This episode takes up where the pilot left off: at the end of the pilot, Logan told Max about some criminals who were taking money from people to sneak the people into Canada via boat, but who were instead forcing the people overboard out at sea. Max infiltrates their ship and steals their cash. The criminals immediately start accusing each other about the location of the missing money, and soon shoot it out. The would-be emigrants don't make it to Canada, but at least they are alive.
This little bit of plot is over quickly, but it's somewhat ironic watching it in 2007, when illegal immigration into the US has become such a big national topic. How would our feelings change in the matter if the US was not so wealthy, and people actually wanted to leave? The scam of taking the people's money and then killing them at sea is similar to scams we hear about in the present day, usually of Mexicans who are scammed and then killed or left to die in the desert.
After this refreshing activity, Max heads to her favorite bar to join her friends. She's acting a bit odd, which her friends pick up on: she seems to be giving the eye to every man in the joint. After a quick trip to Logan's apartment to drop off the money from the people smugglers, she picks up a guy called Eric in the bar. Her interior monologue reveals that some of her transgenic background included feline DNA, which has the side effect of putting her in "heat"; she knows it's happening, but has a hard time talking herself out of doing things she'll regret later.
She brings Eric back to her and Kendra's apartment, but he passes out drunk before anything can happen! However, he doesn't remember this in the morning and believes they had a night of passion. Although Max tries to brush him off, he quickly calls himself her boyfriend and sends her a box of motor oil at work. I have to give him credit for a rather insightful gift: Max is unlikely to be impressed by traditional girly gifts, and the oil will be useful for her motorcycle.
Logan tells Max that he may have found the location of Hannah, the nurse who picked her up just after she escaped from Manticore ten years ago. Hannah may be on Sedro Island, some 80 miles out of town. Max immediately plans to go see her, despite the fact that she has no pass to get out of the city, and Lydecker probably is also aware of Hannah's location and significance.
As Max prepares for the trip, she is in the process of dumping Eric when he reveals that he has an uncle with the sector police - the same police that guard all roads out of the city. She invites Eric on the trip, but doesn't mention that she's going to be traveling nearly at the speed of sound the whole way, in the dark, with no headlights on her motorcycle. When they approach the guard station, Max asks Eric to call his uncle for an impromptu pass through the checkpoint, but Eric reluctantly reveals that his uncle is a janitor for the police. So they blast through the checkpoint at full speed.
The existence of checkpoints and guards around the city gives an added dimension to life in the Dark Angel universe. Are the police there to make sure people stay in or out of the city? How easy is it to get a legitimate pass for travel? One would have to assume that commerce isn't too impeded by the checkpoints, or things would be really bad. Actually, I question the feasibility of guarding the access to a city the size of Seattle. Are there really guard stations on every road in and out of the city? That's a huge amount of manpower. The road Max and Eric were on did not look to be a major road, so one would have to assume that even larger roads would have a more significant police presence.
Max's use of Eric is also revealing, although whether it reveals more about Max's personality or the current culture is not clear. Max had no problem leading Eric on in their relationship in order to use his connections. Although she obviously doesn't wish him to be hurt or killed, she has no qualms about risking his life breaking through the guard station, when it's his back that's toward the bullets as they ride away. Eric also had no problems joining Max on an apparent joyride to an undisclosed location; given the unrest in society, you'd think he'd want to know where they are going. Ah, maybe they're both just being teenagers!
They arrive at the mainland across from Sedro Island, and Max leaves her motorcycle and keys with Eric, then swims over to the island. She finds Hannah at her house relatively quickly and is invited in. Max begins plying Hannah with questions about the Manticore project in general and her mother in particular. Hannah was a nurse in the project, but because of the security surrounding the project, she was not informed about most aspects. She reveals that the mothers of the children were recruited for pay to essentially be surrogate mothers, using in vitro fertilization. After birth, the women were sent back to where they came from, which Hannah implies were not usually good circumstances. Max is disappointed that her mother was just a mother for pay.
Hannah calls into work, ostensibly to let her employer know she's going to be late. Max realizes that she is actually tipping off Lydecker to her presence. After chatting for awhile longer, Max tells Hannah that she had no choice calling Lydecker, but even though she cooperated, Lydecker will kill her. Therefore they must flee the island. Max leads Hannah overland toward the shore for their escape.
Meanwhile, Logan calls Max's beeper, but Eric returns his call. Eric is a little distraught, having been waiting for Max for several hours. Logan deduces what Max is up to, and hacks into Lydecker's operatives' communications. He jams one team's communications and takes their place, radioing in that they've caught the fugitives; Lydecker calls off the search. (I was very happy that when Lydecker realized he had been duped, he demanded that Logan reveal who he was; Logan wisely disconnected, rather than trying to make some kind of taunting or sarcastic remark that might have been compromising.) Logan also instructs Eric to borrow a boat and goto the island to pick up Max and Hannah.
The escape is successful, and Max, Hannah, and Eric make it back into the city. Eric was just a little freaked out about all the events, so he breaks off his "relationship" with Max, saving her the trouble. Logan arranges a fake identity and passport for Hannah to leave the country, so that she will hopefully be safe from further retaliation by Lydecker. Before she leaves, Hannah tells Max that she did know Max's mother just a bit (although not her name); Max's mother quickly realized that something was weird with the program and did not want to give up her baby. She tried to escape before she gave birth, and when it was time for her to give birth, she fought so much they had to sedate her for the induction procedure. Max takes comfort in having inherited her fighting spirit from her mother.
This episode follows nicely on the details from the pilot, but the details were not crucial for understanding the episode. Key flashbacks were given (or repeated) to remind us of events from Max's past. The first part of the episode, with Max in "heat", was a little off, but that seemed to be intentional, since all Max's friends were noticing it as well. Frankly, I cringed at the idea of Max being all sex-crazy, but fortunately she got over it pretty quickly, nothing actually happened with her and Eric, and she didn't end up doing anything really embarrassing.
There was a bit of a logical problem with Max's visit to Hannah. She was obviously expecting that Hannah would have to tell Lydecker she was there. Why didn't she have a better plan for leaving the island? She herself could swim back to the mainland, but Hannah could not. Did she initially plan on abandoning Hannah to her fate with Lydecker? I think she was improvising a little too much here, and she really got lucky that Logan and Eric happened to get in touch with each other.
The so-called affair between Max and Eric was pretty painful. I did kind of enjoy how Max and Kendra arranged to not let Eric know that he passed out before managing any action, but then the guy could just not take a hint. He was so pathetically desperate to stay with Max that it was painful. Clearly Max would normally be way out of his league.
The discussion between Logan and Max about her "boyfriend" was also a bit painful, but intentionally so, since the romantic tension between them suddenly spiked. As they said, they don't have any commitments to each other, so there is no cause for any jealousy. But by breaching the subject, they have opened themselves to the possibility.
Hannah is sent off to Canada, I believe. Canada is apparently something of a safe haven for people fleeing Seattle - it's not too far away at least. In this future, is the Canadian government trying to keep out illegal immigrants like the US is today? Do you suppose they've built a fence along the border? (That would be quite a fence!)
Finally, there's the information that Max learns about her mother. I'm not sure why Max has such strong feelings about her mother. My impression was that the mothers were complete surrogates: the eggs from which the children grew were not from these women. Presumably, the eggs were chosen from "suitable" women by Manticore for their favorable traits. That means that there was really no way that Max's "mother" could greatly influence how Max turned out. Certainly, the surrogate mother provides the nutrition for the baby, but there's no genetics involved. Thus when Max feels like she gained her spunk from her surrogate mother, that can't really be the case. Nevertheless, the woman who carried Max to tern would certainly be an important connection to Max's past.
Where does the series go from here? Max has learned a bit more about her past, but still has many questions. She has a new determination to find her mother, if possible. And Logan was still working on information about one of her siblings, Zack. Lydecker has been easily foiled now twice by Max and/or Logan, and so he should be getting much warier. In the future, he should be harder to deal with.

We see in this episode that even transgenic super-soldiers have an achilles heel.
Since the beginning of the series, we have known that Max needs to take pills to prevent seizures that are part and parcel of her genetically engineered origin. At the beginning of this episode, her seizures are much worse than usual, so she goes through her medicine more quickly than usual. Uncharacteristically, she "borrows" the squatters' "rent" money to buy some more pills, then she heads to Logan's apartment, where he has invited her for dinner. Instead, she simply lies down to wait out the worst of the seizures. It's surprising that she already trusts Logan enough to show him her weakness. They talk about where they were when the EM pulse hit. Logan was on a boat with a lady friend. Max was with a foster family who had a daughter, Lucy, about her age; the father beat up Lucy and Max, and sexually abused Lucy. (Why not Max as well?) Yet again, we see the huge differences in Logan's and Max's backgrounds.
The pills Max needs are sources of tryptophan, which she says are an amino acid. According to Wikipedia, this is correct. Tryptophan is an amino acid the human body cannot manufacture, so it's necessary to ingest it in food. As Max points out later in the episode, milk is a natural source of tryptophan, although if she really wanted to eat something with lots of tryptophan, it appears she should've gone for cheese or poultry.
While Max is having these problems, she is very short tempered with her friends. Plus, when the policeman on the take comes early for the squatters' payoff, she is forced to admit that she took the money. She promises her friends and the policeman that she'll get the money by the next morning. She promptly goes out and steals an SUV, then sells it to a chop shop, but must wait until the next morning for payment.
Max's friends believe she's hooked on drugs, and they flush her new stock of pills and stage an intervention. Max can't believe they are sticking their noses in her business and storms out to find some more pills. Her regular distributor is sold out, so she is forced to rob a local hospital. She is caught and thrown into prison.
While waiting to be booked, she meets up with another new prisoner, Break. He sells antique (as in pre-pulse) clothes, and often has run-ins with the police because he is vocally against police brutality. For some reason, Break takes a shine to Max and plays mother hen to her when they get put into the main jail. He gets her some milk to help out with her seizures, and she talks him into helping her escape.
That night, Break creates a diversion with some very impressive opera singing while Max makes her move. He continues to sing long after the guards begin to beat him up. Why is he willing to do this for Max after having known her for just a few hours? We can't really say. However, Max has obviously been weakened by her seizures, since she cannot scale the fence quickly enough and is overpowered by the guards. The warden even shows up, and he also takes a shine to Max, having her sent to his own house (inside the prison compound). At first, it seemed like he understood what her barcode meant, but later it seems that he just like petite girls.
On the outside, Logan is trying to find Max, and encounters Original Cindy at Jam Pony. She accuses him of getting Max hooked on drugs as some type of sugar daddy, but he explains that she has a neurological condition that requires her to take them. Logan uses his connections to a city detective to determine that Max has been imprisoned for trying to steal drugs. Cindy is aghast to think she caused Max's arrest, so she agrees to help Logan spring Max. Logan's detective friend takes Cindy to jail as a prostitute; Cindy has a supply of Max's pills, and quickly hooks up with Break to find her.
Max is still horribly sick, but wakes up in the warden's house. The warden has another "daughter", a girl named Maria, whose mother was a prisoner who died. Maria takes care of the warden's house and tries to take care of Max; it's soon clear that the warden is sexually abusing her. Max begins to hallucinate and confuse Maria with her former foster sister, Lucy, who was in a similar abusive situation. Max feels very guilty that she didn't help Lucy, but instead fled from the family, even though at the time she was far too young and inexperienced to have known what to do. She vows that she will rescue Maria.
Break arranges for Cindy to join the detail cleaning the warden's house. She sneaks Max the pills. This happens none too soon, because Lydecker has gotten wind of Max's arrest, and arrives with a force to begin searching the prison. Max quickly recovers her physical prowess and forces the warden to help them escape in his car. Once outside the prison, he tries to overcome them, but is killed. Logan hacks into the prison's records and deletes key files just before Lydecker can get them, so Lydecker is completely foiled again.
In the end, Logan arranges for Maria to be adopted by a couple unable to have children. Max and her friends make up. Cindy and Kendra tell Max that they know she's into something big and important and want to be in on it. But when Max tries to tell them she's an enhanced woman, they laugh it off as "aren't we all"? If only they knew!
This episode was a look at how quickly events can spiral out of control. We see just how fragile the balance of everyone's lives are in the society on the show. Without the payoff money, the squatters are forced to evacuate their building, losing all of their possessions. One wonders if the squatters will be as willing in the future to allow Kendra and Max to hold the payoff money - given how much money it apparently was, this is no small responsibility.
This episode was also a look at Max's vulnerabilities. Given that, it's a little strange to see this episode so early in the show - seems that it would be more appropriate later, after we see her being invincible for awhile. But it does show that even Max needs help from time to time.
Seeing Max's abusive foster father again makes me wonder how Max did turn out to be so normal, or at least as normal as a transgenic person could be. How many other abusive situations was she in? I had to wonder why she tolerated the abuse, but I think that she realized that while she might be able to kill the foster father, it wouldn't necessarily make the situation better for her (or Lucy) and that she'd have to run again. If only she knew about the possibilities of getting police intervention on Lucy's behalf, but she was ignorant about society at that point.
The warden and his "pet" daughter were a sickening situation. With society being so unsettled and chaotic, one has to wonder how many other bizarre and abusive situations exist that (hopefully) wouldn't have been able to get by in a more civilized time. People with power seem to be able to set up their own little kingdoms and rule within them with impunity. Perhaps Max will be more willing to help Logan in his fight against corruption now.
I have to wonder about some character motivations here. We get a quick scene with Max's former private investigator, who tipped Lydecker off to Max's arrest. From what we saw, there was no way that Lydecker knew the PI came into that information. So why did he volunteer it? Does he get paid for his help? I would think he'd want to avoid Lydecker's attention as much as possible, since Lydecker apparently had pulled out his fingernails (which was implied in "Heat"). And previously he had helped Max, by warning her about Lydecker.
The other character I wonder about is Break. Why was he so willing to help Max? He was clearly a business man who was just as comfortable making deals with the prison guards as running his outside business. Max gave him no indication that she would be able to help him in return in the future, so what did he have to gain? He certainly knew he was setting himself up for a beating by making a diversion for her. I guess he really liked the hat she gave him.



















There were some fun moments in this show, but it suffered from have two completely unconnected storylines.
Alina Herrero contacts Eyes Only to ask him to determine the fate of her father, Nathan Herrero. Nathan was a journalist and political activist who was a friend of Logan's. He fought against both the corrupt Seattle government and the Russian mafia, making enemies of both, until he disappeared about two years before the show's present day. He was assumed to have been kidnapped and murdered by one of his enemies, but his body was never found.
Logan finally decides to help Alina, but the case is very cold after two years. Logan's detective friend tells him that the police investigated Herrero's disappearance, but not with much zeal, and the file on the case is missing. Logan asks Max to break into City Hall repository of police records, where somehow he knows there will be a copy of the file. Max does a quick turn as a cat burglar, in and out, giving the file to Logan.
Using the file, Logan tracks down the current whereabouts of Herrero's past friends and associates. His old housekeeper has been out of work for awhile, and yet somehow just bought a house. Max plants some listening devices around her new house, and they quickly discover that Herrero is not dead, but is living with the housekeeper; they are lovers. After some debate, Logan and Max decide to tell Alina that her father is still alive, and Max arranges a meeting time for them.
Meanwhile, Max's friend Calvin (AKA Sketchy) is getting himself in trouble. He has hired out his courier services to the Russian mafia, and they ask him to deliver an envelope of money. He manages to lose the envelope with all $15,000. We don't really know the value of the dollar in their society versus today's dollar, but we can assume that $15,000 is still a pretty significant sum. Calvin tries to work out a repayment deal with the mafia, but not surprisingly, they are not inclined to be lenient. They string Calvin up by the heels, naked, and given him 36 hours to repay them.
Max and Original Cindy rescue Calvin. For some unknown reason, they decide to help Calvin get out of his jam. With just a few hours left on his deadline, they get all dolled up and head to the (illegal?) gambling emporium run by the Russian mafia. They have a small stake, which they intend to run up to the $15,000. First, Max uses her enhanced abilities to predict numbers on the roulette wheel. (This is the first time I've ever seen this done. Max is right that it should be simple physics with the angular velocity of the wheel and the speed of the ball, but with the chaotic bouncing, I'm not sure it would be so easily predicted. This is also one of the first signs we have that Max's intelligence, or at least math skills, have also been enhanced, not just her physical abilities.)
However, the roulette wheel is just not increasing their money fast enough. They have attracted the interest of the proprietors, anyway, so they play dumb and talk themselves into a high-stakes poker game. Between their dumb act and the luck of the cards, they don't do too well, until the deal gets to Max. She is able to stack the deck without detections, and sets up two hands. The guy with all the money gets a full house, and she gets a straight flush (after she turns in two cards!). Max wins it all, getting just enough money to pay off Calvin's debt. Some of the mafia goons try to rob them outside, but Max and Cindy kick their asses. It's somewhat humorous that Cindy's kicks to one of the goons conveniently keeps her back turned to Max's super physical abilities.
So Calvin is able to repay the mafia (with their own money!) and thereby saves his skin. Will he continue to work for them? Not if he's smart, although they may not give him much choice. And after this experience, Calvin wants Max and Cindy to use their scam on other gambling places to make some money. Where's his head? As Cindy says, CREAM: Cash Rules Everything Around Me. This does tie things together in this episode, as everyone seems to be motivated by money.
Back to the Herrero plot. Alina is on her way to see her father, but pauses dramatically on the street outside, and her father's apartment explodes. The news reports he and his lover are killed. Surprisingly, it is Logan rather than Max who realizes that Alina arranged the assassination. Max catches up with Alina on a train out of the country and demands an explanation. Alina says it was a combination of hatred and a pay-off from some of Herrero's old enemies. Max breaks the briefcase holding Alina's pay-off, and most of it floats away out of the train.
In a nice epilogue to the episode, Logan gets a package in the mail from Herrero. It has a video tape. On it, Herrero thanks Logan for getting him back in touch with his daughter and looks forward to their meeting. He also includes information and evidence that Logan can use to finally put a corrupt official in jail.
Well, this episode was a little schizophrenic. The plot involving Herrero was OK, but it suffered from having Max and Cindy's big gambling scene interrupting it in the middle. I also didn't develop a real feel or sympathy for Alina or Herrero, so I didn't much care about their fates. The beginning of the episode, where Alina meets with "Eyes Only" via video camera was a good touch.
The second plot involving Calvin was just a bit silly. It ultimately seemed like a reason to get Max and Cindy in sexy clothes. Plus, the gambling scenes went on WAY too long. How long will Max continue to help Calvin out? In the pilot, she "saved" him from having to reveal to his girlfriend that he was cheating on her - at that time Max said she wouldn't help him again. More to the point, why would Max and Cindy risk their lives for him? As expected, the mafia tried to take their poker winnings back; despite what Cindy thinks, if Max hadn't been there, things would have turned out very differently. And the danger to them isn't necessarily over, because it any of the mafia goons were to recognize Max or Cindy again, they'd probably be inclined to take revenge.
One smaller scene that was nice: Max refusing Logan's gift of a gun. We haven't really seen Max using guns, and now we see that it is a conscious decision. She has bad memories of a gun being used to kill one of her siblings at Manticore. So does Max have an aversion to guns or to killing in general? We haven't seen her actually kill anyone for sure, and in previous episodes (such as the beginning of "Heat"), we've seen her set up people to kill each other, but she hasn't pulled the trigger. Even if she doesn't like killing people herself, she obviously doesn't mind someone else killing bad people, and especially likes it when the bad people kill each other.
Another scene gave us a look at Logan's occasional double standards. He meets with his detective friend, then gives the detective a toy for his son. He tells the detective, "Don't worry, it doesn't mean you're on the take." In what world? The detective is giving Logan information he is not legally entitled to, and in return Logan is giving him gifts. Apparently even though Logan is fighting the corruption of politicians and city employees, he has no problem corrupting a few of them for his own purposes. The detective rationalizes it as helping out the good guys, and Logan apparently agrees. Ah, the ends justifying the means.
























Both Max and Logan meet someone from their past, but the meetings do not turn out as they might have hoped.
We join Max joyriding in the middle of the night on her motorcycle, with a stranger also on a motorcycle. Just when they part ways, Max gets stopped at a checkpoint and her motorcycle is arbitrarily impounded. The next morning, she learns that the fee is $3000 to recover her motorcycle from the impound lot.
Meanwhile, Logan's ex-wife, Valerie, has showed up at his apartment. Apparently they divorced over a year and a half ago because Valerie was an alcoholic. Valerie claims she has been sober for about eighteen months, and she has arrived to apologize to Logan. She is pretty and well-dressed, as an upper-class woman Logan's family might be associated with. She seems nervous, but that's understandable given the situation. She and Logan seem to hit it off.
At Jam Pony, Herbal is fired for smoking marijuana in the restroom. Fortunately, Normal has found a replacement: a new guy in town named Sam. Max notices a classified ad in the newspaper that has her barcode number and instructions for a meeting. She shows it to Logan, who warns Max not to go because it's probably a trap from Lydecker.
Max goes anyway. It turns out that Max's former private investigator placed the ad. He has recently come into a great deal of information about Manticore and the escaped children. He will sell it to Max for $15,000 in two days, and then he intends to get out of town and away from Lydecker. He reveals to Max that Zack is in Seattle right now, and so Max is desperate to get the rest of his information.
The next day, Max meets up with Logan and Valerie. She privately asks Logan for the $15,000 to pay for the information, but Logan refuses to give her money that will probably get her killed in a set up by Lydecker. Max is annoyed, but liked the chance to look over Valerie. But, she noticed small things that made her suspicious of Valerie, so she follows her home and discovers Valerie and her boyfriend planning on how they are going to scam Logan out of $1000. That night, Max breaks into the impound lot where her motorcycle is being kept, frees her motorcycle, and robs the office's safe, which apparently has at least $15,000.
The next day, we learn that Lydecker is onto Max, because he had a bug implanted inside of the private investigator's ear. Lydecker readies his operatives to capture Max when she meets with the private investigator again. Meanwhile, Max is ordered to show Sam some directions for a delivery and en route she stops to set up the meeting to pay off the investigator. Sam tries to ingratiate himself with her, but has no luck.
When Max approaches the meeting location, she sees a crowd and police: the private investigator has been shot to death. And right on schedule, Lydecker and his minions arrive. Max retreats to Logan's apartment; she thinks Lydecker killed the investigator, but Logan disagrees, since the timing of it didn't guarantee that Lydecker would capture Max. Max is determined to use the information the private investigator did give her to track down Zack, but Logan is sure it's a trap. Max is worried that this is the case, too, but will not wait. Just in case she doesn't make it back, she tells Logan about Valerie's deception.
Max finds where Zack is staying and breaks into his hotel room. She finds many way too obvious clues that a sibling of hers is living there (such as a bottle of very clearly labeled tryptophan). Zack returns, and surprise, surprise, it's Sam. They don't have any time for a reunion, though, because Lydecker's forces show up. Max and Zack have fun fighting through them as a team, and they escape.
They finally have time to talk, and Zack says they both need to leave the city as soon as possible. Max protests. Zack tries to enforce his authority as leader of the escapees and therefore his right to give orders, but Max refuses to obey. He refuses to tell Max about any of their other siblings, and says that if Max won't obey, then he washes his hands of her. He takes off, and Max is heartbroken.
Meanwhile, Valerie has showed up again at Logan's apartment. Logan tells her that he knows about her plans, and she confesses. He gives her the $1000 and tells her to leave. He is also deeply hurt.
At the end of the episode, Herbal is re-hired at Jam Pony because "Sam" has disappeared. Max and Logan commiserate on their disappointments, then go for a walk in the rain.
This episode was satisfying because we finally got to meet Zack, who Max had been idolizing in her mind. But the episode also kept things moving in the series, because Zack did not turn out to be who Max expected. Max was hoping to find her siblings and form some kind of family, but Zack sees all of them as a military unit. As Logan says, both points of views have their advantages and disadvantages. Max's ideal is more stable and emotionally satisfying, but leaves open the possibility of capture by Lydecker. Zack's view would probably make the transgenics safer by keeping them on the move, but how long can even super-soldiers keep up that kind of paranoid life?
Zack claims that he's been keeping tabs on all of the Manticore escapees. I'm not sure how believable that is, because it seems like if he's known where Max was, he would have been eager to re-establish his authority over her, and if he'd done it sooner, maybe he would've even been successful. More likely he's been spending the past years simply tracking them all down. How many of them has he found? Have they been receptive to his orders? Presumably we'll find out more about all of this as the series progresses.
The plot involving Logan's ex-wife was not really connected to Max's plot, but it did give a nice parallel between them. It was interesting to see Logan being more vulnerable to another person and how he reacted to it. I don't think we really got to see Valerie enough to get to know her, so our focus was on Logan's reactions. Logan can't be that old, so when did he get married and how long were they together? An amusing aspect of this plot was the touch of jealousy exhibited by Max, mirroring Logan's jealousy of Max's "boyfriend" in "Heat". Do they really have any feelings for each other?
The subplot concerning the impound of Max's motorcycle seemed superfluous. It did illustrate the arbitrary and capricious nature of law enforcement in the city. I wondered why Max didn't break out the bike right away instead of contemplating paying the fee. Of course, since she did break it out, she's going to have to do something to disguise it in the future, or presumably the police will recognize it as having been stolen. Breaking out her bike gave Max the chance to rob the safe, but why in the world would that much cash have been stored in that office instead of in a safer location?









































This excellent episode hits on all the strengths of the series: the moral quandaries surrounding the super soldiers, the unsettled society, the conflict between Max and Lydecker, and the developing relationship between Max and Logan.
Max's roommate Kendra has found a temp job helping out at a scientific conference where Dr. Tanaka, a Japanese geneticist, will be presenting his work. This is nice continuity with Kendra, since we saw her tutoring school children in Japanese in a previous episode. Max is intrigued by Dr. Tanaka's work, which uses gene manipulation of living persons to "fix" chronic problems they have. She sweet talks Logan into getting her fake press credentials to attend the conference; she's hoping to learn something about how her genetic flaws, such as her seizures, might be fixed. She tries to tell Logan the research might be able to help him regain the use of his legs, but Logan is in a pissy mood and will have none of it.
Max arrives at the conference as Rachel Glasser, a journalist for a biotechnology magazine. Dr. Tanaka begins by presenting his most amazing achievement: a 7-year-old boy named Jude. Jude had been born extremely premature and with numerous problems, one of which included being addicted to crack via his birth mother. Tanaka used his genetic manipulation techniques to not only keep Jude alive, but to help him become a thriving boy with excellent physical coordination and high intelligence. Jude comes onstage, speaks Japanese and English, and then plays the piano. He does seem perfect, although I think he looks a little vacant somehow.
Max's heart immediately goes out to this boy, who was genetically manipulated just like her. She relives a particularly brutal childhood memory, where she and the other children were tied underwater (to test their lung capacity?) and were not released, even if they panicked, until they reached four minutes. Max is so involved in this memory that she doesn't notice Lydecker, who sits down next to her. He doesn't know who she is - he's also attending the conference.
Max considers fleeing, but then remembers one of the maxims Lydecker drilled into her: know your enemy. So she purposely chats him up, asking him why he is there. He says that he works with gifted, but flawed, children, and he's hoping to learn how their flaws might be fixed. Initially, he comes across as pretty reasonable and almost fatherly, and one wonders how much Max's memories are exaggerated. But as their conversations continue, his true colors start to show. He doesn't really think the EM pulse that caused the downfall of the US was a bad thing: the people that survived are stronger and smarter. He believes that in order for humans to become better, the weaker and inferior individuals should be sacrificed. This is not unlike the philosophy of the Shadows in Babylon 5, which was taken to its extreme and used as a cause of galactic war. Lydecker can't go that far, but one wonders if he believes a world war, for example, would be "helpful".
Events become serious very quickly when the terrorist group May 22nd takes over the conference. They are based on the "philosophy" of the Unabomber (May 22nd is his birthday), and have built their reputation on sabotaging centers of technology. They may have been behind the EM pulse that happened 10 years before. Currently, they are led by Jon Darius. They intend to "free" the child Jude from his captors. Their original plan was to grab Jude and run, but their escape is cut off, so they are stuck in the hotel with some 35 hostages from the conference. In the initial confusion, Lydecker has Kendra hide his gun in her purse, in the hopes that she won't be searched. He then pulls the fire alarm, getting whacked in the head for his trouble.
The hostage situation quickly makes the news, and Logan recognizes Darius as someone he interviewed several years before. Logan decides to head to the scene in the hope that he can communicate with Darius and arrange some kind of deal. Meanwhile, Darius has been contacted by the police detective on scene (who is Logan's friend) and makes his demands for transport away and that Jude will go with them. Darius says he will kill one hostage every hour until the demands are met, and since the first hour is already up, the first hostage will die. His henchmen take Dr. Tanaka to the roof of the hotel and throw him off. Besides the tragedy of the loss of Tanaka's life, Max's hopes for helping herself are also destroyed.
By the time Logan arrives, the army has taken over the situation. They are clearly much more interested in getting rid of the terrorists than they are in saving the hostages. Logan talks to Darius on the phone and arranges to exchange himself (and the promise to air Darius's views in the press) for the female hostages. Watching Logan wheel himself into the hands of the hostages is sobering. One might hope the soldiers would understand what he's hoping to accomplish, but they probably just think he's being stupid.
Darius lets the women go; on the way out, Max fakes a twisted ankle and manages to secretly stay in the building. The women exit the building safely, but when the terrorists escorting them come into view, army sharpshooters take them out. Darius is enraged and orders Logan thrown off the roof. This action shows that Darius is not thinking clearly; besides the additional loss of life, he would lose a lot of public support by being willing to kill a handicapped person. After all, didn't he just release the women in order to look good?
Max hears the order and races to the roof. She hooks up a rope to the roof and when Logan is thrown off, jumps off after him and grabs him. The terrorists quickly cut her rope, but fortunately they break through a window and land back inside the hotel, some floors down. This is a great trick, but unfortunately it's impossible. Max tied the rope around her waist. When she is jerked to a stop at the end of the rope, the deceleration would be huge: it should at least break bones, if not virtually cut her in half, especially since at that point she had Logan's weight on her as well.
Their recovery is great, though, as they each accuse the other of being there. Max accuses Logan of trading himself for the women, thereby putting himself at risk, and Logan accuses Max of not leaving with the rest of the women, after he put himself at risk for her. Max quickly heads off to put the rest of the terrorists out of commission.
The situation with the terrorists is coming to a head. Lydecker has gotten his gun back from Kendra and decides to make his move. But he has no luck, as another terrorist clubs him on the back of the head (again!), and he falls to the floor unconscious. This is great timing, because just as one of the terrorists is about to kill Lydecker, Max bursts into the room and uses her enhanced abilities to take them out. We see her kill someone personally for the first time (that I can recall), breaking his neck with her bare hands. Lydecker surely would have recognized her as one of the escaped children if he had been conscious. Darius manages to slip out with Jude; Max goes after him, knocks him out, and slips out of the building with the boy.
The army special ops forces storm the hotel, only to find all the terrorists already neutralized. It appears that only Darius is alive, and they begin kicking and beating him. Lydecker comes to and orders them to stop. He realizes that if Darius is taken alive, he will have his day in court and be able to publicize his views nationally, so Lydecker shoots Darius dead.
Max and Logan quickly arrange for Logan's police friend to get Jude away and to a good home. Later, Max muses over her decision to save Lydecker's life. She doesn't want to believe that she just did it for some goody-goody reason, like all life is valuable, but decides it was because Lydecker is the only one that knows her whole history and what other genetic surprises she might have in store.
This episode had a lot of ethical meat to it, plus it had a lot of solid action. I'll discuss the weightier issues first. The genetic manipulation by Dr. Tanaka was the bait that drew both Max and Lydecker. They were both hoping to fix some specific defects in the transgenic super soldiers, but Dr. Tanaka implied that the technology could be used to fix a wide range of problems, using bad eyesight as an example. Fortunately, the episode did not go into a lot of detail about how the technology worked, because that kind of explanation would probably go out of date almost immediately. However, it raises a very serious question: should genetic manipulation be used on living persons? If so, to what extent?
I don't think many people would argue that Tanaka's manipulation of Jude's genetics, thereby saving his life and improving it immeasurably, was wrong. If Tanaka had not intervened, the length of Jude's life probably would have been measured in weeks, if not days. But what other kinds of uses are morally acceptable? Fixing handicaps, such as multiple sclerosis, paraplegia, or blindness (for example)? That seems OK. How about more minor "defects", such as poor eyesight or coordination? This kind of modification seems unnecessary, but one might expect that if a patient can afford it, they might do it. What about "fixing" someone's nose shape, eye color, or breast size? This things seem completely frivolous. But is any of it morally right or wrong? In real-world society, we are starting to have to deal with some of these questions.
The child Jude seemed a bit odd to me. The terrorists claimed he was just a human guinea pig, and frankly, there was some truth to that. Jude didn't seem to have the energy and playfulness that are usually apparent in little boys, but I have to think that comes from being in such an institutionalized situation for his whole life. This is something that Max clearly identified with. Also, when the terrorists took over, Jude never really showed fear. I chalked this up to him never being in a truly scary or hurtful situation before, so he had no idea of what the bad outcomes could be. The most reaction he showed was covering his ears from the the loud noises of the gunshots.
The actions of the terrorist group in this episode show how this kind of unrest still exists in society, possibly exacerbated by the breakdown of the US government after the pulse. This part of the plot also highlighted how the changes in society have caused individual lives to be less valued, which we see when the army commander considers the hostages to be completely expendable, as long as the terrorists are neutralized.
Max, of course, had her personal demons to deal with in this episode, as she got to relate to Lydecker on an equal basis. Did she learn anything about him that will help her out in the future? I'm not sure about that. She obviously got a better idea of his motivations; while she (and I) don't agree with them, he is obviously very earnest and does not come across as a psychopath. We got a fun tease throughout the episode about whether or not Max's identity would be revealed to Lydecker. She got lucky her, but their incidental meetings can't go on for too much longer. If Lydecker hadn't been unconscious when Max returned at the end, would she have made her assault?
Max and Logan's relationship continues to deepen as they potentially sacrifice themselves for each other without a second thought. True, Logan also saved the other female hostages, but one gets the feeling that he might not have been willing to go to such lengths if Max hadn't been one of them.
































This excellent episode shows just how far the escaped super-soldiers are willing to go to help each other.
In the episode's teaser, we see a transgenic escapee from Manticore named Brin on the run. We assume she's on the run from Lydecker and watch as she calls someone on the phone for help.
Later, Max returns to her apartment to find that it's been broken into, and the perpetrator is still there: Zack. He looks much the worse for wear, and quickly tells Max what happened. He was meeting up with Brin when operatives from some group, presumably Manticore, arrived and snatched Brin. Zack barely managed to escape. He must have been desperate to turn to Max for help, when he disavowed her at their last meeting ("411 on the DL").
Max takes Zack to Logan's to get fixed up, but Zack doesn't really trust Logan. Logan does some electronic snooping and determines that Brin is probably still somewhere in the vicinity of Seattle, since there haven't been any special military convoys in or out, and she could hardly be sent with just a guard or two. Now the question is where she is being held.
Logan, Max, and Zack begin digging into Lydecker's background in order to get ideas. They learn that he was an rising star in the military until his wife was murdered. The murderer was never caught, and Lydecker apparently fell apart, earning many disciplinary actions and a dishonorable discharge, along with becoming an alcoholic. Since Lydecker is now back in command of an important operation, they reason that he managed to get sober. They gamble that they can find him at a local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
Their gamble pays off. In a bit of black humor, we see Lydecker tell his story to the local AA members. Then, in perfect character, he goes on to tell them what losers they are that they can't take charge of their own lives to keep from being alcoholics, but must depend on the "higher power" evoked by AA literature to help them. He says he keeps coming to AA meetings in order to see what he doesn't want to become. When he leaves the meeting, Max sees an opportunity and jumps Lydecker, forcing him to drive her and Zack to a secluded area.
Zack isn't happy with Max's improvisation, but frankly, doesn't seem too upset to have Lydecker in their control. They blindfold Lydecker (he hasn't seen them yet) and begin questioning him on Brin's whereabouts, with Zack employing a few punches to encourage his honesty. Lydecker is completely unruffled. Even though he's the one blindfolded and tied up, he quickly manages to get them unsettled. He identifies Zack quickly from his anger, but can't quite figure out Max.
No matter how angry Zack gets, Lydecker denies any involvement with Brin's abduction. He knows how their interrogation will escalate, so he breaks his own finger (!!!) to convince them he is being truthful. Even then, he is calm and collected. He suggests that another organization has captured Brin in order to sell her (and her genetically-enhanced DNA), possibly to the Chinese government. He claims he doesn't want to see that happen any more than Max and Zack do.
Max and Zack can't decide if he's telling the truth. Zack wants to kill Lydecker on principle, then proceed with finding Brin, but Max thinks he may be useful. They decide that Zack will go see if Logan can find any evidence supporting Lydecker's supposition, while Max babysits Lydecker. While Zack is gone, Lydecker finally recognizes Max's voice as that of the journalist Max posed as in "Prodigy". Max's identity is finally blown, because if he can remember her voice, he certainly can remember what she looks like! Lydecker also makes the connection that Max was at the conference in "Prodigy" to learn more about how to fix her genetic flaws, such as her seizures, and asks how bad they are. He says that if she returns to Manticore, they have a treatment. Max emphatically refuses, but she's unnerved by his insight.
Meanwhile, Logan's connections reveal that a rogue army officer, Major Sanders (at least he wasn't a colonel!), has basically taken over a nearby base. He has his own mercenary soldiers, and he has been in the employ of the Chinese government to capture one of the Manticore escapees. Now that he has, the exchange of Brin for cash will be happening soon. Zack takes this information with the intent of breaking Brin out with Max's help. Before he leaves, he accuses Logan of putting Max's life in danger by holding her in Seattle with their relationship.
Zack has to be getting used to not getting his way, because Max peremptorily decides that they will use Lydecker to get them onto Sanders' base. Lydecker already knows what Max looks like, but when she takes off his blindfold, she reveals Zack's identity as well. She apparently thinks it's worth the risk.
Lydecker gets them onto the base with ease. When he renews his acquaintance with Sanders, he tells Sanders that he knows about the deal with the Chinese... and he's brought two more Manticore kids to sweeten the deal, because he wants a cut. Max and Zack are quickly taken into custody. Clearly they (and I) had expected some kind of double-cross from Lydecker, but they hadn't thought of this one! The next question is: is Lydecker serious about wanting to go along with Sanders?
Max and Zack are imprisoned in separate cells, alongside Brin's cell. Brin is obviously very ill. Lydecker says it's a rare genetic disorder that causes accelerated aging. He has encountered it in some of the other Manticore kids, and has developed a treatment. Sanders couldn't care less about treating Brin - he just wants her to live long enough for the deal to be made.
Sanders and Lydecker retire to Sanders' office to hammer out their deal. Despite their previous working relationship, they do not trust each other and both make an attempt to kill the other: Lydecker is successful. However, before he can call in his own operatives, Max, Zack, and Brin escape from their cells after Max fakes hanging herself. The incoming Manticore operatives begin fighting Sanders' mercenaries, and in the confusion, the transgenics escape in an SUV.
Their escape is very bittersweet, however, because Brin is obviously in critical condition. On the radio, Lydecker begs them to return Brin, claiming that he can whisk her away to Manticore and cure her. Max and Zack don't know what to do, because they don't want to return her to a life of virtual slavery, but to keep her would probably mean her death. Even Zack's commanding officer facade breaks down as he fights back tears over the awful choice. Brin makes the decision: she doesn't want to die. They arrange to leave her where Lydecker can retrieve her. They promise her that they will free her again from Manticore once she is well.
In the end, Zack quickly leaves town, and Max commiserates with Logan in what is becoming a traditional way of tying up episodes. The final thing we see is Brin well on her way to recovering at Manticore. Lydecker comments that she is almost good as new physically, but that she'll require serious reindoctrination after how long she has been away from Manticore. When Max and Zack eventually rescue her, will she still be the same Brin?
That's it for the main plot. There is a secondary plot involving Jam Pony that is interleaved with the main plot. I don't usually discuss the subplots because they mostly provide color and round out the culture, but this one was especially funny. It provided something of a balance to the extremely serious A plot.
An Indian businessman is on the verge of buying Jam Pony, and he has provided funds for Normal to implement some of his favorite ideas, such as jerseys for the couriers, cleaning up the facilities, and implementing all kinds of new rules. Original Cindy, Sketchy, and Herbal are opposed to a stricter Jam Pony, so they devise a plan. They pretend to go along with Normal's fix-it efforts until the day before the businessman visits for the first time. At that point, they contrive to lace Normal's coffee with laxative. The next day, Normal is too ill to show off Jam Pony to the businessman, but the other assure him that they will take care of things.
When the Indian businessman shows up, they quickly stage an accidental leakage of a package containing a deadly disease. Couriers appear to be falling over dead in their tracks, vomiting up horrible things. Sketchy rushes the businessman to the backroom, where they lock themselves in and seal the door. There's no exit, but they figure they will wait for the all-clear from the police. But Herbal, posing as the police, announces a quarantine, and anyone trying to escape from the building will be shot on sight.
Sketchy puts on a wonderful show of being panicked, and the businessman is legitimately hysterical. Sketchy convinces him that they can escape through the steam pipes under the building, if only they can file away the lock. They do that and "escape", just in time for the businessman to flee from Jam Pony before Normal returns. The businessman never returns any of Normal's calls and the deal for Jam Pony falls through, much to the puzzlement of Normal and his employees.
This episode marks a turning point for the series: Lydecker now knows the faces of two of the transgenic escapees. Zack is constantly on the move, so he should be harder to find, but if Lydecker realizes that Max has tied herself to Seattle, he could cause her a lot of trouble. We have seen things like floating police drones - do they have video or cameras? Who do they take pictures of? Could Lydecker track her down using them? Not to mention all the other normal surveillance that must occur in Seattle in its current state. Max's activities may be severely restricted.
Lydecker shows in this episode just how clever and slimy he is. He knows just how to get under the skin of his "children" - but of course, can't all parents do that? He can think very quickly on his feet: first, he deduced what happened to Brin, and then he worked out a double-cross of Max and Zack and after that a double-cross of Sanders. What does he truly believe? Was he serious when he said he'd rather die than see Brin fall into the hands of the Chinese? That seemed to be the one thing that he stuck to.
Speaking of the Chinese, it's hard to believe that they haven't caught up with Manticore's ten-year-old technology (at least, since that's when Max and the others escaped). As far as we know, the Chinese were not directly affected by the pulse, so they should be pushing forward on all fronts.
What other pies does Lydecker have his fingers in? At the beginning of the episode, we see him talking with someone from another organization. This other person was saying that the Pope is causing problems for some nebulous movement that Lydecker and he are part of. It seems that the result of this conversation is Lydecker agreeing to have one of his "kids" assassinate the Pope. That seems like an awfully big thing to just drop in...did I misunderstand? Is Manticore part of some bigger organization, or is it just Lydecker?
It's great to see Zack back in this episode, since he and Max really rub each other the wrong way. He still doesn't agree with Max's unsoldierly choices, but he seems to be resigned to them. His lecture to Logan doesn't seem to be from jealousy, but from the responsibility he perceives toward Max, even if she doesn't want it. While I definitely feel some sexual tension between Max and Logan, I don't get that at all from Max and Zack. I can completely believe they have a sibling relationship.
Their decision to send Brin back to Manticore is excruciating for both of them. They were on the verge of a victory over Manticore - they saved one of their siblings - only to see it snatched away. If they were each in Brin's place, would they have made the same choice? I'm pretty sure that Zack would have preferred to die than return to Manticore. He seems to see things in black and white, and he would see a return as a complete surrender. What about Max? I'm not so sure what her decision would be. I think she is more open to the idea that there are always options, and might be willing to accept the temporary setback of returning to Manticore with the hope of future escape. Hopefully she'll never have to face such a choice!
Where will the show go from here? The stakes are going to be much higher between Max and Lydecker. Max still wants to find her other siblings, but so is Lydecker.