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A stock boy gets a text message directing him to a specific rooftop at a specific time, and suddenly everyone around him is saying "Time to kill" and "Pull the trigger." Which he does. After that semi-mysterious opening, we meet Dr. Lee Rosen (David Strathairn), who is in charge of a group of…special people. They include Nina, who has the power to make people do whatever she wants them to; Bill, whose adrenalin gives him super-strength; Gary, who can channel-surf the electromagnetic spectrum and read the signals like a human NORAD; and Rachel, who has super senses. In addition to acting as therapist and doctor to these "Alphas," Rosen also knows a guy from the government who wants him to look into how a federal prisoner was shot while in custody and inside a sealed room.
Of course the shooter was the stock boy and everyone but Bill gets to bring their powers to bear to track him down. It turns out he's got powers of his own: the kind of athleticism and body control that allows him to pitch no-hitters and shoot federal witnesses through air ducts. After they catch him, they figure out that he's been brainwashed. You know, the kind of thing Nina does, only on steroids.
Now that they have the shooter -- whose name is Cameron -- the plan is to use him as bait to catch the guy who was brainwashing him. While they're working on that, Don reveals to Rosen that it looks like they're after someone known as the Ghost, who works with a terrorist organization called Red Flag. Anyway, when the operation goes down, the Ghost pulls a switcheroo and gets away while our heroes (including Cameron) run a merry chase after the bellboy that the Ghost brainwashed into taking his place.
But Rosen and the Alphas think the dead man is the Ghost, until it's almost too late. It turns out the Ghost was trying to draw them out, and he nearly gets away with brainwashing Bill into killing Rosen. But Nina saves the day with her mouth (not by talking Bill out of it, but by kissing him so Rosen can shoot him up with an anti-brainwashing drug). Meanwhile, Cameron makes one of his super-shots and takes out the Ghost. And it looks like Cameron he gets to join the team -- whether he wants to or not. There's still the rest of Red Flag out there somewhere, after all.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A stock boy is busy...you know, stocking...at the grocery store when his phone rings. He tries to answer it, but it's just a weird tone and a text message with an address and the word "Rooftop," along with the time of 6:22. An old woman asks where the ice cream is and adds, "It's time to kill." He's too distracted by that to notice the sinister man in shades who just checked out. Luckily for our stock boy, 6:22 seems to be after he gets off work. On his way out, his boss offers him a replacement shift on Saturday and adds, "Time to kill? Pull the trigger." Obviously our guy is getting a little freaked out, but he still makes his way across what looks like Manhattan to that rooftop -- hearing and seeing the messages "Time to kill" and "Pull the trigger" from everyone he passes and everywhere he looks. Up on the rooftop (click, click, click), he finds a case under a pile of trash. The case, of course, holds a sniper rifle. Looking like he knows how to do it, but not why he's doing it, he preps the weapon, checks his watch, takes aim at a building on the block, and...pulls the trigger. All seems according to plan, right?
A bearded David Strathairn is doing laps in his pool to the kind of guitar music that usually accompanies people in pools who aren't David Strathairn. He's got a visitor: Callum Keith Rennie from Battlestar Galactica and 24, looking uptight in a G-Man suit and complaining about all the alt-health crap cluttering Lee Rosen's kitchen (for that is the name of Strathairn's character, and much easier to type it is, too). The CKR character, Don, hands Rosen a Department of Defense folder, apparently wanting Lee and his "group" to do something about it. After more complaints about Lee's Speedo and his non-coffee, Don takes his grumpy leave.
Meanwhile, a brunette woman is being pulled over by a Jersey City motorcycle cop. He gives her the fastest ticket ever, but after she asks him to remove his shades, her voice gets all echoey as she tells him to eat the ticket, as well as the carbon. Which he does. For some reason she also asks if he's single, and after seeing his ring, she tells him to have a nice day. Cool, he has to have a nice day now!
According to the onscreen title that suddenly appears, this is "NINA." She has a DoD dossier as well, headed "Alphas Initiative" with "Overseer: Dr. Lee Rosen" and identifying her as a "patient" named Nina Theroux. "Diagnosis: Hyper Induction -- overrides willpower in others." And she's looking for a husband? How hard could it be for her?
From there, we go to a domestic scene with shirtless Malik Yoba. He's at home with his FBI agent wife (you can tell because the back of her t-shirt says FBI) as they discuss weekend plans -- which include his not being an FBI agent anymore -- and he's distracted by the search for his keys. Which she helps him find, just seconds before he was about to have an emotional meltdown. But when he finally makes it out the door, there's an SUV blocking his driveway. All that calm slips away as he makes a fist, the camera goes right into his brain, and he puts his shoulder against the back of the vehicle to slide it out of the way. This would be Bill Harken, whose diagnosis is "Enhanced Strength -- from flight or flight response." "You got a problem?" he asks the double-taking man who was just out walking his dog. I don't think the dog-walker is the one with the problem.
Another, younger brunette breezes through a laundry, asking a guy to hem her skirt and bantering with her dad on the way out. But then she pauses, the camera zooms in on her ear all old-school Bionic Woman, and she hears her father muttering about her low chances of getting a husband "with her condition." And according to the DoD dossier on the young woman, Rachel Pirzad, that condition is "Synesthesia -- ability to enhance senses." So you'd think her dad would be more careful about talking about her when she's around.
Back to another domestic scene. A young man named Gary is sitting at home while his tired-looking mom tries to communicate with him, but he's busy gesturing at the mental images surrounding him all Beautiful Mind. He appears to be channel-surfing without a TV. His mom calls him on it, and he switches to a mental image of a map that prompts him to say, "They're almost here." Sure enough, a horn sounds outside. This is Gary Bell, whose diagnosis is "Transduction -- able to see all electromagnetic wavelengths." And decode them, too, it seems. And be able to see them as clearly as if they were being projected on a screen. Handy, that. He also appears to be autistic. Anyway, he joins Rachel and Lee in the minivan waiting outside, where Lee, at the wheel, reassures his mom and even maybe flirts a bit before driving off to...the Bowlerama!
Okay, obviously it's the office building to the Bowlerama, where the three of them split off. Gary heads to the break room, where he gets a little tense with Bill and Nina over his lunch that he's putting in the fridge. Bill teases him, because it's cool to tease people on the autism spectrum. Okay, it's not, which is going to make this gig a little tough for me.
Rosen calls them all into an early meeting and plays them a tape of a police interrogation. The screen goes blank and Gary offers to fix it in exchange for getting to drive (which his mom already said he can't). Without A/V, Rosen is forced to verbally explain. But we get A/V, in the form of a flashback to Rosen's buddy Don asking an orange-suited prisoner to explain some method he uses -- only to see a bullet-hole appear in the prisoner's forehead. Back to Rosen, who explains he was killed instantly. But this time, Gary has the video fixed, and the question is how a guy in a sealed room with one door and no windows was shot with a gun they can't find. So, it looks like it's time to hit the streets. And Gary's still not driving.
So there's a little bit where these superheroes fumble with the parking meter outside the station, and then Nina, Rachel, and Gary are face-to-face with the guard outside the interrogation room. Of course they're unofficial, so Nina has to go all Pusher from The X-Files on the guard, making her have to go to the bathroom. A second later, the three of them are inside the room. Rachel's looking at the bloodstains on the table and floor -- individual blood cells, in fact. She's so focused that she doesn't hear Bill come in, which they treat as normal. Bill has ballistics info: the bullet came from a .30 caliber rifle. That would seem to confuse them, until Rachel suddenly asks where a vent high on the wall leads.
Later, the Fab Four are up on the sniper's rooftop. Rosen shows up, and Rachel explains where the bullet came from -- out of the rifle, into a vent in the side of the building, through an airshaft, nicking the vent grate leading into the interrogation room, and into the victim's brain. Complete with slo-mo reenactment, of course. "You forgot about the bird that farted in New Jersey," Bill deadpans. Rosen wants evidence, and Nina comes up with a shell casing that matches the ballistics report. That's the good news. The bad news is that someone's taking photos of them all from a rooftop across the street. Too bad Rachel can't sense that.
Back at HQ, Rosen is explaining how they're looking for a "Hyperkinetic" -- someone with rare aptitude for stuff like this. Possibly also someone with a history of addiction or a criminal record. Bill, the ex-Fed, seems to think that's enough to start a proper investigation, so he's off to start that. "Whatever, Bill," Gary snipes at him on his way out, because of some comment Bill made a minute ago. "I have a bad attitude," Gary admits unrepentantly to Rosen.
So now everyone's doing their separate things in their offices. Rosen's listening to classic rock, Rachel's taking a close look at the bullet casing, Gary's channel-surfing, and Nina's...I don't know, willing the clock to go faster.
Elsewhere in Manhattan, Don meets Rosen in a record store, because Rosen is demanding more information about the case. Don's reluctant to share, but when Rosen threatens to quit, Don reveals, "Red Flag." Apparently they're an old terrorist group that used to do something with Alphas until they were shut down...but now they're back. Dun dun dun!
Bill's sitting at some plaza with an old Fed buddy, who apparently is his source for stuff like this. ("This" being "lists of athletes with military training and a history of PTSD.") The other guy wants to know what it's all about. "I'm rehearsing for Jeopardy,'" Bill says, forgetting to add the exclamation point. As he gets up to leave, the photographer is back, taking more photos. And it looks like the sniper from the cold open! It's not, but he looks like him, which is confusing.
Back at HQ, Bill sticks his head into Rachel's office to nab part of her cupcake. He seems to also have a superpower for touching other people's food, because we saw that earlier in the meeting. After Bill leaves, Rosen enters, and Rachel goes into a distracted recitation of her exam of the bullet casing before Rosen figures out what's bothering her and she starts unloading on Bill. Rosen admits Bill has "boundary issues" and suggests she take it up with Bill, which makes her pretty nervous. But back to the analysis, which suggests that the shooter is, in Rosen's words, "a jittery orange-eater from Norway?" Rachel pauses, then adds that between that, Bill's list, and other stuff, she's narrowed it down to 40 suspects. Rosen congratulates her, but Gary interrupts. Apparently he's just pulled a YouTube video out of the air so effectively that it stripped the logo right off its Web page. He shows it to them: It features a baseball pitcher who is one pitch from a perfect game, but on the last pitch the batter gets a hit. And yet the pitcher makes the grab, then throws the guy out by throwing the ball around the runner to the first baseman. The video ends with a nice look at the super-pitcher's jersey: Hicks, No. 7. And yes, that's the shooter from the beginning.
Cut to Bill and Nina staking out the grocery store, and Bill's pretty sure they've got the right guy. In addition to being "the highest-rated marksman in the history of the Corps," he's the dude from the beginning. Nina's not sure, because A) he's working at a grocery store, and B) he's hot. Bill would be happy to get into it with her, but Gary's in the back seat derailing the conversation. Like he does.
Inside the store, Hicks gets fired for walking out of his last shift. Outside, Gary meanderingly points out that Hicks is heading for his apartment -- where Rachel is now. Bill gets all bossy about how they need to follow his orders, and yells into his walkie-talkie for Rachel to get out. Alas, Rachel's in synesthete mode, so she can't hear. The other three get ready to roll while Rachel examines Hicks's apartment, which is pretty nice even though she can see the smells coming off of everything (including the oranges). The rest of the team arrives outside the building in time to see Hicks enter the security door. Bill follows him inside, gun at the ready. Rachel has just found the sniper rifle in the bedroom, and calls the others to report in. Of course Hicks hears her, not because he has super-senses like her, but because he's in the apartment with her. When he busts her, Bill kicks the door down and orders Hicks to the floor. Hicks look like he's going to obey, but trips Bill up with the sweep of one hyperkinetic leg. A fight ensues, with Bill hurling furniture and shattering drywall, but Hicks makes it out the window and down the fire escape like a Parkour master. Bill tries to give chase, but apparently he's all out of juice. "You're spiking," Nina tells him down at ground level. It's up to Rachel to listen for the sounds of Hicks's flight, while Gary mentally taps into security cameras to track him. Rachel gets in the car and drives off in pursuit. She quickly catches up to Hicks and uses The Voice to get him to stop running and take a little nap on the spot. Killer nabbed! Episode over, right?
Nope! Back at HQ, Hicks is reluctantly undergoing an MRI. We don't need Rachel's super-senses to be able to spot a big white spot showing up in the image of Hicks's brain. Meanwhile, in Nina's office, Bill is stressing about how he wasn't able to nab the suspect, while Nina's more concerned with how Hicks didn't seem to know what was going on, comparing him to the people she's "Pushed." That's her word. Gary and Rosen enter the room, and Rosen seems to back Nina. Because after all, it's not like they've never met someone who's able to make people do things they don't want to. (Although Gary quickly points out that it doesn't work on him.) He shows Hicks's MRI to Bill, and Bill asks what it means. "That's a very good question," is Rosen's exit line.
Outside, Rosen banters with Don about Don's suspicions regarding donut shops before moving onto the subject of Hicks. "He was brainwashed," Rosen says shortly. Don makes some more confusing, paranoid remarks about something called the "Ghost Files" that prompt Rosen to ask, 'Why do I feel like I'm in a Beckett play when I talk to you?" Don brushes that aside and tells Rosen about some people they lost last year in the Red Flag operation in grisly ways, all of whom had bumps in the brain. Rosen's not happy to learn this, but Don tells him, "Go get the Ghost, before he gets someone else."
And here he is. The creepy guy in shades from the grocery store at the beginning -- presumably the Ghost -- walks into a trendy hotel lobby, wipes his gloved hands on a napkin, then uses another one to shield his (still-gloved) finger while he presses buttons to get on an elevator. Inside a white apartment, with a closet full of identical white suits and gray coats like the one he's wearing, he puts his sunglasses in a case. He's clearly got some OCD going on, as he neatly panics over a loose thread on the breast pocket of his suit. Maybe he should be more worried about how the palm of his right hand looks like a melted pizza. Then he lets in the photographer (four minutes late), who lays out his photos of the team while saying there's no record of any of them. White Suit is satisfied, but there's the matter of the photographer being four minutes late. He puts his pizza-hand to the side of the photographer's neck, telling him to follow his instructions "exactly" time.
At HQ, Rosen's doing an exam of Hicks, who's handcuffed to a chair in the MRI room. He gives Hicks an injection to counteract "the effects of the forced induction," and starts asking him about his blackouts and what he remembers. Hicks's last memory is of a tone coming out of his phone, and then waking up the day. Rosen asks if there was anything like aphasia -- "Difficulty reading, hearing the wrong words." Suddenly Hicks remembers all the "Time to kill" messages. He has lots of questions for Rosen, but Rosen's two answers: "Nothing's wrong with you" and "You killed a man" don't exactly jibe with each other.
Elsewhere, the photographer walks into a convenience store, buys a big bottle of bleach from a top shelf, and, to the horror of the clerk, chugs as much of it as he can before collapsing. Interesting development! Get it? Development? Because he's a photographer? Oh, never mind.
At HQ, Hicks has been uncuffed and apparently Rosen has clued him in on the situation. But there's stuff we don't know. When Hicks asks why someone would do that to him, Rosen says, "Because you are an Alpha." That's a new one on Hicks, so Rosen explains, "You have a neurological difference that confers some exceptional advantage." He says everyone there is an Alpha, but Hicks is in denial. As they move into Rosen's office, Rosen says that "all Alpha skills come with a downside." He then gives Hicks some change and asks him to buy him a soda -- from across the room. Hicks takes a couple of shots at the coin slot, missing both, but Rosen makes him keep at it...until he succeeds, to his own amazement. Rosen's happy, because he's got a possible new apprentice and a soda.
Hicks has even joined the group in the meeting room as they discuss how to track the Ghost. As Rosen points out, Hicks (who I'll call Cameron now that he's on the team) must still be of use to the Ghost, or else he'd be dead like all the other people he used. Bill makes a sarcastic comment, and Rosen explains that they'll use Gary to trace the call -- as long as it's not on a Nokia. ("It's a different protocol," Gary explains). Cameron realizes he's being used as bait, and nobody denies it, because he totally is.
While the team's set up in the field, Bill is bitching at Rosen over the phone, only to hear Rosen deflect it all with his reasonable, receptive "shrink-voice." Bill threatens to hang up on him if he keeps doing it. Rosen does and Bill does.
Nina's up in the apartment with Cameron, looking at pictures of his ex and kid while Cameron secretly stashes a handgun in the back of his waistband. That done, Cameron starts quizzing Nina, who says she lives rent-free and answers to no one. Except for how she works for Rosen, as Cameron points out. Cameron seems doubtful about why she does it when she can do what she does, but before they can get very far beyond her lame explanation of "maybe I'm just a nice person," his phone rings. He says hello, but there's nothing on the other end except that creepy tone again.
Luckily, Rosen is on the phone to Nina, instructing her to give Cameron a shot he prepared. So Cameron's okay and, better yet, Gary's got the signal. The whole team piles into the minivan, following Gary's EM visions. They pull up at the Thompson Hotel, where Gary pinpoints the signal as coming from the sixth floor. Bill's taking Nina along inside, while Rachel keeps the car from getting towed, Gary feeds Bill intel, and Cameron gets handcuffed to the door so he doesn't kill anyone again. Bill's kind of a jerk, is he not? Inside the hotel, Bill gets on the elevator while Nina prepares to shake down the concierge. He gives her a little trouble so she has to Push him into thinking the tour brochure she's holding is a search warrant. Which works, of course. Meanwhile, Bill's on the sixth floor, making his way down the hall, gun drawn. Bill's getting stressed about how long this is taking as a room service guy enters room 613 -- the same room Nina and the clerk just narrowed it down to. "I'm going in," Bill announces, then makes his super-strength fist. While he's winding up, Cameron asks Rachel to free him, but she says she can't. Up in the hotel room, Bill bursts in. The suite seems empty, until someone plunges a knife into his shoulder and runs past him. Bill starts shooting, past other guests even, but the quarry disappears into the stairwell. Hearing that, Cameron prevails on Rachel to let him loose. In the lobby, Nina Pushes the security guy to block the exits, but since he's wearing an earpiece it doesn't work and she has to go through the clerk. Cameron runs in and darts up the stairwell. Nina follows in the elevator. Cameron is chasing the bad guy up the stairs, only a couple of flights behind. Inside Room 613, Bill tells the guy inside to get up. Cameron is pursuing his guy across the rooftop bar, brandishing his handgun and getting his Parkour on. Nina catches up, so they both see the man in the white suit and gray coat leap over the railing to his death. This is bad? Problem solved, right? Obviously not, because the person in the room service uniform that Bill just helped to his feet is...the Ghost. Duh. And as Bill helps him up, he puts his pizza-hand on Bill's neck.
The ad break was long enough to turn the street into a full-on crime scene. Cameron's not convinced, and Nina seems to be lost in bad memories of her own. "Bad memories," she says, which is how I know. Up in the hotel room, Rosen and Rachel are looking through the Ghost's journals, which are OCD masterpieces that include the diagram of the shooting Cameron performed earlier. And when Gary finds the Ghost's suits, Rosen figures a guy with such a California Redwood up his ass must have really been after someone important to change up his usual plans like he did with Cameron.
Outside, Nina is complimenting Bill, although he's being hard on himself. And he's also complimenting Cameron, which is more surprising. Rosen shows up and sends the other two off to the van before giving Bill a little reassurance. Then he heads over to Don, who apparently showed up on the scene just to refuse to answer any questions for the cops. And to tell Rosen that he's after Cameron. Rosen tries to plead Cameron's case, but Don's out of there. And Bill, who was left behind to "spin the story," spots the Ghost -- back in his normal look -- among the crowd of people behind the crime scene tape.
Nighttime at HQ. Nina and Rosen are still trying to figure something out, namely why the Ghost used an Alpha this time instead of the average fools he usually uses. Sure, only Cameron could have made the shot, but still. Speaking of Cameron, Rosen says things will be complicated. "More complicated than me?" Nina asks him. Rosen tries to dodge the question, and since the scene just ended, I think he succeeded.
In the break room, Cameron's texting while Gary "eavesdrops" on them when Nina comes in offering to give Gary and Cameron a ride home. Down in the lot, they're just about to get into her "borrowed" sports car when Gary suddenly picks up the signal from the Ghost's cell phone again. Cameron heads off the direction Gary pointed, and Nina stuffs Gary in her car while she goes to warn Rosen. Gary's mom would love that. As for Gary, he's just excited to be behind the wheel. Speaking of Rosen, he gets a call from Don, who is at the morgue having just discovered that the body isn't the Ghost. "Which raises the question, who was the guy in the room and where is he now?" Rosen instantly leaps several steps ahead, realizing the Ghost set them all up -- which is why he chose an Alpha in the first place.
Right now, the Ghost is lying in wait for Cameron. Seeing him coming with his gun drawn, he dodges around his car, but snags his suit on the chain link fence, perforating the jacket. Rosen is still on the phone, cluing in Don: Red Flag used Cameron to draw them out, instead of the other way around. Oh, and here's Bill in the office, raising his gun to shoot Rosen, who dives out of sight. Down in the parking lot, Cameron finally catches up to the Ghost, too late to stop him from grabbing Rachel as a hostage. Upstairs, Rosen runs to the drug cabinet and breaks it open while brainwashed Bill stalks him. Outside, the Ghost figures Cameron thinks he can make the shot without hitting Rachel, but the Ghost says he knows better: "Every time the pressure's on, you fall apart." Upstairs, Rosen is trying to talk brainwashed Bill down. Nina shows up just in time, using her Pusher voice on Bill -- but it doesn't work. So Nina just kisses him, and while he's occupied with that, Rosen gives him the injection and he collapses. In the parking lot, the Ghost is still taunting Cameron, saying he can only make the shot if the Ghost tells him to. But Cameron makes it anyway, and Rachel's safe. And the Ghost is down. Cameron goes to him, and his last words are, "You're on the wrong side of this, Hicks." Now he tells him.
MRI time again, but now it's Bill in the machine, and it looks like he'll be okay. Rachel tells Rosen that she will be too. Cut to Rosen in the break room, telling Bill there will be side effects for a few days, and some emotional blowback over the few weeks. After he leaves the room, Nina comes in to ask how Bill is. "I heard you snuck one on me," he smirks. Back to normal.
It's daytime again, and Rosen finds Cameron watching his kid's Little League game from what looks like a court-ordered distance. Rosen shows up to provide him with a minute or two of therapy -- just a taste, understand -- saying that he and Cameron could help each other. Cameron's not really interested in working for the government again. Rosen gets that, and mildly points out, "You did murder a federal prisoner." Cameron says they both know he couldn't control that, but Rosen says not everyone will buy that. So even though he's being super nice about it, he's basically saying that Cameron has a choice between jail or joining the team. What do you know -- Mr. Nice Guy has a dark side.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter , or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.
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