Damn, Jessica Alba's lips are BIG. Um, anyway. This episode opens in a market of some kind -- there's boxes of fruit, there's aprons, meat lockers, and OH SHIT a girl in the walk-in freezer. She's young, frozen, of Asian-American descent, and sporting a bar-code tattoo on her neck. Once discovered in the freezer, however, she bolts. That's actually when we see the bar-code tattoo -- when she runs out into the street. She's got super-fast vision, and super-fast running abilities. And that's what we know before we cut to commercials.
Back from commercials. Jam Pony. Herbal asks Normal for a day off. He wants to attend a concert celebrating Bob Marley's birthday. Normal tells him to go to hell, then declares that he'd like to take off June 12 to celebrate Dubya's birthday (um, that's now-President Bush, a.k.a. Shrub), since he was a visionary et cetera. Ahem. I'll leave that one alone. No need to fan the fires of an already-ugly political scene out there. Normal then proceeds to make Sketch model some dumb-ass new safety jacket/uniform, and declares that Jam Pony is about to be purchased by an Indian man with a very long name. So the whole place is getting a new coat of paint, and the messengers are going to wear digital tracking devices, and, of course, safety jackets. I'm bored.
Elsewhere in the city, the renegade Manticore girl is on a pay phone. She identifies herself as Brinn (what the hell kind of name is that?), and tells the person she's talking to that she knows she's not supposed to make contact, but she had too close a call with Lydecker recently, and she needs help. She arranges a meeting time, and runs off. The suspense is taut like a folded wool blanket. Which is to say, not at all.
Cut to Lydecker talking to someone in some very romantic light. Two men, golden sun, glistening water. They speak of the Vatican. There's some politics involved, and the man who is not Lydecker asks Lydecker to help, and it seems that one of Lydecker's kids will assassinate the troublemaker in Italy. Then the two men embrace passionately. Their hands rove, hungry, under one another's jackets, then shirts. Their eyes lock lustfully as Lydecker sinks to his knees and -- ah, I'm just joking. It's really just some banter about funding, Manticore, and the missing kids. Too bad, really. Gay porn can be so hot. Lydecker says he's closing in on one of the kids. Grrr, tiger. Maybe there will be some porn later on in the show, huh?
And speaking of porn, has anyone noticed how really big Jessica Alba's lips are? I mean, have you really looked? Have you looked at a frozen frame of Jessica Alba not riding a motorcycle through dark city streets, yellow sunglasses serving only to emphasize how entirely, ridiculously huge this girl's lips are? I mean, I'm surprised she can open her mouth. Sometimes I wish she couldn't open her mouth. Jessica Alba, if you're reading this, I'm sorry for making so much fun of your lips, but it's my job. And your lips, while kissable like big, soft marshmallow pillows, are outlandish. So the motorcycle speeds through the city streets, while Jessica Alba sits atop a stationary bike with a big-ass fan blowing her hair around. At least they started using the fan, you know? That was bad in the first episode. She's going home, she's home. She hollers for Kendra, finds a note saying Kendra's out getting some, then sees that her house has been broken into. Ew! It's Zach, all bloody! Ew! He tells about how he was ambushed by Lydecker's storm-troopers when he was meeting Brinn in an alley. They got Brinn, and they hit Zach with the car. So now he's all bloody, and he falls over in Max's arms.
Okay, so back from an excruciating commercial break, Cap'n EO's bodyguard (whose name escapes me right now, I hate to say) is trying to change Zach's bandage, but Zach is throwing a super-attitude force field around himself, thus preventing anyone from liking him or being nice to him. Max tells him that the Cap'n and his bodyguard are cool, then asks what happened to Brinn. Zach creates so much static with his unbearable attitude that I can't quite make out what he's saying. Suffice it to say that there's some squabbling, there's some chests puffed out, including Max's (y'all get your hands out of your drawers. It's a metaphor), and then there's the idea put forth by the Cap'n that Brinn is still in Seattle. So Max wants to get her back, Zach doesn't, and the Cap'n wants to help Max. Duh.
And cut to the Jam Ponies grousing about work. Herbal is hiding out at the bar with O.C. because if he makes any more runs before noon, Normal will name him employee of the week. Sketch makes a joke about urine testing, and Original Cindy cracks that Normal will be testing for flavor. Ha! That was a good one! Ohhhh, those wacky kids. Now they have a bright idea that they're going to sabotage the Indian man's plan to buy Jam Pony. You don't have to be a potato to see that one coming from about a thousand miles away, do you? Geddit? Potato? Potatoes have lots of EYES. Geddit? Hoo. And in a bit of clever camera mayhem, the camera pans up, up, up above Original Cindy's head and through the ceiling of the bar, and look! Cap'n EO lives above the bar. How about that. So let's just merge paragraphs here, shall we? The Cap'n, Max, and Zach are all looking up information on Lydecker in the Department of Defense databanks. Lydecker was an exemplary soldier until his wife was murdered. Then he got all crazy and drunk and eventually earned himself a dishonorable discharge, then checked himself into military rehab. So Max and Zach run off to an AA meeting to try and find him. But not before Max and Zach can spat some more, and not before Zach can throw more static at the Cap'n. Zach isn't cute at all anymore. It's amazing what difference a smile can make. No, really.
Over at Jam Pony, Sketch and Original Cindy and Herbal kiss Normal's ass in the most obnoxious manner possible. Original Cindy offers to lose her Afro-puffs so as not to appear "too ethnic," and Sketch cleans the floors really well, and then Herbal brings Normal a cup of Blue Mountain Jamaican coffee, which Normal drinks with relish. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wacky this way comes. (I've used that line before, I know, but I really like it.) They smirk. And smirk. And smirk. And I, astute and careful viewer that I am, wonder what in the world is in the coffee.
Speaking of coffee, let's take a look-see at the local AA meeting. Of course it's our friend, Lydecker, standing up and talking. And I bet Max and Zach hoof in just any minute now. 'Cause the first time's the charm, you know? Serendipity, goddess of all that's strange and wonderful in Televisionland, works powerful magic here in Seattle. Powerful magic. Lydecker tells about how drinking damn near destroyed his life: "One day at a time is a cop-out. You don't need a higher power to help you. You don't need a sponsor. What you need is strength of mind, willpower. Alcoholism is not a disease, it's a failing. I come to these meetings for one reason: to remember what I do not want to become. Helpless, impotent, and weak." Um, this goes over like a shit sandwich at a church social. There is much shaking of heads, much smugness from one Lydecker. He strides out, all smug and greasy, and so I am very glad (I am an easily manipulated viewer. I am not ashamed to say it) when Max grabs him, knocks him out, and shoves him into his own car. Zach zooms up on a motorcycle and asks Max what the hell she's doing. So it's not a Plan that they've got. I see. She tells him to follow her. And so he does.
Back from commercials, now we get to find out what was in the coffee. What do you think it was, gentle reader? What's the standard Wacky Hijinks Additive? Come on. Here, I'll give you a hint:
"Whatcha doin?"
"Chewing chocolate."
"Where'd ya get it?"
"Doggie dropped it."
Oh, you clever wits, you guessed! It's LAXATIVES! So Normal is stuck on the crapper, with his Shrub poster and his house full of 1960s and '70s furniture that must be verrry expensive in the year 2015, seeing as it's absurdly overpriced even now. Ah, toilet humor. So Sketch shows the Indian man around, and then in comes Herbal, who trips and drops his package. Oh, it's a biohazard, and now the Indian man watches as some mysterious smoke pours out of the package, and Herbal goes down in a fit of frothing convulsions. Sketch pulls the Indian man into a closet and tells him that they have to stay there until help arrives. Wacky. Wacky. Hijinks. I'm gonna name my first child Wacky Hijinks. For real.
On to the more serious side of confinement (notice how the show is interlaced with non-verbal parallels? Exquisite), Max and Zach have Lydecker bound and blindfolded in a warehouse somewhere. They make frantic love. I mean, they argue. Whatever. I wish someone would get laid on this show. Oh, wait, I think it's me who wants to get laid. Never mind. But speaking of laid, Jessica Alba's ass looks great in some product-placed Levi's jeans. Max and Zach interrogate Lydecker. Zach beats the hell out of Lydecker's face, and Lydecker guesses it's Zach. "Still so angry? You haven't changed much, Zach." They demand Brinn, and Lydecker tries to guess who Max is. He runs down the list of missing kids, and Jessica Alba's face does a passably good job at simulating distress and internal conflict. Good work, Jessica Alba, you're learning! Lydecker says a few times that he doesn't know where Brinn is, and Zach just whips and whips Lydecker's face. So Lydecker starts running through the litany of how to interrogate a prisoner, and Max starts yelling at him to SHUT. UP. Sometimes I yell that at the television, but it hardly ever works. Eventually Lydecker breaks his own finger. Let me say that again. He breaks. His own. Finger. Why does he do this? To convince them that he doesn't know where Brinn is. He doesn't even yelp in pain or anything when he breaks it. I am so sure. Anyway. He tells them that he gave Brinn up for sale on the foreign market, but he doesn't know who's brokering the sale. So Max and Zach confer. Zach wants to stay with Lydecker while Max checks out the story with Logan, but Max thinks "something tragic" might happen while she's gone, so she sends Zach off to make more static with the Cap'n. Alone at last.
Oh, right. The subplot. Sketch and the Indian man are still locked in the closet. Herbal shouts into the closet -- through a bullhorn -- that he's part of the Seattle police and he'll shoot anyone leaving the quarantine area. He puts on a "fake" Anglo accent. (Remember, kids, quotation marks are not used for emphasis, but to indicate sarcasm or irony.) Again I say, I am so sure. Sketch suggests that they go out through some steam tunnels, which are apparently hidden beneath a locked trap door in the closet. How many of you have ever seen a big ol' trap door in the floor of your supply closet? Especially one which leads to some steam tunnels? Just checking. What are steam tunnels, anyway?
Back at the main plot, Zach and the Cap'n are discovering that they have more in common than they like. The Cap'n tells Zach to look after Max in this madcap adventure we call Project Rescue Brinn, and Zach replies that, doy, it's his job to look after all the escaped Manticore kids. Then he wallows in self-recrimination over Brinn getting captured. The Cap'n gazes at him empathetically, and they fall into a passionate embrace. You didn't fall for that for one minute, did you? I guess that trick's getting old. Oh, and now Zach asks the Cap'n what's between him and Max. The answer? Get ready for this, rocket scientists: "I dunno. Something. Just not sure what." Ah, well. At least he's honest.
The Steely, Assessing Gaze competition is interrupted by a phone call. It's a source, reporting that Chinese Military Bad Guys have been looking for biotechnology, and now they have a lead. There's an American Military Bad Guy who's "gone rogue," and he's holding the technology at an abandoned base on the outskirts of Seattle. We, as perceptive viewers, understand that the technology is also Brinn. The Cap'n gives Zach directions, and in return Zach gives the Cap'n (you guessed it) static. This time about how the Cap'n is the one who's going to get Max killed, 'cause she should've blown Seattle a long time ago, but she stays around because of, I dunno, something. Zach snits away, and the Cap'n swallows thoughtfully. No, really.
So while all this is going on, Max and Lydecker stare at one another. He asks her for water. She tells him she'd rather not waste the spit, at which point he recognizes her voice from the conversation they had at the bio-genetics conference several episodes ago. Yay for plot continuity! He tells her she can come home; she says she'd rather die. Then she yells at him for killing her friend the night they escaped. He makes some noise about how she's remembering through a child's eyes (does that sentence make sense?), and then Zach comes in to break up the party. Lydecker says he knows the captain of the base where Brinn is being held, and asks them to let him help them. Zach tells him to get screwed, but Max insists that they bring him along to get them in the front door. "He'll want to double-cross us, but he can't, because we're the only hope he has of getting Brinn back. Isn't the right, Donald?" Hee. Donald. He keeps referring to Brinn as "Manticore technology." Ew. Max pulls off Lydecker's blindfold, and the camera goes into a tiny slo-mo as Lydecker memorizes their faces. Oh, and Zach says, for the record, that he doesn't like it. What record? Stupid soldier. This episode is interminable. I mean, they take Lydecker and drive over to the base. Lydecker gets them in, no problem, and Major Sanders (the Rogue Commander) asks Lydecker to join him in the mess hall. So they march right in, and Lydecker busts out with some "give me my kid back" shit. Um, dumb. Of course Sanders just snaps his fingers, and all the soldiers in the mess hall jump up and hold them at gunpoint. Lots of gunpoints, really. Sanders and Lydecker make a deal. At first Sanders can't see what Lydecker could offer him, since Sanders already has Brinn, but then Deck (as we'll affectionately call him) tells him he's brought two more to "sweeten the pot." So the soldiers grab Max and Zach, and Zach says with very loud telepathy, "I told you so, skank!"
Commercials. Christmas commercials. 'Cause I'm so lame I forgot to tape and recap this episode when it aired. Thanks, tiriel, for the tape! I worked through Christmas, and spent Christmas day skating from friend's house to friend's house. How about you?
Over in the subplot, Sketch is all sweaty and teary-eyed, and so is the Indian man. Sketch says he always wanted to learn how to swim, and he always wanted to sleep with two girls at the same time. The Indian man says he's done that. They smile at each other. And then, on the outside of the closet, Normal comes in. Original Cindy tells him that the Indian man is a no-show, and Normal marches to the closet to get his number off the bulletin board. Now, before the suspense kills you, let me just calm your fears by saying that Sketchy got them both safely into the "steam tunnels" (whatever those are) just in the nick of time. Conveniently enough, the "steam tunnels" let the Indian man and Sketch out just by the Indian man's car. The goddess Serendipity, she is all-seeing and wise. So the Indian man jumps into his car and tells Sketch to get lost, but only after Sketch starts to retch (hee, rhyme) in the car. And then the Indian man screeches away, and Sketch congratulates himself on a job well done. (The reason I don't call the Indian man by his name is that it's a very long one, and there are many jokes revolving around people mispronouncing it. Including a good one, when Herbal calls him Mr. Sithapathasuperman. That one was funny. But it's too long to write, even with the help of closed captioning. So there you are.)
And back in the main plot, Max and Zach are marched barefoot through some cold-looking halls. "Take these examples of Manticore technology. And take their shoes, too." Heh. They are placed under serious lock and key in the same holding cell with Brinn. Oh, she's aged a lot. Her skin is all mottled and wrinkled, and it looks like she has a grey streak. Spontaneous, rapid mutation of the genome, expressed by rapid aging. Four of Max's group have developed it so far. And the threat hangs, implicit, in the air, that Max and Zach could get it, too. Lydecker says they need to ice Brinn down, and mysterious bags of ice appear instantly, packed around Brinn with loving hands. Lydecker and Sanders talk money for a minute, then Max calls him a "bottom-feeding pimp, peddling flesh for the Benjamins." 'Cause she's ghetto, yo. In case you forgot. Which I had. Lydecker tells Sanders's men to basically stay the fuck away from the kids: no interaction, no opening of cells, no allowing of self within arm's length. Then they walk away. Max plays flirty with the guards for a minute, then picks off her...handcuff twisties? Plastic-bag ties? What is that? Anyway, she picks it off with her teeth, and makes saucy with the guard who has a problem with her. That Max, she's begging for some cell-block action. It's that feline DNA, dontcha know.
Sanders and Lydecker go back to the office, and Sanders proceeds to try to screw Lydecker in the deal. Lydecker wants half, but Sanders wants eighty percent, so then Sanders goes for a gun, but Lydecker throws a knife into Sanders's chest before he can shoot. Where did he get that knife, exactly? Anyway. Now he's got Sanders's gun. And Sanders's walkie-talkie. Which is how he knows that Max has hung herself in her cell. The guards panic, unsure what to do. So, of course, they open the cell door and get their asses whomped by Max, who can hold her breath for a really, really long time. Lydecker races down to the cell, shouting the whole time for the soldiers to stay the hell away. It takes them about a minute to take out all the guards, and they grab Brinn (who's wearing a cute little Gap t-shirt), and -- what's the term? Bounce. They grab Brinn and bounce. Lydecker talks to Max on the walkie-talkie, telling her to leave Brinn so that he can take care of her. Brinn lies on Max's lap and looks damn harsh. Lydecker talks more sense into the walkie-talkie, while Zach tells her to turn it off about thirty times. Oh, Zach is crying. And Max looks sad. Brinn says she doesn't want to die. So they make a deal to leave Brinn on a park bench somewhere for Lydecker to come and pick up. Max promises to come and get Brinn someday. Max and Zach kiss her goodbye, and they get in the truck and drive away. In oh-so-slightly-slow-motion. For drama. Now they're both crying as they drive away. And in a minute a helicopter shines its cold, white, choppity light on Brinn. And that's the end of the plot.
Now for the subplot. Normal is trying and trying to get hold of the Indian man with the very long name, but the Indian man isn't having any of him. Original Cindy consoles him, and then he has to run to the crapper again. I hope he's been drinking a lot of fluids. That's the thing they never show in the laxatives-as-comic-device skits: dehydration. That, um, shit can kill you. For real. Anyway, Normal skitters off to the can, and then Original Cindy and Sketch and Herbal all congratulate each other. And that's the end of the subplot.
And now for the wrap-up, Hall-of-Justice style. Max looks pensive in the Cap'n's sexy red living room. The Cap'n looks sexy in a sexy red shirt. They exchange words about right and wrong, and then the Cap'n reminds Max that Lydecker knows what she looks like. He tells her to be more careful. After a sexy perfume-commercial shot of Max perched on some stylish furniture, the camera cuts to Brinn, who looks normal again. Lydecker says that the "other two can't hide forever." And that's the end of the episode.