We're on a plane coming in to Boston. The dour male stewardess is collecting empty cups and other such garbage in a big old trash bag, nicely illustrating how far we have come from the days when flying was a Big Deal. Some guy jostles the woman sitting to him; he nervously apologizes, and she nervously says it's okay. Elsewhere, a woman is thanking God they're landing. "I hate flying," she says to the guy to her. "So you've mentioned. Repeatedly," he says wearily, completely embarrassing the poor white-knuckler. I think, given the chance between sitting to nervous flyer or rude asshole, I'll take the nervous flyer. She gets up to go to the bathroom, and we hear a sound-collage of obnoxious passengers making demands on this poor guy, who is apparently the only flight attendant on board. "Still waiting on that third pillow," says some snotty woman snottily, and the steward explains that the flight is full and all the pillows are out, even though in all the shots we've seen, only one person is using a pillow, a woman sleeping to the nervous flyer. Then the rude guy tells the steward, "I need a drink," and the steward mutters "so do I" and then informs the asshole that drink service is over since they'll be landing shortly. Rude asshole glares at him. Only once in my life have I drunk on a plane, and it was when I was flying from Calgary to Halifax for my university graduation and I noticed that the girl in the seat to me had an athletic bag with a Keith's logo on it, Keith's being this great beer made in Halifax that pretty much turned me in to the alcoholic I am today, and at the time it wasn't really available widely across Canada so I figured she must be from Halifax too, and we struck up a conversation, me being quite happy not to be stuck sitting to a colicky baby or some obnoxious windbag. I mean, I was just glad to have the chance to be the obnoxious windbag for once. And she was going back to Halifax for graduation too, so eventually we decided to celebrate by ordering beers for what was the first time for both of us, and how geeky we must have seemed to the stewardess as we joked with her that we'd never ordered alcohol on a plane before but we were celebrating, and the stewardess was all, "Congratulations! That will be twenty dollars," for the two beers, at which point I almost choked until I realized she was kidding, even though the actual price for two beers on a plane was not really that far off. And so we each wound up having a couple of beers, and I'm not sure if there's something about being on a plane or if I hadn't had a lot to eat that day or what, but both of us managed to get a decent buzz from only two beers, but we were both that kind of laughing happy beer-drinkers, which must have been awfully pleasant for everybody else on the plane. And of course I get off in Halifax where my relatives are waiting for me, with my aunt more than happy to call my mom back home and tell her Danny got off a plane and he and the floozy hanging off him were both drunk.
Anyway, the stewardess picks up a little plastic dinosaur that's in the aisle, and places it on the tray table of a little girl. "Thanks," she says, completely freaking the steward out. "What did you say?" he says, and she's all, "Uh, thanks," and he says, "I may cry. Thank you, young lady." And he squats down beside her, and then he's playing with the dinosaur and he says, "He's cute, what's his name?" like just when you're feeling sorry for the put-upon flight attendant he starts acting like an idiot and the girl gets all, he is NOT cute, he's a fearsome predator, and she starts rattling off the Tyrannosaurus rex's vital statistics. The steward asks if that's what she wants to be when she grows up. A dinosaur? "Yes, a paleontologist," she says. Then she says she wants to be a botanist after that, and yammers on about how her mom says she can do anything. And then this weird overdub has some disembodied woman's voice saying, "Yeah, wait until she grows up," like WHO SAID THAT and then the girl says it must be great to be an airline steward since you get to fly everywhere for free, and the despondent steward's weary façade is being cracked by this little girl's ray of sunshine, and then this guy says, "Yo, paying customer over here, can I get some service, pal?" so I guess this is the flight from New York. And the girl acknowledges that maybe sometimes the people aren't so nice.
The control tower. John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton are thankfully nowhere to be seen. The controller's bringing the pilot in. The steward straps himself into his special seat, and we get shots of all the characters we'll come to know and love over the hour: the sleeping woman. The rude asshole. The nervous jostler. The nervous jostled. Freaked-out nervous flyer in the bathroom, even though you're not allowed to be in there during descent. The future paleontologist looks out the window. "What's that?" she says. In the tower, the controller looks out the window just in time to see the plane disappear into thin air. This, naturally, concerns him. "Flight 134, where are you?" he says. The plane's gone from his radar screen, too, and some alarm's going off as he takes off his headset and goes to the tower window, mouth agape. "Where'd they go?"
Brand-new sepia-toned opening credits. Suitably creepy. I like them. Commercials.
In the control tower, the frantic controller's telling some suit-wearing guy that he had the plane on radar and visual, and it just disappeared. Just as he says this, the plane reappears. "Clear the runway!" he says, then picks up his headset. "Flight 134, do you read me?" "It was beautiful," says a blissed-out pilot.
Miracles HQ. Skeet walks into this dingy old factory room filled with old equipment, and Whatshername, sitting at a desk. So is this picking up immediately after the end of the last show? I don't think so, because she says, "Paul, it's good to see you." Then she says they'll need to photocopy two forms of I.D., like driver's license and social security card. Oh, and don't forget to see Doug in payroll, he's got some forms for you to sign. Skeet says he wants to talk to "Mr. Keel" before he signs anything, and Keel comes out all broody and dressed in black, like he's just hanging out waiting for his name to be mentioned so he can lurch into the room all sinister. Keel's like, whassup? He suggests they go for a walk.
So they go to a playground, where Keel frightens all the children away by looking all intensely at them and talking about the end of the world. Skeet wants to know why Keel's been watching him, and Keel says Skeet's a good investigator, which is something he desperately needs "in light of the coming darkness," and I'm guessing it wouldn't be too much fun to hang out with Keel on a day-to-day basis if he's always dropping in these apocalyptic non-sequiturs of his. Hey, Keel, want a beer? Sure, I guess I'll have a Pete's Wicked Brew, in light of the coming darkness and everything. Keel says that Skeet's former employer didn't fully appreciate Skeet's unique gifts, and Skeet says, "Like seeing 'God is now here' written in my own blood?" and Keel's all, exactamundo. But I don't think the church can be blamed for that one, since Skeet never even told them about that. And Keel says Paul plays "a significant role" in all of this. And Skeet's all, all of what? I don't believe in the end of the world. Keel says it's probably best that he doesn't, and basically just responds to all of Skeet's questions with cryptic answers. And Skeet flashes back to Tommy, and thinks this was a bad idea, and goes to leave. And Keel stops him by blathering on about how he doesn't know why Tommy had to die for Skeet to live, but that's what happened. "Something is coming, Paul. The signs are everywhere." And he rattles off a list: "Famine, fires, floods." And he holds forth on how there's been a rise in crime and strange phenomena and "nothing is simple anymore," and the seriousness of all this was undercut somewhat by Keel's cell phone going off. He says into it, "I'm on my way," and hangs up. He tells Paul that something very strange has just happened at Logan Airport. You in or what? Paul says nothing.
And he says nothing in the back seat of the Miraclemobile while Keel and Whatshername throw some exposition at us (and the credits inform us that this episode is directed by a guy named Jesus), as we learn that Keel got a call from Charles Jurgensen, whom Keel knew at Coincidental University (or maybe it was Cambridge) and who is now a senior officer in the NSA. "I tried to educate him in the British ways," he says, whatever that means. "How'd that go?" says Whatshername. "Not entirely well," says Keel. "You don't like him," she says. "No, I don't," he admits. "But I respect him; he's very dedicated." And Keel goes on to explain that they used to have common interests, but Charles wanted to change the world. "And you didn't?" says Paul. "No, as a matter of fact I did not," says Keel. "That's quite a philosophy," says Paul all snarkily. You'd think he'd be a little more on his best behaviour, this being his first day on the new job and all.
At the airport, the miracle crew makes its way through some military checkpoints as we see some PR flack using her best soothing voice in the arrivals lounge to tell anxious relatives that the flight landed safely, but there was a small fire in the bathroom, and federal regulations demand that the cause be determined. "My wife has severe medical problems!" says one guy while the team walks by.
In a stark, grey room, some official dude is on a cell phone saying, "It's not terrorists," and that it's nothing they've ever seen before, and they're bringing a team to investigate the "paranormal ramifications" as he prints off these dossier pages of the group as the team walks in. "What the hell took you so long?" he barks, like, nice welcome, and Keel gives him a "Nice to see you too, Charlie," and Charlie glares at Skeet, and "Evelyn Santos" is Whatshername's name, and Charlie gives the dossier sheets to some guy and instructs him to make the team some badges. And Keel says, "We don't need no stinkin' badges." Well, no, he didn't, but that would have been pretty cool. And Charlie goes to the trouble of swearing them in, only as what he doesn't say, and warns them that any discussion of the situation off the premises will be considered treason, and Keel's all, dude, just tell us what is UP already. Charlie explains about the plane disappearing "for exactly sixty-four seconds" before reappearing and landing safely; Skeet asks what happened to the passengers, and Charlie says they're interviewing the "coherent" ones, but they all have different stories. Meanwhile, everybody can't help but notice a lump under a sheet on a gurney. So Keel asks, "What do you want from us?" and Charlie says "answers," which you'd think would be obvious to the head miracle answer guy. Oh, and we've only got a couple of hours before the media starts "peeling our skin," whatever that means. Finally, Skeet just out and asks, what's under the sheet? Weird slo-mo of Charlie walking over and throwing back the sheet to reveal a charred body underneath. "Passenger 13B," he says. 13B burned to death in the airplane lavatory, but there were no other signs of a fire. "We need to know how the hell all this happened," he says. "And we need to know it now. Let's go."
And now they're going through a metal detector as Charlie explains that they're not to bring any cameras or recording devices or leave with any notes. Evelyn sets off the metal detector, and I was kind of hoping she had some cool piercings somewhere, but instead she whips out this little laminated doctor's seal of authenticity and goes on about how there's a bullet lodged in her brain that was deemed inoperable, and we learn that she used to be a police officer, and the army dude says, "She's clean."
They enter an airport hangar where the plane has been…parked? Is that the right term for a plane? The hangar has been partitioned off into little cubicle-like spaces, and Charlie says something about being short-handed, but he might have been kidding since the place is swarming with soldiers, a couple of whom are dragging away an unruly passenger. Charlie introduces them to a dude named Michael Garcia of the NTSB, who'll get Evelyn and Skeet started on their interviews, as Charlie snags Keel, saying there's something he wants him to see. Throughout all this, Skeet is making The Skeet Face. Michael tells Evelyn and Skeet that they're trying to figure out what happened "from the moment the plane…" he says, before trailing off. "Disappeared?" says the ever-helpful Skeet. "Encountered difficulties," corrects Michael. Skeet asks how the passengers are, and Michael says he'll show them. He draws back a divider, and we see the nervous jostler and the woman he jostled kissing. Michael says they didn't know each other before they got on the plane. Um, that's the first "paranormal" example they show these guys? Two people kissing?
We get a montage of various people from the plane. There's Rude Asshole, explaining that there was complete and utter silence, and that for the first time he felt like he belonged. "And then, there he was!" he says. "Who?" says someone off-screen. "Well, Satan," says the asshole. And he looks happy about it. There's another woman whom we haven't seen before, and she's recounting a bright light and thousands of voices singing. And then there's Skeet going into a partitioned room to talk to a very happy woman who happens to be Ann Cusack, the woman who was asleep on the plane before. She says something wonderful has happened, and she needs to talk to her husband. "He has to know. He has to know!" and Skeet's all official, would you like to sit down? And she says her husband needs to see her. "Why?" says Skeet. The woman, whose name is Karen, giggles and says "no!" and spins around and asks if she's dreaming. She says her husband needs to see her. "Why?" says Skeet. Karen explains that she has a severe brain injury. Or at least she did when she got on the plane. And meanwhile a dude is setting up a video camera. And Karen says she has a "whopper" of a brain injury: "I can't move, walk, stand, or speak." And she twirls some more while Skeet gets his Skeet Face ready.
Elsewhere, Evelyn is introducing herself to the little paleontologist wannabe, who looks traumatized. She introduces herself as Deanna Thompson. "Can you tell me what happened on the airplane?" says Evelyn. "I saw…" says Deanna, trailing off. "What did you see?" says Evelyn. "The rest of my life," Deanna says. "You mean…?" asks Evelyn, like, maybe your interview technique shouldn't be quite so vague, there, Evelyn, but Deanna seems to know exactly what she's asking, because she says, "Oh, yeah," which was actually kind of weird.
Elsewhere, Charlie is leading Keel down some more heavily guarded corridors, saying the people in the hangar have problems, but this guy they're really worried about. It's the flight attendant, in a straitjacket, electrodes on his forehead. He's babbling away in a foreign language, something that sounds Middle Eastern. Commercials.
Then the autopsy on Passenger 13B begins, with Charlie saying, "So any idea what in God's name happened here," like, yeah, the show's called Miracles -- the characters don't have to always be mentioning God every two minutes to remind us. "That's what we're about to find out," says the doctor, turning on one of those little circular saw things.
In the arrivals lounge, the same dude from before is flagging down the PR woman to ask about his wife, since she is "profoundly disabled" and she's traveling with her nurse and he needs to know she's all right. "We're doing everything we can, Mr. Longrich," she says, and walks off, and he's all, "It's Longview!"
Now we're watching the make-out couple again, and if someone could explain what exactly is so weird here, I'd appreciate it. I mean, they didn't see the future or Satan or start speaking in tongues. Although they are kind of annoying, giggling and babbling about "pinecones and pineapples."
Then we get the scary close-up on the mouth of the steward again, still babbling away, and we hear talk about "elevated alpha waves" and high blood pressure. Keel notices that they're using two video cameras, and is told that's in case one breaks down. Hmmm -- I wonder if that's going to turn out to be important. Keel then just grabs this handheld tape recorder from one of the government guys -- rather rudely, I might add -- and tapes the babbling flight attendant, then plays it back a little slower. "You know the language?" asks Charlie. "I believe he's speaking Aramaic," says Keel. "Like Jesus?" says Charlie, since this is Miracles, after all. "Not from what he's saying," says Keel, who never gives a straight answer to anybody.
Deanna Thompson recounts her sad life. She gets married at twenty-two to Glen Thompson, who didn't do too well in school, but his uncle gets him a job with the county. And they save up all year for a trip to the Grand Canyon, but Ethan and Allie -- their two kids -- are carsick the whole way. "I know I'm supposed to love them, but they're really difficult," she says. Evelyn makes a sad face.
Karen tells the story of her honeymoon -- her husband had said they couldn't really afford to go anywhere, and then surprised her with a ski trip to the Swiss Alps. She was on her ski team in college, so she was showing off a bit when she "lost it" and hit the lift tower. "That was twenty-one years ago," she says, the realization of that just striking her. "Mark never blinked. He's taken care of me all these years," when she couldn't do anything for herself. "That's why I have to see him, and tell him," she says. "What do you want to tell him?" asks Skeet. "That I know…every time he touches my face or he brushes my hair or he bathes me, I know how much he loves me." Skeet looks really uncomfortable as she starts to cry and blubber about what a good man her husband is. "I've never been able to tell him how much I love him!" Skeet offers her a hanky, like, nice try, Skeet. She tries to smile, since she's actually happy, and says she can't wait to see her husband. "You will," says Skeet, effectively telling us that the condition is going to wear off. Nice going, Skeet. Suddenly, she wants to know where Joyce, her nurse, is. "She hates flying. She's always afraid the plane is going to crash and we'll all burn to death." A little light bulb goes off over Skeet's head as he excuses himself, after noticing that Karen was seated in 13A. Karen happily taps her feet.
The doctor is weighing the crispy critter's gooey heart when Skeet comes running in so he can see the tag reminding everybody that this woman was sitting in 13B, even though we're all way ahead of Skeet on this one. A soldier strolls up to Skeet. "You can't be here," he says. So why didn't anybody stop him, then? And the soldier says, "Move or I'll move you," and Skeet agrees but doesn't move, so soldier-boy drags him away.
And Deanna is blabbing on about wanting to go back to school, but then Glen gets laid off so she takes a second job instead, and how Evelyn is managing to stay awake is beyond me. "On my thirty-ninth birthday, my father dies of lung cancer," she says. Evelyn says she's going to go get them some water, and then totally bails on her.
The steward has finally shut up, as Keel translates what he was saying to a guy typing up a transcript, with phrases like "all matter is held in place" and "if this frequency is disrupted" on the screen. Keel wanders over to the steward. "How you doing, Phil?" he asks, and Phil answers in Aramaic. "I think we can let him out of this jacket now," Keel tells Charlie, so they release him, and Keel notices a Medic Alert bracelet for epilepsy. Then Charlie is reading aloud about "modulating frequencies" and such from the transcript and asking Keel what the guy's talking about. Keel says he thinks the guy is using one of the world's oldest languages to "express certain theoretical projections of modern physics." "Like what?" says Charlie. "Cold fusion, perpetual motion…" says Keel, scanning the transcript. Something seems to catch his eye, but he just finishes with "…et cetera." Charlie wonders aloud what the hell happened up there.
And then Keel's snagged Skeet and Emily and is shoving them into a janitor's room for a clandestine meeting, figuring he's only got a couple of minutes before Charlie starts looking for them. He has a theory as to what happened up there. "I think that each of those passengers brought their own individual experience to the phenomenon they encountered," he says, which Skeet says would explain why they all experienced different things. Evelyn relates Deanna's sad tale and how she saw her future after talking with the steward about what she wanted to be when she grew up. And Skeet lets them in on the Cajun-blackened nurse who was skared to death of burning up, and Keel babbles about the passengers being in a "higher realm where consciousness determines reality." Skeet says Karen was dreaming what she always does, that she could walk and talk. And I think that on an airplane, if everybody got what they happened to be thinking about at the time, I imagine most of them would have received an entire can of pop without having to ask specifically for the whole can from the stewardess. ["I'd be ripping the seal off a pack of Dunhills, myself." -- Sars] Evelyn asks Keel about the flight attendant speaking in tongues, and Keel explains that ancient mathematicians used to speak in metaphors when their concepts became too unwieldy. He hopes he's the only one who's noticed it, but he believes the steward has discovered a cutting-edge physics, "one that our military leaders would dearly love to get their hands on," a methodology for "disassembling reality." What are you saying? asks Evelyn. "I'm saying that flight attendant knows how to destroy the world," says Keel. Everybody makes The Skeet Face.
We go to commercials, which include a news teaser about a "real miracle," and if there's anything more annoying than television news tied to their network's programming, I don't know what it is.
"What are you talking about?" Skeet wants to know, and 24 has completely ruined me to the point that when we came back from commercial and Skeet asked that, I immediately thought, "They've been standing there THIS WHOLE TIME?" before remembering that Miracles doesn't take place in real time. "Our friend is conducting a lecture series on the physics of destruction," says Keel, and they're forced to speak in hushed tones as they hear people outside the door. "Imagine a cross between Oppenheimer and Stalin," says Keel. Kim Jong-Il? Some miracle. Keel says he doesn't think Charlie or the other translators have picked up on it yet. For only he, the Keel, knows all. Then he says the steward also said, "The dark is its own thing," and asks Skeet if that means anything to him. Skeet makes The Skeet Face as we flash back to Tommy saying just that last week. "Why?" asks Paul, and Keel says, "Because the thing he said was, 'Tell Paul.'" Before that sinks in, Charlie bursts in and gets mad at them for holding secret meetings, despite Keel's claim that they were just holding a brainstorming session, which might have been easier to believe if they weren't hiding out in a janitor's closet. Charlie needs Keel right away, because the flight attendant has started to speak English again.
Deanna gulps down her water and says she needed that. "Can I bum a cigarette?" Evelyn's all, "No!" "You don't smoke?" says Deanna, but Evelyn just points out, "You're eleven." Deanna's all, oh yeah. And Nosy Parker Evelyn tells her to think about what happened to her dad, drawing a blank look from Deanna. So Evelyn's all, he dies of lung cancer, duh? And Deanna says, "Oh yeah, I forgot." And the music of Everything's Wearing Off swells in the background.
After a shot of Karen's husband pacing and looking anxious, we go back to Skeet interviewing her while she herself paces, wanting to be out of there to run or jump or walk into a restaurant on her own and order a meal and eat it by herself. "I even want to go skiing, how crazy is that?" "It's not crazy at all," says Skeet. But Karen grimaces, rubbing her head. Skeet asks what's wrong. "A headache," she says. And instead of thinking that this might be important, Skeet just asks what's first on her list when she gets home. "That's between Mark and me," she tells him. Skeet looks kind of embarrassed. But after she's finished with the hot sex, she wants to go swimming in the ocean again. Meanwhile, as she speaks, her hand is twisting into a claw.
There's Phil The Phlight Attendant Physicist, yammering away and saying things like, "All matter is held in place by these vibrating string-like entities," as the scientists cover white boards with formulae. I bet the translators are really pissed that he's now just speaking in English. Charlie asks what he means by "entities." Phil says, "Frequencies. All matter is held in place by them. If you disrupt the frequencies, the matter disperses." He struggles to explain what he means, finally describing it as being like that toy where you use the little magnet pen to move metal shavings around and give the bald guy in the picture frame a beard or a mustache or whatever. Everybody just stares at him, Keel with his trademark intensity, since this of course is Phil using a metaphor to explain an unwieldy concept. "All matter in the universe is thus given a kind of temporary cohesion, but it is…" he pauses. "Illusory." "What the hell just happened to him?" asks Charlie, but before Keel can offer up some long-winded theory, Skeet comes barreling in to say they need to let Karen out so she can go see her husband. He says Karen's getting sick again, that the effects are wearing off. "They're losing it," says Keel. Charlie says that means they don't have much time, and of course refuses to let Karen go. Skeet appeals to Keel for help, but Keel's too busy brooding. Skeet tries Charlie again, saying that Karen just wants to talk to her husband while she still can. "Give me five minutes," says Charlie, and leaves, and Skeet sarcastically thanks Keel for all his help.
Back in the hangar, Karen waits anxiously. Evelyn and her completely expressionless face notice Paul pacing around, so she tells him to try to not let it get to him. They sit down, and he says that if they don't want to let Karen out, they could at least bring her husband in, but Evelyn's all, I wasn't talking about that. "I mean everything," she says, adding she felt the same way when she first joined up with Alva. Skeet blathers on about how a week from now no one there will remember what happened to them, except for Skeet and Evelyn, and sometimes he wishes he… "You wish you could forget?" she says, and he looks at her, and she smiles. Then Charlie breaks up their little moment by stomping up to them and saying, "No one leaves," which makes me wonder the point of his "give me five minutes" thing was. ["Maybe he had to pee." -- Sars] Skeet walks away. Evelyn looks pretty.
Skeet's back in Karen's partition, and asks how she's feeling. She says she's tired and her head hurts, and he breaks it to her that whatever happened up there seems to be wearing off. "I have to see Mark," she says. "I already asked. They're not going to let anyone leave until it's all over," says Skeet, much to Karen's chagrin.
We fade into Karen and Skeet walking over to where the plane is being studied by that Garcia guy, who's complaining about "de-oxygenated water" and "no tungsten in the light bulbs" and wondering how he's supposed to put that in the report, and I guess maybe the water had been dreaming about being oxygen-less and the light bulbs were sick of having tungsten. And as Karen and Skeet walk by, she says, conspicuously loudly, "I want to show you where it happened while I still can," and then she's loudly talking about a big flash of light above the wing. And Skeet tells the guard to "get Garcia -- he should hear this," and I'm not sure the guard would leave his post on Skeet's say-so, but he does, so Karen and Skeet make a break for the door, with the guards quickly giving chase.
And now it's dark outside as the two of them run across the tarmac to the airport. They can see Mark inside but can't find a door in, so Karen bangs on the window and yells at her husband. But it's bright inside, so Mark can't see outside. And I guess the windows are shock-absorbing and soundproof too, as he doesn't hear her screaming or banging the window -- and at one point he looks right in their direction. But a jeep full of G.I. Joes pulls up and yanks Skeet and Karen away, Mark completely unaware, as he strolls over to the window, peering outside. All that's left is a perfectly formed handprint painted on the window.
The autopsy. Crispy critter. We hear this crinkling noise as the assistant tells the doctor to "look at this." The doctor watches as the blackened, charred left arm quickly returns to its healthy, pink, raw self. "This is interesting," he says. Dude, put the heart back in. Now. Commercials.
On a television screen in the airport, the helpful media correspondent is letting us know that terrorist activity on the flight is being ruled out, but there was one death due to a fire in the lavatory.
And a completely unburned nurse with a Y-cut right down her chest lies on the table. Charlie's all, you mean she'd be alive right now if it weren't for the autopsy? And the doctor says there's no way to tell for sure, and Charlie's all, dude, I told the media someone was killed in a fire in the lavatory. "And now we have an almost perfectly restored body. Difficult to explain that," says Keel. Charlie hits on a remarkably simple solution: "Burn her," he says. And I guess everyone who felt sorriest for Deanna must have missed any of the scenes involving the nurse who BURNED TO DEATH and then would have come back to life had she not already been DISSECTED IN AN AUTOPSY and now her CORPSE IS BEING DESECRATED and yeah, who got off worse, Deanna who briefly had a flash of her mundane future, or the crispy cut-up defiled nurse here? Yeah, sure is a toss-up to me too.
Soldier boy uncuffs Skeet while Keel stands there, ready to lambaste Skeet for his not terribly well thought-out plan, and says he managed to convince Charlie that five years in jail for Skeet would produce a lot of unwanted publicity. "I had to do something," says Skeet, and Keel says they were brought in to observe, nothing more, in his clipped English diction. "You sound just like your friend," snits Skeet.
The passengers make their way out to their families and friends. Karen's immobile in her wheelchair. Skeet walks over and kneels, taking her hand, eyes welling up. Evelyn looks at him, then looks over at the video camera. They don't say anything, which is unfortunate, since nobody ever says "that's so crazy it just might work" on television anymore.
Elsewhere, Phil wants to know what's going to happen to him. Keel tells him the army will take him somewhere to find out what he knows. "I don't know anything!" whines Phil, and Keel says he did, even if he doesn't remember, and the army's going to operate on the assumption that he still does. "Can't you do something?" he says. Keel asks Phil if he remembers the last thing he was thinking about before it happened. Phil says the passengers were running him ragged. He remembers talking to Deanna, who said her mother told her she can be anything she wants to be, and he remembers his mom telling him the exact same crap: "'Phil, when you grow up, you're going to do big things,'" he says she told him. "'You'll be important. You're going to change the world.'" Charlie comes in with a couple of guards, saying it's time to go.
As they leave the hangar, Keel pleads with Charlie to let Phil go, and Charlie asks if he hasn't done Keel enough favours today, and unless I'm mistaken, the favour tally stands at one, and maybe Charlie should remember that Keel came in as a favour to him in the first place. And then Charlie said he's had enough of Keel and his friends today, and strides away. Keel katches up and asks if he may at least say goodbye to Phil, which is kind of a weird thing to say, and Charlie tells him to make it quick. So Keel goes over to the escorted Phil, and in the first actually annoying scene of the series, Keel speaks in Aramaic and then grabs Phil's head, kind of like a faith healer casting out demons, before the guards drag Keel away. "What the hell was that?" says Charlie. "Traditional Aramaic farewell. Good night, Charlie," says Keel, rather pleased with himself.
As the gang leaves through the metal detector, Evelyn sets it off again. "It's the bullet lady!" says the guard, like, keep it in your pants there, corporal. Skeet goes through and also sets it off. "Must have been the keys," says Skeet. Good one. The guard searches Skeet and grabs a smuggled videocassette. He glares at Skeet, who says that's all there is. "You got some sort of problem?" says the guard, but lets him go anyway.
We watch the reunions in the airport, Deanna happily running to greet her family, the nervous jostler being upbraided by his humourless wife, his poor, sad temporary make-out partner leaving by herself. There's Mark, kissing his wife on the forehead as he wheels her away.
As the three miracle investigators leave, Skeet's all, so you weren't exactly just observing back there with Phil. "Ancient shamans believed that a sudden shock coupled with the correct mnemonic prompt could erase a person's short-term memory," explains Keel. Yeah, and some people believe Santa Claus exists, but that don't necessarily make it fuckin' so. "So you think he really wanted to destroy the world?" asks Evelyn, and Keel says he wanted what most people want: to be important. As they watch Phil being hauled off in an army vehicle, Evelyn says, "My guess is he got what he wanted." Yeah. Looks like he got just what he wanted. Keel broods off, leaving Evelyn and Skeet to have another moment. In the saw-it-coming-a-mile-away twist, Evelyn hands Skeet the videocassette from the other camera. And let me just point out that in order for this plotline to work, the writers went so far as to put a bullet in Evelyn's brain. Clever.
The Longview household. Mark's making a salad. Karen sits there, blinking. There's a knock at the door. It's Paul, explaining that he was with Karen after the flight, and that she's a terrific woman. Since Mark doesn't look particularly inclined to make small talk, Skeet just hands him the tape and tells him to never tell anyone he has it, and he leaves. Mark goes back inside, puts the tape in, and watches his happy wife talk about how much she loves him, and he starts to cry, prompting all two dozen of so of the Miracles viewers to get all misty-eyed.