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By Amorgan

After the cop leaves, Max gets ready for work, then stops to drop off a paycheck with sick neighbor Theo. He's gotten much sicker, his wife says, and mentions that she took him to the hospital again. Max goes into the sickroom to visit Theo, and he tells her that he knows what he's got, and that the VA hospital is giving him "that medicine" that Mr. EO says is no good. Max tells him not to believe everything he hears on TV, and then speculates that Mr. EO is just a bored rich guy sitting in a "trick apartment," trying to scare everyone for fun. She is so hard, yo! Then she tells him that she'll see him at work tomorrow (ha). She stops to reassure Theo's wife that "guys are the weaker sex," (nice one, right in front of an impressionable six-year-old boy) and that Theo's just being a big baby, not dying of Balkan War Syndrome. If Max was a DJ, her name would be DJ Smuggy Smug.

Back in Mr. EO's apartment, Mr. EO and the bodyguard track down the surveillance video from the building door and watch Max on video stroll in. He zooms in on her ID tag with impossibly high-tech technology (hey, he's rich, it's the future. People can do anything when they're rich, and especially people from the future. For real. Wait and see) and tracks down the bike messenger service where she works.

In other parts of the city, Max rolls in to the bike center and is accosted by Sketch, who tells Max that he's been cheating on Natalie and that he needs Max's help. His cheat is threatening to tell Natalie all about their affair if he doesn't dump Natalie like last week's fish.

Max lambastes him for being arrogant, condescending, smug, self-serving, and lame, and I wonder how much James Cameron is going to have to flagellate himself before he lets me get on with my sci-fi action viewing. There are long, long minutes of Max talking down to Sketch, who acts like a total, rationalizing idiot. There are many gender stereotypes flying around. I don't want to think this way about men. I don't want to think this way about women. Stop it, James Cameron, and just send Linda Hamilton a nice card that says, "I'm sorry." Then get into private therapy and spare the rest of us your wife-cheating guilt!

About the time that Max asks Sketch what he needs her to do, Mr. EO is bribing Normal (Max's boss) for her name, home address, and hangouts. Normal warns Mr. EO that Max is trouble (all the while putting some gross, greasy pomade stuff on his yucky-yuck hair. EW!). Mr. EO throws Normal's warning to the wind and hightails it to the bar where Max and Original Cindy are playing foosball and debating the implications, both local and global, of Max helping Sketch get out of getting busted for cheating on Natalie. Mr. EO spots Max just as Max spots him. They exchange a few words, the subtext of which is, "I don't trust you but I really want to have sex with you," and then go for a walk. Oh, Mr. EO's name is Logan Kale. Max asks him how his wife likes being married to Mr. EO, referring to the woman and child she interrupted so rudely when brawling with his bodyguard. He tells her that Lauren (that's the woman's name) is one of his sources, not his wife or girlfriend. She's trying to testify against Edgar Sonrisa, and is being hunted by him, so she's holing up at his fine house until she can get into the witness protection plan. Max asks Logan what he's getting out of his altruistic journalism. He says his parents were well off (so he's a trust fund baby -- yow!), and he's all about blah blah blah altruismcakes, make the world a better place, help defeat the bad guys, give the people a voice, et cetera. Max throws some self-serving "I just like to go fast on my motorcycle" line at him, and then, just as the conversation turns to Max's "extraordinary athleticism," she is gone (poof) just like that. He looks up and notices a police hover-spy thingie, ostensibly the reason for her flight, and then we are launched into another craptastic commercial break.