By Sobell
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.We finally find out why Bryce wanted to kill himself: four weeks before the blackout, he learned that he had treatment-resistant cancer -- the kind that makes you really, ridiculously good-looking right before it finally kills you. But he had the blackout, which put lie to the whole "You'll be both handsome and dead within weeks." The day of the blackout, we also find out that Bryce had met with a counselor and admitted that he never really wanted to be a doctor and he's not very good at it. We also meet his lady-friend from the flashforward: She's a biomedical engineer named Keiko. And, like Bryce, she's managed to nab a job in a high-pressure, highly competitive field, but she's not terribly happy with it.
AND we get to see Bryce and Keiko's flashforward: Bryce is now semi-fluent in Japanese, he and Keiko have been corresponding for some time, and when she meets him, the camera makes a point of lingering on the water-wheel pattern on her t-shirt and the tattoo on her wrist, which has the kanji character "believe."
Over the course of the episode, Bryce gets an opportunity to get into a cancer trial and ditches it, heading to Japan instead to find Keiko at the sushi restaurant in her hometown. (The restaurant has the water-wheel logo we all saw on Keiko's shirt.) He gets as far as Keiko's house but Keiko's mom, still smarting from her daughter quitting the robotics job and refusing a semi-arranged marriage, lies about how she has no idea who the girl in Bryce's drawing is. But we see the end of Keiko's flashback and learn that she and Bryce will meet at a restaurant in Los Angeles. And guess who took the same flight back from Tokyo? So, Bryce and Keiko moving toward each other is pretty much the main story of the episode.
In other storylines: The FBI guys have their hands full with learning about the alpha insignia on the ring and learning that Demetri's been red-flagged by the NSA after they intercepted his call from Shoreh Aghdashloo. Although the NSA bureaucrat originally refuses to turn over their record of the call (and the data associated with it), she soon folds after Mark, Demetri and Wedeck glare at her. (Perhaps during the February sweeps period, they'll team up with Simon to develop that set-people-on-fire-by-staring-at-them technology and deploy it in future intra-agency meetings. I can dream.) The boys all analyze the recording and find out that Shoreh Aghdashloo made the call from Hong Kong. By the end of the episode, Mark and Demetri are on a plane to the island where east meets west.
So, Mark finds out that Olivia got the text about how Mark was drunk in his flashforward, and he reasons that only two people on the planet know, and only because he told them. (It does not occur to genius Mark that maybe someone else's flashforward shows a sozzled Mark.) Mark asks Aaron if he's the one who sent the text to Olivia about how he was drunk in his flashforward, and Aaron dumps him as a sponsor. When Mark asks Wedeck, his badass boss doesn't say yes, but he doesn't say no, either.
And, in "subplots I pay attention to only because it's my job," Tracy appears to be hitting the bottle, which puts a strain on Aaron the recovering alcoholic.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Four weeks before the blackout: a doctor is pointing at bodily scans all, "There, and there, and there, and there." Then the perspective shifts so we see Bryce standing to said doctor, and Bryce confirms that a) his cancer has returned and b) it's metastasized. To make matters even worse, Bryce now has cancer in his liver (odds of surviving more than six months: Not Good), but on the bright side, it's not in his lungs or bones. Yet. And the worst news of all: Bryce's cancer is Stage IV and it's especially resistant to treatment. The doctor levels with Bryce: "We're running out of options."
Bryce numbly stumbles to his car. Behind him, a driver impatient for his spot dogs his steps, first honking the horn, then shouting, "Come on!" The guy skids away. Bryce appears not to notice any of it. He gets behind the wheel of his car, still dazed, which explains why he hits a cherry-red convertible as he backs out. The driver gets out, ready to dispense the (self-)righteous wrath of the aggrieved yuppie, and because this guy is not what we'd call "observant," he misses the fact that Bryce is wearing a shocked, thousand-yard stare. Bryce then shifts from the "denial" portion of his diagnosis to the "anger" portion, and rams the convertible a few more times before taking off. Bryce gets out of his Jeep and begins stumbling off to ... um, call for a ride? Anyway, as he walks off, the other guy yells, "You are so dead, man! Did you hear me? You're dead!" And honestly, that was what pushed me over to Bryce's side, because it takes a doucheknob of uncommon insensitivity to scream that sort of aggrieved threat in a hospital parking lot.
Two weeks before the blackout: in Tokyo, a charming Japanese woman in business drag is practicing her smile before a mirror. She is very obviously about to go into a big meeting -- something the exposition hurries along by having a guy run into the bathroom and asking Keiko Arahida to hurry up, as everyone's waiting for her. She then walks into a conference room and we see her explaining her qualifications to the waiting crowd of men: "I started by trying to assemble a robotic hand, as a teenager in my parents' house. I barely got the servo part working, but it was a start. I was hooked. I got my undergraduate degree as a mechanical engineer at the University of Tokyo, then a master's degree in biomedical engineering and robotics." Silence in the room. Then someone leans forward to ask Keiko her role models and we find out they're Marie Curie, Jane Goodall and Jimi Hendrix. "I play guitar. It's one of my hobbies, along with salsa dancing. I was first in my class at the university. Nakahara is the best robotics firm in Japan. I think I would be a perfect fit here," Keiko concludes.