By Sobell
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Simon's out for revenge. Janis agrees to help him break into NLAP after Simon promises to turn himself in, and then Demetri swings by and somehow agrees to go along with the the NLAP caper. He cites his deep affection for Janis as a friend; no doubt, she is playing him like a piano.
Mark has stuck a fork in his marriage and declared it done. This leaves him considerably more free time to talk to Hellinger. Maintaining the fine tradition of those who have endured multiple flashforwards, Hellinger is nuttier than the Harry & David storehouse. He warns, "You will lose control, and you will lose everything... and then, you'll be killed in your office." Mark is not too fazed, and rejects Hellinger's plea to prevent this future by letting Hellinger go.
He then spends the rest of the episode trying to anticipate what Hellinger's organization will do, and does a fairly crap job. He goes to beat the crap out of Hellinger As Has Been Foretold, but Wedeck steps in like the rockstar that he is, then Olivia brings Charlie by for a touching father-daughter scene. After Mark's wrenching goodbye to Charlie, he decides to make a bad day worse by going to talk to Hellinger again (why? Whhhhhhy?), and after Hellinger tells Mark that Charlie will be better off without him, that's when Mark finally loses it and attacks Hellinger. Vogel watches with the same dispassion as a middle-schooler looking at a paramecium in a microscope. Wedeck decides it's time for Mark to take a mental-health day.
Naturally, Mark then wanders into a flashforward-day party, where a strange man accosts him, claims that in his vision, he quit drinking, and hands Mark his stylish flask with, "You look like you could use this." Benford breaks into sobs and falls off the wagon. One bar brawl later, Mark is in jail.
Demetri meets Zoey at the airport with every intention of going to Hawaii. Her happiness at seeing Demetri is short-lived, because Demetri 'fesses up to sleeping with Janis ("I thought I was going to die, and it made sense at the time") and Zoey rightfully points out that while Demetri was being all fatalistically philandering, she was pouring everything she had into the conviction that she and Demetri would have a long life together. That conviction? G-O-N-E. As is Zoey -- she tells Demetri to enjoy hanging out alone in Los Angeles while she goes to Hawaii.
In the subplot we care about: Nicole 'fesses up to Bryce about Keiko having been at the hospital and now in a detention center, and Bryce huffs off to the detention... from which Keiko was sprung by her mother mere hours before. Keiko is being bundled off to LAX.
In the subplot that some of us may care about: Tracy dies, thanks to her brutal treatment at the hand of Jericho. Aaron unleashes the Wrath of Dad and we learn from some random Jericho guys that they weren't massacring people, they were conducting experiments in cahoots with Hellinger's group in advance of the global flashforward.
In the subplot that will have us all scratching our heads: Olivia decides, "Screw fate!" and decides to run far, far away from fate and Lloyd.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The episode begins with Charlie waking from a sound sleep and shouting for Olivia. When Olivia comforts her crying child, Charlie tells her, "Today's the day. Today's the day Daddy's gonna die." Olivia has nothing to say to that, so she kisses the top of Charlie's head and wonders how she's going to finesse the timeline when bringing Dad 2.0 around.
7:26 a.m. Simon has evidently kept Janis up all night, which su-u-ucks if she's still in the "so tired I could die" phase of pregnancy. He, however, is fueled by spite and genius. Simon expresses some minor concern over how large the howling mob will be when his name is definitively linked to the Suspect Zero footage, and whether they'll stick with the classic torches and pitchfork, or go with newfangled tasers. Janis wearily asks what Simon wants. He tells her: "I want revenge. I want to destroy the people who are responsible for the global blackout." Janis cites Hellinger as proof that the sinister world cabal behind all this is about to crumble, and Simon promptly calls BS on the argument, slyly alluding to her tenure as a mole for the cabal. He admits he doesn't know who the cabal is, but since they had him install a piece of software on the NLAP mainframe to ensure the accelerator would fire on October 6, he'd like to use that as his first clue toward tracking said cabal down. Janis tries to talk Simon out of a road trip up to Palo Alto and into a road trip to FBI HQ; he bargains, "You get me to NLAP, I'll turn myself in."
8:11 a.m. Mark and Demetri are eating a taco-truck breakfast and congratulating themselves on a night well-spent capturing Hellinger. Which is odd, since I seem to remember that scene taking place during the day in the last episode, but I suppose the paperwork could have taken a while. As might processing a passel of interchangeable henchpeople in black turtlenecks -- you'd keep getting confused, on account of them all looking alike, start double-processing ... ANYWAY. Demetri notes that he's now off to work with the digital forensics guys to try and recover some of the computer files Hellinger managed to erase. Mark is like, "That will be tough, as you're going to be spending the morning on Hawaiian Air, winging your way to the Rainbow State." And then he hands over a thoughtful gift and nice callback to prior episodes: a CD he burned with 15 different covers of "Islands in the Stream." Demetri laughs as he asks when Mark made it, and Mark cracks, "I don't get much sleep." He then gives Demetri a carpe-diem-type speech about seizing the future he used to think he didn't have, and concludes, "Even with the way everything went down, even though I lost her, marrying Olivia was the best thing I did. Don't be afraid, especially on a day like this."