As the camera zooms in on our heroine, the camera jumps back, startled. What was that? The camera sniffs gingerly around the scene, trying to get a new whiff of the scent. It slowly creeps up as it realizes that yes, yes. That's the smell of a serious shout-out. Woo hoo! Want to hear it? I thought so. Max is in the bathroom of her squat and realizes that she is out of toothpaste. She starts ranting about how she can barely remember a time when you could walk into a store and the shelves would be lined with products. If you wanted toothpaste, you went out and bought some toothpaste. Kendra, the roommate, jumps up to offer her a replacement toothpaste concoction of baking soda and peppermint oil. And then (drum roll please) Max says, "That's what I don't get about this whole economic breakdown thing. There's a huge toothpaste shortage, but you can buy peppermint oil." Ta dah! That is a huge shout-out to a discussion we've been having in the forums about how, say, this show makes no fucking sense. Ever. Like how the couriers drink Heineken all the time, yet coffee is some hot commodity. Or how Max buys Captain EO a grapefruit for his birthday and he's excited. I mean, would you be excited about a grapefruit? Well, I guess if the Captain gave me a grapefruit I'd be excited. Anyway. Major shout-out. Thanks, writers! Now, back to our regularly-scheduled crap.
Kendra has scored some temp job translating documents for a Japanese doctor, and she doesn't know how to spell polymerase. So she asks Max. Who gives her a mini-lecture on recombinant DNA and the role of enzymes. Kendra and I stare at Max for awhile. Kendra calls her a goofball. I am thinking Log. Log. Log. Log. She's that good an actor. Wouldn't you rather be watching Ren and Stimpy, too? Max peers at the papers Kendra is working on. Gene resequencing. Manipulation of RNA nucleotides. Kendra says that the Good Doctor, Tanaka, took a crack baby and manipulated his genes until he was a child genius. Max is intrigued, because if the Good Doctor can fix a kid with "the IQ of broccoli," he can certainly take care of her seizures. She asks if she can read the papers before Kendra leaves for the conference where the papers will be presented. And, writers, perhaps in the episode you can explain to me how Max knows so much about genetics. I have yet to see a flashback of the small soldiers in chem lab. Maybe if you are genetically enhanced, you have access to a sort of collective unconscious of genetic information. From the cradle, you know all about codons and telemeric degradation and gene sequencing. But I guess that would mean Max and Dolly the Sheep have more in common than their acting ability.
Max drops Kendra off at the conference and asks if there's anyway Kendra can get her in to the hotel "to score some towels." Kendra says no, but she'll be sure to get some towels if anyone asks her to shower with them. I felt I had to write that line down, because I actually chuckled and that has never happened before with this show. Max sees herself in the crack-baby-turned-prodigy. So she heads for Captain EO's to see if he can whip up some phony credentials to get her into the conference.
Captain EO is having a rough day. He is just rolling along, minding his own business, when the writers decide he has to wipe out in his wheelchair just as Max lets herself in. Bad writers! Don't torture the Captain! Captain EO shuts the door so Max can't see him sprawling on the floor. He struggles to get himself back in the chair, and manages to get himself settled just as Max comes barging into the room. I guess they didn't teach her about knocking at Manticore. Captain EO is justifiably grumpy after all this, and he is not too into Max and her tight shirt and lip gloss and over-processed hair. Oh, wait. That's me. Max wants her credentials, and Captain EO gets them for her, but he refuses to go see the Good Doctor give a talk on "pie in the sky" theories about human blueprint reengineering. He's really grumpy and more or less kicks Max out the door. Captain EO is coming to his senses. Finally.
The creepiest thing about the opening credits is the spine on the fetus. It's just all wrong.
Hey, did you know that the courier operation was called Jam Pony? Me neither. Max is at work, but she is whipping up a fake cold faster than you can say, um, Log in order to get over to the conference. Normal is letting her get away with it, too. Captain EO calls to apologize for being a grump-ass. Max accepts his apology and then splits the scene to attend the conference in a Contempo Casual tight khaki pantsuit, ironed hair, and a whole tube of lip gloss. I guess there is no shortage of either clothing or lip gloss, despite the depressed economy. As soon as she spots the Good Doctor, Max rushes over and stands directly in front of the people he's talking to and introduces herself. Hey, Max, maybe the Good Doctor can retroactively create some decent manners for you too. She is jumping out of her pantsuit to impress the guy with her blah blah blah blah entron codon plasmid-cakes. The Good Doctor just looks at her and nods until he gets called away to present his paper. Kendra, who is working at the conference in oh-so-appropriate go-go boots and purple boa, notices Max and snots that it was obviously her rich boyfriend who got her in. Max and I shout, "He's not [her] boyfriend," and Max tells Kendra that she is a reporter named Rachel Glasser.
The lecture begins with a slide of the crack baby, Jude, all lubed and tubed and hooked up to machines because he's a crack baby and can't breathe on his own. But, wait, he can now! And he can walk! And talk! And play chess! And speak in Japanese, French, Spanish, and English! What a Good Doctor. The audience sits back to enjoy Jude's skills at the piano while Max has some serious flashbacks. Like the Good Doctor, Lydecker tried to teach them that there were no limits. But he tried to drown them, too. Bad Lydecker. Max voice-overs that the kids at Camp Manticore were frightened little campers who were too frightened to take out the head counselor, no matter how many of them he shot, autopsied, or attempted to drown. Lydecker is not a good surrogate father. Lydecker is an evil man who should get on line for a vasectomy. Lydecker is just plain bad. Lydecker is sitting down to Max at the lecture. What will our intrepid girl reporter do now?
At intermission, Lydecker hits on Max. I guess she doesn't have an Electra complex like the rest of us, 'cause she just looks skeeved. Or maybe she's confused because her hearing is doing this weird underwater-filter-through-a-can thing. There's another item for her wish list for the Good Doctor! Lydecker introduces himself, and Max stands there and stares at him. Like a log. And finally makes her excuses and walks away. She is tripping off the walls with her Camp Manticore flash-card flashbacks when Kendra comes up and asks if that guy (Lydecker) was hitting on her. Kendra says something really uninteresting about old men and testosterone and "banging the gong" and, oh Kendra, go shower with someone already. Max wanders off back to the lecture and sits down right to Lydecker, because she likes to live life on the edge, dontcha know. The dramatic irony is killing me here. Lydecker starts telling her about his work with "gifted children," and then some banter ensues where everything Max says is laden with hidden meaning and Lydecker tries to look down her shirt. Dirty old men, what a hoot! Lydecker says something about the genetic flaws in his gifted children, and Max looks despondent. Well, like a despondent log.
As the lecture starts up again, the Good Doctor asks Lydecker to stand up, and asks everyone in the audience to point and laugh at Mr. Four Eyes. Okay, no. The Good Doctor tells Lydecker that with his groundbreaking recombinant technology, Lydecker wouldn't have to wear glasses any more. But, you know, Lydecker's vision can't be that bad, because he totally gives Kendra the googly-eye while he's standing with his glasses off. The Good Doctor continues talking about all the good work he can do with his gene therapy, while Max catches sight of a gun, right before the lecture is invaded by a gang of well-coiffed yet self-righteous terrorists known as the May 22nd Movement who came to liberate the crack baby from the Good Doctor. Can you see where this is going? I can, and it ain't pretty. Lydecker grabs his gun, which is not at all in a holster, but is, instead, in the outer pocket of his jacket. I mean, good grief, there are children around. Anyway, Lydecker hands the gun to Kendra, because he thinks she won't get searched.
Back at Jam Pony HQ, Normal is doing a hackneyed Rodney Dangerfield-style rant, and Herbal and Original Cindy and Sketchy are playing make-believe lunch (no, I won't elaborate, it's too stupid), when they are interrupted by a special news bulletin talking about the hostage situation at the conference. Herbal spouts some quasi-Rasta crap about how Jah has a plan for everything, so it's all good all the time, even when it's a hostage situation and people are going to die. OC and I opine that that's a pretty wack philosophy. At the Halls of Justice, the news bulletin explains that the May 22nd Movement gets its name from their hero the Unabomber's, birthday. John Darius leads the May 22nd Movement and since Captain EO interviewed him a few years earlier, he decides to head down to the hotel to help the police negotiate with the hostages. 'Cause that makes a whole lot of sense. And if the Unabomber was your idol, wouldn't you be holed up in a one-room, tin-roofed, sans-toilet shack in Northern Idaho mailing letterbombs and exuberantly prolific fifty-page single-spaced diatribes to various government officials and not charging around the countryside with over-gelled hair and submachine guns? Just asking.
Back at the hotel, the hostages are all mouthing off to the terrorists. Seems they are concerned about the crack baby because he has become a poster boy for an amoral and coldly technological world. They're going to find him a family so he can grow up happy and normal and not at all remember the day he was kidnapped and held at gunpoint for several hours. It's about this point that the storyline really falls apart. Because as stupid as that bit of logic is, it just gets stupider. I envision the writers on the show talking in a heavy Scottish brogue, calling up to James Cameron like Scotty from Star Trek, saying, "I can't hold this plot together, man! The storyline is just too weak! Abandon all efforts and just have Max run around in hot pants again!" Oy. The police call to negotiate for the hostages. Hey, is Logan's friend the only police officer in Seattle? Seems like it. The May 22nders want transportation and safe passage for them and "the child known as Jude." Is it an amoral and cold technocratic thing to name children or something? Logan's police officer tells them that it will take more than an hour to arrange that, but John Darius says that the first hour is already up and he hangs up the phone. Then he and a terrorist named Terrence grab the Good Doctor, escort him to the roof, and push him off. Goodbye, Good Doctor. If this were ER, the Good Doctor would be taken to the hospital where he worked, and the entire staff would gather around and try to resuscitate his dead body for hours and hours at the expense of the other patients, and then the waiting room would explode. But it's not. So the Good Doctor just gets tossed off the roof to prove a point. I think I'm bored.
OC, Sketchy and Herbal get their five minutes of screen time by loitering around the hotel and looking at the police activity. I mean, not to sound like Normal, but do these people work? Herbal is continuing with his Rasta lessons, saying it's all good even though the Good Doctor was tossed off the roof right in front of them. OC tells him to lay off the spliff. Isn't she swell? Captain EO has finally wheeled himself down to the hotel and gets his friend's attention. The officer tells him that Rachel Glasser is still unaccounted for and that the military has taken over the operation. Captain EO says that he knows John Darius and that he can probably help. Back inside the hospitality suite, Lydecker gets the gun back from Kendra, and Max has some more flashbacks. The military is not too keen on letting Captain EO in on the operation, but then Logan explains that he's a Captain, and thus outranks the Lieutenant and will do whatever the hell he wants. Or something like that. Captain EO tells the lieutenant another thing or two about hostage negotiation and then gets on the horn to John Darius. One of the May 22nders is having doubts about the wisdom of killing a hostage an hour. John Darius asks if she's doubting him, and she says yes. Before he can bitch-slap her disloyal ass, the phone rings, and Captain EO is on the line. He tell John Darius that the military has taken over the operation and that they are just dying to charge in and get him, hostages be damned. John Darius says that a military massacre would be good for stirring up public opinion in favor of his cause. Yeah, that worked really well at Waco, dontcha know. Captain EO points out that that won't fly, and tells him that he promises to get his story out if John Darius lets the hostages go free. John Darius and I snort in unison.
The crack baby-cum-child genius is staring blankly at Max. He has been staring blankly for this entire episode, actually. Even when the Good Doctor was dragged off to be killed, the kid just stared blankly. Maybe wooden acting is a side effect of gene manipulation. Kendra takes the kid off to get some water, and Lydecker moves into to hit on Max some more. But Max and I are both increasingly annoyed with this storyline, and we both ignore his neo-Fascist, social Darwinist rantings about toughening up children, preparing for life's troubles, strengthening the species, and wishing he could speak digitally. Oh, huh. Lydecker is bleeding from a large head wound, and I have no idea why. It wasn't in any other scene. Writers? Continuity much? John Darius has decided that Captain EO has a point. He's willing to let the women (but not the child!) go if the Captain will roll himself on into the hotel as a good-faith gestures. Captain EO of course agrees, even though the military won't guarantee his safety. Max of course won't leave the Captain or the kid in the hotel, so as she and the other women are led outside, she fakes a sprained ankle, takes out the guard, and sneaks back into the room.
So Logan has come to save the day, but the terrorists have parked his hot wheels in a corner to Lydecker. While Captain EO eyes up Lydecker's Genedyne credentials, Lydecker mumbles about Captain EO's chivalry and the fact that he must be a little nuts to get wrapped up in something like this. I think the blood loss is getting to him, because he's really just rambling about nothing. Max sneaks into the AV room of the hotel's conference center in order to spy on the goings-on. As the women flee the hotel, OC, Herbal, and Sketchy are still loitering outside. I always wondered who hung around police lines trying to get a better look, and now I see it's actors who should really get back to their day jobs. Except for OC. She rocks. OC spots Kendra as she is being escorted out of the hotel. Kendra tells OC that Max is still inside. OC and Sketchy can't believe their ears, and Herbal decides that it is definitely not all good. It's all bad. I guess he converted to Catholicism.
Everything goes from bad to worse, as the military decides to sharpshoot the terrorists who brought the hostages down and then storm the building by landing people on the roof. John Darius is not amused and is, like, totally shocked that the military doesn't keep their word. 'Cause the military's known for their forthrightness and honesty. John Darius is so upset by the military's action that he decides to chuck Captain EO off the roof. Wait, wait. What's that noise? It's the sound of thousands of little hearts going break break break at the thought of Captain EO no longer being on the show. But don't worry, girls, James Cameron knows where his ratings come from. Up on the roof, the terrorists are wheeling Captain EO over to the edge. And there's Max sneaking up after them. What's she doing with that rope? Oh, she's attaching it to a carabiner that just happens to be lying there. Now she's tying it around her waist while the terrorists hoist Captain EO onto the edge of the roof.
Now Max is running all Lindsey Wagner-style (minus the hot '70s music) as the terrorists toss Logan off the roof. She dives off after him and he lifts his hand to grab hers, because I guess he knew she was up there. She grabs him and manages to break through a window just as the terrorists shoot through the rope. And where do she and the Captain land? The bed. 'Cause that's where the ratings are. Some non-funny banter follows where Captain EO doesn't even thank her for saving his life, and instead they snark at each other about what the other is doing there and who was supposed to be saving whom. And then they decide that Max could go save the kid. And then Max and her sensible pantsuit sneak out the door. Whatever.
The lieutenant is walking around the military's HQ, singing the evil military song: Full Breach of the Facility! Hostages be Damned! Civilians are Expendable! La la la la la la la la! Max busts back into the AV room and starts a nature filmstrip to distract the terrorists. They fall for it and send two men to get her. As they shoot at her, she does a back flip, and they shoot each other. Ha! That'll learn you! She runs off down the hall. The terrorists realize that the military is making their move, so they grab the kid and bust a move. Lydecker decides it's finally time to use his gun, so he points it at John Darius, but before he can get a shot off, he gets bonked on the head by another terrorist. What happened to all your hardened military instincts, Lydecker? Didn't you see that guy standing there? I know I saw him there. Max appears on the scene just as Lydecker is about to be taken out by the terrorists. She kicks them off of him, and all the hostages make a break for it. I think there was supposed to be some inner turmoil for Max in that scene -- you know, where she saves the life of her arch-nemesis -- but you really couldn't tell. Log log log log. Max finds John Darius and the crack baby and kicks John Darius's ass. Then she pop-psychologizes the kid and tells him he doesn't have to be brave anymore, and he should let out all those nasty negative emotions. I think that scene was supposed to be touching, but it was like two wood chips interacting. Max carries him out the back door.
The military finally shows up, but all the terrorists are already down for the count. They are upset that Max took all their fun, so they decide to beat John Darius about the head for awhile. 'Cause that's always fun. Lydecker gets up from the little nap he took on the floor and gives the soldiers a lesson in due process. If a man is dead, he can't testify. End of lesson. Lydecker wants to know where the crack baby is. The soldiers say he is unaccounted for. Of course, Captain EO has him. He is going to find a nice home for him. On a farm somewhere. Where he can have a puppy and a soccer mom. Maybe he'll live on the same farm as the little girl Max rescued from the dirty prison warden. Or with Hannah. Or with the seventy-two other people that Max and EO have sent off to live somewhere. They could start a commune. OC, Herbal, and Sketchy are still hanging around. Max comes and gives OC a hug and tells her it's all good. Herbal decides Catholicism is too darn depressing and reverts back to Rasta.
Max once again barges into the Halls of Justice without so much as a knock on the door in order to thank Captain EO for negotiating the release of the women. The Captain then thanks her for saving his life. Then they talk about Lydecker, and how Max saved him, and how Lydecker would be disappointed that she did not exploit her tactical advantage over her enemy. She says she had to save him, because she couldn't let him die when he was the only one who understood what was happening to her body. Then she says she's bummed, 'cause she forgot to steal towels from the hotel. I'm bummed because I just wasted an hour of my life watching this show, but whatcha gonna do?