rock and we have two days to catch him," she reminds us for no real reason. Cue the crappy opening voice-over. Alcatraz!
1960. Ernest Cobb settles into his new cell with a sigh of bliss. Alone at last! Then a gabby guy in the cell to him starts talking to him and won't shut up. Cobb starts pacing in frustration. He sees the guards take Jack Sylvane away; it's the day Tiller pissed around with Jack and wouldn't let him see his wife. Gabby says Jack is going to solitary. The wheels start turning in Cobb's head.
Hole in the Woods. Lucy pays Jack a visit and asks him about Cobb and where they've both been for the last 50 years. She's terribly polite about it. You'd think the government would have him in a lab somewhere. Jack doesn't have any answers for her. She shows him the giant key he stole from Barclay Flynn. "Did someone ask you to get it?" she asks. "I don't know," he says. In a surveillance room, some techs monitor a lie detector readout. "He's telling the truth," a tech says to Hauser. Hauser looks doubtful.
Alca-Hub. Soto and Madsen have uncovered a box of Cobb's personal belongings. They don't get far into it before Hauser and Lucy return. Hauser tells them that ballistics confirmed that Cobb was using an old Winchester. Madsen figures he must have gotten it from a specialty gun shop, which is kind of a leap, since he could have easily gotten it from whomever is behind the mystery. She and Soto head off to investigate. "You wanted children," Hauser says to Lucy. "Go babysit." He talks like they're maybe a couple, although she appears to be half his age. Not that that's necessarily odd, or anything. Lucy tags along with the newbies.
On the first try, they hit a gun shop that happens to be the gun shop where Cobb bought his Winchester. The salesman tells her he bought the gun with a prepaid credit card and left no name or address. Charlton Heston would be proud. Madsen gets a look at the shop's security video. Lucky for her, Cobb slapped a hotel key on the counter while digging out his credit card. It's an old-timey key with a big room marker attached, so they'll have no problem narrowing down his possible location. A cutaway shows Cobb in his dingy room, readying his gun.
1960. Guards bring Cobb to the mess hall to meet with Warden James. James sits alone, eating a giant slab of gristly, black steak. Apparently, Cobb had sent him a letter requesting a transfer to "deep lock" so he can get away from the other prisoners. The warden denies his request. He had Cobb brought to him just for that?
Present day. While Madsen talks to a motel clerk, Soto asks Lucy about the prisoners. "Do you know how these guys are coming back and who's, y'know, behind it?" Maybe they're not really coming back. Maybe all of them are dead and they're all in some kind of shitty holding pattern till everyone can carpool together to the afterlife. "How is it that you're just accepting everything like it's not the biggest thing ever?" he asks. "How I feel about what happening doesn't change the fact that it is happening," she says. "Thanks, that helps a ton," he deadpans. They eventually all get up to Cobb's room, except he's not there. He's in some other room, getting his rifle ready, muttering about those 47 slats. He sets up at a window and waits. Lucy opens the curtains. The words "I can see you" are written on the window, along with scrawled crosshairs. She stands there and gets shot in the chest. Madsen falls to the floor, pressing her hands to the wound to stem the bleeding. In the motel across the way, Cobb packs up his gun and picnic basket. Soto calls an ambulance to take a miraculously still-living Lucy to the hospital. When Hauser shows up, he blames Madsen for getting Lucy shot, while Madsen blames Hauser for not giving her more information. They make pissy faces at each other.
Later, Madsen goes to wash Lucy's blood off her skin in some unidentified bathroom somewhere. She has a minor freakout and slaps the towel dispenser a bit. Take that, towel dispenser! At the hospital, Soto tells Hauser that Lucy is in a coma. Hauser makes pained faces. He goes off to the Hole in the Woods to ask Jack Sylvane if Lucy was a target. Jack says he doesn't know, so Hauser makes some ominous mention of a "Dr. Beauregard" being able to jog Jack's memory.
Alca-Hub. Soto and Madsen put their heads together to try to find Cobb. They noodle around the computers and find Lucy's database on the missing "63s." In 50 years nobody's found a pattern to Cobb's seemingly random killings, but Madsen looks at a map of his shootings and in a few seconds decides that the randomness is actually hiding his true victims. That is Smallville levels of awful, right there. She points out there there's always a teen girl among his victims. "Who's the 16-year-old in his life?" she wonders. Infodump from Soto: Cobb was an orphan and went looking for his birth mother when he was 20 and she rejected him.
To solve the mystery, Madsen tries to get into Cobb's head by sitting in his old cell with his belongings. Soto brings her a letter from an Eloise Monroe that was never delivered to Cobb. It turns out she was his little sister and she wanted to apologize for their mother being unkind. Soto and Madsen figure Cobb was pissed that his little sister got to be raised by their mother. Eloise died in a car accident, so with her off the list they don't know who Cobb might be going after .
1960. When it's time for morning count at the prison, Cobb politely declines to comply. This leads to his transfer to a cell in solitary, which pleases him just fine.
Present day. Madsen sits in that same cell. Out of Cobb's belongings, she puts together a crude scope out of a telescope lens, notched magazine, rubber band and the lens from a pair of glasses. It works well enough that Cobb could have sat in his cell and viewed the city beyond. He watched and waited for the day he could get out and start killing again. That day is now: He sets up some distance from a mega-mart and picks off shoppers and crows, one by one, the whole time muttering his numeric mantra.
1960. Warden James pays Cobb a visit in solitary. He commends Cobb for committing a minor infraction in order to force his hand. "You win, son, fair and square," James says. Cobb seems quite pleased with himself until his cell door opens and James brings in his new roomie. It's Gabby, and he starts blabbing a mile a minute about nothing important. Cobb freaks out. "You can't do this!" he protests. "It's my prison," James says. "I can do whatever the hell I like." Gabby blabs and blabs, faster and faster like a lunatic auctioneer. Cobb screams and tries to focus on the tranquility of the city outside the windows. Gabby's voice fades into the background.
Alca-Hub. Soto frets that they've lost their chance to catch Cobb, seeing as how he's now made his third attack and will go underground. Madsen thinks shooting Lucy doesn't count because it's not part of his pattern, so he still has one more to go. They do some computer magic and figure out which buildings Cobb might use as his vantage point, based on what he could have seen from his cell in 1963. Or he could use a hill again, right? Hauser joins them. Lucy is stable, he says, although the doctors don't know her prognosis yet. Madsen figures Cobb will be at one of two buildings, shooting down on either Pier 31 or Fort Mason. Off they go to track him down.
Hauser takes one building and Madsen takes the other. Hauser gets to his rooftop first and sees Cobb already in position on the other. He scopes out a market below and mumbles on about his 47 fence slats. Just as he gets a girl in his sights, Madsen comes up behind him, startling him. He shoots in her direction, missing, then tries to refocus on his target. Madsen hides around a corner. Hauser joins her on the rooftop. For an old guy, he can really book. Madsen tells Cobb about the letter his sister sent him. She offers to show it to him. For some odd reason, she puts down her gun and steps out into the open. For some even odder reason, he doesn't shoot her where she stands. He's distracted enough that Hauser can come around the other side, surprising him. Madsen jumps Cobb and forces him to the floor. Hauser puts a bullet through Cobb's shooting hand, just for good measure.
Hospital. Hauser watches Lucy, still unconscious. In the hall nearby, Soto confides to Madsen that he doesn't think he's cut out for all this. He's the only one who's even close to being appropriately weirded out by any of this crap. "I'm afraid I'm not gonna be good at it," he says. "Too late, you already are," she says. Aw. Hate levels decreasing.
Hole in the Woods. Hauser brings Cobb to his new cell, right to Jack Sylvane's. They seem genuinely surprised to see each other. "I could have killed you today," Hauser says. "Now that you're here, you're gonna wish I had." Flashback to 1960. Warden James visits Cobb in the infirmary, where he's been outfitted with a straitjacket and leg shackles. "Time and again you've found your way into solitary," James says, "and damned if I can figure out why." Cobb says nothing. James says he's found a doctor who might be able to help him. "If anyone could figure out what's gone amiss in that noggin of yours, it's this lady right here." In walks a young woman in a smart blue suit. It's Lucy Banerjee, or at least that's what we've known her as so far. "Hello, Mr. Cobb, my name is Lucille Sengupta," she says with a pleasant smile. "I'm here to help you." Man, and I thought Hauser looked good for his age.
Tippi Blevins disappeared from prison fifty years ago and then mysteriously reappeared to write about this show. Email her at b_tippi@yahoo.com, or find her on Twitter.