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The Alphas are all rounded up without warning and stuffed into Binghamton, but that's just the beginning. Agent Nathan Cley, who's never had the best relationship with the team to begin with, has decided that one of them is a traitor. His tipoff? The fact that a few old scientists who worked on something called MK-Ultra, the Cold War version of the Alphas program, were all tracked down and killed by Red Flag, using information that could only have come from Alphas HQ. Cley's individual interviews of Rosen and the team lead him nowhere, even with the help of an Alpha named Eric who happens to be a human lie detector. So Cley's move is to stick them all in a room together and let them figure out. Instead, Rosen uses an apparent back injury as cover to stage a mass jailbreak. Eventually the team makes it to an abandoned warehouse, but they still have to deal with the problem of which one of them is the mole before Cley and his goons catch up to them. Rosen announces that he knows who it is, but prefers to give the culprit the chance to confess. When time runs out, Rosen fingers Cameron, and in case you ever wondered who would win a fight between Cameron and Bill, now's when you find out. Fortunately, Cley and his team bust in before anyone gets killed, and Rosen rushes Gary out of there by stealing a government SUV. Which is bad because Rachel has just realized that Rosen isn't Rosen at all, but an impostor. An Alpha shapeshifter, naturally. So the good news is that now we know who the mole really is.
Meanwhile, the real Rosen wakes up somewhere without his glasses and a bad haircut, but he's still spry enough to defend himself against a hench-Alpha who was about to kill him like he killed the MK-Ultra scientists. Rosen escapes to HQ and stops Gary from deleting all the MK-Ultra files on Faux-sen's instructions. Faux-sen almost makes his escape by turning into Gary, but Rachel's not falling for that again. So all our Alphas are back in the DoD's good graces, the mole's been caught, Bill and Cameron have patched things up, Eric is probably going to join the team, and the only things left to worry about are Red Flag's move and how long it's going to take Rosen's hair to grow back.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Things must be getting heavy, because we're getting previouslies before this episode. Which, see past recaps.
Two men meet on a concrete pier extending into a lake. One is an older, tweedy man who walks with a cane, and the other is a younger, squinty, unshaven hood who is clearly not the man that the older man was expecting. "You're not with the Committee. You're one of them... some mistakes never go away." The younger man's only response is to put his hand to the older man's chest, which causes the older man to basically turn into a human aneurysm, going livid aside from veins standing out on his face where there probably shouldn't even be veins. "Some do," the new arrival says, lowering the corpse to the ground. Cold!
Rosen is picking up Gary at home, rushing him into his convertible, despite Gary protesting that it's his vacation day. Gary's going on about the car show he's spending four days seeing, which segues into a discussion of American-built cars. "Like that one. That's terrible parking," he adds, because the big, black government SUV has just screeched to a halt, cutting them off, and armored agents burst out, guns leveled. "Get down," Rosen tells Gary, like the open-topped convertible is going to be any protection against the air pistols that the commandos are already firing. Let's hope Gary's mom isn't watching this out the front window.
Bill gets out of his car at Alpha HQ, clearly feeling so rotten that his fight-or-flight kicks in out of nowhere and causes him to crush his metal go-cup in one hand. Commandos are also there to greet him, but the leader of this team acts faux-friendly before they shoot him as well. Looks like they're using tranq darts, and it takes almost their entire arsenal to bring Bill down. "Alphas," the leader sighs before putting a few more into Bill's unconscious body for good measure.
Up in the office, Nina and Cameron are talking about movies, mainly Casablanca, in a not-so-subtle shout-out to the episode title. Suddenly they hear a scream from Rachel, and run into the hallway to find her already down. Nina yells at Cameron to run, and he pulls a few cool hyperkinetic moves to make a dash for it and leave Nina to her fate, but he's surrounded and taken down anyway. That would have been awkward to talk about on their date anyway.
When he wakes up, he's on a cot in a bare, white cell. It's one of what looks like many, in which the other Alphas and Rosen are also coming around. Gary's cell appears shielded, so he can't get any EM signals at all, and Rachel's is completely soundproofed. It's almost as if they're in a facility specially designed to hold Alphas. These Alphas, in fact, which has to give them a warm, fuzzy feeling. Rosen demands to know what's going on, and Cley's voice comes over the intercom saying he's out of luck, he's at Binghamton, and "You're gonna be here until I find out which one of you is the traitor." So it could be a while, then, since we all know none of them is. Right? I mean, right?
After the ads, Rosen is the first one removed from his cell, as the guards walk him past the other cells where he can see his people peering helplessly out the windows at him. Soon Rosen is sitting in front of Cley in a big, yellow-lit room, asking what this is all about. Cley rattles off a few names that Rosen recognizes as scientists who used to work for something called MK-Ultra. "They were your predecessors in a way. Recently deceased," Cley tells Rosen, and shows photos of dead, veiny, older guys including the one from the opening, clearly killed by an Alpha. Rosen points out that none of his people have that ability, but Cley says Rosen had the victims' contact info -- and someone called them all from Alpha HQ yesterday, with all the right security clearances. Ergo, Cley figures one of Rosen's group sold them out to Red Flag. Rosen protests all of this, but an Alpha watching this on surveillance monitors tells Cley through an earpiece that Rosen isn't telling him everything. "He doesn't like you," the Alpha adds, unnecessarily. No shit.
There's a slick transition to Cley's interview with Cameron, who says he doesn't know anything about it. Cley's Alpha lie detector backs him up. Cley points out that Red Flag has had Cameron kill before, using mind control, and Cameron admits that he can't rule it out. We'll call that one a draw.
Cut to Cley reading Nina's profile to her. Nina comments on Cley's rudeness, wearing sunglasses and all so she can't Push him. He brings up the Skylar thing, as an example of how Nina does whatever she wants. Like that's news.
Gary's defending his friendship with Anna, the leader of Red Flag. "We don't talk about work," he explains. There are signals going through this room, but Gary can only sense them, not read them, and he complains about how Cley is blocking them. Gary points out that Anna doesn't want to hurt people, but is only protecting Alphas, which probably isn't helping him much if he's trying not to come off as the Red Flag sympathizer in the bunch. He points out that Cley hurts people too. Unsurprisingly, the Alpha in the surveillance room can't read Gary at all, which probably isn't necessary because it's not like Gary can lie anyway.
, Cley plays Good Cop with Bill, telling him, "I know you're not the mole." "Oh, now you I can read. That was a lie," the Alpha chimes in on Cley's earpiece. Cley is trying to build a rapport with Bill, who isn't buying it, but is listening anyway.
Then it's Rachel's turn, who's digging herself a hole with her babbling before settling down and saying they're all afraid of exactly what happened today. "Ask her if she has a boyfriend yet," the Alpha chirps, getting up from his seat to go watch through the one-way glass. She can of course hear him once he gets there, and he calls a greeting through the mirror, saying it's Eric. "Cley said if I help out he'll get me out of this dump," he explains, and preemptively asks her out. Cley tries to get his investigation back on track, which Rachel calls a witch hunt. Cley says it's not of he's right, but Rachel points out that if Cley's wrong, "You're turning friends into enemies." They weren't such great friends to begin with, though.
So Cley goes back to his Alpha Eric, who's got nothing for him, other than that Hicks is too handsome. "Time to change the plan," Cley intones. Cut to all the Alphas being herded into a cafeteria-like room together so Cley can eavesdrop on their conversation. Gary says that he checked, and nobody but them accessed the MK Ultra files, so it has to be one of them. He adds that Cley suspects him for talking to Anna. Present tense, as it turns out, but he insists that he only told her about his new jacket. Bill cuts in and says Cley is leaving them to figure it out on their own. Cameron wonders, "What if we don't?" Cley's voice comes over the intercom, threatening to send them all to Building 7. "He can't do that," Rosen blusters. Apparently that's the Black Hole of Calcutta for Alphas, as if we needed that explained.
After the ads, everyone's getting kind of uptight, Bill more than anyone. He tells them that this tactic works every time: you put a bunch of suspects in a room and see who's calm. "It's usually the calm guy that's guilty," Bill says, with a pointed look at Cameron to go along with the episode title's not-so-subtle shout-out to an entirely different movie. Gary remarks that Bill's never calm, Rachel's always nervous, and Gary's agitated, so he figures the three of them can go. Alas, the door's still locked. Rachel brings up the fact that Cley is working with Eric Latrobe, so that Rosen and Nina can explain to Cameron how Eric reads people's faces, and used it to cheat at poker games until the team caught him. Like that's the worst behavior professional poker players ever engage in. After Cameron yells something at Eric, Rosen suddenly gets up and grabs at his own back, which he says is paining him. The others gather around him in concern as he agrees that they need to get out of here, giving Bill and Rachel significant looks. Rachel traces the letters "door code" on the table, and Rosen collapses into a chair right on cue.
In the surveillance room, Eric confirms to Cley that Rosen's pain is real, and soon a couple of doctors are in the room with them. With guards, of course. "Follow my lead," Cameron mutters to Bill, while the Binghamton staffers fuss over Rosen. Cley gives the order over the intercom to bring the others back to their cells, which they do. Soon Gary, Rachel, and Nina are back in their cells, but Bill braces himself in his door frame and refuses to move, even as he's getting tased. Now that's hardcore. Cameron knocks out his guard and goes to Rachel's door so she can sign the code to him. Probably wasn't such a great idea to have windows in those cells, Cley. Cameron punches in the code and Rachel tells him they're all the same. Soon Nina's out too, and Gary is as well, and with a well-timed Push from Nina, Cameron and Bill quickly have the rest of the guards down. Watching on the monitors, Cley orders a full lockdown, even as the Alphas return to the cafeteria to get Rosen, mowing down the guards and medics in there with the tranq guns they lifted off their guards. Rachel hears another guard coming, and Cameron icily bounces a tranq dart off the door right into his face, which was a pretty cool move. Soon the whole team is in the hallway, with Cameron and Bill wading through guards kung-fu style, until all the uniforms are down and Bill busts through the locked door with a flying Alpha-kick. thing we know, they're all outside, on the grounds. Bill rips through the chain link fence like it's a muslin curtain. Their escape is being witnessed by a man with a sniper rifle and night scope, who says, "Say the word. Who do I drop?" Oops, that wasn't part of the escape plan.
But the answer to his question is nobody, apparently, because Clay's standing behind the sniper, apparently unable to make up his mind who he should take down. Finally he calls him off. "Six assets, one traitor. I'm not a wasteful man. We'll adjust." Six fugitives now.
morning, Bill leads them all to one of those abandoned warehouses that Jack Bauer always used to clean terrorists out of on 24, this being one that he's already cleaned out, apparently. While Cameron secures the doors and Gary does a local scan, Nina argues they need to keep moving or split up to get away. But Bill insists that they're not leaving until they know who the traitor is (Gary helpfully rules out the UPS guy). Turns out they've all accessed the files except Cameron's, so that's no help. Rachel suggests Nina push everyone, but she can't push Gary, or herself. And Rosen says he himself can probably resist her too, after eight years of practice, and Bill could probably manage it too if he's running enough adrenaline. Rosen's back is actually still hurting, and suddenly Gary offers to call his friend Anna, the leader of Red Flag, and just ask her. Bill says he can manage this without mind control, and Rosen says so can he -- because he knows who the traitor is. Well, now he tells us.
Cley and Eric are driving through the city, Cley getting some coordinates sent to him and snapping at Eric for messing with the radio stations.
Back at the warehouse, Rosen is in no hurry to finger anyone, saying he cares about all of them and is trying to decide how to handle it. Gary says it wasn't him, and when the others agree that he doesn't lie, he kind of sidetracks things by saying he's working on it as a social skill, and then walks over to intercept a data stream. Rosen says he'd prefer to give the traitor a chance to confess, and suddenly Gary announces that Cley is less than twenty minutes away, thanks to a spy satellite that tracked them here. Rosen insists that all they can do is wait for the culprit to confess, and then he will try to protect him or her. Which must be terribly reassuring to all these people who've had plenty of chances to see how that normally works out.
Cley and a convoy of SUVs pull up in an industrial area and quickly find the beat-up car that the Alphas apparently stole to get here. Alas, there are dozens of warehouses around, but Cley isn't worried; they'll just search all the warehouses one by one. Eric offers to wait with the cars, but Cley refuses to let him. "Where's the trust?" Eric whines. Cley retorts, "You can tell what people are thinking. Who do you trust?" No answer from Eric, who has to join the armored agents in nothing but his shlumpy pants and sweatshirt. Jeez, Cley, at least give the guy a vest.
Inside the warehouse, the Alphas have fallen to bickering among themselves when Gary interrupts that he's hearing headset transmissions, and Cley's men will be finding them soon.
While walking between warehouses, Eric and Cley have a little character moment, Eric claiming that his downside is that being nervous makes him have to pee. Cley corrects, "Your downside is that you're a distrustful, depressed, miserable human being." Eric tells Cley that ignorance of other people's thoughts is one of the keys to human happiness. Cley responds with a completely irrelevant whine of his own, saying this gig was supposed to land him a gig in DC, but he's still stuck living in upstate New York. I'm sure there are plenty of folks who would prefer that.
Rosen announces that time's up, but he still isn't saying a name. Cameron figures he's bluffing, which is what I was thinking all along, but we will very soon find out that Rosen knows exactly who the mole is. "I'm sorry, Cameron," he says. It seems Rosen has learned from Gary about random cash deposits into a secret account Cameron has. Everyone starts looking at Cameron with expressions of shocked betrayal, like he isn't the new guy, while he stutters about how it's for his kid. And Rosen does something pretty out of character, walking up to Cameron and saying, "I should never have let you on this team in the first place. I should have sent him to Binghamton a long time ago." Cameron hauls off and punches Rosen, knocking him to the ground and causing everyone else to stand around in shock right up to the ads.
After the ads, however, we do a zoom-in on Bill's body to show he's extra-amped, and he attacks Cameron pretty hard. Nina tries to separate them while Rosen spits blood on the floor and Gary goes into panic mode, putting his hands over his ears and screaming at them to stop fighting. Bill's certainly stronger than Cameron, but he was also short-sighted enough to start this fight in an abandoned warehouse that also has lots of abandoned tools and building materials for Cameron to work use on him. As a result, the two are pretty evenly matched, Bill's brute strength against Cameron's speed and kinetic cleverness, but it doesn't last forever. Soon Cameron's on the ground, and Bill picks up a cinder block like it's made of Styrofoam (which of course it is). But before he can cave in Cameron's head, Cley's team blows the wall open and floods in, weapons drawn. Rosen tells Cley, "It's Hicks. I need to get Gary out of here." Which he does, while Nina yells at Cley that it's not Hicks. She seems pretty convinced.
Outside, Rosen rushes Gary into one of the parked DoD SUVs, blowing off Eric as he hops behind the wheel. Inside, Cley is still trying to secure the other Alphas when Rachel announces that Rosen is the mole. That blood Rosen spat out on the floor? It's not Rosen's blood type, which tells Rachel he's an impostor. She leads the way outside, just in time to see one of those SUVs peel out. Rachel's able to zoom in and see that Faux-sen is leaving with Gary.
And here's the real Rosen, waking up on an uncomfortable couch in an apartment, in his t-shirt and boxers, with medicine vials and syringes sitting on the table to him. He looks around the room, as best he can given that his glasses are on Faux-sen's face instead of his, and takes in the photos of his team, particularly his own, marked with precise facial measurements. Also, his hair is whacked off on the top, so how long has he been out? The whole season, do you think? Suddenly he hears a toilet flush in the bathroom, and quickly grabs the meds and a needle before playing possum. The killer-Alpha from the opening scene comes out of the bathroom, just as he gets a text reading "Take him out." Even with Rosen apparently unconscious, the killer makes a little speech for him before laying hands on Rosen. Rosen goes all veiny, and rather than put up with that a second longer than he has to, he reaches up and sticks the needle into the Alpha, who obligingly collapses while Rosen's face slowly goes back to normal. A moment later, Rosen exits the building in the killer's clothes, and after a quick look around, discovers that he is literally in the backyard of Alpha HQ. Convenient, because now he can run all the way there.
Inside, Faux-sen is rushing Gary towards his office, insisting that they need to delete the MK-Ultra files. Gary's confused by this, and doesn't notice that Faux-sen has turned away to prevent Gary from seeing that his face is starting to distort, like the Polyjuice Potion is wearing off. Gary does notice when Faux-sen throws up in a potted plant, though, and lectures him about it a bit until Faux-sen snaps at him to shut up. The real Rosen's going to be mad that he didn't get to say that himself. Faux-sen, who is having more and more trouble keeping it together, sets Gary up on his computer and asks how long it will take to wipe the files. Gary says a while, and gets to work while Faux-sen continues to struggle to choke back his bile. Right then is when the real Rosen walks in and tells Gary, "Step away from that man. He's not me." Well, clearly not. Even Gary should be able to see that Rosen's hasn't been himself the past few minutes.
After the ads, Gary looks between them, telling the real Rosen that his hair is too short, so he must be the fake. Rosen says Faux-sen must have cut it, either for skull-measuring or color-matching, but the important thing is that Faux-sen is an Alpha who is able to take on the appearance of others. Gary realizes it must be true from watching Faux-sen's face melting. Rosen tells his says it must be painful to hold another shape, and Faux-sen says in a completely different, British-inflected voice (that otherwise sounds eerily like Gary's, because why cast a whole voice actor for a few lines when Ryan Cartwright can just record them in his real accent?), "It's no picnic being you, that's for sure. All hunched up, pretending to be so damned understanding." He makes a grab for Gary, who says Faux-sen helped Red Flag kill the MK-Ultra guys. "You killed Freeman, Baxter, and Stenns?" Rosen says in astonishment. He asks why, and goes for the computer to find out what Faux-sen doesn't want him to see. But it just devolves into a scrum. Again.
The rest of the Alphas walk into the office and see Gary coming up the hallway, babbling about Rosen having a gun and being the mole. Rachel, however, takes one look at Rosen's (or Faux-sen's) shoes on Gary's feet and the jig is up. Bill helps Cameron pin him to a support pillar while he goes all face-melty again. In his British-Gary voice, he calls them the traitors, against their own kind. Just then the actual Gary pops out, perfectly fine, to give everyone an update: "I'm here! I'm the real me. He's the fake. He was the fake Rosen before. But the real Dr. Rosen is here now. And he's hurt his leg and he has bad hair." If nothing else, Gary seems to have mastered the inverted pyramid.
It's nighttime again as Rosen and Cley debrief each other in Rosen's office while Eric is hanging around for some reason. They seem to be getting along better now, as they agree that the shape-shifting Alpha was out to kill the MK-Ultra guys, erase the files, and let Rosen get blamed for it. Rosen figures it must have been "important enough for that morphogene to risk his life for it." Or maybe Faux-sen just wanted to kill someone who has words like "morphogene" at his fingertips. Eric exposits that the shape-shifter's in Building 7 now and Rosen responds to Eric with a very pertinent question: "Why exactly are you here?" Cley explains that Eric will soon be leaving Binghamton, so Cley thought he could help Rosen out once in a while. "Call it work release." Eric is stunned at Cley's sincerity, and tells Rosen he'd be happy to do even part-time or freelance. Rosen says he'll keep it in mind, and Eric's heart grows three sizes. He goes to wait in the car, and Cley warns him not to run. "Why would I run? I've got a job offer waiting," Eric says on his way out. So I guess we have a new recurring character. Cley sits down, and Rosen complains about Cley's treatment of his team, much as Faux-sen did earlier, so it's like Cley has to hear it from him twice. Cley feels bad, but not bad enough to actually apologize, pointing out that Rosen had a Red Flag mole. "If I hadn't acted quickly and decisively, you would have been dead or framed. Or both." "And I'm supposed to thank you for that?" asks Rosen, who after all saved his own ass without any help from Cley. Cley says he could, "Or you could worry about how Red Flag's gonna come at you . Because they will." With that, Cley leaves Rosen to his thoughts, which swirl uneasily around beneath his new Black & Decker haircut.
On his way out, Eric sticks his head into Rachel's office and says he'll call her before he darts out of sight. Nina claims she always thought Eric was cute, which I think Eric would see right through in a second. The two women join Bill and Cameron in the break room, with their bickering already in progress. Cameron is explaining that he pitched two perfect games in a row, making him statistically unique, and ignores Bill's ribbing that it was in the minor leagues. Even so, Cameron's earning twenty bucks an autograph at collectible shows, "and my shame is Tyler's college fund." Rachel's just glad the two dudes have made up. Gary joins the group to talk about the vacation days he's still owed and how they can use them to all go on a road trip to another car show in Detroit, so Bill can pick out a new car. "You drive an accountant's car," Gary teases. Bill teases back, and while he's pointing out that he doesn't get away with comments like Gary can -- like, only one of you is autistic, Agent Harken -- suddenly the camera zooms inside his body like it does when he's activating his Alpha power. This time, it zooms all they way inside his heart, where we get the quickest glimpse of what seems to be a glowing yellow diamond. Then we're back just in time to see Bill collapsing unconscious to the floor while the other Alphas crowd around him in concern, and Gary runs to get Rosen. The real one, let's hope, for Bill's sake.
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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