In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Hank has a nightmare on the plane back to the magazine that involves a mysterious "he" and a bunch of cruddy locusts, while in real time Jacinda repairs a clock that leads White Vincent to a new location. After she leaves several clues -- each explained with barfy romantic scenarios that don't pass the sniff test -- Hank and Beck catch up to them in Princeton, NJ.
Okay like, this is a clue: Jacinda points to her tongue on a CCTV camera, which reminds Hank about how he used to leave gum under tables, so they look under some tables, which leads them to a nonstandard phone number that Hank's dad (because his parents show up to act sketchy and for no other reason) happens to know leads to a dead phone in Einstein's old office. So of course, they figure Einstein is probably an Apostle. But if so, where is his clock? If you were thinking the most obvious answer is, "HIS MIND," then you are probably a character on this show. Their first hypothesis is that he put the clock in his mind.
After some very unnecessary codebreaking and chalkboard-sciencing, the clock is discovered under a big monument in the center of town where Einstein used to have picnics. Inside the clock is the piece of paper he wrote his dying thoughts on, previously lost to the ages. So what happened was, Einstein realized he was going to die, so he buried this clock and then on his deathbed he wrote this note about the clock, and then -- whilst in the midst of dying -- he dug it back up, slapped that bitch on in there, and had at it.
The note is like, "Sorry I made up the atom bomb, but if you're finding this clock, I guess we also figured out a way to nuke God. So, my bad. Times two."
Meanwhile, Goose is led by another cute romance trap into a private meeting with White Vincent, who mostly acts bonkers. It seems he expected Goose to also have fake irises covering up his Nazi eyeballs and keeps calling him "brother" as not a metaphor, but in fact, he is neither Vincent's brother nor a Nazi Apocalypse baby clock, but merely the secret clone of a Nazi saint.
Among people revealed to be part of the vast conspiracy with these clocks are: Goose's parents, who may be Nazis; FBI Lady's husband, who was the target of that plane blowing up and not just collateral damage; Jacinda, who met Goose at the unveiling of a famous locust clock years ago, because why would you think it wouldn't be clock-related like every other goddamn thing that has ever happened; and most likely, a new whiz-kid FBI chick who is every bit as personality-free as the other two.
Ken Leung shows up at a priest poker game to tell Charles S. Dutton that the Rosicrucians that are trying to kill Hank are called the Shepherds and that the Nazi guys White Vincent is apparently reporting to are known as the Great Pirates. They are run by Amy Irving, who has locusts as pets and also a creepy little boy who writes in backwards cuneiform whenever White Vincent reports to her about how many clocks.
week: As the apocalyptic signs accumulate, Hank must ask himself who is this Jacinda really and why is she so all about clocks? And why is he having psychic locust dreams? Are his parents as boring as they and everyone else on this show, seems to be? Why is everything about him? What is up with FBI Lady's insufferable husband, is he alive? Is he a Nazi? If you can have a Hindu lady-Apostle, you could probably have a black Nazi no problem. Or wait… is he a clock? week: FBI Lady's husband is revealed to be a locust with tattoos in various languages that lives in a clock. As in the tales of mythology.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Haha, even the previouslies where they desperately scramble to explain what the hell is going on. Even when the specific thing that we're doing is to make sense of this shit, it's still just words, clocks, people, old lady, clock, screaming, clocks. Really all you need is just that one guy saying, "He was a holy man, he was a noble man, he was a Nazi officer." In twenty years if you ask me the best thing that happened in 2013 to me personally it will be, "I heard a dude say this on a TV show. Are you ready?"
WHITE VINCENT DROPS A DEUCE ON YA
"Two is the number of love, life's everlasting breath. Sometimes its blind pursuit leads not to life, but death."
How can you tell this is a dream sequence? It's not as simple as the fact that nothing makes sense, the weird Nazi poem, we're dropped in medias res into some randos running around some kind of compound for no reason, and Goose literally only says the name "Jacinda" and the descriptive phrase, "My wife," over and over and over. So how can you possible tell? Is it when the locusts -- alert: new Thing, on this show full of Things -- start divebombing the window, just as they've saved Jacinda from the nobody that kidnapped her? No, still no. The only way you can figure out it's a dream sequence is that Hank wakes up immediately after the locusts show up, gasping and saying, "It was just a dream!"
Hank: "It was just a dream!"
FBI: "But Hank, it was just a dream."
Hank: "But it felt so real!"
FBI: "I don't care, my husband died on an airplane and now we're on an airplane, so I have to get weird real fast."
Hank: "That's very sad but may I remind you my wife was just in India, where we just left?"
FBI: "You're right. Thanks for reminding me. Now let's review the facts, such as they are."
Literally this is the dialogue at this point:
"Vincent's after these clocks. And these clocks, they seem to have a map in them. Which leads to what? I don't know and I don't care. I just wanna find out where he's keeping her."
FBI: "Maybe instead of where -- since we know where, it's India, we just flew away from it and are landing back in NYC for the third episode running -- you should ask why."
Hank: "Why what. Why did he kidnap her? Because of clocks."
FBI: "No, why did he keep her alive? He always kills his hostages. You know, because that's how hostages work."
Hank: "Totally. Yeah, why is she still alive despite all my efforts?"
BECAUSE
"I need you to fix this clock is why!" For real that's why.
White Vincent: "This clock doesn't work quite right that I got from that little girl who was also an ancient man of Christian Hinduism saint powers and of clocks."
Jacinda: "Oh, do I have a single trait or quality all of a sudden? I thought I was just an object belonging to a white guy."
White Vincent: "No, your only trait or quality is clocks. Fix this clock or puzzle. It will lead, presumably, to other clocks. Other puzzles. Einstein maybe. And while you're doing that, also put on his dress. Being a hostage has stunk you up."
Jacinda: "I guess you've never had a hostage this long, since you always kill them. You know, like people do with hostages."
Verbatim this bitch says, "If I help you, are you gonna return me safely to my husband?"
White Vincent: "God knows he deserves it. What with the apocalypse coming he won't have time to go looking for another woman-shaped object to brighten up the place with."
Jacinda: "I will go on a date with you and fix this clock for you, because that is the extent of my value as a person. But dammit, you need to bring me clock supplies!"
MØDƎЯN SKƎPTiȻ MAGAZINE
Girl One: "How's the wife? Still a hostage?"
Hank: "Yeah, super annoying. Plus Vincent got a clock. Frankly I don't know which part pisses me off more. Oh and get this, a Rosicrucian tried to kill me. India is a shithole."
Skeptikids: "If the Rosicrucians are the good guys, what does that make us?"
Canceled, motherfuckers!
They figure out that Mamie Gummer's sister, along with FBI Lady, broke into the magazine while they were off picking up Hank from the airplane or whatever. Even though it's this thriving print magazine for lunatics that supposedly has a huge staff and unlimited travel budget, Hank still thinks probably Girl Skeptikid forgot to lock up. I wonder if she has an apartment or if, when he bought her from that orphanage, he was like, "You will live here now. Like a gerbil."
Actually though, my intuition is that one of the many levels of incompetence at play in this show is that the writers wrote it to be a certain kind of grimy situation -- you know, like the Lone Gunmen -- and then a separately tone-deaf producer or director was like, "I think the magazine press should be more airy and like an Ikea model apartment" and nobody cared, so nobody said anything. I would say half of the gonzo retardo shit about this show probably is that, just people saying, "My lazy dumb hack portion of this is complete, send it down the line."
That way nobody can say you didn't do your best -- you just Wikipedia-ed Einstein's chalkboard or whatever, said some shit dialogue that no person has ever said in life, remembered that women aren't people and forgot everything you ever knew about religion or storytelling, and put that shit in a boat on the river for the chump to sprinkle his own special crap on. Which is fine, except plausible deniability and pride in your work aren't compatible -- in fact they're mutually exclusive -- so you've managed to replace excellence as an objective marker with, "Well, I did my best." Which is a pathetic way to do anything worth doing, but especially art.
Meryl Streep's Other Daughter, Mamie Gummer's Sister: "Are you White Vincent? Should I shoot you in the face?"
FBI: "No, this is the person who owns this place. Are you new? Have you not seen, like, a dossier or something?"
MSODMGS: "I want to bug this whole place and be security for you, and also I am a codebreaker and a flirter-with-boys but I have a steely way about me and very good handwriting."
Hank: "Is this necessary? We keep having to come up thin shitty reasons to have you on each episode, now we gotta deal with this girl too?"
Boy Skeptikid: "It's okay. Our flaccid romance could really use a worthless triangulation now that we're back from Bavaria."
MSODMGS: "I don't know about that. I am kind of autistic."
Boy Skeptikids: "Ha! Like women have souls in the first place."
Science: "PS we just invented facial recognition. You want that for this White Vincent thing?"
FBI: "Yeah, that would actually help a lot. Thanks!"
MSODMGS: "Now adding science to our global network of over 400 billion cameras!"
Hank: "I'm skeptical."
FBI: "Pull it together. There's no 'I' in 'FBI'."
YOU MEAN LIKE A DOPPELGANGER?
Jacinda: "Oh but who wants to talk about me, the abductee? Let's discuss my husband."
White Vincent: "Recently I met a spitting image of Hank Galliston. Weird, right?"
Jacinda, verbatim: "You mean like a doppelganger?"
White Vincent: "Yeah you idiot. Like one of those. You must have read your husband's magazine to know what that word means."
Jacinda: "He came out on the side of skepticism, in re: doppelgangers. Skeptically enough."
White Vincent: "He is very skeptical about shit, I have noticed. Maybe not for long, though, considering he is actually the opposite of skeptical in every instance we have seen on this terrible television show."
Jacinda: "The one thing he is not skeptical about is the power of believing in stuff."
Jacinda magicals the clock and it magics. The gears or whatever form a code: "PR642."
Jacinda: "What does that mean?"
White Vincent: "We are going to fly halfway around the world in the time it takes those people to get from New York to New Jersey, that's what it means."
Jacinda: "Aren't those states contiguous?"
White Vincent: "Scharment nose nates schmongtinguous? Fuck you. Get in the car."
MØDƎЯN SKƎPTiȻ MAGAZINE
Hank's Dad: "Well, if anybody had to get kidnapped by the world's most expensive mercenary and apocalypse Nazi terrorist, I'm glad it was your stupid wife."
Hank's Mom: "That dumb bitch smiled all the through her terrible wedding to you, who are the worst. I'd be surprised if she's even caught on to what's happening."
Hank: "Thanks, you guys. That means a lot. Hey, do we have any German relatives?"
Parents: "You mean like a doppelgänger?"
Science: "Time for an important update! That last scene with Jacinda took place nine hours ago, in Paris. You'd better use your unlimited travel miles to go to Paris, while they are flying here, to figure out that they are flying here. That way we can waste an entire goddamn episode of television."
Jacinda stares up at a security camera -- in fact the very one by which science was able to science her -- and points at her tongue as if to say, "I was engaged to Chris Hardwick once and this is still the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me."
Hank: "Tell the Préfecture de police de Paris to check underneath surfaces in their room. Stuff like the edge of chairs or desks. All the surfaces?"
FBI: "Oh, Lord. Don't even tell us there's a fla..."
SHBACK
Jacinda: "Hey, just because you're here at this UFO Convention where they've paid you to come and be skeptical about UFOs for some reason, don't be nervous. You have been much more skeptical and much more of a crank and bore in the past. Remember when you thought every religious person you came across needed to hear about how dumb they were? That was a nightmare."
Hank: "Being so skeptical is a real fuckin' rush, you know, it's just like giving yourself permission to explain to everyone that you are smarter than them. Even about unprovable things."
Jacinda: "Good thing I'm not a person, just your hot wife. Hey, spit out your gum into my hand."
MØDƎЯN SKƎPTiȻ MAGAZINE
Hank: "And ever since then, she would point at her mouth and I would remember to take the gum out of my mouth, as if I were goddamn five years old and she was my motherfucking piano teacher."
FBI: "Yeah, I'm just gonna leave that part out. Also, I speak French of course."
Jacinda carved PR642 into one of the desks, but sadly there is no gum so I guess it was a red herring. Oh! That was the clue. I get it now, show.
Hank's Dad: "That's a phone number in Jersey, of course!"
Nobody: "Are you for serious that you're in this episode solely and preposterously to recognize this random number from the Thirties like that?"
Hank's Dad: "Also to act super sketch about you being a Nazi officer, of course."
Boy One: "Okay, that is a number in Princeton New Jersey. Let's go there."
Hank: "We don't need to find a clock to know where Vincent's going. We have Laila. And also how stupid that I even needed to say that."
PRINCETON
MSODMGS: "We're going to figure out who that phone number belonged to!"
Hank: "You mean like by looking in a phone book?"
FBI: "It could take all day, frankly."
Hank: "Or just go to the Library."
Fr. Roc: "Cool, cool. I am going to go play poker with my priest friends, and see if they can explain to me all about a secret society that is a millennia-old secret. I will be very subtle."
LIBRARY
White Vincent: "Tell me another cutesy barf story about your marriage I don't care about."
Jacinda: "Maybe later. Right now I want to needle you about how you should probably kill me and yet you do not."
White Vincent: "Oh, were you expecting me to answer a direct question? Were you not aware that I am bonkers? Did you somehow forget that part?"
Jacinda: "Please, mister. Return me to my owner before he gets mad!"
MØDƎЯN SKƎPTiȻ MAGAZINE
Parents: "Father Roc, before you leave, could you tell us what is going on with Hank? Is it like a doppelgänger? Because we are Nazis, you should know that."
Fr. Roc: "I don't care about any of this. Also we're not friends. Your son is kind of a dickhole, frankly. Not that it keeps us from skying for him."
Dad: "Should we tell them we know that he is a doppelgänger? That seems like it might be relevant to what's going on. He was a holy man, he was a noble man, he was a Nazi officer. I'm a proud dad."
Mom: "Nah. If there were also constellations or locusts or watches or a Thing under a cathedral, or even just pirates, I would say maybe. But this just seems like your average clock-related wifenapping. We should totally keep this under our hats."
LITLE WEIRD BOY
You know what this show needs? More shit going on. Like for example a little boy watching a TV through a store window -- you know, like how we're always doing that in 2013 -- and approving of the continually stronger signs of the Apocalypse that only Hank seems to be noticing.
LIBRARY
I wish to know more cutesy awful barf things that the Gallistons did before Jacinda was so cruelly kidnapped from her perch within the golden cage of matrimony. Have at it.
Hank: "We would pull out random books from library shelves so that they spelled out nonsense phrases and then try to guess the nonsense phrases of each other's pulled out books. It was hilarious!"
It wasn't. But the important thing is, Jacinda left them another clue in the Phonebooks Section of the Princeton Book Museum of Library. And just in case you were feeling okay about all this:
Jacinda, verbatim: "Ugh, I know that look. That's your skeptic face."
Hank: "I just keep waiting. For the other shoe to drop."
Right, because she's hot and he's a chinless droning crank Nazi clone. So then the idiot makes them both take off their shoes and drop them on the floor, like as a symbolism of how shoes are like clocks or whatever, because when you're a Manic Pixie Dream Girl that's the kind of bullshit you get up to. Do you think every single time this happens to Jacinda she's like, "Finally I am a real actress and not just somebody's girlfriend or a person from The Real World and people will think of me as more than just a piece of cardboard with lips!" And then somebody has to sit her down and be like, "No, honey. You won't be tasked with acting or anything like that. We both know why you're here. I just hope you don't age or people are going to get real shitty, really fast."
Hank: "Anyway, I hear myself telling this story now and it makes me want to sit on a chainsaw. Only now, without my stupid wife to make me feel like a man, do I realize what a selfish moron I am. But hey, she pulled out some encyclopedias in a random order just like in our miserable, awful Kay Jewelry romance."
Boy Skeptic: "Guess what, that phone number would have led to an office in the building over. But somehow since White Vincent has powers of time travel, he keeps being places seconds before you get there."
INSTITUTE OF SCIENTIFIC PHONE NUMBERS (FROM OLDEN TIMES)
Hank: "I know the names of scientists."
Beck: "I love science, but hate nuclear armaments."
Hank: "I love being skeptical, but I hate being skeptical."
Beck: "Let's talk about God."
Hank: "I am skeptical about that. But believe things."
Science Man: "Who are you? Are you also Nazis and a lady in a ball gown with an odor?"
Hank: "Did she do annoying things? Like make you spit out your gum or throw shoes around in a library where people are trying to read?"
Science Man: "I preferred the Nazi, yes. They were here ten minutes ago. And before them, more people. Know why? This is Einstein's office."
Hank: "Albert Einstein?"
It is at this point that the show Zero Hour deems it necessary to show you a little black and white movie called What Is Albert Einstein that teaches you what an Albert Einstein is. All caught up? Good.
Hank: "Well clearly the German Jew who invented time and space was an Apostle of Christ also. But I wonder where his clock is? Listen, have you heard of any hundred-year-old Jewish physicists on campus anywhere? Perhaps refusing to sit down?"
MØDƎЯN SKƎPTiȻ MAGAZINE
Girl Skeptic: "He did once say* the Catholic Church was very 'tight butthole' for resisting the Nazis before anybody else noticed they were Nazis."
Hank: "Did he say anything about a clock? Or standing on a clock for seventy years?"
Skeptikids: "Here's a picture of him from Life magazine I found."
Hank: "Is it helpful?"
Skeptikids: "No, we just found it."
Office Person: "If there were any magic Jesus clocks in here, they might be in his Exhibition of History Stuff, in the building over."
*(My understanding is that this is actually not true either, so: Way to be skeptical, genius.)
POKER IN THE FRONT, EUCHRE (IST) IN THE BACK
Priests: "One thing Catholics like is gambling. Let's play five-card hold 'em and talk about secret societies."
Fr. Roc: "Have you guys ever heard of any secret societies?"
Priest: "No, because they are secret. Is this about you getting your throat slit in the pilot? Because that seems like an interesting story..."
Fr. Roc: "-- Good hang, fellow men of the cloth."
INSTITUTE OF EINSTEIN STUFF
FBI: "I guess White Vincent beat us here too, and got the clock."
Hank: "When will this episode ever end?"
Everybody: "Let's chill and find out."
HOLD UP I HAVE AN IMPORTANT MEETING WITH A LITTLE BOY
White Vincent: "Speaking Apocalypse Antichrist-to-Apocalypse Antichrist, I have something for you to write down in spooky backwards cuneiform."
Little Boy: "I thought this show needed more crap going on."
White Vincent: "Tell your mom or whoever, Amy Irving, that I have three clocks but not the Thing under the Cathedral yet."
Little Boy: (Writes it down; is smug and creepy.)
Boy Skeptic: "Are you reading a website? I love websites!"
Other Streep: "Me too. They're my favorite kind of sites."
Boy Skeptic: "Other than porn, mine too."
Other Streep: "I have a gun, so."
Boy Skeptic: "Anyway, do you know Who is Albert Einstein?"
Other Streep: "Just another Jew with a chalkboard."
Boy Skeptic: "Whoa. Did you know that he wrote down the secrets of energy on that chalkboard, and then erased it as he was dying?"
Other Streep: "For a skeptic you are not that skeptical about things."
Hank: "Well, I give up. It's that time in the episode where I stop believing in things."
Girl Skeptic: "Remember that clock? It wasn't the clock we're looking for. White Vincent tripped up and got the wrong clock."
Hank: "I'm skeptical about that!"
Girl One: "Well, think about it. His famous clock in his office was a Biedermeir heirloom that was passed down through his family in the 1800s."
Hank: "So, not a Rosicrucian Jesus clock? Because that would be... I wanna say older?"
Girl One: "No, younger. Remember those cute guys in the suspenders were under the church making clocks in 1938."
Hank: "So it should be around here, but not in his stuff. And he was an Apostle of Made-Up Jesus, so he would have been more focused on the clock than real-life stuff..."
Girl: "So there's only one explanation. Einstein hid the clock the one place nobody would look..."
Boy, ver-fuckin'-batim: "HIS MIND."
MORE CHALKBOARD NONSENSE
Skeptikids: "What's that magic bullshit machine do?"
FBI Ladies: "It reads chalkboards and what they used to say."
Skeptikids: "You know what, that's very interesting. But also, Jacinda should know by now that she just has a regular heirloom clock and not a magic one."
Hank: "Exactly. This is how she proves that she has worth. By literally doing nothing, she is doing something."
Everybody: "Oh yeah? And what's that?"
Hank: "Waiting for me to yell, obviously, and run around ignoring everybody else because I am so important. Just like every week."
THIS IS MY SKEPTICAL FACE
White Vincent: "I've noticed you're doing a lot more nothing than in episodes, where you did literally nothing but roll around trying not to get dissolved by chemicals."
Jacinda: "I don't know if you know this, but clocks are kind of complicated."
White Vincent: "Just like your husband, huh?"
Jacinda: "Yes, let's talk about him. Even in our scenes about the scintillating clock repair storyline, the people demand more talk of Hank."
White Vincent: "Like a clock, you took a broken loser and put it back together. And just like every clock you've interacted with on this show, you did a so-so job at best."
Jacinda opens her trap and spews out an unbelievably sickening monologue about how Nice Guys and romance and he went to Jared and it's so awful and unearned and gross. I would rather read Fifty Shades Of Grey than listen to some awful cardboard bullshit couple talk about their gaywad love activities. Listen:
Vincent: "You took a 40-year-old man who'd never been married, a man who doesn't believe in something unless he can see it, and you made him believe in the one and only thing no one can ever see. Love."
Jacinda: "What makes you think love can't be seen? I've seen it. In Post-Its filled with poems, stuck on my bathroom mirror. And in a yellow tack given to me every single year on my birthday, knowing that wherever I stick it on the map, that's exactly where we're gonna wake up the morning. And you know what? I see it in Hank's eyes every single time he looks at me."
Vincent freaks out because he is like, obsessed with Anthony Edwards's eyes -- because he thinks they are zombie Apocalypse Nazi Baby eyes -- but he is too bonkers to explain this properly to Jacinda, so she just thinks he's grossed out by her gross words.
EINSTEIN THING PLACE
Streep: "Let me do some of this Einstein math from the quantum chalkboard real quick... This is really hard, figuring out the secret of energy that he erased. Don't worry, though. I can do it."
Skeptikids: "Like Post-Its filled with poems, math is something you can't see, but we can see it. Because of science."
Streep: "Oh, I see the problem. Part of this was erased."
Skeptikids: "Uh huh, go on."
Streep: "It was a cryptovariable!"
Skeptikids: "You don't say."
Streep: "Shh, I have to do more math. I have to do all the math."
OUTSIDE
FBI Lady: "I am about this close to not believing in things."
Girl Skeptic: "Did you know that in the hospital, the last thing Einstein asked for was a piece of paper and a pencil?"
FBI Lady: "This is so stupid. Everything is so stupid. I just want to lose control of myself in a crazy lady rage and shoot a terrorist. Why do we have to go through this retardedly elaborate goat rodeo with the clocks and the cryptovariables and the..."
Girl Skeptic: "So he wrote down a thing we will find out later. And then apparently, while in the middle of dying, he took that clock and he buried it..."
Streep: "At the Einstein monument under a tree that you can see from here. Where nobody would ever think to look for it."
Hank finds some pushpins scattered around and, since every other romance flashback has immediately preceded a scene where that thing is the thing that happens, he can be forgiven for suddenly tearing off into the street like an idiot, Hansel and Greteling his way across the campus and across New Jersey and across the whole world just picking up thumbtacks. Guess what, it wasn't Jacinda. It was White Vincent. The guy everybody is looking for, that they find every episode, just like Carmen Sandiego! Guess this show is over now, huh?
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS WHITE VINCENT YOU GUYS
White Vincent: "So you found me again. Tell me, Kommandant, was it the thumbtacks or your very useful skills of believing everything people tell you no matter how dumb?"
Hank: "It was both, White Vincent!"
White Vincent: "I guess just like in every other episode, we should chat. Cross your fingers I don't get suddenly bonkers."
Hank: "Sure, I've got time."
White Vincent: "How and where did you meet your wife? Are your memories real or are you just a clone of a holy Nazi man?"
Hank: "We met at this real-life clock that was a very big deal despite being even worse at being a clock than this show is at being a show."
White Vincent: "That's so cool how everything is always clocks."
Hank: "It also has a scary locust on it."
White Vincent: "That's so cool how this episode suddenly it's also locusts. Hang on, I feel like I'm about to get bonkers suddenly."
Vincent goes suddenly bonkers. One of his Nazi eyeballs pops out and he starts grabbing at Hank's clone Nazi eyeballs and it's kind of amazing:
"We both understand the shame of the masquerade, but I've come to offer you solace, deliverance. SHOW ME YOUR EYEBALLS! SHOW ME THE FLAW, HANK! I WANT TO SEE THE FLAW!"
FBI Lady suddenly unloads a clip in White Vincent's direction, so he vanishes into the ether and reappears in a van on the other side of a random gate in this abandoned building on Princeton acreage and, because she is an out-of-control woman who needs to remember her place, she is reduced -- gun in hand, okay -- to pawing the air through the gate like an actual zombie.
White Vincent: "Okay, seriously I have to ask. Why do you keep trying to shoot me?"
FBI Lady: "Gnnnr! Arrrgh!"
White Vincent: "Oh no, no. Your husband wasn't collateral damage on that flight I blew up. He was the reason I blew it up."
FBI Lady: "Grrwlrrrr?"
White Vincent: Disappears. Mindfreak!
PICNIC TREE WHERE EINSTEIN TOOK A CLOCK OUT OF HIS MIND & BURIED IT, FOR JESUS
Everybody: "Thank goodness we found this clock! Too bad about your wife getting kidnapped for, seriously the fifth time."
Hank: "FBI, sorry you got mindfreaked."
FBI Lady: "That's the thing about a cryptovariable. You think it's a constant, then wham. Variable. What's important is that we investigate this clock further."
Clock: "Einstein, after a very busy day of dying and also burying things and erasing the secrets of energy, wrote an apology on a piece of paper for discovering physics and the other sciences. So it doesn't even have to do with the goddamn motherfucking Apocalypse."
SECRET PRIESTLY POSTGAME PATTER (NOSTER)
Ken Leung: "Psst. Do you have any friends getting shot at by Rosicrucians?"
Fr. Roc: "Yeah. Can you tell me about that? I realize it's a secret."
Fr. Leung: "Yeah but it's not a secret-secret. More like a secret handshake kind of a secret. What do you want to know?"
Fr. Roc: "Tell me everything. But also not really in a helpful way."
Fr. Leung: "You know how priests are a kind of person and Rosicrucians are a kind of priest? Well, the ones that shoot at you are a kind of Rosicrucian called Shepherds. They are into protecting saints and also relics but most especially, clocks."
Fr. Roc: "From whom? Just general, like, ne'er-do-wells or... like street toughs? Graverobbers?"
Fr. Leung: "No, pirates."
Fr. Roc: "This show just doesn't have enough crap going on."
PIRATE AMY IRVING? HOW DARE YOU
Amy Irving: "Thanks for taking down notes from that guy in backwards cuneiform. Now go do your homework, while I feed my locusts over here in this terrarium."
& NOW SOME WORDS FROM ALBERT EINSTEIN, APOSTLE & CLOCK-BURIER
Dear Earth. Sorry about the atomic bomb. Sorry even more about how I helped the Rosicrucians build a bomb so nuclear that it can blow up God. If you find a bunch of clocks first. Love, St. Albert. PS. Do not let my niece Meg Ryan marry a simple mechanic, even if he is played by Tim Robbins. Thank you and auf Wiedersehen.
WEEK
Nope! No sir. Zero Hour is upon us. I will miss -- in fact, already miss -- this particular show, which I can easily say is the worst thing I have seen on TV in literally years. It's not often that I get to watch things I don't purely enjoy and, in fact, never do so on my own because life is too short for spite. But I got paid for this and I very much enjoyed the exercise. It made my other shows look genius by comparison, which probably helps in the long run. And so I will miss it. But not a lot and it won't last for long.
...Oh! And there it goes.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Deception, Zero Hour, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, and a novelette, "The Commonplace Book," appeared this fall on Tor.com.
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