Episode Report Card Potes: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Over the Rainbow
By Potes | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 08.07.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.All the folks in the Second Mass watch what is apparently the most hilarious old-school cartoon in the gym as Anne tells Tom about the Skitter harness situation and how Ben is probably screwed. Tom is not so psyched to hear it. Meanwhile, Weaver is being weird as ever and doesn't want to talk about the Allston incident. He's got a new associate -- Lieutenant Danner -- who is career military and loves following orders, and it's clear that Weaver wants Danner to be his number two. Dai comes back from a scouting mission with a big wound and lots of blood missing. He talks to Weaver about what he found, and then Weaver announces that they're going with Porter's original plan. Tom is dubious, and so Weaver assigns him to sentry duty with Hal. But once Tom learns from Lourdes and Anne that Weaver has in fact been availing himself of the classic Judy Garland uppers and downers meal plan (the pills explained! Finally!), which can cause erratic behavior, Maggie replaces Tom on the sentry mission so he can TCB at home.
Tom confronts Weaver about the pills, and Weaver doesn't take it so well. He has Danner strip Tom of his weapons and hold him in the boiler room, which is a classic speed freak move. Jimmy is witness to all of this and his highly disturbed that his surrogate dad has lost his mind. Meanwhile, Ben offers to help Scott, who is working on finding a radio frequency that will interfere with Skitter communication. Scott goes through the frequencies and a few hit Ben with some serious in-head feedback. Y'know, because he's part Skitter. Meanwhile, Weaver tells Pope that he needs four bombs instead of one. Pope says that he can do it, though there will be a very short fuse for each. He seems to know that Weaver is a little off in this request, but as a fellow speed freak he seems to appreciate it.
Per usual, Rick wants the Skitters to find him and Ben and take them back under their scaly legs. Ben wants to be a human, but Rick says that he knows they both can feel a change coming. Meanwhile, Hal and Maggie return and have seen fresh signs of Skitters and Mechs. This doesn't deter Weaver, who says that they're punching through anyway. Jimmy gets disturbed enough to tell Hal that Tom is under guard in the boiler room, and they in turn tell Anne. Everyone works out a plan to get Tom out, which also entails tying up Danner. Once Tom is free, Dai wakes up and tells him what he earlier told Weaver: Porter was attacked by aliens and is probably dead, and the other regiments never reported in. Porter's last order was that, if there was no confirmation from the Fourth and Fifth Mass, the attack should be aborted. Tom of course freaks out about this, and goes to confer with Pope. Pope tells him how Weaver wanted the bomb split four ways, and Tom points a gun at Pope's head and orders him to dismantle them.
But! In the meantime, Weaver has found Danner. He goes to ask Anne where Tom is, and then Tom, Maggie and Hal jump out at him with guns. They disarm Weaver, but then Pope appears behind them with a giant machine gun and the news that he didn't diffuse the bombs after all. But then it turns out that Tom predicted that Pope would do just this, and so he took the blasting fuses in whatever time that Pope would have taken to go warn Weaver. And then Weaver looks like he's going to shoot Tom, and trust me when I say that if he did this episode would have been a whole lot more interesting. Tom screams that there is another way, and after seeing Jimmy in the room looking troubled Weaver drops his weapon. Tom convinces him that everyone should know the facts about the mission and then have the opportunity to volunteer. Weaver finally agrees, and announces that he stopped taking his upper/downer cocktail when they got back from Allston. Oh, so he's just fucking nuts, then. Good to know.
Weaver tells everyone the deal -- basically, that this is probably a suicide mission -- and asks for 50 fighters. He gets them, and even Hal signs up. Tom is under orders to stay at the school and keep the civilians safe. Weaver leaves him with two suitcases of Mech bullets, and Ben and Scott also drop the knowledge that Ben can hear Skitter radio frequencies. And then part two happens!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open with a little cartoon and some syrupy music. Two cartoon flowers kiss, right in front of their baby flowers no less, and then we see the citizens of the Second Mass seated in the gym and cracking up in slow motion like they've never seen anything more hilarious. One kid has his mouth open so far that a Skitter could orally harness him. A cartoon kangaroo starts punching a curtain with boxing gloves, and the slow motion people can't even control themselves, they're laughing so hard. Did the aliens actually blast America back to the 1940s? Is this cartoon going to be followed by a newsreel about how women can work in factories now and a performance of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy?"
Elsewhere, in non-poignant regular motion, Anne has just told Tom about how harnessed kids become Skitters eventually. They stand over Hermie's slimy carcass together. What a perfect scene for some romantic action! Tom assumed that Ben would be okay when they got him back, because why would having an alien tentacle attached to your back with metal spikes cause any long-term side effects? Anne says that he is healthy, and seems to be adjusting emotionally. And plus, Ben and Rick were harnessed for months longer than the others, so their bodies might just take longer to reject the spikes and such. But that, of course, doesn't explain the patch of rough skin on Ben's back that looks a whole lot like the beginning of a Skitter scale. Tom says that it isn't enough that the Skitters took Ben from him once -- they're still trying. And there is poor innocent Ben, just cracking up at a dumb cartoon from the Pleistocene era. Tom and Anne enter the gym just in time for Ben to turn around and hold Tom's gaze. And lo, the look is pregnant with meaning. What would be awesome is if Ben turned into a Skitter who fought for the resistance! He'd have so many excellent powers! Think outside the box a little, professor.
Weaver calls Tom in for some planning, but before he can go over his attack route ideas, he acts really grouchy about the fact that everyone is having a good time 1940s movie night. He wants the civilians to be extra sharp tomorrow. Dai hasn't yet returned from his trip to see Colonel Porter, but Weaver says he has plenty of time left. Tom wants to run any last-minute changes by the squad leaders tonight, but Weaver says that Lieutenant Danner is already on it. And then we see Lieutenant Danner, who actually is remarkably Nazi-esque. I don't think we've seen him at all before, so I can't say where he came from, but it's clear that he's Weaver's new right-hand man. As Danner leaves, Tom says that if they don't hear from Porter, they have a problem. Weaver is basically like, "Grrrr." Then Tom asks Weaver how he's holding up after their day in Allston. Weaver does NOT want to talk about it. You can't blame him for that, actually. Weaver stomps off to talk some more to his new BFF Herr Doktor Danner.