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Al's death makes the news, as he's apparently the very first person in the whole wide world to think, Hey, if I off myself, I can throw one or more flashforwards into doubt. Some folks -- Mark among them -- are giddy with the idea that the future is, once again, a blank slate upon which to write their most hopeful projections. So he whisks Olivia off for a celebratory "Hurrah! We won't sink into alcoholism and adultery!" weekend, but it's cut short by a call from Demetri: the star-tattooed guy who is supposed to come after Mark on April 29 has surfaced, so maybe Mark wants to pursue this lead before it pursues him? Mark does. He leaves Olivia with a lovely parting gift -- the lingerie that she'll be wearing in her flashforward. Mark and Olivia later debate whether the visions are "that much more set in stone than [they] thought" or if they can change things. Olivia argues, "We can change things, Mark … we just have to decide how far we're willing to go to make it happen." In her case, she's willing to throw out the lingerie.
Mark, Janis and Lloyd chat with a witness, Ingrid Alvarez, who watched the star-armed guy and a pal kill a guy in the alley. She can't give too many details, and Mark gets the bright idea to use her as bait to grab the star-armed guy. Demetri's for it: "We catch these guys tonight, we can finally put a face on our enemy." So they set their trap in Ingrid's cockatiel emporium (I swear, I am not making this up), but unfortunately, their quarry ends up dead. Even more unfortunately, none of the FBI geniuses think that maybe, more than one person can have this type of tattoo. (We see this in the cliffhanger, where Ricky Jay is blithely dispatching another star-armed guy.)
Meanwhile, Lloyd is suffering pangs of conscience, as he believes his experiment caused the flashforward. Dr. Hobbit's not having that, and he proposes they settle their do-I-tell-or-not dispute via a game of poker. By the way, don't ever play poker with Dr. Hobbit, because he's a total trash-talking douche. It is eminently satisfying when Lloyd wins. (Even if he has to use his new sleight-of-hand skills to do it.)
Tracy, Aaron's daughter, is home, but she's suffering from recurring nightmares, and she's asking Aaron to keep her existence on the down-low. She finally explains what's got her so spooked: her Humvee was attacked by a Blackwater-esque private military contracting organization called Jericho, and the attack happened about a week after Tracy watched Jericho massacre an Afghani village. The Humvee attack left Tracy short one leg, yet she somehow managed to survive this alone in the desert and has been living "on the run," as she's concluded that she is safe from neither Jericho nor the military that insists on employing these thugs accountability-free.
And in plots that were entirely superfluous: Nicole is part of an exciting new cult devoted to the idea that Al Gough sacrificed himself so that free will could return to the land. Too bad that every other plot showed people hurtling toward their flashforwards.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!I need to begin this recap with an apology. In prior weeks, I have been spelling Bad Ass Boss Courtney B. Vance's character name as "Weddick." It was what I saw on IMDB, and it was what appeared in closed-captioning. This week, a nameplate on the desk showed the spelling as "Wedeck." I apologize for misspelling it lo these many episodes; it will be correctly spelled from here out. Or until the fiends at ABC alter the spelling again.
Pearl Jam's "Unthought Known" begins playing as the scene pans down to a leafy suburban street. We see Celia of the last episode getting her letter from Al Gough. The camera swoops across the Pacific bluffs and we see Aaron watching his daughter sleep on a pull-out couch in the living room. He looks a lot less happy than you'd expect from a father whose kid came back from the dead. Eddie Vedder continues to have deep thoughts as Demetri studies Mark's board. Zip! Celia's now holding a press conference where she holds up the letter and tells her story. Cut to the news boxes outside the FBI building in Los Angeles; the Los Angeles Post runs with the story "THE FUTURE CAN BE CHANGED." In some quaint seaside town off highway one, in some quaint and overpriced hotel right on the Pacific, Mark and Olivia enjoy some marital calisthenics. How fortunate that Eddie Vedder's bellowing gets them in the mood! Nicole continues to do her volunteer work, and as she does, she notices a flyer for a group called "Sanctuary." They have a logo that, to be frank, looks like a stylized diagram showing people where the little man in the boat can be found (if you know what I mean), but that doesn't appear to deter Nicole. Bryce continues to obsessively draw his dream girl. Lloyd continues to do card tricks, much to Dylan's delight. The music crescendos as Janis walks back into work -- there's a big welcome-back banner, and flowers, and Wedeck gives her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, which is really sweet.
And then it's quiet again. Lloyd is in Dylan's hospital room -- that child must have gold-plated insurance coverage -- and he's reading about Celia as some blow-dried coif given the power of speech bloviates on the television about what this all means. Answer: a whole lot of nothing; you can make a hairstyle talk, but there's no magic black enough to make it sentient. Lloyd is also looking at an email he's about to send out with the subject line "WE NEED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY." As he looks at the screen, the hairstyle asks, "Is there going to be another world blackout? But the big question -- possibly the central question of human existence -- do we have free will?" Lloyd sends his email.
Speaking of having no free will, Janis attempts to resign but Wedeck is not having it. She asks if she can explain herself, and without looking away from his computer screen, Wedeck says, "You were attacked. You were shot. You returned to duty to find out a coworker jumped off a building. Am I in the right ballpark here?" Janis says calmly, "My life's not making a lot of sense right now, and I think I need a little time off to figure it out ... I know we've been shorthanded since the blackout, but ever since Gough --" she breaks off. Wedeck says, "This isn't about Al." Oh, but it is. Janis says, "When I think about what he did and why he did it, it just really made me think about my own future. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Do I lean into what I saw? Do I fight it? What if my getting shot was ... I don't know, some sort of a sign that this baby's not meant to be?" Wedeck puts it into perspective: "You're going to let a bullet decide whether or not you're going to bring a baby into this world? If Al's death proved anything, it's that our choices still matter, now more than ever."
Lloyd is charming Dylan with a card trick when Simon comes in and snidely remarks, "I've been wondering how a Nobel finalist and a recipient of the MacArthur prize spends his idle moments." Lloyd wants Simon away from his kid and gone now, now, now. Simon's hurt that Lloyd never calls him. They storm out of the room to argue about Lloyd's email. Simon still doubts their experiment was the sole cause of the blackout, and Lloyd argues that they need to share what they know with the world.
Mark and Olivia are hangin' in the hotel room, polishing off the room service, and Mark hands over a surprise gift to celebrate "second chances and the fact that we can change the things we saw." Alas, Mark cannot change the fact that his job is a demanding mistress: he gets a phone call and Demetri tells him to open his laptop. Barstow PD sent a video that matches something from the flashforward board (it's been plugged into NCIC, a computerized index of law enforcement information). When Mark looks at the homicide, he sees that one of the murderers has the distinctive three-star tattoo on his forearm. Apparently getting flashes of your sozzled near-death experience to come is something of a moodkiller, so it looks like Mark and Olivia's special couple time is over.
So now Mark and Demetri are doing laps in the FBI building's Logan's Run-style atrium as they disgorge expository dialogue: the murder victim's name was Neil Parofsky, he was an aeronautical engineer, nobody's thought to check whether he was on Mosaic and if so, what he said. (Argh! ARGH! Were I law enforcement, Mosaic would be the first stop: did the victim have a flashforward? What was in it? Are there clues as to why their future might have threatened someone else's?) Demetri says that Parofsky worked in El Segundo, but when he was found in Barstow, his watch and wallet were missing. I can't vouch for the watch, but I'm betting Parofsky left his wallet in El Segundo. (Ba-da-bum! Try the veal!) We find out that the person who shot the cell phone video, Ingrid Alvarez, saw Parofsky hand something over before he was killed.
Then Mark and Demetri walk into an office where Janis is holding a very nice bouquet of long-stemmed lillies. Mark says, "First day back? I should have gotten you flowers," but Janis says the flowers are for Olivia, what with the good lady doctor having reassembled Janis's innards for her. Janis then hands over hard-copy stills off the cell phone, fresh from the video forensic unit's enhancement skills. Blurry shot, blurry shot, blurry shot, then dun-dun-DUN! A picture of a beefy male forearm, and said arm is decorated with three blue stars, just like the forearm of the would-be killer in Mark's flashback. You know, the flashback we're going to see for the umpteenth time because the people who put together this show suspect we don't actually pay attention to it from week to week. Mark recovers from his flashback-flashforward and announces they're off to talk to Ingrid Alvarez. This way, Mark can get the man who wants to kill him a few months from now. He fixes Janis and Demetri with a smoldering look and says, "Al sacrificed himself to prove we could change the future. So let's change it."
As Mark's saying this, Olivia's in her office, opening the pretty gift box Mark had given her. It's lingerie -- nice stuff, too -- but Olivia has her own flashback-flashforward because Mark's just given her the set she's going to be wearing when she's canoodling with Lloyd in late April. It looks like the universe is still trying to line up those predetermined outcomes, eh? Bryce interrupts Olivia's troubled reverie and she puts on her white coat to get to work.
At Aaron's house, the couch-sleeping Tracy has just woken up from a flashback-nightmare to her stint in Afghanistan. Aaron rushes out to comfort his distraught daughter, but she pushes him away and hops over to get her prosthetic. She tells Aaron she doesn't want to talk about it, but Aaron's like, "If you'd like to compare traumas, let's talk about grieving a dead child." He adds, "I had your grave exhumed two months ago because I was convinced you were alive." So ... we're up to early December now? Eight weeks have passed since the flashforward? Shouldn't Janis be knocked up by now if she's going to be seventeen weeks pregnant in another four months?
Ahem -- back to the scene. Aaron lays down an ultima
tum: "If you want to keep hiding out here, if you want me to keep pretending to the world -- your mom included -- that you're still dead, you have to tell me what happened. After what I saw in my flashforward, I'd believe anything you say now. Listen to me, Trace: four months from now, I'm going to be sitting at your side in Afghanistan. You saw it and I saw it. I'm going to get involved with whatever it is. So let's just cut to the chase and get started."
Back at Our Lady of the Mood Lighting Memorial Hospital, Olivia is dismayed to find out that despite her best efforts, Dylan Simcoe -- and, by extension, Lloyd -- are still not off her roster or out of her life. Bryce asks, "Why are you so anxious to get rid of [Dylan]? Is it his dad, Mr. Simcoe?" Olivia's like, "NO, I AM NOT SLEEPING WITH HIM -- I mean, what makes you say that?" Bryce explains, "You guys have a weird relationship. Every time he comes around, you get crazy tense and --" And speak of the devil, Lloyd's right here. Olivia tries hard to look casual but really, she's about to jump out of her skin. Lloyd asks what the ramifications of Dylan's newly-discovered D.V.T. are, and Simon inserts himself into the conversation with "Would it be safe to leave the boy's bedside for a while? [He snatches Dylan's chart out of Olivia's hands.] I see that you have him on heparin. Now, the risk of complications at his dosage is relatively minimal, am I right?" Olivia asks, "I'm sorry -- and you are?" Simon turns on the charm and says, "I'm a friend of the family. Frankly, I was hoping to pry Lloyd away from the hospital for a little while. I mean, the boy is ready for discharge if I've read this chart correctly." Olivia's all, "Pry away, my good man. Pry away!" Simon says edgily to Lloyd, "There -- you've been absolved of any guilt, parental or otherwise." Lloyd looks at his conversational companions and says acidly, "Lovely. Thanks for your help." Olivia's happy to help herself to an exit. As she and Bryce skedaddle down the hall, Simon checks out Olivia's legs and asks Lloyd if he's sleeping with the doctor. Lloyd huffily says, "That's none of your concern, Simon." Au contraire, Lloyd: "Everything you do is my concern since you pressed send on that idiotic e-mail of yours, which brings me to the purpose of my visit."
The two men round a corner and Lloyd staunchly insists, "I'm going public with or without Myhill's cooperation or yours." There's a bit of bickering and Simon concludes, "It looks as if we're at an impasse. There are two ways to settle this. The first is oh, so tawdry and public: I make a general annoyance of myself, kick over as many anthills as possible --" "Enough, Simon," Lloyd interrupts. The second option: Simon and Lloyd play poker to determine whether or not to go public. Lloyd is appalled, asking, "You want to wager the outcome of millions of people on a poker game?" Simon corrects him: "The gods did it all the time -- dice, chess, whatever took their fancy. They liked tinkering with the lives of mere mortals." Lloyd fact-checks Simon on his delusions of divinity, but it doesn't work. Simon posits that being able to kill 20 million people in a flash should land you a spot in the pantheon. "If that doesn't qualify us for godhood, tell me: what does?" To paraphrase a forum poster: How about raising those 20 million from the dead? That seems harder than killing them in the first place.
Mark, Janis and Demetri are now in Barstow (say hi to Shack, y'all!) and pulling up to their witness's house in a modest neighborhood. There are lots of black-and-whites around, which generally suggests a crime scene, and the agents fret over the possibility that the man with three stars on his arm got to Ingrid before they could. When they walk past a gold sedan with a woman's body spilling out of the driver's side, their worst suspicions seem to be confirmed -- but they learn that the dead woman is actually Ingrid Alvarez's roommate. "Looks like they got the wrong roommate, huh?" the local detective says. Mark tries to look grim; his long, fluttering lashes sort of undercut the look.
Simon and Lloyd are still playing cards. Simon is trash-talking nonstop -- "How much are you going to give me this round?" "I hope you don't drag this game out as long as the last one?" -- and every time this alleged genius opens his mouth, I'm reminded of Grady M. Towers' essay "The Outsiders," which posits that extremely brilliant people are "a different kind of human being," and in perceiving themselves as so, they feel profoundly isolated from human society and this can lead to marked social maladjustment.
Anyway, Simon says, "When you lose, you'll be able to console yourself that I've prevented you from confessing to a mass murder." The non-physicist tablemates look at him, alarmed, and Simon shrugs, "Manchester figure of speech." Sort of like the Glasgow kiss, only on a much bigger scale, eh?
Zip! Ingrid's been whisked to the Los Angeles FBI office, where she's saying dazedly, "They killed Blanca but they were trying to kill me?" Yup, that's pretty much the long-and-short of it. Ingrid, sadly, does not add, "But Blanca's flashforward had her winning at the Bellagio!" or "I knew something was up when she refused to say whether she had a flashforward," which seems like a bit of an oversight on a show where everyone's operating under the logic "I had a flashforward, therefore I'm immortal" or "I had no flashforward, therefore I need to act like an extra in a Darren Aronofsky film." Wouldn't a flashforward be a valuable datapoint in a murder investigation, because it might provide motive?
ANYWAY, I may be thinking about this more than anyone currently involved in the show, so let's get back to the scene's main point: Ingrid's recitation of what she saw on that fateful night. Ingrid says, "I was working late, me and one of my clerks. I was locking up for the night. I went to my car, but there were men in the alley. Three of them. They were fighting, but I couldn't hear what about. When it got physical, I hid." We see the two men roughing up a third, asking. "Where is he?" as Ingrid crouches behind her car. She continues, "I called 911 but they put me on hold. I still can't believe I stayed calm enough to use my phone [to shoot the video]. My hands were shaking." We see the two people shoot the third, then relieve the body of its case. Ingrid can't remember too much about the two men -- one was gray-haired, the other big and bald -- but says, "As they were walking away, they were talking about something. It sounded like Q.E.D."
Back to the poker game. One of the players asks, "You guys ever read about that inevitability index thing that's been in all the papers?" Simon replies, "It's a scam -- some entrepreneurial hucksters' idea to sell us on the idea that the odds of the future happening can be 'calculated.' It's all rubbish. Fate is fate. We're not responsible, Lloyd." Lloyd looks up from his dwindling pile of chips to ask, "What about free will?" "No such thing," Simon declares. "Since when did you become such a hard determinist?" Lloyd scoffs. Simon says, "Simple quantum suicide theory. I will win this hand, and every subsequent hand we play ad infinitum. Q.E.D." Lloyd says scornfully, "Don't you get tired of hearing yourself pontificate?" Simon does not: "Don't you get tired of being a self-righteous prig? We're scientists, Lloyd, not attention-seeking reality show contestants looking for their 15 minutes of fame on a talk show." Well, there goes my dream of America's Top Stochastic Fluid Model Generator. Lloyd correctly calls Simon out for using his prodigious intellect to justify doing what he damn well pleases. "You upend the entire world and you hide behind determinist rhetoric," Lloyd says with the placid contempt of someone who feels he's got the upper hand in an ethical debate. And it finally hits me why Swingtown tanked.
No, no, hear me out on this digression. Jack Davenport excels at playing people whose personal moral code separates them, rightl
y or wrongly, from their more fun and exciting contemporaries. And the appeal of these characters -- most of the time -- comes from their solitary, slightly forlorn attempts to cling to their dignity amidst circumstances that have been imposed upon them. Except in Swingtown, Jack Davenport played a man who was morally retarded, and thus his character felt like a hypocritical dolt. You can't really think of hypocritical dolts as sexy, and it's not like the show corrected itself to become Grant Show and His Moustache Finally Get the Harem They Deserve!. Hence, the tankage. (Well, that and CBS being deathly afraid that all the network-friendly sex might kill their audience.)
Here, however, Davenport's back to playing a man whose principles -- so, by extension, his very self -- are under assault. All is well in the universe again. And Simon is snapping, "You're not the only one who lost someone, Lloyd." He declines to share who he's lost -- or ever loved. When Lloyd calls on his hand, Simon says, "I knew you were bluffing this entire hand. Because there's no such thing as luck, or fate, or 'there but for the grace of God.' This game is pointless. I've already won. The future's already happened. Fighting it is futile." The end of his little spiel is the voice-over for footage of Nicole being drowned in the world's best-lit pool.
Nicole snaps out of her flashforward-induced reverie and -- surprise! -- she's dry and she's at the hospital. She tells the patient Olivia, "I'm guessing Mark told you what I saw?" He did. Because when it comes to keeping confidences, it's only his own flashforward where Mark's not spilling the whole can of beans. Olivia warmly adds that she and Mark worry about Nicole, and Nicole witlessly beams, "You don't have to be. I'm going to be fine. The future can change. It's all over the news." Before Olivia and Nicole can convene the symposium on free will versus predestination, they're distracted by a nurse coming by to announce a floral arrangement for the new mother of quintuplets. She needs Nicole's help with it, presumably because it takes two people to shake out all the desperate TLC programmers hiding in the gladioli. As Nicole walks off, she tells Olivia, "We can change what we saw, just before the blackout. Everything's back to being up to us again." You know, as comforting to some people as the idea of being in charge of one's own future must be, I really wish we would have also seen the converse: people who are absolutely crushed by the idea of their golden future no longer being certain.
At Aaron's house, Tracy's come over to tell her father what happened over in Afghanistan: She's been missing for two years because of the attack on her Humvee -- an attack meant for her personally. A few weeks prior to the attack, she had seen something she shouldn't have. Private-security contracting firm "Jericho PMC" -- mission statement: "Blackwater? Never heard of 'em." -- massacred an Afghani village full of women and children, and Tracy happened to observe it while she was doing long-range recon in the area. Tracy reported it to her superior officer, and a week later, her supervisor sent her on the mission where she was assumed to have met her end. The people who blew her up? Jericho. Tracy reasons that because of Jericho PMC's status as a military contractor, the Army's in collusion to hush this up, so she can't exactly trust the armed forces to have her back. The Tracy-survives-the-blast-and-discovers-her-leg-missing is all very harrowing, but I couldn't really get into it because I kept thinking, "Lady, you spent a lot of time rolling around on the ground and screaming after you came to. Exactly how fearsome and far-reaching can these mercs be if they didn't even have the brains to check out what all the noise downwind from the flambeed Humvee was?" I ask you, doesn't anyone teach murder-happy mercenaries to confirm their kills anymore?
And in the scene, Aaron totally violates his daughter's confidence and has a curbside chit-chat with Mark. After Aaron shows Mark a time-stamped photo of Tracy taken on his mobile, he answers Mark's gasped "How?" by explaining, "Tracy would kill me if she knew I was talking to you. She was in a Humvee with three other soldiers. It got blown to Hell. A bloody mess, body parts everywhere, including her leg -- the DNA, right?" Mark asks the pertinent question: What's Tracy been doing these past two years? Ah, but that is what Aaron wants to talk to Mark about: "She's been on the run. She saw something she shouldn't have, and got in trouble with Jericho. They were the ones who attacked her. I know this sounds like something out of a Baldacci novel or something, but Tracy was dead, and now she's alive. I really need your help, Mark. Tracy was scared to death of these Jericho guys, and I'm afraid they're going to try and find her."
Cut to Mark undressing for bed, thinking about the new secret he has to keep from Olivia. She knows something's up, but all Mark says is, "I saw something today, and it got me thinking that if this person's future could come true -- and it did, even though it seemed impossible -- then maybe these visions are more set in stone than we thought." Olivia's not having any of that: "Maybe we have to work that much harder [to subvert them]." Speaking of which -- Mark asks how Olivia likes her new lingerie, and she deflects the query. As Olivia says, "We can change things, Mark. We just have to decide how badly we want to, how far we're willing to go to make it happen," the scene shifts to her office, where the janitor is clearing out the ashcan, which is now full of Olivia's new lingerie. As we shift back to the Benford bedroom, Olivia concludes, "I say there's nothing -- nothing -- we shouldn't be willing to do for one another to make it happen."
Speaking of willing to do insane things for noble reasons ... Mark goes to work the morning and pitches the idea of using Ingrid as bait in a trap to draw out the star-tattooed guy. Wedeck patiently says, "I know a lot's changed, but we still don't use civilians as bait." Wedeck asks everyone to work the Parofsky angle, but Janis and Demetri quickly demonstrate that they have: Parofsky used to be the chief engineer for Micro-Circadian Electronics and was recently let go on suspicion of corporate espionage. Janis brings up Ingrid's recollection of the thugs taking a package off Parofsky before killing him; she wonders if it contained purloined intellectual property. To make a procedural scene a little snappier: Mark argues that these unknown killers are hot to whack Ingrid, so floating the rumor that she's out of protective custody ought to flush out the goons, and then they can be apprehended in a Mark-masterminded sting. Were I Demetri and Wedeck, I'd remind Mark of his last grand plan, which ended in flames at a doll factory. But I'm not, so they don't, and thus the dramatically-convenient plan continues apace. Ah! One more relevant thing in this scene: Wedeck suspects a mole in their department, what with "whoever we're investigating knows what we're doing before we do it," and all the recent attempts to fold, spindle and mutilate the series regulars. Mark is on board with that, arguing that someone has to let the tattooed killers into the well-secured FBI building on April 29, and it makes sense that it's someone on the inside. I suspect Agent Vreede. You heard me call it here first.
Night has fallen. Aaron brings a hot beverage to Tracy as she sits out on the back patio, and she asks if there's any chance that he spiked it with bourbon. Aaron snorts that it's not likely, and asks when Tracy took up the demon rum; she declines to answer. But she's plenty vocal once Aaron reveals that he's looped Mark in on what's going on. "Are you insane? You don't even know these people. I came to this house specifically because I thought I'd be safe, but I see now that was a big mistake. The second that Jericho knows I'm still alive, they'll find me and they'll kill me." Aaron refutes all this with, "Don't you remember your flashforward? The fact that you even had one proves that you're going to be alive." Then Aaron narrates his complete flashforward: "I was with you. I gave you my pocketknife. You were on a cot. You fell asleep. We were in some kind of bunker or cave, surrounded by guards." (With portraits of keffiyeh-wearing men and Islamic script on the walls, by the way.) Aaron continues, "I think somebody was calling my name. Then I stepped outside. There was a man out there. He was very concerned about you. He said something strange, 'The account has been verified,' then I gave him an envelope, but I don't know what was in it." Tracy asks about the man in Aaron's vision and we learn that person is Khamir Dejan, a field medic
with the I.M.C. Khamir's the one who took care of Tracy after her Jericho incident, it turns out. Tracy says, "That's why I left. I was so afraid Jericho would kill Khamir to get to me." Aaron falls back on his I-saw-it-in-the-flashforward-ergo-it's-true argument, but Tracy's not fully on board with his theory of predestination. Also, she seems not to be too thrilled about the idea of being back in Afghanistan.
And now, the sting, only without Paul Newman or the tinkling ivories of Scott Joplin. Mark and Demetri are outside Ingrid's House of Birds, while Janis is on the inside, eying all the beady-eyed avians with a mix of wariness and curiosity. She breaks the ice by complimenting Ingrid on her "amazing birds," and Ingrid replies, "My babies. The only real family I've ever had. Each one is special to me. I can't believe I ever thought of giving them up." Um, awwww? I think? I'd treat you all to a monologue on the fearsomeness of birdy talons and cruelly-curved beaks, except I voluntarily live with a 20-pound cat who clicks around on his own Fu Manchu-length set of claws and expresses affection by sinking his teeth into any tender, exposed flesh he can find, so really, I have no (toothmarked) leg to stand on here. ANYWAY, Ingrid goes on to share her flashforward: She was blonde, working with birds at the Bronx zoo, and most certainly not with her friends here. "So the day, I put [the store] up for sale." Janis notes that the market for bird stores appears to have fallen prey to the recession. Ingrid's philosophical: "It was all for the best. I don't know what I was thinking, changing my life for a future that might not even come true." Janis looks very thoughtful at this.
Outside, Demetri and Mark are gossiping about Demetri's relationship with Zooey, and blah blah blah, whatever. We get it, Demetri's facing down murder and grappling with how to best spend his time before he's consigned to the Bureau Invisible.
Back inside Ingrid's Aviary, the lady is generously offering Janis one of her cockatiels as a symbol of gratitude. Janis tries to duck out with, "Ingrid, if you truly loved your birds, you're not going to want to give one to me, but thank you." Before things can get awkward with Ingrid forcibly thrusting a bird into Janis's arms, the power goes out. The mercs are back for Ingrid. Janis raises the boys on radio, and Mark orders some unseen troops to surround the perimeter.
We get a scene -- in the DARK, so it's not like we can see anyone -- of Mark stalking the tattoo-bearing guy and vice-versa, and it's interspersed with flashbacks to episodes, but the upshot is, Mark very nearly gets killed by a guy with the stars on his arm, but Demetri shoots the guy first.
Then Demetri is kicking himself for shooting the star-tattooed guy, and Mark tries to console him by pointing out that had Demetri not acted, then he (Mark) would be dead on the floor. Demetri says heavily, "You can't interrogate a dead man." Not on this show, anyway. I can't believe neither of these ace investigators have realized that maybe, just maybe, it's possible for two different people to have the same thing tattooed on some part of their body.
Outside, Janis walks over to a shell-shocked Ingrid and breaks the news that at least one of the men who wants her dead is still out there. Ergo, the best thing to do is to put Ingrid in protective custody, i.e. the witness protection program. Ingrid says, "That's okay. I think it's my future -- I should have trusted my gut all along." Janis looks very thoughtful as she ponders this; perhaps she's realized that the theme of this episode appears to be Destiny just called; She said "Free will is for suckers." Or perhaps Janis is remembering that her own guts were, until very recently, scrambled and fried and as such their little messages may not be quite accurate? There's a Meaningful Look, in any event.
Back at the card game between Simon and Lloyd: as the strings play a tense little number in the back, Simon glares at Lloyd across the table and says, "Judging from your dwindling amount of chips, your pain is almost over." The dealer lays out the hand: a five of hearts, a king of hearts, a king of clubs. Then the dealer lays down an eight of hearts. Simon begins the smacktalk: "What are you thinking over there, mate? Maybe you got a pair of eights, rocking a full boat. How much do you have left?" Lloyd has "just under 15." I am going to assume that's "thousand dollars" and not "chips." Ah, yes -- Simon and Lloyd throw more chips in the pile, and the dealer lays down a seven of hearts. Simon sips his drink (sadly, it is not a glass of shut-up juice) and suggests that it's time to bring an end to this subplot: the last hand will be winner-take-all. He concludes, "If you win, we'll go public. But, of course, I'll win and you'll keep your mouth shut." Lloyd sighs and looks down at the table unhappily, then spits out, "Fine." Simon pushes his whacking great lot of poker chips into the middle of the table, and Lloyd tosses his few chips out. Simon then says, "As a physicist, you're a genius. But you were never very good at concealing your tells." He flips over his cards: king of diamonds and king of spades. The dealer duly notes, "Four of a kind for Mr. Campus." Lloyd looks drained -- understandable for someone who's spent the last few weeks surviving on hospital food -- then flips over a nine of hearts and a six of hearts. The camera swoops back to Lloyd's face. He looks tired, but also smugly vindicated. Cut to Simon, who looks gobsmacked. The dealer helpfully clarifies: "Straight flush. Pot and game to Mr. Simcoe. Congratulations." Lloyd stands up and tells the dealer to keep the chips: "Call it a tip. I got what I came for." And honestly, I am now wildly curious as to what kind of health insurance Dylan had, because if Lloyd doesn't need that money to cover the deductibles on that kid's hospital stay and procedures ... Anyway, the camera cuts away before we can see the blackjack dealer cartwheeling around the card room in joy, and instead, it's Simon sprinting to catch up with Lloyd, as Lloyd has places to go and people to tell about his role in the blackout. He demands, "How did you beat me?" Lloyd sighs and replies, "Did I tell you Dylan really loves magic?" An ace pops out of his sleeve. Lloyd continues, "Sleight of hand's his favorite." HAAAA. I am really amused that Lloyd cheated! And I bet Simon never imagined it, what with Lloyd playing the part of the gotta-be-honest doctor with a conscience. Lloyd rubs it in some more with, "There are some things even I won't leave to chance. That being said, I'll let you have the first pass at drafting the announcement." Lloyd then pats Simon's cheek -- which does not dislodge Simon's glower in the slightest -- and saunters off. Simon stands there; the thought bubble above his head probably reads: "To Do: 1. Embed Lloyd-targeted insults in the statement. 2. Solve the physics equation that will let me set people on fire with my glare. 3. Take a long, hard look at that cheating cheater who cheated."
We zip from the glowerers to the brooders as Mark thanks Demetri for "backing my play." Demetri would like to know which play he's backing, please? "Is this about taking Tattoo Man off the streets, or putting him under it? ... I know you said if we get this guy, we might be able to change our futures. I wanted to make sure here the plan wasn't to kill him so he can't kill me or come after you in your office." Mark pissily inqures, "Whatever gave you that idea?" Demetri points out that Mark isn't the only one invested in making sure the future doesn't come true. Mark is all, Oh, yeah, you're a little hung up on missing St. Patrick's Day 2010. He tries to glare self-righteously at Demetri -- and fails, as those big, Bambi-esque eyes simply can't summon anything more scalding than "mild confusion" -- and asks if Demetri really thinks Mark's capable of killing someone on the suspicion that it will prevent an unwanted future. Demetri replies, "I would've," and walks out. Mark sits there and tries to look darkly contemplative
but again, the Bambi Mug pretty much makes it look like he just smelled a flower that didn't live up to his olfactory expectations.
Janis, meanwhile, is busy reading up on sperm donation via Wikipedia, because why wouldn't you trust anonymous, crowd-sourced and self-vetted information over any content produced by accountable medical professionals? Wedeck comes up to ask what she's doing, and Janis replies, "Trusting my gut." And, probably, dying a little on the inside now that her boss has seen her browser with the words "SPERM DONATION" splashed across it in 48-point type. Wedeck rubs her shoulders with paternal affection (aww!) and prods Janis about a prior email.
Janis has a new, NSA-provided rendering of the Suspect Zero photo, and the only interesting and useful new thing to come out of it is the observation that Suspect Zero is wearing a ring. Wedeck would like the NSA to work more digital wizardry and identify the ring ASAP: "If we can tie this jewelry to the guy wearing it, we'll have our first workable lead."
Mark comes home to Surly Benford Manor and interrupts Olivia mid-laundry folding and tells her, "I killed a man today. I had a shot at changing my future -- at changing our future, and I took it." There is the requisite post-murder hugging and Mark tells Olivia, "Maybe April 29 is just going to be another day at the office now." A troubled-looking Olivia's all, "Come again?" and Mark unravels the logic: since he's killed the man with the star tattoos, surely he's changed the future. Because, after all, nobody in the history of the world has ever gotten the same tattoo as anyone else, right? As Olivia hugs him, she realizes Mark's just one-upped her in the future-changing efforts: it's a long way from tossing lingerie to killing a tattooed goon.
Oh, wait! The universe is about to prove Mark wrong about changing the future! It's a dark and stormy night, and the guy who is the reason Ingrid's now in hiding rolls down the passenger-side window on a truck and hands over that attache case to a waiting goon. We see that they've both got the three-star tattoo, as do other anonymous goons milling about this undisclosed location. A non-bald goon conveys the case inside a shadowy warehouse to ... Ricky Jay? Okay. To Ricky Jay, who opens the case to confirm that there are six signet rings in it. Each ring is inscribed with an alpha symbol. But Ricky Jay wants more bling; he notes that there were supposed to be seven rings. Why -- so Ricky Jay can return them to the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone? We don't get to find out. Ricky Jay's about to lay some philosophy on us: "After the first atom bomb test, you know what a colleague of Oppenheimer's said? 'What a foul and awesome display.' He then added, 'Now we are all sons of bitches.'" Then Ricky Jay gets up and shoots the goon, possibly reducing the world's sons-of-bitches count by one, and he goes waltzing off-screen, having fulfilled this week's Contractually Obligated Cliffhanger.
Well! I, for one, cannot wait for the future episode where Lloyd, Dylan and Ricky Jay battle for the future of society via clever magic tricks. Bring it, sweeps!
sobell is terrible at poker; she'd have asked Simon if they couldn't maybe play blackjack for the bet. She blogs here and here, and tweets here.
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