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Chaplin is determined to recover his stolen launch key from whoever stole it, and he's not exactly using a soft touch. Kendal is having to search every member of the crew, who aren't taking kindly to this treatment, not least because Chaplin and Kendal are keeping the missing key a secret between the two of them. Also subject to search is Mayor Julian, who gets a bunch of his stuff confiscated, and Sophie, upon whose laptop Kendal sees the footage of the drug-addled kiss he gave her last week. Things are a little tense between Kendal and Sophie for a while, but eventually she tells him about the soil samples and their trust in each other is restored.
But not before some other stuff happens. Chaplin and Kendal have also stashed Booth, the one surviving member of the Black Ops team from last week, in a hidden location and are trying to get him to tell them who the CIA sleeper agent on board the Colorado is. Booth doesn't know, but he suggests that locating the agent's secret comm site will lead them to the traitor. He also makes Kendal a private offer in which Chaplin gets taken out of the picture so Kendal can run things for a while until the current president is brought down by his own misdeeds. And to sweeten the deal, he offers to have Christine brought to the island.
Aside from the questionable trustworthiness of Booth, there's also the fact that Christine isn't waiting around to be taken anywhere. Kylie Sinclair gets hold of a photo proving Amanda Straw wasn't killed in a plane crash per the official cover story, and Christine waves it all over the news. And then she and Kylie conspire to plant a bug in Paul Wells's car so they can overhear his conversations with Secretary of Defense Curry. Christine has to let Paul kiss her to pull it off, but hopefully it'll be worth it.
Prosser discovers that some of his men are scoring drugs on the island. So he rousts the local dealer, which enrages Julian so much that he straps a bomb to a sailor and drops her in the middle of a party Kendal was throwing the crew. King and Shepard manage to defuse the device, and then go share the kind of sex on the beach that doesn't come in a glass. Chaplin and Kendal roust Julian, who offers up a stooge as the perpetrator of the attempted bombing. Chaplin goes along with the charade and lets Brannan (yes, him) shoot the guy, giving Julian a dire warning not to test him again. But Julian just doesn't listen, and his men nab Prosser, scorch his feet, and leave him stranded in the jungle with nothing but a vial of the prescription painkiller Prosser was hooked on years ago. Well, that and a horrific story about Julian's first day as a child soldier.
Kendal reports back to Chaplin about the hidden comm site on the island, and Chaplin agrees to switch gears and start looking for that rather than the key, which will lead them to the traitor. Who, and not that anyone knows this yet, turns out to be none other than Pilar Cortez. She's been going on about loyalty all episode, so we really should have guessed.
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Kendal's searching all of the crew's luggage in the makeshift shore base they've thrown up somewhere on the island, and they're getting pretty owly about it. Including Shepard, who's a little offended that even she isn't exempt from suspicion. Kendal's selling a cover story that they're looking for an accomplice in the BZ attack that Julian facilitated last week, as well as the stolen EpiPens. He can't exactly go broadcasting the fact that Chaplin's nuclear launch key is what they're really looking for, can they? Kendal chases Shepard off, and when Chaplin shows up, he tells the captain that there's no sign of the key. Chaplin says this needs to stay between the two of them until they've identified the enemy within the crew. Apparently it's been 48 hours since it disappeared, which makes Kendal wonder why they're even still alive. "Our Judas hasn't reported their success yet," Chaplin says blithely, and insists that even Shepard might have gone off the deep end after her father's arrest. Kendal insists that he trusts her, but Chaplin isn't having it, even though Kendal's worried about losing the crew. Chaplin has clearly forgotten that whoever stole the key also saved his life and made sure the sub had breathable air again, or he'd probably be a little less uptight about all this.
On board the Colorado, Prosser is ordering the sailors to open up the lockers under their bunk. One sailor, Kowalski, tries to stash what he claims is a night-guard for his teeth, but Prosser isn't fooled, furiously dragging the sailor into the head and flushing down what is instead a baggie of drugs. Just Say No doesn't just apply to shady nuclear launch orders, after all.
Kendal and Chaplin pay a visit to the Black Ops guy from last week who claimed to be McClure, who they secretly stashed away in an abandoned hut in the jungle somewhere. They're the only ones who know he's alive, so he starts by telling them his real name, Booth. Sic semper tyrannis, motherfuckers. But what the senior officers really want to know who in the crew Booth's working with. Booth drops a hint, prompting Chaplin to mention the widespread rumor that there's a CIA sleeper agent on every sub, just in case a captain goes crazy. Well, whoever the sleeper is on the Colorado, clearly their alarm didn't go off. Booth figures whoever it is must have gotten Chaplin's key, but he insists he has no way of knowing who it might be, and even invites Kendal to torture him again. For now, they leave him chained up and go to see the one other person who might know.
That would be Julian Serrat, whose house they roll up to in force, weapons leveled, while he's having a little afternoon get-together whose guests include Sophie. Chaplin says Julian should have posted more guards, as though enough exist, and has Prosser to give the order to search the place. Chaplin offers to let Julian tell him where his missing item is, and threatens him with the 28 cruise missiles he still has on board. Julian admits that this is the first time he's been threatened with a cruise missile. Rookie. While sailors start carrying boxes out, Kendal gives the order to search Julian's person. Coincidentally, that task falls to Brannan, who's somehow back on active duty after trying to hijack the Colorado a few episodes ago. Nor has he forgotten his last visit to Julian's.
King again wakes up in Tani's bed, and after some chatting she offers to help him bury the other two dead SEALs, but he declines, saying it has to be just him and Hopper. No girls allowed. She offers to close down early and get him drunk when he comes back, and he says she's good for him, which is something he's not used to. Think he'll mess it up?
At the monitoring station, Kendal's now searching Sophie's office in her absence, and stashing some of Julian's stuff there. She doesn't even have a screen saver password on her laptop, which he opens up already cued to the beginning of his beating of Booth last week. Yeah, could be a worse bit of footage, especially considering how obsessively Sophie was rewatching it at the end of last week's episode. I'm surprised the scene isn't phosphor-burned into her screen. Sophie comes in, not happy, and he gets right back in her face about being at Julian's. She dares him to search her, "But you know I was not involved." He says he doesn't know what she is, and she says that makes two of them. Burn.
Prosser goes up to a big guy on the street to tell him to stop selling his drugs to sailors. The dude just sneers and walks away, at which point Prosser takes his hand off his sidearm. Glad that was resolved.
Kendal is alone with Booth and going further into the backstory, as Booth verifies Kendal's suspicion that the attack on Pakistan was a pretext to justify the president's power grab. "Enjoy, man, you're the good guys. But here's the twist: so are we." He starts talking about how nobody knows whether Chaplin is playing chess or is actually insane, and starts telling Kendal all about Chaplin's psych profile. Kendal just laughs it off, and asks how they get home. Booth says that's not what they want: the Colorado needs to stay put, as a symbol of resistance. But with Kendal in charge instead of Chaplin. Booth says it could be over in six months to a year. Kendal doesn't want to wait that long, but Booth offers to sweeten the deal -- by bringing Christine to the island. Which I'm sure she'd love. She and Sophie would adore each other.
In Washington, D.C., Kylie Sinclair bribes a guy whose boss she used to be (before Daddy apparently put her brother in charge) into giving her a little goodie package: a device that can be attached to a car for 20 seconds to set up a bug that picks up all hands-free calls, as well as another device that should remotely unlock the door of any vehicle built after 2008. Kylie thought he'd be the one getting into the car, but he says that a felony's out of her price range, so she dismisses him.
In the captain's quarters on the Colorado, Kendal meets with Chaplin, who remains obsessed with getting the key back, and plans to impose a curfew. That's the first thing I do whenever I misplace my keys. "Remember, your key is a target too," he warns Kendal. Kendal is still worried about morale, but Chaplin isn't worried about it despite Kendal's concerns.
Out at what is fast becoming a SEAL cemetery, Hopper (who's apparently well enough to dig now), tells King that the Navy is also burying people, namely the Black Ops team. Except there are only four graves. So they go right to the sub and King demands of Shepard where the fifth one is. Shepard says she'd know if there was an extra one, because the captain or XO would have told her. "You sure about that?" King asks.
So then Shepard visits the captain's quarters and asks if there were any survivors from the Black Ops team. Chaplin lies that there weren't and quickly turns the grilling around on her, asking if she knows how she ended up in his boat. She babbles about how she assumed it was at his request, then that maybe her father pulled strings. Without giving her anything back, Chaplin dismisses her and locks the door behind her. In the corridor, Shepard runs into Cortez and, in a foul mood, searches the backpack she's and finds some bottles of liquor inside, for a an impromptu party on the beach with some of the other female crew. Shepard reminds Cortez of the curfew, but Cortez assures her they were planning to be back before then and apologizes. Shepard lets her off the hook, and in return gets an invitation to come along.
In town, Prosser spots the local drug dealer selling to Kowalski, and while the sailor bolts, the COB walks up to the dealer and beats him unconscious, flicking bullets out of his ejected magazine onto his motionless body. "time these go in your head," he warns the dude who isn't even awake to hear him. Must be intended for the witnesses.
Kylie's in a parking garage again, and a woman comes up and tells her the admiral isn't coming. She introduces herself as Forrest, a friend of the admiral's and now Kylie's, telling her about Admiral Shepard's shooting of Amanda Straw, who officially died in a plane crash over the Pacific. That makes the photo of Straw's bloody but dry corpse that Forrest produces potentially rather awkward for the president if it gets out. Forrest says it might make people wonder what else the president is lying about, and walks away. Okay, good meeting!
Cortez, Shepard, and the other female crewmembers are making their way through the jungle at night and tweaking Shepard a bit about how uptight she is. Which is, you know, fair.
Kendal returns to Sophie's office for another look at those green vials he saw earlier, which I guess he's just realized are similar to some confiscated from Julian. Sophie comes in, and when Kendal starts making with the accusatory questions about Sophie and Julian some more, she asks if he's going to beat her up like he did Booth. Which is a bad move because Kendal returns to her laptop for the footage, asking if it looks like he's enjoying it. Well, then it cuts to the footage of him kissing Sophie when he thought she was Christine due to the effects of the BZ attack, which it does look like he enjoyed. "What's this?" he asks, and she walks out. Okay, awkward.
On the beach around a bonfire, Shepard is confessing to the other crewwomen about how she once took the SATs for someone else. Cortez steps out of the circle, and Shepard goes to ask her what really happened during her captivity with Julian. Cortez says nothing dirty, like everyone thinks; she promised to spy for him aboard the Colorado, but the deal was off after Julian killed Redman. Shepard asks if she really would have done it, and Cortez's answer is in the form a story about a dog she had as a girl that turned on her and got shot by her dad, who said you can never trust a dog after it turns on you. "Same with a traitor," she says. Was that the question?
Christine's doing a TV interview at home, talking about how the administration is lying about Amanda Straw's death. The interviewer says that's a serious allegation, and when Kylie nods at Christine from behind the camera, she busts out that photo of Amanda Straw, which Christine says is part of a cover-up of a bigger story that includes Kendal and the Colorado. Kylie certainly didn't waste any time, did she?
The drug dealer marches into Julian's house during dinner to show off his wounds, and Julian seems pretty pissed off about it. Even more than his baseline, I mean.
The crew is mustered on the beach, and Kendal tells them all a joke about a little boy who claims to be building an NCO out of a pile of manure. They don't seem appreciative of the story until it gets to the end and the boy in the joke explains, "I don't have enough crap to build an officer." That gets a laugh, although I can't believe it's the first time any of them have heard it. He keeps telling them jokes until some guys show up at his prearrangement with a stretcher full of beer, which he hands out while letting them watch an old football game projected on a sheet. And just like that, they're won back over. Morale is easy, it turns out.
Cortez steps away from the party to go visit Chaplin and bring him a beer while he sits alone in the empty bar, and to say she's there for him whenever he needs her. Chaplin thanks her, "But you should not seek me out alone. There's an order and a morality that we both have to follow." Cortez remarks that everything has changed. "Not everything," Chaplin says. With that, Cortez goes back to the party.
Meanwhile, Kendal drives a Jeep out to the woods with Booth's dinner and a beer, only to be waylaid by King and Hopper, who want to know what's going on, and would rather take over the interrogation from Kendal. "When we're done, we got a nice resting place for him out in the jungle," King tells him, which is not really designed to reassure Kendal. Kendal tells them to back off, saying he's close, and King agrees to do so. "For now."
Inside, though, it's quickly apparent that Booth is the one inside Kendal's head, bringing up his captivity in North Korea and his guilt over the seven other men who died. "Now Marcus has landed you in prison again." As for some practical information Kendal can use, Booth says the sleeper will communicate using a secure comm site somewhere on the island. "Find the site, you'll have him. Now, you ready to start helping yourself?" Kendal asks how it would work, and Booth explains how Chaplin will be nabbed and kept safe while Kendal runs things on the island and waits for the administration to grant them all amnesty. Sounds almost too good to be true, doesn't it?
Back at the party, King grabs a beer and tells Shepard that yep, Chaplin and Kendal do have that fifth Black Ops guy stashed away. He starts to mock her for always being the type to raise her hand first in class, but before she can respond, a pickup drives by and dumps out a sailor named Snyder. She gets up to her knees and tells everyone to stay away, revealing a bomb duct taped to her with the words "CRUISE MISSILE" scribbled on the tape. Nice touch, Julian.
But after the ads, King goes up to Snyder to examine the bomb, which Snyder says is on a timer, though she doesn't know how much time is left. Shepard also gets in close to try to keep Snyder calm while King works. With Shepard's help, he manages to pull out the right wire. They all collapse on the ground and the timer beeps seconds later. "Time's up," King says while the sailors gather around Snyder after it's clear that nobody will be blowing up tonight. It's probably safe to say the party's over, though.
Paul Wells shows up at Christine's house in a panic about her latest interview. She claims the photo just showed up in her mailbox, and when Paul yells at her, she yells back that she's under a lot of pressure, plus there's even a leaky faucet keeping her awake on top of everything else. Paul apologizes and offers to take a look. And the light going on in Christine's bathroom is the signal to Kylie, waiting out back, to do her stuff. She activates one of the devices she's holding, and the whole lot full of cars chirps obligingly before she gets into Paul's and plugs the device into the car's USB port. Good thing it has one, right? The program starts downloading, but Paul soon decides he needs to get his toolkit out of the car. Christine stalls him by getting all flirty and sweet, and then he kisses her. That man has absolutely no sales resistance. She backs away, acting confused and asking him to be patient. Yeah, like more than a second. At least Kylie has the car rigged by now.
Shepard finds King out on the beach and after exchanging compliments on how well they handled the recent crisis, she kisses him. He pulls away, but only to let her hair down. "Been wondering what that looks like," he says, and soon they're undressing each other there on the beach like another timer's about to go off any second. Aw, poor Tani, who I don't care about. After the ads, they quickly get dressed, agreeing that it was a one-time ting and tersely thanking each other. Sure it's a one-time thing. Bad move, King, potentially betraying the island's primary source of liquor and the owner of a bed that's probably a lot more comfortable than wherever Shepard sleeps.
Chaplin, Kendal, and an armed squad show up at Julian's house, Chaplin screaming, "WHERE IS HE?" Julian comes out saying Chaplin doesn't know what he's looking for, and produces some stooge he's had beaten and tied up, claiming that's the guy who wired Snyder. And that Chaplin can't take Julian anyway, because the people of the island love him too much to allow it. The stooge even confesses that he acted alone, as Julian obviously coached him to do. Chaplin turns to Snyder, who nods. Julian offers to deal with the man, but Chaplin says he's got it. "This man has admitted to the attempted mass murder of my crew. Chaplin draws his sidearm and hands it to Brannan, who shoots the prisoner in the chest and then levels the weapon at Julian. Shocked that the U.S. Navy just went that dark on him, Julian tries to make a break for it, only run into a personal beatdown from Chaplin himself. "Try me again, and I will be your judge, jury, and executioner," Chaplin spits into Julian's face, while Kendal looks at him with shock. And maybe wondering if he might be crazy after all. Again.
King returns to Tani's apartment behind the bar late at night and finds her already asleep. So there's that awkward conversation postponed.
At Christine's house, Kylie announces that they're getting a call on Paul's car phone. They listen while SecDef Curry comes in and identifies himself by name, asking Paul what's going on. Paul says they have a leak in the White House and it isn't his fault, and besides, he wants out. But apparently Curry's dangling Paul's son out of his reach somehow, and says to stick to the plan. So we have to feel bad for Paul now? Sorry. I feel bad for his son, admittedly, but that's not exactly new.
At the monitoring station, Sophie talks to Kendal about the nutty events of the episode, including what he saw on her laptop earlier. Kendal says he's sorry, and Sophie says, "Only an American would apologize for a kiss." She says she's not working with Julian, but paying back a debt to him from her ex-boyfriend, hence the mineral samples. "This island is worth a lot of money," she tells Kendal straight-up, rather than the oblique way she said it a few weeks ago. She explains to Kendal that she didn't want him thinking she lied to him, and asks him to promise to keep it a secret from everyone. Kendal can't promise that, but Sophie says, "Now you know that I will not lie to you." Which is clearly her biggest concern.
Out in the jungle, Julian and his men unload another sailor from the back of their jeep. He's tied up and has a bag over his head, but it's no surprise that when he fights and it comes off, it's Prosser. Julian asks him why he's such a tight-ass about his sailors wanting a brief escape from the prison of the island, and while the men hold him, offers him samples from a whole smorgasbord of drugs in his bag. Prosser has an involuntary reaction to a vial of Fentanyl, which Julian is only too happy to prepare to inject into Prosser, even as Prosser insists he kicked the habit years ago. But while doing so, Julian tells a story from his childhood about how some men tried to take him into the bush and make him chop off his mother's arm with a machete. "That was my first day as a soldier," Julian explains. Does everyone have to have something sympathetic about them? In the meantime, Prosser's feet have been stripped bare and some of the men have lit up a gas torch, which they use to cook the COB's poor, defenseless tootsies. So now he could actually use that Fentanyl, which Julian shoots him up with, and leaves the vial with him for when the pain comes back. Their work done, they cut him loose and drive off to leave him to find his way back, on feet that will no longer hold him up. If you ever wanted to see a grown COB cry, this is it.
On the roof of the station, Kendal comes out and asks Chaplin, "So we're executioners now?" Chaplin blithely says there was no other option, and asks how things are going with Booth. Kendal tells Chaplin Booth's story about the sleeper agent's comm site, and how the Colorado is now basically The Resistance. Chaplin shrugs and says they can stop looking for the key and look for the comm site instead. "We find the traitor, we find the key." Notice how Kendal left out the part where Booth offered to put him in charge?
Elsewhere on the island, Cortez finds a stand of bamboo, lifts a rock, and stashes Chaplin's key under it. Found it, you guys!
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at M.Giant[at]gmail.com.