Okay, it's early evening as we open at the Boulle Behavioral Lab in (Alex) Richmond, Mass. -- thank you for the shout-out -- and once inside, we see a white laboratory-coated, possibly evil, slightly rat-like man stride down a long corridor, past a paramilitary armed guard, and into a room. Inside, a man is reciting a monologue from Hamlet (it's the one when he's holding the skull, the "alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio," one, but the writers cut right to the good part about death being like sleep, and shuffling off this mortal coil) and then we pan down to a white card that says "Hamlet, performed by Edward Woodward," and it could be the guy from The Wicker Man, who was no doubt a guy who got teased a lot when he was a kid. Try this one: what do you call a guy with three pieces of wood on his head? Edward Woodward. Say it fast, it works. Then, boom: we see the room is full of monkeys, typing. Maybe a million monkeys, even. They chatter and jump and type nonsense, and the ferrety lab-coated guy takes notes, until he comes up behind one chimp and sees that it's typing Edward's recitation word for freaking word. A gasp and dropping of clipboard follows, and he runs off to tell someone.
Moments later, we hear The Specials, or The Meters, or the Bob Marley band playing a merry sort of reggae number. The lab-coat guy comes back with other lab-coated folk, and we see the chimp's screen is all gibberish. Dang, guess no one taught them Ctrl-S. We get another gasp face, and faces of rebuke from the other lab-coatees, then the chimps are left alone again. When the Shakespeare-loving chimp sees he is alone with his mite-eating kind, he deletes the screen, and starts typing again, this time, "A Short History of My Demeaning Captivity." Hee. That monkey sure showed them.
Oh, say can you see? The credits.
A piano tinkles genteelly at a fancy hotel in Baltimore. A martini is poured, people are elegantly dressed, and oh, there's everyone's favorite, Yves. She says, en Français, thanks for the drink, and the swellegant guy who paid for it replies, "rien," which means literally "nothing," or "think nothing of it," but gets translated as "you're welcome." So, they banter en Françias, he hits on her, and she slides over her room key card and sashays away. What an invitation.
When she arrives in her room, there's a bottle of champers chilling, waiting, and I say "WOOO!" real loud because I see Edward "The Equalizer" Woodward is a special guest this week. So, she makes the room all comfy, turns on some sultry saxophone Espionage Jams! Greatest Hits, Volume IV, hides her knockout drops behind the sofa cushions, and whoops! There's Frohike. Langly emerges, saying, "The bathroom has a water fountain in it." Hee. So glad they they're busting her gig for a change. She gets all huffy that they're there, and they ask her to explain some email they got. She asks how they found her and Frohike says they tracked her down via her latest anagram, "Sara Lee Wheyvold." Frenchy walks in, sees the party, and walks out. Yves fusses and huffs some more, goes onto the balcony, and starts scaling the walls. Then she says three dudes are headed up to "kill everyone in the room." Frohike and Langly pause for a moment, then cause a pileup in the doorway in their rush to exit. At the door, they see three thugs headed their way. Quickly, they lock the door and gather up the sheets and towels, and by the time the thugs bust in, all they find is a sheet-and-towel rope hanging off the balcony. The thugs split, and we see that Langly and Frohike have hidden themselves on top of the table parasol. Just as I was about to doubt that a parasol could hold the weight of two men, it collapses. Whoa! We have pratfall number one.
The Lone Gun-Bunker. Yves is still steaming mad. Yeah, yeah, don't get your leather thong all in a wad. So, finally they tell her about the email they got, in text and voice file form. It's the chimp who, using Edward Woodward's voice, tells the Gun-Dudes that he's captive, "a slave" held in a lab by people in the D.O.D., and there are others like him. He's heard of their work and tireless fight for democracy, too. Uh-huh. Wow, a chimp never kissed my ass before. I must not be a very good writer. Or maybe my work just doesn't speak to captive, highly intelligent monkeys. No, I know that can't be true. So, Yves is all, that's Edward Woodward, and Jimmy is like, the guy from The Equalizer is being held captive? So sick am I of the Jimmy-is-stupid thing, I take a long break from recapping and watch the vampire movie-fest on FX. Hours later, I am back. Sigh. So, Yves is all like, someone is yanking you, and through thoughtful hacking, the LGs have found out the email did come from behind a D.O.D. firewall, and that they're going to go up with a crowbar, as requested, to help free "Peanuts." That's the "slave name" the chimp was given. Yves is coming along, because, "[they] owe [her]." And that makes sense how? Oh, never mind.
We're back in (Alex) Richmond, Mass., with the ferrety lab-coat guy, who's spelling out his name with little-kid magnets of the alphabet: Doctor Hasslip. Hass-lip. Now, it's the assembled chimps' turn. He calls on Peanuts and spells it out on the board. Peanuts looks impassive, and Hasslip says he's on to him. A paramilitary grunt busts in and asks for a word with Hasslip. Hasslip leaves and Peanuts runs to the board and starts rearranging the letters. Hee, chimps are funny.