It is the middle of the night and our girl Max is climbing out of the water onto a boat. She's wearing a leather outfit. Which isn't exactly what I would choose to swim in, but hey, whatever turns you on. There are a bunch of Bad Men walking around. You can tell they are Bad Men because they are smoking and talking about money and hanging out on a boat that is docked! Max sees one of the Bad Men leave a briefcase of money sitting out in the open. So she swipes the cash. 'Cause she's a bad, bad girl, but not as bad as the Bad Men, because she doesn't smoke. One of the Bad Men notices that the money is gone and demands of the other Bad Man where it is; he claims he left it right there.
We cut back to Max getting busted mid-heist by two Bad Men henchmen. And, you know, she's kind of a shitty thief. I mean, this is the second time in as many episodes that she has gotten caught halfway through a robbery. Good thing she's bionic and can take out anyone who catches her. So she, of course, swabs the deck with their butts, but not before mentioning that one of them is "kinda cute." Then she puts her leather backpack on both shoulders and dives off the side of the boat. In her leather outfit. As she looks back toward the boat, she sees that the Bad Men are fighting about the missing loot, and then they kill each other. Because that's what Bad Men do. By the way, this scene purportedly takes place in Seattle Harbor. Being from Seattle, I can tell you that no one calls anything the Seattle Harbor. The Sound? Sure. Lake Union? Fine. The Seattle Harbor? No.
Now we see the intro to Dark Angel, which I swear we did not see last time, because I would have remembered all those pictures of a Jessica Alba as a fetus. Oy.
The Private Dick is talking on the phone to some hapless halfwit whose wife is cheating on him with his mistress, or something, when he notices that Lydecker is standing in the room. Turns out the Private Dick is being blackmailed by Lydecker, a.k.a. Mr. Bad Guy. It seems their deal is that Lydecker will not rip out the Private Dick's fingernails anymore if he fills him in on Max's comings and goings. Which sounds like a fine deal to me. Mr. Bad Guy wants the Private Dick to be very clear about how important this girl is to him: he would peel every inch of skin from Private Dick's body if it would bring him one heartbeat closer to Max. He knows she's out there and eventually she's going to have to come up for air, and when she does, he wants to be there. Hey, Mr. Bad Guy? You were right to her last week, and you didn't even recognize her. You may want to re-think your little plan while you try to get a clue.
We then cut to Max popping a wheelie on her motorcycle. She likes to ride real fast on her motorcycle. And if you didn't know that before, you will now, because there are about eight different shots of it.
On to the bar, where all the bike messengers and their friends are gathered around watching some bike messenger chick do tricks on the bar. Which is something the Health department might want to look into. Original Cindy, Max, and her roomie check out the so-called scenery. OC really likes the chick doing the tricks, and Max announces trick chick "is all" Cindy's. Because she is generous like that. Or not, because she seems to want every other person in the room: "Bring me the hot boy over there. His friend's kind of working for me, too. And that brother over there in the corner is breaking my heart!" Hey, Max! Shut! Up! Yep, that works for me. The roomie asks Max whether she is running a fever, since she looks flushed. And then OC calls her out for "eyeing over every pair of pants that walks in." Word. Some random guy walks by without even looking at Max, who is all "Hey!" Max justifies this action to her friends by saying, "I'm just being friendly 'cause he's cute." OC calls her out again: "Will somebody correct my eyes? You've been laying out for the boys all night long." The roomie jumps in to add, "It's like you're in heat or something." Max looks startled by this assessment. Which is to say, she modified her pouty face to resemble the expression that we humans call "startled." OC tells her not to worry about it; if Max has an itch, she should go scratch. Then some scrawny pseudo-indie pop guy walks up to hit on Max. OC, in all her glory, informs him, "We're talking, bitch." I love her. The grungy guy (I'll call him Scrappy) asks Max if she comes here often. 'Cause that line is really original and always works on girls who are way out of your league. Max asks him what he wants to drink. OC ask , "You're heterosexual. Can you explain that to me?" Which, of course, she can't. Because only the casting director can. Max and Scrappy get their beers. And, wait. Wait. They're drinking Heineken in Seattle? What, all the microbreweries got toasted in the pulse? No Redhook? No Pyramid? Not even a Rainier? Huh. Before Max can drink her...um, Heineken, she gets paged. And runs off to jump on her motorcycle. She likes to ride real fast on her motorcycle. OC relieves Scrappy of the beers, while she fills him in on the fact that his date just bolted from the room.
As Max rides, the voice-over tells us that her roomie was right, and that she is in heat. Because they spiced up the genetic cocktail that is Max with some feline DNA. She's part cat? Oh, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. Right, right, suspend my disbelief. Max says that the addition of feline DNA explains why she can jump over a fifteen-foot fence and take out a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound linebacker with her thumb and index finger, but it also means that three times a year she is climbing the walls looking for some action. If just a dash of feline DNA can do all that, I'm sure glad cats don't have thumbs and index fingers. That would be scary. Anyway, Max is glad that the worst of it is over, and that now she just has to get through the twelve hours without doing something she'll regret. I hope she can just make it through the forty-five minutes, because I really don't want to watch that.
Captain EO is working with a physical therapist to regain his strength and, most likely, his ability to walk. Because nobody stays paralyzed in TV Land. Captain EO is arguing with his physical therapist about pushing himself. Captain EO is also wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. Wait. Is he supposed to be an anti-capitalist fighter who wants the masses to rise up? Cause I didn't get that with his anti-corporate, anti-government fighting-for-the-little-guy streaming pirate video broadcasts. But now that I see Che, all is clear. Anyway, Max shows up to fill him in about what happened on the boat. Something about money, dirtbags, and dead dirtbags. Blah blah blah. And then we finally find out that the whole boat scene had to do with those Bad Men who smuggle immigrants and then kill them or something. Remember? From last episode when he gave her the cat statue back? Good continuity. Max wants to know if Captain EO found out anything about Zack. But no, not yet. Because Project Manticore was a covert operation and these things take time and patience is a virtue. Max tells him to blow it out his ass and to call her when he has something for her.
Then Max gets back on her motorcycle. She likes to ride real fast on her motorcycle. Last call isn't for another hour, so Max heads back to pick up Scrappy from the bar. When she walks ,in he starts spouting some quasi-Shakespeare: "Do my eyes deceive? Or is this the woman of my dreams?" Max wisely tells him not to talk. Scrappy is really loaded and Max shoves him on the bed so that she can go voice-over in the bathroom. She nonsenses about how she should send him (whose name, we find out, is Eric) home, and then something about how she's not leaving the room and then she leaves the room anyway. We, the viewing audience, are then treated to a really gross shot of Scrappy passed out, face up and totally naked save for a strategically placed pole. At which point I had to stab my eye out with my swizzle stick. Max doesn't notice that he's unconscious until she's on top of him. When she finally notices she takes the words out of my mouth, "There is a god."
We return from all eight commercials to hear Scrappy singing the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah in the shower. Classy guy. Max's roomie informs Max that "there is only one word for [her], and it starts with an S ends with a T and has an L and U in the middle." And as my sister-in-law pointed out, being told you're a slut first thing in the morning is pretty much grounds for kicking your roommate out immediately. Max tells her roommate to shove it up her self-righteous ass, and that Scrappy was too drunk to do anything, but not to tell him because it might break his heart. Ego much? I was just going to feel sorry for Scrappy when he comes out of the shower in a towel and is all, "Good morning ladies." And then tries to ingratiate himself with the roomie, who is having none of it, heads out the door and tells him he better not be wearing her towel. Word. Scrappy hugs Max and says, "You must be tired, baby." She rolls her eyes and goes along with it, but announces she has to leave for work and that he should let himself out.
Back at the bike messenger center the Fake Jamaican guy babbles about not tolerating the wickedness of Babylon and not wanting to stick his head in the sand when confronted with porn and whatnot. So here's a question: If he's a super-religious Rasta, where are his dreads, why is he living in what the Rasta consider to be Babylon, and why is he delivering their packages? Whatever. Normal doesn't understand a word he is saying, so he gets a translator to tell him that the Fake Jamaican doesn't want to deliver porn anymore. Normal points out that it is his job, but for some reason stops short of firing him. Max has a package of motor oil or lube or something waiting for her. I guess it's a hard to get commodity Post-Pulse. OC asks her where it came from and then grabs the card which reads, "Your bed is my everywhere. I love you, Eric." Then she wants to know if Eric is Gilligan from the other night. Hee! I love her! Max tells her nothing happened. OC is all, "He slept in your bed, but you didn't let him hit it? Then you did all right, boo! That lube's expensive." I'm sure the boyfriend will understand if I date OC instead of him, right? Their conversation is interrupted by Captain EO coming in over the television, which for some reason is always on. He sure wastes a lot of his sixty seconds telling people about how the broadcast will last exactly sixty seconds and cannot be traced and whatnot. I'm just saying. Anyway, he tells the world about the Bad Men on the boat that Max helped get rid of. They are such a dynamic duo, no? Saving the world and looking good doing it.
Max gets paged and we see her riding through the streets of Post-Pulse Seattle. It kind of looks like the set of Les Miserables to me. She barrels into Captain EO's apartment with the stupidest line I have ever heard outside of a Dennis Rodman movie. She says...oh, I can hardly type it. She says, "If you're blowing up my pager it better be major." Where, oh where, did the writers get that line? Is Mr. T. taking a turn at script writing? Oy. My head hurts. So Captain EO paged her because he found out something major about the woman who picked up Max during her escape from the Manticore base. He got the records of where everyone was transferred after an "Air Force base" closed in Gillette, Wyoming in May of '09. The base didn't have many pilots, but did have a lot of OB/GYNs, nurses and teaching specialists who were transferred around the country after the base closed. Max finally catches on that this Air Force base was actually Project Manticore. Among the transfers is a dietitian named Hannah Sukova. And if you don't remember, Hannah was the name of the woman who helped Max escape. She was transferred to the Sedro Island Air base. Max is determined to go find her. She figures that Mr. Bad Guy has already found her and that she is in danger. Captain EO warns her that she may blow everything and not find the rest of her cohorts if she isn't careful. She tells him that she is at good as being patient as he is. Then they look meaningfully at each other for awhile. Did I mention that he is running a G4 Cube? My iBook has turned green with envy.
Max's roommate is teaching Japanese lessons to kids. 'Cause she may be bleached and all, but she's smart in that Post-Pulse street smart New Depression sort of way. James Cameron's really avoiding those stereotypes. Yessiree, he sure is. As the kids leave, one of the kids asks if she can pay with a bag of coffee instead of money. The roomie gratefully takes the coffee, because she "hasn't had a real cup of coffee in ages." What? Did Starbucks go out of business after the Pulse, too? That makes no sense at all. But I probably shouldn't open that can of worms. Anyway, Max is preparing for her road trip to Sedro Island. Scrappy barges into the apartment and tells Max that she is "even more beautiful than he remembers." She joins me in an eye roll and demands to know how much about last night he remembers. He says he remembers enough to know it was a night he'll never forget. Max's roommate asks him how he managed to score all that lube, and he says that it's because he's well connected: his uncle is more or less in charge of the Sector Police. Max's ears perk up and Scrappy tells her that he can come and go as he pleases through the checkpoints which, I guess, surround the city. So she takes him with her on her motorcycle. She likes to ride real fast on her motorcycle. But her hair never moves. They must have some wacky-ass Aqua Net in 2019.
Scrappy clings to Max as she rides real fast with no lights on. He thinks it would be a good idea to turn her lights on. She informs him that she can see in the dark. Oh right, feline DNA. As they approach a checkpoint he starts to get shifty, and tries to get her to go back to some hotel they passed. She calls him out about his uncle, and he admits that his uncle works for the sector police, but as a janitor. D'oh! Good think Max can just crash through the checkpoint as she pops a wheelie on her motorcycle. I was going to say something about why she bothered bringing Scrappy along in the first place, but then I realized that she needed him to take the bullets that the security guards fire at her as she scoots past. Good planning ahead.
So Max and Scrappy hit the pier, and she asks him nicely to watch her keys and her pager. Except it wasn't at all nicely. She once again dives off into the water in her leather suit and leaves Scrappy to fret on the pier.
Max emerges on Sedro Island and uses her bionic powers to spy on some woman in her house. She recognizes the woman as Hannah and rushes up to introduce herself as "the girl [Hannah] found on the road that night." They sit down to chat about the past, and Max asks her if she knew what or who she was when she picked her up. "I knew you were a prototype," Hannah replies. How do you make a prototype like Max? Sugar and spice and a dash of cat. Hannah said that she knew something was going on that night because of the sirens and the lights. They were told it was a drill, but she overhead one of the guards say it was an escape. When she saw Max in the haircut and the government-issue hospital gown, she just put two and two together. We get some flashbacks of the escape and Hannah's rescue, so everyone who watched the presidential debate instead of the premiere can realize that they didn't miss so much. Hannah apologizes for not staying with Max that night, but the area had been sealed off and she couldn't make it back. Blah blah blah. Max doesn't care, because she's real tough and they "were trained to keep moving in enemy territory." Whatever flashbacks. Hannah stops mid-sentence to tell Max that she is "so beautiful." Max can't take a compliment for shit and says, "It's in the genes." Oh she is so put-upon. Hannah gets up to phone in late to work and Max looks. Well, Max looks like she always looks. She only has two facial expressions, you know. Maybe it's in the genes, too.
Captain EO pages Max, but Scrappy answers the page and introduces himself as Max's boyfriend and demands to know who he is talking to. Captain EO totally ignores his testosterone-driven hissyfitting and asks him where he is. And, of course, Scrappy has no clue, because Scrappy is simple. You can tell by his haircut. Captain EO figures it out anyway, and tells Scrappy the plan.
Max is asking Hannah about the mothers at Project Manticore. Hannah says that she had very little contact with them because they were constantly monitored and kept separate from the staff. Max "poor me"s: "Oh, so the little science projects they were carrying would go according to plan? And I bet they did it for money." Yes, Max, we know you would win any dysfunctional family contest you were in, but still, shut. Up. Hannah stands up for the moms and said that most of them were young and had no idea what they were getting into. Max wants to know if Hannah knew her mom at all, which Hannah denies. Max pouts. But she can't help it. Her lips are stuck like that. Max prattles about moms and babies and her rough childhood and Hannah looks distraught, especially after Max opens a music box. 'Cause music boxes are the universal symbol for a sad childhood and/or never knowing your mom. Didn't you know? Anyway, Max then turns around to call Hannah out for telephoning Lydecker to let him know she was there. You see Max is super-street smart and she knew that the "calling in late to work" thing was a farce. I knew it was a farce, too, because who gets to just call in late to work? No one, so Hannah was obviously selling Max out to Mr. Bad Guy. Max and Hannah split the scene as we see all sorts of big scary paramilitary equipment rushing towards them.
Max runs through the field and totally doesn't help Hannah at all. I mean, I guess I would be a little reticent to help the woman who had just sold me out to the Bad Men, but come on now, you're bionic; just pick her up and run. It has to be faster. The life you save may be your own, Max. Captain EO still has Scrappy on the phone who is giving him a blow-by-blow of the action and filling us all in that he "can be counted on in a pinch." Captain EO joins me in a loud snort. Max and Hannah run through the woods some more while Captain EO does some techie stuff. Max and Hannah get trapped on a bridge and just when I think they're going to 007 off the dam, Captain EO hacks into the walkie-talkie signal and throws the Bad Men off the path. Max then grabs Hannah and slides down some wire that is just hanging there. That didn't look very safe at all. Anyway, Hannah and Max head for the shore to make a break for the mainland. They find a boat, but even Max can't get it started. Luckily, Scrappy shows up in a big boat to rescue them. 'Cause behind every great woman there are two men saving her behind. Or one man and a Scrap.
Back on shore, Max gets a much-anticipated break up speech from Scrappy. He's really into her and all, but they are very different people. He hopes Max won't be too broken up. She isn't. I'm sparing you the exact dialogue, cause it's really unbearable.
Back at the space-age bachelor pad, Captain EO gives Max some phony travel documents so Hannah can leave the country. Then they have another in a long series of conversations where they pretend that they aren't attracted to each other even though they really are. We find out Captain EO is scared of heights and has never been to the Space Needle. Just in case those are important facts for later or something. Not that I have insider information or anything.
Max rides real fast on her motorcycle to meet Hannah on some dock. She gives her the documents and some money. Which, of course, Hannah refuses to take and then ends up taking anyway. Max talks about how she can take care of herself and how there is someone there who needs her. Who? Who? Captain EO? Didn't he just save your ass and not the other way around? Who needs you, Tough Girl? Anyway. Hannah confesses that she knew Max's mother. She wasn't like the others. Seven months into her pregnancy, she tried to escape because she didn't want to give Max up. When she was full term, they had to strap her down and then put her under in order to induce labor. Then we get a really nice shot of a way-too-old baby that is supposed to be a newborn Max, only it looks like the kid got puked on. Seriously, did they just tell the makeup artist that newborns look gross, so he or she just doused the baby in (I hope) fake puke? That's not right at all. Max's mom was put into a psychiatric hospital after her birth and Hannah never saw her again. Max attempts to look thoughtful, but settles for pouty. She sits on top of the Space Needle to try and figure out what people mean by "a range of emotion."