Episode Report Card Sobell: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Secret Agent Jan
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.29.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Tonight is a Janis-centric episode. Her pregnancy isn't going as well as it needs to -- she's anemic and not gaining enough weight -- and it's due to her stress levels. Gosh, being a double agent is hard! Somewhere amid all of this, we find out that the blueprints Dyson Frost was carrying around provide the schematics for some sort of astrological clock. And the first date is October 6, 2009. We also find out he secreted a QED in the white queen chess piece he left back in Pigeon, Utah.
Those developments are somewhat secondary to the story of how Janis came to be working for the bad guys. We find out she was recruited as a mole two years prior to the flashforward. She's been passing information to her handler (who holds down a job as the harmless middle-aged matron in a pet store), albeit reluctantly since the flashforward. Equally startling: We find out that Vogel's been on to Janis since the day she graduated from Quantico, identifying her as a potential mole. And he's the one who urged her to become a mole, so he could get someone on the inside of whatever shadowy cabal. (Oh, Vogel, you are sort of like the Bruce Wayne of this show, always thinking a billion steps ahead.) So, in actuality, Janis is a double agent. Whew!
Meanwhile: Olivia has a friend in Gabriel. Although his greeting her in the Benford living room freaks her right the hell out (and understandably so) we find out that he's been shadowing her for much of her adult life. Olivia double-checks Gabriel's ravings against her old photos and, surprise, surprise, he's in the background in an awful lot of them. This convinces Olivia that Gabriel's ravings are probably more correct than incorrect, and she enlists Vreede in her personal "What the hell?" quest. We learn that Raven River was a mental hospital that was shut down back in the 1980s after some very sketchy experiments with schizophrenics and autism. Naturally, Vreede and Olivia rush on over. Unsurprisingly, Lloyd is there, and he leads Olivia and Vreede into the ward where, it turns out, Dyson Frost conducted tons of flashforward experiments on these poor mental patients. Gabriel begins raving again and amid his shouted revelations: Llyolivia was foreordained by fate! Mark is a mistake! And apparently, Olivia needs to get her love life in order or else it's the end of the world.
And in Afghanistan: Aaron zzzzzzzz. (All kidding aside, it turns out that it's hard to go anywhere in Afghanistan without someone trying to shoot at you. Aaron finds this out the hard way.
We've seen the future and we're pretty sure that it means the cast needs new jobs. We've got suggestions for their next moves.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!The episode begins with a sequence not unlike the opening of The Silence of the Lambs, only instead of Clarice Stark running through the woods of Quantico and setting squirrels on fire with her laserbeam gaze, we have Janis and Demetri running at the back of the pack while Janis VO's about the brutal six-mile obstacle course that is "The Yellow Brick Road." We get a ton of backstory: "I never intended to be an FBI agent. I was a lawyer, and hated my life. Then I had this friend who joined the Bureau. I never thought of myself as particularly patriotic, but it sounded cool. I liked the idea of being part of something, actually trying to make the world a safer place. I loved it. I loved every second of it. Quantico made me strong. It taught me what mattered. And it showed me I'm capable of tackling problems I never thought possible." We get a shot of Janis and Demetri, all wet (it is raining, natch) and muddy and elated over finishing the course. By the way, that is all you see of Agent Noh this week. He's evidently off taking a well-deserved break this week. We shall miss you and your irritated glare, Demetri.
We then cut to Janis looking all date-night pretty at some lounge, telling a soignée older brunette that, "Of course, I've never lived in L.A., so we'll see how I survive this." The other woman discreetly fishes about the status of Janis's love life and Janis feints, then the lady Lita tells Janis's cleavage that she's a sort of corporate headhunter, if you substitute the phrase "massive, secret global cabal" for "corporate." Janis is being headhunted. And, going by the smoldering looks Lita's giving her, cleavage hunted. After Lita makes her "moonlight for us whilst working at the FBI," Janis coyly flutters her eyes in assent.
Zip! Back in the present, and Janis is expositing in re: the photos and blueprints that Dyson Frost (RIP) had on him when he died. Everyone in the conference room oohs appreciatively at being told what pieces of paper are, while Vogel glowers in the doorway. Mark is all, "Let me jump in by reminding you that Dyson Frost died in my arms, and he said something cryptic about 'In the end, you'll be saved by the lady you see every day.'" Have any of the agents thought to check a comprehensive Grateful Dead lyrics database? This sounds right up their alley. Vogel finally pipes up: "I can't speak on behalf of everyone, but I'm still contemplating the unbelievable fact that we had the possible mastermind of a global blackout in our hands, and just before he's able to divulge any real information, he's killed by a terrorist who, mere hours before, was in our custody. Now how the hell does that happen?" Um ... the writers were given an order to wrap up the show in one season, plausibility be damned? Mark huffily responds that it's all worth it because Demetri's alive, and it descends into bickering before Janis is all, "Gentleman, can we please pay attention to the blueprints? Surely they mean something, right?" The boys ignore her and continue bickering, and it takes Wedeck speaking loudly and threatening to hit them with a big stick before they get back to the damn blueprints. Naturally, Vreede will not be allowed anywhere near them or, by extension, the main plot. He is to chase down the Raven River reference. Fortunately for Vreede, Dyson Frost wasn't the only one babbling about Raven River. Mark gives a go-team summary, and Janis looks all uneasy. BECAUSE SHE'S A MOLE.