Episode Report Card Sobell: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Lloyd Knows When to Hold Them, and When to Fold Them…
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.12.2009
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 Next 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