Episode Report Card DeAnn Welker: B+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Choose Your Own Caviezel
By DeAnn Welker | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.22.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.We start out with Nude Caviezel in love. Okay, wait, this isn't the show I signed up for. Not that I'm complaining or anything... But he loses the woman he's with, and becomes shaggy Jesus Caviezel (a la The Passion of the Christ), on a subway in New York. He basically karate chops a very deserving group of privileged punks on the subway, and ends up at the police department talking to Taraji P. Henson. When she heads to the lab to learn that Jesus's fingerprints have been found at half a dozen crime scenes and that there are open warrants for him in four countries, some bigwig lawyer comes in and busts him out. He wonders who's picking up the tab, and the lawyer and some other suits take him directly to Ben Linus.
Ben calls Jesus "Mr. Reese" (but since his brute strength and power must come from God, I'm sticking with Jesus), but promises not tell anyone everything he knows about him: the work he used to do for the government, the doubts he came to have about that work, that the government and everyone else thinks he's dead, that he's been trying to drink himself to death and even contemplating more efficient ways. Ben's name is "Mr. Finch." He wants to give Jesus a purpose. And by "purpose," he means "job." Finch tells Jesus about all the people who die every day in New York City, and wonders: What if they could stop murders -- not the ones in the heat of the moment, but the ones that are planned days and weeks in advance? Finch shows Jesus a woman named Diane Hansen, who's on his list of people about to be involved in a crime. He doesn't know if she's the victim or perpetrator; all he knows is she's involved and that Jesus must follow her to stop it from happening. So, yes, he's asking creepy-looking Jesus Caviezel to follow a cute young thing (Natalie Zea). Jesus refuses this tempting offer, kicks Finch's suits' asses and leaves.
He goes back to a hotel room (a fairly nice one considering his status as a homeless drunk) and shaves himself into Sexy Caviezel. Then he drinks himself to sleep and the phone rings. It's Finch -- duh! -- who lures him back with promises of being able to save people, like he couldn't do with his "friend," Jessica (the woman he was Nude Caviezel with in the opening). He takes Jesus to his secret lair and shows him his list of Social Security numbers (that's all he gets), but won't give him any more information.
Jesus starts looking into her -- by hacking, stalking, trespassing, and basically becoming a giant creeping stalker, literally lurking in the background of her life. It works, though, since he quickly narrows the suspects to another district attorney, Wheeler, with whom Diane has some sort of romantic history; and the guy she's currently prosecuting, Lawrence Pope, who's on trial for killing his friends in a drug deal gone bad. Pope eventually ends up dead, and Diane doesn't trust Wheeler, which convinces Finch and Jesus that he's bad.
In a flashback, we learn that clean-cut Jesus quit his job as a special forces ranger of some type in order to be with his girl, Jessica. At the very moment he tells her this, Sept. 11, 2001, occurs, and they both sit up in bed to watch.
Jesus takes time out from future-crime-solving to tell Finch how frustrating it is not to know what's going on. Finch limps through Central Park as he explains how this all goes back to 9/11, after which Finch created a super-secret security system for the government to find terrorists. The list of Social Security numbers is just the irrelevant (non-terrorist) information that Finch manages to sneak out of the system every day.
Jesus follows Diane Hansen -- to protect her -- and quickly learns she's Queen Bee of the bad cops, and Wheeler's the guy who's onto her devious ways. Jesus lets his guard down while his shock wears off at being wrong, giving one of the bad cops time to point a gun at his head. She tells them to "take care of him" and to get rid of Wheeler tonight. One of the corrupt cops, Fuscoe, drives Jesus out into the desert to presumably kill him. Jesus makes his escape, but not before telling Fuscoe he will let him live so he has someone on the inside.
The corrupt cops show up at Wheeler's and see Wheeler's young son is with him, but that doesn't change anything: They'll just kill the kid, too. You know, in case you didn't know they were really, really bad. Jesus steps in between the cops and Wheeler, but bad cop Stills doesn't relent, and makes a lot of threats. So Jesus kills him. (See why it's fun to call him "Jesus"? So I can say total nonsense such as that.)
He still has to get Diane Hansen, though, which he does by subbing a recording of her telling the cops to take care of Wheeler with a testimony recording, so she ends up airing her confession in court.
Jesus and Finch have a heart to heart in the end, and decide to keep doing this thing, even if it kills them (which it might). Taraji P. Henson arrests one of the bad cops Jesus let go; all she wants to know is more about Jesus. Because she's obsessed. Must be his eyes.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously in the wacky brain of J.J. Abrams: Disguises! Numbers! Parallel universes! Plus, lots of faux science. And always with the sexy, which we get here, too (thank you, Jim Caviezel). Let's just hope this show is more serial storyline and less procedural, mystery-of-the-week drama.
Speaking of, we open right on his sexiness, as he rolls lovingly around an outdoor bed draped in white sheets with an equally sexy blonde woman. He whisper-talks (does he have any other way?) a voiceover: "When you find that one person who connects you to the world, you become someone different. Someone better." It's worth noting that he has a scratch on his shoulder that she caresses a little bit as they kiss. Whisper-talk voiceover continues: "When that person is taken from you..." Lost-style musical cut to shaggy, dirty, homeless Jim Caviezel (whom, by the way, I've decided to call JC for now instead of Jesus. I'm in the market for better nicknames for his character and all others. If you have ideas, email me or post them in the show forum). JC finishes: "...What do you become?" I'm guessing that since we already see he's a shaggy, depressed, homeless guy, his question is rhetorical.
Some punk kids enter his train. We know immediately they're punks because the preppy ringleader is chewing on his fake gold necklace. Lame, and lamer. They pick a fight with some minority subway riders who flash a gun, but end up leaving out of fear or intelligence when lame ringleader Anton asks if they want to see a real gun. Anton assures his friend they'll get some new "hardware" next week and restore some order to the subway. He basically is a richie-rich kid but rides the subway to taunt people. JC's his next target. He steals his bottle of liquor, but JC quickly and easily jumps from depressive to ninja as he kung-fus Anton's three friends and then chokes Anton into submission. He grabs his head -- regretfully? -- as surveillance images beep-beep and back out to shows us that someone is watching.
When the surveilling is over, Anton and his friends are glaring at pretty female cop Taraji P. Henson (I'll just pretend we already know her name is Carter and call her that, but all of these last-name-only characters are going to get old quick). She wants a statement from "the bum," but first she watches surveillance footage of JC beating the crap out of the punks. She finds JC, tells him she wishes he'd let those punks land a couple punches first, says no one fights like that unless they're in the service -- but not the regular Army -- and then asks his name. He thinks it's funny that you only need a name now when you're in trouble; so, is he? She asks him to tell her; he's the one living on the street. She wonders if he needs her help, or if he's one of those guys who's done so many bad things he thinks he deserves to be punished. She asks if that sounds like his story, then excuses herself for a moment. She's such a good detective that she doesn't need to wait for answers, I guess.