By M. Giant
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Dr. RevCam King and the Powells are spying on each other, although neither side knows it's being spied on… at first. You'd think the side that has a shapeshifter who can look like anyone would have the advantage, right?
Well, what actually happens is that while Charlotte blunders around the Powell homestead, clumsily imitating Stephanie and Daphne, Stephanie is still working at the lab in hopes of getting inside King's super-secret project of evil so she can get the evidence they need to stop him. Not content to let her do the spying alone, Jim has George help him track King's phone records to an apartment that's clearly also an HQ for the Powell surveillance project. It turns out to be Charlotte's, and after a brief confrontation, she escapes from Jim and vanishes into the crowd.
Katie tries to help Joshua with his withdrawal symptoms by trying to make him a batch of serum herself. But Stephanie busts her, learns the truth about Joshua, and decides to help him herself -- by coming up with something that'll get rid of not only his symptoms, but his powers themselves. Thanks?
JJ, meanwhile, has taken it upon himself to solve a mystery for Natalie. Seems her mother was conveniently murdered ten years ago. With the help of Daphne and her new-newbility of Jedi mind tricks, he not only tracks down the killer but recovers the locket that once belonged to Natalie's mother. He might be getting some after all.
Thanks in part to some clever deduction but mostly Charlotte's terrible spycraft, Jim ends up confronting her at the Powell Pad while she's in his form. After some Jim-on-Jim violence, Jim is the last Jim standing, although we're meant to wonder about it (we don't). Joshua gets to repay Stephanie's favor in advance by disposing of Charlotte's body, while Stephanie decides to imitate Charlotte right back -- pretending to be Charlotte-as-Stephanie and talking to King about his crush on actual-Stephanie while convincing him to let actual-Stephanie in on his secrets and send Charlotte-as-Stephanie to Belem to investigate the scene of the Powell's origin story. In fact, she's almost too convincing. But how long can it be before King notices he's short a Stephanie? Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Jim: We can't assume anybody is who they seem to be this week.
Stephanie: I know. Speaking of which, who the hell is this guy?
Substitute Recapper: Uh, Cindy's out this week, and I don't think I'm up to attempting that brilliant thing she does with the weecapping in dialogue form. I could try, but it would just be a totally unconvincing imitation that wouldn't fool a brain-damaged fern.
Jim: Like I'm not used to that after this episode.
Michael Oher: MY NAME IS KENNY!
Stephanie comes home at night to find the Powell Pad ransacked and seemingly empty, except for a Jim-looking corpse staring blankly up at the ceiling from a puddle of cranial blood. Given that we already know there's a shapeshifter in the mix, I don't think we need to be too worried (although everyone knows that shapeshifters revert to their default mode after death), but Stephanie falls to her knees to him in denial.
As if in answer to her pleas, the gods of Kübler-Ross come through with a subtitle "12 Hours Earlier," telling us that this was one of those "how did we get here?" openings. That explains why I don't remember there being a cliffhanger at the end of last week's episode. Well, that and the fact that this is the first episode I've seen.
Anyway, 12 hours in the past, Daphne is asking her mom for an advance on her allowance, but getting nowhere until she goes all Pusher from The X-Files on her and Stephanie quickly gives in. Of course she even manages to do that smugly, all but waving Daphne's landspeeder aside saying, "She can go about her business. Move along." JJ whines about the unfairness of it all, but what he really wants is someone to change Natalie's mind about dating him. Even the date he's planning with Natalie at the coffee shop isn't something that Natalie knows about yet. "Smooth," Daphne says. The kids leave as Jim enters, wondering why Stephanie's going back to work even now that they know her boss is an evil mad scientist. Stephanie says she's doing it to find out what they need to so they can stop him, and after all the bitching she's done about Jim's crimefighting, when he asks her to back off, she says they both know she's the only one who can get them inside. So she's decided to be better at crimefighting than him now too? Leave the man a shred of dignity, for crying out loud.
"I need you to get on the inside," Dr. RevCam King ironically segues to Charlotte in his office. He explains about Jim and Stephanie's newbilities, and she quips, "Quite the power couple." She agrees to take on the task, even though after that horrible joke, she's lucky to still have a job at all.