But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. – Exodus 23:22

After last week’s S&M lovefest between Charlie and 01, it was time to bring together Charlie and Reena. Here we are in episode 14, and the only interaction these two have had is a few seconds during the link explosion and one foot chase through Cape Town way back in episode 2, “Sand”. Reena’s been off on her own, being poked, prodded, shocked, beaten, and abused by everyone in Betaverse, but she’s been doing it on her own. Tonight, a first attempt is made to bring her into the fold.

Charlie doesn’t know if Reena is friend or foe, but as with 01, he’s willing to take the allies he can find in his fight against Vexcor. And she’s a pretty good ally with a great deal of access.

A Crisis of Faith

We haven’t gotten into any detail about the religious beliefs and practices in Alpha, but a reasonable guess would be to assume religion has little grip on the people. What little we know of Gamma seems to point toward the prevalence of new age practices, we certainly know traditional religions are strong here, and Alpha appears to be a world that has given up faith entirely. Faith in one’s fellow man and faith in the future have long since been abandoned in that dystopia; it’s likely faith in a higher power has as well.

But Charlie’s not in Alpha anymore. He’s eating sticky donuts in Cape Town now. He’s becoming a man willing to fight for 10 billion people. He’s becoming one of us.

In that process, nascent spirituality and guilt are gnawing at his soul.

Drawn to a church, Charlie debates a priest and himself, but walks away. This is the first time we see young Gemma haunting him, on the steps of the church. The girl Charlie couldn’t save is trying to save him.

While Charlie’s discussing the finer points of theological theory with the priest, Reena’s dropping off Norman Ord’s package of misdeeds at Karl’s door. If you remember, last week Reena got Norman to print all the records of Vexcor’s illegal dumping – activity he directed himself – by threatening to expose him to security, with a little game of Jekyll/Hyde and Go Boom to sweeten the pot. Tonight she slips those under Karl’s door, presumably because his reputation as a Vexcor muckraker is widespread.

The Eye of the Tiger

01′s getting back in shape, recovering from his gunshot. I’m writing this prior to the SciFi airing, so I don’t know if they’ve stuck with the heavy metal on the soundtrack or swapped it out, but I think it needed a good ’80s power ballad instead. That, or “Montage” from the Team America soundtrack.

Regardless, 01′s getting stronger while Princess watches. On the podcast for this episode over at Charlie Jade Verse Alex Epstein said that Bob Wertheimer was a big fan of the actress, Lisa-Marie Schneider, so the writers gave her more to do. She gets to be involved in one of the best gags this show ever did a bit later on, so I’m happy for that.

After his workout, 01 heads to the shower for a little transdimensional jaunt…only he can’t do it. Whatever hit 01 a few episodes back, when he returned too soon from Gamma, it’s still causing him problems. He is as stuck here as everyone else.

So, unable to head to Alpha to tattle on Julius to the home office, 01 puts Princess to work in pinstripes and a tight bun. A little video manipulation brought to us by magic Alpha technology lets 01 transform the image and voice of Princess into Essa Rompkin. And so we get a great bit that I actually think should have been played out longer. Schneider doing her best impersonation of the ice queen, and Michele Burgers doing a fabulous approximation of 01′s callow lover.

Ord on the Run

Looking through the documents, Charlie realizes Norman’s name is on each one. He tries to find him in the Vexcor computers, but the records have been imperfectly excised. Karl guesses that’s because Norman is looking to get out of town, so Charlie calls in a little help. And so we get the return of Blues Paddock, played by the lovely and talented Rolanda Marais. In a game of cat and cat, she and Charlie each try to get the upper hand. Blues finds a single, paper record of Norman – making the absence of any electronic footprint that much more intriguing to her – and stakes out Norman’s house. She’s given Charlie the address and just has to wait for him to show up.

But Charlie is one step ahead of Blues; he’s gotten to the house before her. Hiding out in the Ord’s backseat, he has Norman and his wife head to his loft.

There, Charlie and Karl learn Reena is working inside Vexcor and is the one who got them the information about the illegal dumping. Norman tells Charlie how to contact Reena – through a posted notice about a missing dog in the Vexcor gardens – in exchange for passage out of Cape Town. He and his wife flee to Johannesburg, their first stop before leaving the country. A friend of Karl’s – someone who worked in the apartheid-era underground railroad – will help the Ords escape Vexcor’s grip, finally.

The Barber of Seville

I’m guessing a few of you have been looking forward to tonight’s episode to see 01 Boxer‘s little surprise for Julius. I hope it made you all laugh as much as it gets me *every* time I see it. 01 has his counterfeit slate to deliver, and he wants to make him as uncomfortable as possible in the process. Danny Keogh‘s a pro to just keep going no matter what Michael Filipowich throws at him.

Julius tries to lay blame on the attack squarely on Ren Porter. 01 isn’t buying, but goes along for now. He’s hoping his phony message from Essa will take care of his problems with Julius.

It doesn’t. Julius shows up at the Glass Door with the slate in hand and confronts 01. He knows it’s a fake slate. He knows 01 hasn’t been to Alpha or wasn’t able to get Essa to listen to him. But he knows 01 and he share a common goal – to keep the link down. Ren’s pushing hard for the link to be restored and Julius wants to keep that from happening. He makes 01 an offer he can’t refuse.

The Corpse and Stimpy Show

Charlie lurks outside an abandoned building, stalking Reena inside. She’s not alone. Porter and one of his goons tailed Reena from the gardens and are preparing to kill her. Some really nice time jumps are utilized in these scenes to make the action really pop.

• Reena breaks the goon’s neck with a swift kick to his head as he lies on the floor.
• Porter and the goon following.
• Reena with her foot on the goon’s neck: “we’re surrounded by dead people.”
• Porter and the goon looking for Reena.
• Reena quickly disarming Porter and grasping his neck. A Mexican stand-off ensues until the goon lays down his weapon. Reena quickly kills Ren and then takes down the goon.

All of this, intercut with Julius and 01 drinking and scheming about Porter’s death.

Charlie tracks down Reena before she escapes. They have a scene together where we learn Reena
knows 01. We should, in fact, conclude that 01 provided the explosives Reena used on the Gammaverse link site. They talk and realize each other is stranded from elsewhere. But there’s a small problem.

The Reena who killed Porter and the goon is her programmed personality. When reminded too strongly about what she did, the programming takes back over and disarms Charlie before running away. Charlie’s hopes for a new ally have to be delayed.

A bit later, 01 tracks Porter’s chip and finds him dead. With his usual reverence for all things living and dead, 01 relieves himself on the body while ringing up Julius to deliver the good news.

The Gray Suits

One of the men in gray shows up in Charlie’s loft, giving additional weight to 01′s confessions of last week. He’s mysterious and a bit off-putting, but claims to be there to help. As Charlie is about to ask him about Krogg’s memo, he disappears. On the episode commentary, Alex Epstein says that the men in gray come from yet another universe even farther gone than Alpha. They wanted to save Beta from destruction, but might have had nefarious reasons to do so. Listen to the commentary podcasts, people!

The same man shows up once more. Charlie goes to talk with the priest again, sitting in the confessional asking for his advice:

I met this person, this woman and she needs help. Probably more than i do. If that’s possible. She’s lost. Doesn’t even know it.

But the priest’s advice is very utilitarian. He tells Charlie to solve his own problems first, before trying to solve anyone else’s. Reminds him of the stricture on a plane, to put your own oxygen mask on before helping anyone else.

Charlie leaves upset, surprised by the selfish and self-serving advice. Then the man in the gray suit exits the second confessional booth.

Jasmine and Sew Sew

The aftermath of Jasmine’s fatal attack last week is short and sweet. Short, in that Sew Sew makes sure there is no crime in the computers. Sweet, in that Sew Sew makes sure Jasmine knows he wants love, not sex. For the first time since Charlie’s disappeared, Jasmine sees a glimmer of hope for her future. It’s small, and requires her loving Sew Sew, but it’s real. And Sew Sew isn’t a bad man; he’s the last and only good cop in Cape City.

That’s a sliding scale.

Final Thoughts

Another very fine episode where we got to mix characters together and have some fun with the results. Charlie and Reena need more opportunity to play off each other, and Charlie and 01 should still be getting together more, but this was still a good one. It was especially nice to see 01 and Julius together. Michael Filipowich and Danny Keogh really work together well.

What did everyone else think?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. – 1 Corinthians 13:12

Alright. So last week was a bit of a feint. 01 didn’t give Charlie 12 reasons not to kill him. But he gave him one. One, excellent reason summed up by Karl: “01 Boxer, that sick bastard, has done more to hurt Vexcor than either one of us.”

Of Human Bondage

More than a clip show, this episode is partially constructed from pieces of the first half of the series, reexamined through 01′s perspective. We obviously can’t trust his version of events completely and neither does Charlie, but with enough clarification, enough physical abuse, and enough filtering, we all come to a better understanding of 01′s motivations and machinations. But it all starts in bondage.

Bondage is everywhere it seems. Charlie’s got 01 tied up to get information out of him. Jasmine has a client tied up for his pleasure in pain. No one gets exactly what they want out of this episode – excepting maybe 01 who seems to enjoy playing with Charlie – but everyone gets something.

While Charlie and 01 dance about finding nuggets of truth amid the pile of lies he spews, Jasmine deals with a surly client. So surly, in fact, that she finally brains him, imagining him as Jobbo. It looks like she’ll get off the streets one way or another; she calls Sew Sew.

Things turn out a little better for Charlie. He learns more about his enemy, realizes he has an ally – if an unstable and unreliable one – in 01, and even gets let off the hook on Katie Grayle a little.

Things turned out perfectly for 01, of course. Not only did he get sprung from jail, but he got tied up and beat up by Charlie. Next time, it’ll be his turn to tie Charlie.

The Secrets of 01 Boxer

Last week we saw Charlie pull 01 out of Blues’ hands right ahead of Vexcor security. We spent a few minutes and saw a few glimpses of the interrogation but never learned anything. This week we learn a great deal, though there are still a lot of questions about what’s real and what’s not.

01 believes Essa is driving the company to ruin and to commit terrible acts. Her hubris and vanity are forcing progress on the link to proceed at a calamitous pace. This is true in both the storybook version 01 tells – himself neatly attired in too-short pants, a jacket and tie, and his hair combed down like a child’s – and later versions which we recognize as closer to “the truth”.

Katie Grayle wasn’t a random innocent, but a Vexcor employee. 01 certainly used her as a pawn in his game, but she wasn’t pulled from the dance floor for no reason. More importantly, 01 didn’t kill her. Vexcor killed at, on Essa’s orders.

Krogg wasn’t killed for publishing his memo about the danger of the link; Krogg was killed to keep Vexcor from reestablishing the link. 01′s actions at every turn have been calculated to slow Vexcor. Without Krogg or a functioning link to transport other scientists through from Alpha, Beta had to struggle to make any progress at all. That was further impacted by 01′s assault on the temporary link in the dry cleaners.

The Men in Gray suits are working in the shadows, controlling everything. They suppressed Krogg’s memo, they killed Krogg, and they killed Krogg’s girlfriend. But wait. Those are lies, aren’t they? 01 killed Krogg. So what of the Gray Men? 01 has obviously seen them and knows more about them than he’s letting on, but what exactly their motivations are and where they come from will remain a mystery for now.

Note how 01 keeps common threads and phrases throughout his various flavors of the truth. In particular and most poignant is Essa’s line: repeated when she’s the floozy to 01′s good son; when she’s the corporate master; and finally, when she’s the face of evil, ordering the death of Katie Grayle.

I will do anything it takes to protect the integrity of this company. The company is everything.

Cutting the Red Wire

Reena finds Norman Ord in the boardroom, covering his tracks before taking off. One of the dozens of Vexcor employees in Beta slipping further out of the company’s grasp, Ord is responsible for toxic dumping. When Reena catches him – as she was surely waiting for him to make his move – she gives him two choices. She can either finger him to Vexcor security, or he can give her all the documents she wants on the company’s illegal dumping activities. He chooses the latter.

When he attempts to send the file, security protocols lock down the room and a bomb hidden under the conference table starts ticking down.

Ticking down? Really? Ticking out loud so Reena can hear it?

Either the bomb is the most sloppy device ever, or Reena planted it earlier. Which one of those do y’all think it is? Which one makes it easier for Reena to choose the right wire? Which one makes more sense when you realize that the explosives in the bomb don’t come from Alpha, Beta, or Gamma?

Yeah, I’m not sure what to make of that either. Somehow, Reena planted a bomb using materials she shouldn’t even have access to, found it, and disarmed it. Think it through and provide your best guesses (people who’ve read ahead are not allowed to participate.)

Final Thoughts

Charlie and 01 are now (sort of) allied against Vexcor. In that 01 knows far more than he’s letting on, this is a very uneven relationship and neither safe nor comfortable for Charlie. He still doesn’t have answers to his questions, though it might be that the answers he does have are for better questions.

Reena’s moving forward on her mission to destroy Vexcor from the inside, but considering how she reacted to the bomb, I’m not sure it’s completely *her* mission. Consider the flashback she had to when she was momentarily content with the world, walking down the street and eating ice cream. Strolling and smiling, Reena came across a Vexcor construction site and her mood and demeanor changed instantly. She’s been on this mission since that moment. Why? And who planted the bomb she disarmed? And how did she know which wire to pull?

Who is Reena?

What did everyone else think?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.

Well I may have killed a few people, I may have even enjoyed it. But you want to walk away from 10 billion people. And they’re all going to die without your help. Which one of us is a psychopath? – 01 Boxer

Remember a few weeks ago when Charlie and 01 got a minute or two together on screen and it sparkled? What do you think about an entire act of the two together?

I had a chance to interview Michael Filipowich a couple weeks back; we’ll be posting that Wednesday morning. In that interview I found out just how lucky we all are the writing chores changed hands. The first guys…well, here’s Filipowich:

They were always worried about putting Jeff and I together…I swear they said this – “we don’t want to blow our load too early.”

Yikes. Fortunately, tonight we got an episode designed to bring them together.

Except for Reena in her own little nightmare world, still not incorporated with the rest of the cast, every moment of tonight’s episode led to the end of Act 3 when Charlie took 01 away from the police station. Everyone played his part, working either with or against Charlie, and we get the best episode yet.

We also get a lot of questions that won’t be answered for another week.

Meet Blues Paddock

Rolanda Marais tells us all we need to know about Blues Paddock early on. Investigating the death of a Gemma Gitano lookalike and two others at a Vexcor facility, she walks her partner through what happened. He tells her she must be watching too much CSI, but we can see he’s impressed. Then he asks if she’d like to have some fun, because 01 has been seen hiding at his club. But Blues is having fun. Her job is who she is.

She’s a bit like Karl, in that she sees shadows and conspiracies and connections all around her. Also like Karl, she’s absolutely correct to see those things. While she’s not interested in picking up 01, she’s very interested in interrogating him. Two dead Vexcor executives alongside a hired gun, plus the strange events surrounding the link explosion, plus 01 Boxer’s apparent murder of one of his companions add up to too many coincidences for Beta’s Dana Scully.

She knows there’s more to the link explosion than Vexcor’s letting on, so she questions 01 about it. Wants to know why he was there, wants to know if he can identify anyone else filmed at the scene. She pops in a tape and we see both Reena and Charlie, but 01′s too busy barking like a dog and humming the Wicked Witch’s theme to answer her questions. Not that he’d answer if he weren’t otherwise occupied. Blues keeps pushing because she knows 01 knows something.

Her spidey sense is further stimulated when Charlie shows up to cart off 01. No fool, she sees right through his masquerade. Then again, who’s ever seen a Fed with Friday shadow and a suit that nice? The sunglasses and attitude were enough for Inspector Archer, but he was also the one who had to deal with all the paperwork. That bit of bureaucracy probably falls on his shoulders too often; he has the look of a man wearied by procedure.

Charlie Jade, Eff Bee Eye

Back at Karl’s apartment after seeing the Gemma lookalike plummet to her death – and shooting her killer and accomplice – Charlie tells him she was just another pawn in Vexcor’s three-dimensional chess game. It’s been a month since Gemma traded herself for Charlie’s freedom, but he can’t accept she’s gone; he keeps searching instead of doing anything proactive. And Karl’s grown tired of the narcissism and selfishness cheapening Gemma’s sacrifice.

Charlie’s here in Beta for a reason. Gemma sacrificed herself for a reason. And it’s not so Charlie can get back to Jasmine.

If Krogg was right, everyone in Beta is doomed. But Charlie isn’t listening. He’s still forlorn about Jasmine who, it appears, has stepped up her appointment schedule with johns and subs.

He leaves and Karl fumes.

Sometime later, Karl comes to Charlie’s to apologize. Sorta. “Mostly not.” While Charlie works on an exoskin, using one of Vexcor’s bugs for his own purposes, Karl tells him he thinks he knows a way for Charlie to get home. He’s reluctant to tell him, almost holding it back as a bargaining chip for Charlie to do something, anything, to help save his universe. But that’s not Karl’s nature.

Karl figures if 01 could take Katie Grayle (the poor, lost dead girl from the pilot) home with him, he can take Charlie.

Which makes the rewiring of the exoskin fortuitous as Charlie uses it to locate 01 at the Glass Door. The little bug scurries along the floor, dancing between hobnailed boots and stilletto heels in its search for 01. It finally finds him, hiding out in a VIP room enjoying himself with Princess. 01′s used to being spied on – growing up with Bryon Boxer he’d have to be – so it’s not a surprise he notices the bug and crushes it without it interrupting coitus.

Finished with his private party, 01 figures now might be a good time to take a powder. He heads toward the back door and meets Charlie, who’d like him to meet his little friend. 01 decides the better part of valor is getting the hell away from the man with the drawn gun, so he joins Archer’s party instead. 01′s a fan of bondage anyway, so the handcuffs are a welcome addition to his wardrobe.

Charlie and Karl formulate a plan to break 01 out of the police station, where Charlie will impersonate an FBI special agent with authority to take possession of 01. The writers get a little commentary on American politics with this, as Karl’s prepping Charlie for his role. He tells him to keep his sunglasses on and act superior. And he admits being shocked by how easy it was to convince Archer to hand over 01: “A phone call and a couple pieces of paper and he went for it. You say terrorist these days and eveyone shuts their brain off.”

Not everyone, however.

Blues picks up the scent off Charlie right away and tests him. First, she invites him into a room to pick his brain about procedure. It’s a self-locking interrogation room. She trips him up right off the bat with a question about “the Agency” but lets him continue for a moment before dropping the hammer on him: “It’s a Bureau, not an Agency. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Should have corrected me. They always do.”

Then she drops the second hammer. She’s got photos of Charlie at the link explosion and wants to know who he is and what he wants with 01 Boxer.

Charlie plays it cool. Blues was clever and tricky and wanted Charlie to see that, but he’s not a fool. He spins it the best he can, but she’s not buying.

Blues steps out for a minute to get prints lifted off some of the papers Charlie’s handled and sees Archer handing 01 over to some cops. A second set of transfer papers have come through, this time to bring 01 to central booking. Knowing these are fake as well, she gets the head of the team to trip up and pulls her weapon. Archer and the rest of their colleagues surround the fake police and get them to put down their weapons. Blues heads back to Charlie to figure out how he knew the police station was so easily breached. (This, by the way, is a bit of sloppy writing. There’s no way Blues would step away until the standoff was completely resolved and the fakes in custody. But Charlie needs to be brought out of his locked room for the next bit to happen.)

The head of the extraction team – and let’s be real, we knew it was one of Ren Porter’s teams from the moment they walked in – pulls a cellphone from his back pocket, saying he’s going to make a call. He’s not tackled or otherwise subdued (also a bit unrealistic) and punches in a number. His team cover their ears. Charlie sees and yells for Blues to do the same, too late, as he covers his own. The cell phone is an audio grenade that takes the police out of commission.

Charlie grabs Blues’ gun and wings the team leader, then grabs 01. He gets 01 outside where Karl is waiting, as loyal and reliable as ever.

That’s Leadership for You

At Vexcor meanwhile, there’s a bit of tension in the air. First Julius browbeats a physicist who doesn’t share his concerns about Krogg’s report. Tossing in some more exposition in case anyone doesn’t remember its ramifications, Julius tells her if Krogg was right then bringing the link online may destablize the membrane and collapse Betaverse out of existence. The physicist is confident that won’t happen, but needs the link to come online so she can get more data to verify. Which of course would put the link online and risk destroying Beta. Julius tells her they’re holding the test.

Ren hovered in the background during the conversation, and afterward has a walk-and-talk with Julius. He asks why Julius suddenly believes Krogg’s memo, wondering out loud if Julius is keeping the link down to avoid dealing with home office. Julius counters by saying he could accuse Ren of letting Charlie go on purpose just to make him look incompetent and hands him pictures of the dead Gemma lookalike. How much Reena overhears of this conversation isn’t clear, though it’s obvious the CEO and head of security should keep these conversations out of hallways.

Regarding the dead executive, Ren says she was getting ready to run and was killed to send a message, but someone intercepted his team. He can’t stablize the workforce while the link is down, and the longer its stays down the more employee drift they’ll have to contend with. He doesn’t have the staff to keep everyone in check.

When Ren finds out 01′s in custody he puts a plan in place to extract him. They can’t kill him now, because they don’t know if 01 managed to get home to Alpha after being shot. Julius is holding Ren responsible for the failure, and when the link comes online he’ll hold him responsible for trying to kill 01. Ren’s stuck with few outs and he knows it, but he’s nothing if not a loyal Vexcor employee.

Cleanup Operations

In the aftermath at the police station, everyone’s recovering slowly. Bloody noses and bleeding ears all around and no one’s going back to active duty until they’re fully checked out. Blues goes to check the station’s surveillance cameras, but is informed that they malfunctioned for the duration of the incident. Except…the officer telling her this is Ajax, the cooly efficient blond from Vexcor security.

We’ve seen her before: she moved Gemma out of her apartment in “Identity” and cleaned up the mess at Kunjani back in “Betrayal”. If all of Ren’s people were as good as Ajax, he’d have a lot fewer problems.

In fact a little while later, Ajax gets rid of one more of Ren’s problems with a slashing strike and a bottle of acid.

The Big Finale

So here’s an interesting fact. Act 4 of this episode, the great warehouse interrogation, is actually episode 13, compressed. So if you liked upside-down bondage and tough talking, just wait until next week when that’s all you’ll see.

Because of that, I don’t want to say too much about what we saw in the warehouse tonight. We can go into much greater detail, and actually know what the 12 reasons for not shooting 01 are, if we wait a week. But I can’t pass up on at least a little commentary…

01 makes some subtle and not-too-subtle racist comments toward Karl before Charlie sends him to the car. Crafty as always, 01 wants to get Karl’s defenses up before trying to get between him and Charlie.

Do you know how many people you have to kill to get one of those renovations by the waterfront? Not to mention a high-class hooker to be your slave…I’m sorry, was I not supposed to mention the slave part?

After a long night of give and take, in which 01 makes Charlie question himself and his motivations, Charlie finally asks 01 why he shouldn’t kill him. 01′s got 12 reasons.

Karl’s shocked when 01 walks out under his own power, and he and 01 do a little dance. Charlie doesn’t trust him, but he believes him enough to be a reluctant ally. A reluctant ally for our reluctant hero.

Other Thoughts

I didn’t say much about Reena because, honestly, I don’t know what to say. She had a dream that told her to go back in time and not blow up the reactor, basically. What that means, and why she had it now, I don’t know. It was pretty to watch, though, the nightmare.

Also, I haven’t mentioned them before, but you should definitely be checking out the episode podcasts over at Charlie Jade Verse.

Beyond that, let’s just say a hearty welcome to Blues Paddock. We’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the coming weeks.

Important Programming Note

Don’t forget to come back Wednesday morning for our EXCLUSIVE interview with Michael Filipowich.

What did everyone else think?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.

Blood. Blood’s thicker than water. But then blood’s just a synecdoche for family. And what is family?

The relationship between a father and son, certainly is family. So is that between lovers. Two orphans, watching each other’s backs and surviving on the streets through cunning. That’s family, too. In a world where six companies control everything, company is family as well.

Back in “Devotion” we saw some of Charlie’s training with the Vexcor security forces. At that time, they were welcomed into the fold by a behavioral specialist: “Vexcor is your future. Vexcor is your family. And you are its sons and daughters.” The familial relationship is cultivated within Vexcor to ensure its employees treat Mother Company with the respect and sense of duty required.

It’s with that in mind that Charlie tells Gemma he reports to Essa Rompkin. Gemma’s a company girl: loyal to Vexcor, even if she disobeys her superior. She doesn’t think Julius has the best interests of the company at heart so she goes along with Charlie’s plans. Only when they fall apart does she lie to Karl and tell him she always knew Charlie couldn’t belong to Vexcor. She believed him, but realizes Charlie needs to hear differently.

A Gypsy In the Fold

We start off this week where we left off last: Charlie and Gemma at the now empty reservoir. Figuring her for a loyal employee, he tells her he’s not a spy from another company, but on a mission from home office to monitor the goings on here. She tells him her department was looking to “move the water resources to where they can be better used,” or, as we might say here in Beta, “steal the water.” Having just seen millions of liters of water disappear, he tells her he’s seen 01 Boxer travel using water and suspects a connection.

As they drive back to Cape Town, they catch up a little, discussing their names. Charlie picked ‘Jade’ because it sounded cool, he likes the color, he really doesn’t remember. I imagine a last name is important to most C3s who rise to the level of C2, but it doesn’t signify for Charlie. Gemma’s does.

In a flashback to their youth, we see Gemma and Charlie watching the dancing figure from the holoprojector, dressed in gypsy scarves. Gitano is Spanish for gypsy. Her name honors where she came from, even if was the key to her future.

Julius Galt, distracted by thoughts of his magnificent and expensive new office, is barely able to concentrate on the serious matters that plague Vexcor in Beta. He offers Ren his current office, but Ren is more concerned about he drift affecting so many employees making them want to go native. Julius tells him to watch them, but Ren doesn’t have the manpower to follow ordinary executives when they start to slip.

Sitting on the beach, Gemma tells Charlie she hates Beta. She hates how they treat cancer, poisoning the victim just enough to try to kill off the cancer before they kill off the patient. Her ideal world is more orderly, more structured, and more controlled. Charlie says it must be hard for a scientist to see somthing like that and she tells him how she became an engineer. She falsified everything: name, rating, even education. She learned on the job, getting a few lucky breaks on the way.

In another flashback, Gemma tells Charlie she’s taking the place of an apprentice housekeeper. But she’s not going to clean out the house, she’s going to clean it. Sure a C1 will eventually recognize her inherent worth and talent and send her to school. “I’m gonna rise, Charlie. I’m gonna get myself a last name.”

Gemma asks Charlie where he’s living in Betaverse. It’s the first time he’s heard the term and is confused, but covers.

Boxer on the Ropes

There are some sharp cuts between Alpha and Beta tonight as we see Bryon Boxer’s condition worsening at the same time as 01 is regaining his strength. Starting off in Alpha where Essa finds Bryon Boxer in the boardroom. He complains he’s growing weaker every day as his “molecular integrity decays” and Essa promises when the link is online they’ll track down 01 and give him a transfusion.

In Beta, 01 calls Princess to come help him at the Glass Door.

Some time later, Essa finds Bryon collapsed on the boardroom floor. He tells her he needs an immediate transfusion.

We immediately cut back to Beta to find 01 out looking for Princess. He tracks her down outside a club with a pretty boy and takes her right off his arm. Guy, the guy, tells 01 it’s not a problem; he can have her. 01 then proceeds to beat the crap out of him. One quick headbutt to the nose puts Guy down, then he kicks and kicks and kicks. “That’s for Nathan.”

Bringing Princess back to the club, he quickly gets her back in his thrall. She tells him the police think he killed Jeanette and he tells her to front the club, but their fight and the fight with Guy was all just foreplay. He takes her on a liquor-stained tabletop.

Back in Alpha, Bryon tells Essa that anyone who’s been through the link will have the “molecules that are phasing in the correct dimension” to help him. They’ll just need to separate those out. So later, she brings in an accountant who’s been through the link 13 times.

Some more sharp cuts follow:

1. Beta: Karl and Gemma talking. He wants to know why she’s in Beta and she tells him she works for Vexcor and does what she’s told. “Vexcor? They’re greedy, corporate monsters!”
2. Alpha: Essa gives the accountant his limited options. In exchange for helping the company, the accountant’s wife will receive a promotion, and she and his daughter will be reclassified as C1s.
3. Beta: Gemma tells Karl she belongs to Vexcor, it protects them. Karl says, “you sound like you were brainwashed.”
4. Alpha: If the accountant doesn’t help, he’ll be fired, his wife will be fired, and they’ll spend the rest of their lives as C3s. He reluctantly agrees and signs the life insurance policy. Extracting those molecules is a complicated and ugly process.

When Essa finally gets the beaker of extract, she’s at her desk going through the dead man’s wallet. A photo of his family and a few ounces of white liquid are all that remain of him, the sum total of his worth to Vexcor.

Gemma Turns

Gemma will never truly betray Vexcor. It’s not in her makeup to betray the only mother and father she’s ever known. But she doesn’t believe Julius is acting in the company’s best interests and uses that to justify her actions. Along with her lingering guilt over abandoning Charlie as a child, her desire to help Vexcor leads to all her actions.

When she meets with Julius, he has finally read her report on water level fluctuation and changing pressures, but doesn’t believe it to be important. She tries to explain that the reservoir is empty, completely, but he isn’t listening. He thinks she’s overreacting. She wants the physics departent in Alpha contacted and Julius reminds her the link is down. Then she overplays. She tells him she’s heard 01 can travel without the link.

Gemma: Mr. Galt, I’m not trying to go over your head. I’m–
Julius: –There is no one over my head! Here in Beta, I’m commander-in-chief, president, and king. Until the link is back up, you work for me.
Gemma: I work for Vexcor, sir.

Her insubordination is too much for Julius and he exiles her to Botswana. As she’s leaving, he asks if she’s heard from Charlie. She lies.

Continuing to play on her loyalty to Vexcor, Charlie tells her if he can get back home, he can deliver her report. Therefore, he needs to find any records Vexcor has on 01. They head to see Karl to make their next move.

When Ren tells Julius that Gemma is missing, Julius tells him he ordered her to Botswana. She was raving about the reservoir being empty and has lost her mind, but Ren tells him he talked to their people at the site and the water is all gone. Noting the stacked coinncidences that all surround Charlie’s appearance and disappearance, Julius wonders if Charlie can travel like 01.

Using stolen ID sticks, Charlie sneaks into Vexcor. Gemma and Karl track him and talk him through. Spotting Ren, Charlie ducks into a restroom where he has a long vision of Jasmine showering. He calls out to her and she reacts, as if to a spectre. Charlie keeps watching as another man joins her, but the sight is too much for him. He loses it and becomes unresponsive.

Gemma talks him out of it. She tells him, “Charlie, do you remember? I left you. But you never left me. Not even once. Don’t leave me know.” Getting a grip on himself, he gets back up and leaves the restroom and Jasmine behind, telling himself it can’t be real. As he walks out, Jasmine seems to follow with her eyes.

Back in control, Charlie heads out and sneaks into the nearly completed office. He hacks into the computer using Julius’ ID stick but has some problems navigating. Gemma’s advice to treat it like any other home office computer is of no help, but he does start finding files. He can’t find anything linking 01 to the water seepage or travel, but he does find Elliot Krogg’s Memo 221 which he sends to Karl.

I think this was the first time Gemma’s eyes were truly opened to what Vexcor is when Karl tells her 01 killed Krogg.

Ren and some goons come in after the memo is sent and take Charlie captive.

Cabletied to a chair, Charlie is still antagonistic to Ren, challenging him at every turn. Charlie asks him if he learned his “tough guy talk at Vexcor security orientation” and mocks him for being prevented from killing him. Since Julius wants to know if Charlie can travel, Ren can’t just kill him. After Ren takes out his frustration by having his goons hit Charlie a few times, Charlie challenges him more directly: “Hey hero. Why don’t you tell your friends to hit the road and you and I can take a walk. You saw what I did to the last guy who had your job, didn’t you?”

Gemma calls and offers a trade. Her for Charlie. Her silence for Charlie. Then she continues the theme of the scene and questions Ren’s manhood: “Come on. You’re just a simple C2. How are you ever going to earn being in that boardroom if you can’t make a decision on your own?”

Ren’s only solace in the scene is mocking Charlie after accepting the deal. “How does it feel being rescued by a hydrologist? Hero.”

Gemma lies to Karl and says she always knew Charlie couldn’t be working for Vexcor. She also lies to herself and says she’ll be fine. She’s one of them; they won’t hurt her. That’s just how they do business.

I see trees of green, red roses too

Alone, Karl prints off Memo 221. With each sentence, each word, he grows more irate and concerned. More intercuts with Alpha, now with Essa examining the accountant’s wallet. Karl realizing the price Vexcor is willing to pay and Essa seeing that price up close.

The trade goes down and Charlie gets back to Karl’s. Gemma’s gone, and Ren will ensure her silence. Karl wants to confront him about the memo, but Charlie is too despondent.

A series of slow, graceful shots follow of the beauty of Cape Town: children playing, couples on the beach, Table Top mountain, the Atlantic crashing on the shore. A series of shots demonstrating the majesty of creation. At least this corner of creation.

Karl comes to Charlie’s apartment but he’s still upset and doesn’t want to listen. He’s almost in a fugue state as Karl shoves Krogg’s report in his face and tells him to read it. Then he just tells him what it says. If the link goes online and becomes permanent, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma will collapse on each other. In the middle, Beta will just disappear.

Theories on Bryon Boxer

Here a few theories about Bryon and his problems, please add your own in comments:

• Bryon is really from Gamma. He invented the link years and years ago and traveled with it to Alpha which he found ripe for the picking. With his vastly superior technical knowledge in a world primed for corporate control, he was able to found Vexcor and quickly rise to a position of near-dominance in short order. But, living so far from his home universe and without access to any particles vibrating with the correct frequencies, he grows sick. 01, or anyone who travels, picks up the rare particles he needs.
• Bryon used the link so much in his youth that his body became unstuck from his reality. Now he needs special particles that are generated through link usage to keep him balanced.
• The link has an addictive effect when used with the frequency and duration Bryon once used it.
• Bryon comes *from* Linkspace. He belongs to none of our universes, but is a creature of the space between. His essence is therefore out of sync in any of the three worlds and needs to be replenished by stealing the traces of link-vibrating particles others pick up when traveling between the worlds.

What did everyone else think?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.

What makes you who you are?

Does your identity come from what you do? Where you come from? Something else? I met a girl one night, a friend of a friend of a friend, and asked her what she did. She told me she “tried to do one thing a day to bring her joy.” Now, the pragmatist in me wanted to kick her out of my car. But the guy looking to get lucky said, “that’s a beautiful answer.” Did she answer my question?

Tonight’s episode asks that question several times.

Is Jasmine a C3 or a C2? Is her identity so tightly coupled to Charlie’s that she now lives a shadow life, waiting for him to return like Penelope waiting for Ulysses? Or is she an independent agent, coping with life the best she can?

What of Gemma Gitano? Is she the little girl living on the streets with Charlie, or is she the Vexcor hydrologist with a manufactured past and a programmed future?

Finally, who is 01 Boxer? Is he the happy, loving husband and father in Gamma or the sociopath in Beta?

Things in Alpha are Sew Sew

In a callback to the pilot, Jasmine buys coffee from the same vendor as Charlie. The two of them exchange some words about Charlie and when he might be back, but it has the feeling of a formula they use to get by. Sew Sew Tukarrs comes by and starts hassling Jasmine. David Dennis has a really unusual way of reading lines that always seems menacing, and it really works in this scene. The tension remains high, because I’m never quite sure what he’s about to do.

Jasmine has clearly gone back to her comfort zone as an escort, and Sew Sew seems unhappy about that, as though it personally effects him. He scans her and sees she’s reading as a C2 which he knows is clearly illegal, but he’s not looking to arrest her, or even to blackmail her. He just wants to take care of her.

We’ve ignored Sew Sew’s story for weeks now. In fact, he didn’t have an independent story before, instead only reacting to Charlie and his disappearance. Now he’s got a mission. Two, actually. Firstly, he’s trying his best to worm his way into Jasmine’s life. Whether for unrequited love, or some more nefarious purpose, he’s slowly working that front. Secondly, he’s investigating a large concentration of disappearances, more than 85 Vexcor employees, including Elliot Krogg and Julius Galt.

More than 85 Vexcor employees and their families.

Sew Sew and Essa Rompkin (Michele Burgers) duel over those missing Vexcor employees. Essa of course claims to know nothing. With hundreds of thousands of employees in the Vexcor family, she couldn’t possibly know about this missing handful. Besides, many more people are missing in Cape City. Then Sew Sew hits her with the big gun, asking how it is their families are also missing. This is a nicely understated scene from two accomplished actors working hard at cross purposes.

Gamma is Getting Grungy

01 Boxer’s children are playing with a toy boat when they see some nasty pollution start pouring in the water. Checking it with his wife, 01 wonders if it was an old toxic site that wasn’t cleaned up, implying Gamma was not always the paradise it is today. But his wife thinks not. She does remember hearing of some toxic sites out in the desert, however. 01 realizes he needs to leave to take care of things. Especially if there is waste coming through in the desert, he knows it’s because of the link.
Sometime later, 01 is meditating, preparing himself for the pain he’s about to endure:

01: I’m a different man over there. I have no control over myself. It’s like I’ve gone insane.
Wife: It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. You’ve been trying to save our world.
01: You’d be amazed at the things I’ve done.
Wife: You have to forgive yourself, for whatever you had to do.

01 flashes back on his evil deeds, then burns his palm over a candle. He’s hardening himself back up for the journey, as much as it hurts his wife to see it.

01 finally leaves, getting up in the night so as not to disturb his wife. He goes to the bathroom and turns on the shower, but she hears and comes to see him gone. Back in Beta, we get our first indication that the trip isn’t very smooth. That, or just being in Beta again makes 01 physically ill. He reappears in the alley behind the Glass Door and finally manages to drag himself back inside.

Beta Fever

Charlie’s identity crisis starts off early. Looking over the lease for a new place, he realizes he has no identity in Beta. More importantly, he wants no identity here. Staying off the grid means paying cash, not using his name, and staying out of sight. But some things simply require identification, so he finds a forger.

Once Charlie disparages the low-end materials and flashes his wad of cash, the forger goes for his very best stuff. A stolen ID stick from Vexcor. Humorously, its Ren Porter‘s. Charlie finds out the forger’s source and heads there himself.

At the same time Charlie’s with the very highstrung, very geeky kid who supplied the identity stick, Ren shows up at the forger’s. Similar, though slightly different intimidation techniques are applied in both cases. Charlie is always less frightening because the threat of imminent death doesn’t seem real, at least to us watching, whereas with Ren, I think he’d kill his own mother for a better seat in a movie theater. Regardless, Charlie walks off with the 24 identity sticks after being visibly shocked by one of them in front of the kid.

Seeing Gemma Gitano, Charlie flashes back 20 years, seeing himself and Gemma as orphans on the street. They fought together, ran together, stole together, and took care of each other. But when it came time, Gemma ran, abandoning Charlie. The only possession she kept was a holosphere, like the one Charlie left for Jasmine in his will.

After Charlie’s departure, highstrung kid starts packing. Fast. He knows his world’s about to crash down around his head and tries to get out in time, but the cops nab him first. Talking with Blues Paddock (we’ll see more of her in the upcoming weeks,) he explains that he didn’t hack into the credit card databases, the identity sticks did it. But he can’t prove it because they’re all gone. With his phone call, he contacts Vexcor and tells Ren that Charlie was interested in Gemma Gitano.

I admire the kid for being smart enough to recognize Vexcor was his only hope here.

In a slightly amusing scene, Ren and Julius discuss the stolen ID sticks and the Beta fever many of their employees are experiencing. Julius isn’t surprised, as no one was intended to stay away from home this long, but as soon as the link is reestablished he thinks everything will return to normal. He says this, while standing in the middle of a partially complete board room that’s costing Vexcor millions to build. In Beta. Where Julius has been trapped for months.

I don’t think he realizes he’s suffering from Beta fever too.

Precious Gemma

We get our first look at Gemma as an adult, walking around a link facility on a lake. As a Vexcor hydrologist, she’s been trying to talk with Julius for some time about water levels. All he wants to talk about is Charlie. When she lies and says she’s never seen him before, Julius hangs up and sends security agents in to get her moved.

The water, however, is far more interesting. If the levels are changing here, and there’s pollution just randomly appearing in Gamma, there is likely a correlation.

Charlie takes a closer look at Gemma’s ID stick and sees the fake background Vexcor created for her. Upset, he flashes back again to when he was very sick and Gemma was taking care of him.

Meanwhile at Gemma’s apartment, a Vexcor security detail shows up to quickly move her out. Her past has come back to haunt her. The detail is led by Ajax, the same cooly efficient agent who cleaned up Kunjani after the botched hit on Charlie last week. She’s far too good at her job to come from Beta, I think.

Charlie slips into Karl’s place right after Karl gets home. The apartment feels empty without Charlie living on the couch, but Karl feels too much guilt to appreciate Charlie’s return, even as Charlie lets him off the hook:

Like i said, everybody breaks. You didn’t betray me, Karl. You did what you had to do to survive. That’s not betrayal, that’s human nature. Somebody else did the same thing. Long time ago. Back then I didn’t know the difference.

Now Charlie does know the difference, and he needs Karl’s help finding her.

They track down Gemma’s apartment, but it’s already emptied. The only thing left, hidden in a fireplace grate, is the holosphere. Charlie knows it’s a message, but he can’t tell if it’s saying come find me, or stay away. He does know she knows he’s in Cape Town. And he does know she’s kept it all these years. So that’s something.

Water, Water, Everywhere

At the link site, Julius is dismissive of Gemma’s concerns. She’s just a hydrologist and should focus on her own job, not speculation about dark matter and the fragility of the universes. The universes are 15 billion years old; they aren’t fragile. If no one listened to Krogg, who was head of the project, it’s no wonder no one will listen to a lowly hydrologist.

Karl finds a credit card hit for a dessert shop near the Vexcor site and sends Charlie there. Charlie knows Gemma’s got a sweet tooth, so this is the place to go. He parks his car and watches Gemma through binoculars while she collects soil samples from the lake bottom. She’s waded out into waist-high water, and as Charlie watches the wind kicks up and the lake begins to disappear! Gemma’s being pulled in the undertow and Charlie rushes down to help her.

By the time he gets there, the lake is empty, but the two old friends have a heartfelt reunion.

In Alphaverse, a dry lake suddenly fills.

One final, out of the blue scene: Ren catches up to Reena, in her job as messenger, and hands her an envelope. He doesn’t recognize “the new face of terror,” and she promises to get the envelope to the right place. She mutters to herself, “you can trust me” as she walks away. That girl is going to bring down this whole company.

What did everyone else think?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.

See, I told y’all stuff was gonna happen, right? Holy hellfire! While this episode has some very nice character moments slipped in, it’s really all about story. A lot gets pushed forward, some ideas that had been dropped for weeks get brought back to the forefront where they belong, and we say goodbye to at least one old friend. Despite all the spackle the new writers had to use to hide the gaps between the old way and the new, this episode crackles.

Before we jump in, don’t forget to check out our exclusive interview with head writer Alex Epstein.

Karl Breaks

We’re leading off with Karl because this episode is all him and Tyrone Benskin knocks it out of the park. Karl serves two important purposes on the show. He’s our proxy – the dumb character who needs to have things explained to him so they can be explained to us – and Charlie’s guide. Those are both thankless tasks. If you’re always laying pipe, it can be hard to get anything meaty to do.

Tonight, Karl gets one of the meatiest stories this show’s done. Reena’s torture gave Patricia McKenzie a lot to work with, but nothing quite like Karl’s breakdown in the woods. The sight of him collapsing before the prospect of being necklaced was something else. His fear came to life in that scene, breathing the gasoline fumes right alongside him. It was a really nice touch by the sound editors playing crowd noise beneath the early part of the scene, climaxing with the sound of a tire bursting into flames.

Serpentine and cold-blooded, Langley Kirkwood‘s Ren Porter doesn’t need to yell to be frightening; he’s scariest when he smiles. The little look of frustration he gives when the first match doesn’t light might be my favorite moment in an episode filled with great moments. The banality of it, in contrast to the horror with which Karl is being threatened, makes it that much more real.

Karl’s final betrayal, leaving Charlie at Kunjani like Jesus at Gethsemane, was his most painful. Surely he knew in the woods that Ren was right: even if Karl didn’t talk, they’d find out about Charlie eventually. But here…I think Karl had really convinced himself that they just wanted to talk with Charlie. Seeing the guns and realizing his role, it’s a wonder he didn’t hang himself.

Charlie Was an Official Pastry Judge

Maybe it’s just me, but Charlie’s irritation and impatience with himself tonight seems like a commentary about the progress of the show to this point from Robert Wertheimer and the new writers. He’s irritated that he’s been sitting around wasting his time instead of digging hard into Vexcor. That’s a similar assessment to the one we’ve had. Rather than being an active agent in his story, Charlie’s been sitting back, waiting for people to come to him.

I’m exaggerating to a point, but the first eight episodes were far less about Charlie looking for answers than they were about Charlie reacting to Beta. Even in “Diamonds”, where he and Karl learned Vexcor is planning to implant chips in everyone, Charlie didn’t make his discovery through some deep investigation of Vexcor. He made it trying to get back his stolen ring.

Tonight, Charlie’s taking the fight straight to Vexcor.

A drive around town with Karl to take photos of Vexcor construction sites turns up nothing unusual. They could be up to something nefarious, or could just be expanding. Then it hits him. Mapping the sites, Charlie sees they form a perfect circle under Cape Town. Vexcor is replacing the link site in the desert with an even larger site right under the city.

While Karl has his encounter with Ren, Charlie checks out Vexcor’s home office. Unable to get past the building’s firewalls from the outside, he sneaks in. First he overhears some employees discussing Julius’s new office – the “temple” – and the link home. then he connects his phone/tricorder/sonic screwdriver to the network. What I couldn’t tell was whether he tapped and took it, or if he left it connected for now.

Regardless, Charlie heads underground. Karl’s been burned and would be in too much danger if he stayed around, and Charlie needs to sow confusion within Vexcor by making them wonder if he’s an employee of one of their Alphaverse competitors.

This also means Charlie’s going to have to stay away from Paula for now, but she makes that both easier and harder by telling him to stay away permanently. He stalks her and almost decks her dad and she thinks he’s dreamy. He kills a few Vexcor security agents in her restaurant and suddenly he’s bad news? Man, women are fickle.

Realistically, Paula’s been a complication that doesn’t add much to the story, so it’s no wonder the writers took this opportunity to get rid of her. More time for Jasmine, now.

01 ♥ Essa

We started off this week where we left off at the end of “Devotion”, with 01 Boxer wounded and hopped off to Gamma.

By the way, this might be the best, last chance to see that third tap in the shower. So rewind and take a look.

01 stumbles into a beach house, bloodied and weak, and makes his way upstairs. As he collapses, a woman sees him and screams. Knowing 01′s history with the fair sex, we might assume this poor woman is frightened by the intrusion of the strange, bleeding man. That’s a nice bit of sleight-of-hand from the writers, as we’ll find out by episode’s end that the woman is in fact 01′s wife and mother to his two children.

The crazy sociopath is a loving family man in Gamma. Bet my wife wishes *I* lived in Gamma. Hell, 01 probably takes out the trash without being asked, he’s so downright decent in that ‘verse.

So what gives? Well, we know that 01′s trying to protect Gamma from whatever evil plans Vexcor has for it. That’s one reason for him to put himself through the obvious torment of the other ‘verses. In addition, last week we saw the bargain he’s made with the devil, his father, to trade his blood for his mother’s remaining possessions. Presumably all the bargaining power Brion Boxer has over his son revolves around those items.

From his fever dreams, we can see 01 is not a man happy with who he is. Filled with provocative images and an underlying Oedipal theme, his convalescence is more for the psychic wounds he’s suffered so long away from home than the physical injuries. Reborn by episode’s end, 01 looks ready to tackle Vexcor, his father, and Essa with newly restored clarity of purpose and sanity.

Reena and her Party Dress

Speaking of provocative images, this is the first time we’ve seen Reena smile since…um, I guess that set of photo booth pictures? Seriously? It took over two months to let Patricia McKenzie smile. Two months of misery, pain, torture (literally), and guilt. Tonight she smiled. And wore a dress. Personally, I think she should wear dresses all the time, but that’s got less to do with Reena and more to do with my crush on P-Mac.

This week she did have to come to grips with the loss of Rosalie, but knowing her friend’s gone to a better place makes it easier on her. Burying her in the backyard was probably not amongst her happiest moments in life, but if the body is just a vessel, she can take comfort that Rosalie’s soul has transcended.

We also had a few small signs of what’s to come ahead. The water in Rosalie’s house appears to be turned off. Presumably other essential services – phone and electricity – will be soon to follow. Beyond that, Reena knows she’s but a temporary guest here. She can’t stay too long before someone realizes what’s happened. She figured that out when she skipped to answer the phone, then let it keep ringing.

Reena’s going to be moving on soon. But at least she’ll have money from her new job at Vexcor thanks to Rosalie’s final gift: her identity.

Final Thoughts

Charlie’s going to go back to the mystery of Elliot Krogg. Specifically, what was in Krogg’s report? That’s probably pretty important, as the rogue scientist thought the link was too dangerous to bring up. With Reena inside Vexcor, there should be some interesting events unfolding. Her new job in the mailroom should allow her access to most everyone and everywhere in the building, so it’s going to be interesting to see how “the new face of terror” gets around without being noticed.

Finally, Karl. He’s pretty f’d up right now. It’s going to be a rough road ahead for him.

What did everyone else think?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.

I have mixed feelings about this episode. It’s the best of the season so far, I think. A compelling case can be made for “And Not a Drop to Drink”, as it opens the kimono on inter-dimensional travel, 01′s unique abilities, and the importance of water to the scheme of things. But tonight…it’s something else.

Then again, this is also the last episode under Writing Regime #1 (WR#1). Things you’re starting to understand? Things that you’re figuring out? Some of that’s just going to change next week and beyond. And trust me when I say it will get a hundred times better and cooler. It takes a few episodes until the second team – Alex Epstein, Denis McGrath, and Sean Carley – really takes off, but even in next week’s episode, “Betrayal”, you can see marked improvement. That slowness that was evident early in the season goes away fast as things ramp up quickly.

But that ramping starts tonight, even if it still looks like Charlie Jade is spinning his wheels.

Missing Persons

Charlie heads to the Glass Door to confront 01 Boxer about another missing girl. If you want me to point at the one thing obviously wrong in these first eight episodes, it is this: this is the first time these incredibly charismatic actors have shared a scene. Jeffrey Pierce and Michael Filipowich command the screen in subtly different ways.

Pierce burns slow, with the taciturn stoicism of heroes of times gone by. John Wayne and Gary Cooper made careers out of these traits. Clint Eastwood honed them to a fine edge, where a squint spoke volumes. Pierce is at his best when he plays to that same strength. In stark contrast, Filipowich is a short fuse, a real-life Daffy Duck. His silences are more frequently broken by unexpected mania than a wry smile while his tightly coiled muscles bear the threat of sudden violence or passion. The closest comparable actor I can think of is Joe Pesci, though Katee Sackhoff shares similar traits of unpredictability.

Sadly, this is just a short scene, but we can expect more to come.

As Charlie’s been investigating 01, he’s found another in a string of missing persons. Karl convinces him to push forward, even when Charlie’s convinced this particular girl’s disappearance has nothing to do with 01. A quick money drop by pops leads to the boyfriend of daughter Aliah. Using the classic “enhanced coercive interrogation technique” of tossing a ball against the doofus’ head gets him to confess that Aliah ran away on her own and has taken up with a motivational guru.

“You are what you choose to be”

Mancuso Keyes is a guru to the rich and fabulous, helping them take control of their lives. Helping them be what they choose to be. This catchphrase echoes Charlie’s military training and we see a series of flashbacks throughout the episode filling in more about that period in his life. It wasn’t the army and it wasn’t the police. Charlie Jade, enemy of all things Vex-Cor, used to be a Vex-Cor security officer.

In his first flashback, Charlie recalls an innocent training exercise. A squad, closing on a blockhouse, establishes position and flushes out the occupants with tear gas. As the occupants come out, weapons hot, the security personnel mow them down. When the exercise is done, the dead disappear, as though in some sort of training simulator. A behavioral specialist welcomes them as the sons and daughters of the Vex-Cor family.

In his second flashback, the setting is the same but Charlie now leads the squad. However the end result is quite different. These aren’t simulated people who exit the blockhouse. These are real people, armed but unable to defend themselves. How and why they were there is not explained, but knowing the rules of Alphaverse and the ways of Vex-Cor, we can surmise they were enemies of the company, given weapons in order to justify their summary executions.

When Karl tells Charlie that Keyes worked as a behavioral specialist for Vex-Cor security, he recalls the same, stirring speech as it was delivered after the fatal training exercise. The words have less meaning this time, unable to raise the proper devotion to mother company. Angry over the memory of his manipulation at Vex-Cor’s hands, he ups his pressure on Keyes.

Seeing that Keyes has advanced tech that can knock out a Vex-Cor bug, Charlie tries one last time to talk with Aliah. But she’s not listening. Keyes and Charlie talk alone and Keyes has one final insight for Charlie:

I’m a teacher. You know? It’s like horses. Before you can train them you have to break them. Yes. Like you were broken and reborn.

Charlie’s final flashback, on these words, is a gruesome scene of torture gone awry. No cute ball-on-the-head questioning occurred here. This was blood, and pain, and death. As is usually the case, Charlie himself was not the perpetrator of the violence. Here, he observed only the aftermath, but the impact of the scene is written in the lines of his face.

Brion Boxer: Vampire?

What? I mean, WHAT?

Essa tells 01 that Brion needs to see him; 01 tells her to make him come to the office. When he arrives, the two of them are hooked to some kind of machine. Brion, at death’s door is barely conscious for the procedure. Something is sucked out of 01 and injected into Brion. I’ll assume, in the absence of any other theories, that it’s just blood. There must be something special about 01′s blood, some life-giving properties. Whether these are general, or specific to Brion in his condition, I could not begin to guess.

When the procedure is complete, Brion is a new man – youthful, vigorous, energized. 01 is wearied, but appears to be alright. The price Brion pays is a small box containing possessions of 01′s mother. Theirs is a classic battle between father and son for the love of the boy’s mother. The hatred and contempt each holds for the other is palpable. The bounds that hold them together are now more patently visible. 01 can’t leave. He needs for his father to retain nothing of his mother’s.

Back in Beta, some of 01′s odd behavior now makes a little more sense. Broken and damaged, he holds onto his mother in the only way this child has figured out. He puts on her lipstick, dallies with her mirror, and tries in small ways to become his mother.

That’s only some of the time, of course. Mostly, he gets stoned and screws women in Beta. That’s what our world is for, I guess.

Not that any of that lasts for long, as Julius makes the call. He gets 01 to stay at the club for another 15 minutes, just long enough to die. Fortunately for 01, the assassin is incompetent. He kills 01′s companion and manages to hit 01 in the shoulder, but fails to kill his target before 01 hits the shower and the third tap on his way to Gamma.

While I imagine this security agent is not long for the world, things can’t be much sunnier for Ren and Julius, can they? With 01 alive, their lives are in his hands.

Reena’s Friend

My favorite thing that happens when WR#2 takes over? Reena gets to suffer a bit less. Hey! I should be happy tonight. She’s recovering from her fall against Rosalie’s car, but no one’s trying to rape her, brainwash her, program her, or cut off her nose with giant, rusty scissors. In a nice place by the beach, she can finally let her guard down a little and try to rest in…what? Rosalie’s dying? Jesus!

With an infection rate of somewhere around 20%, South Africa is one of the most affected nations in the world. Calling it an epidemic there is no exaggeration, so it’s little wonder the creators of Charlie Jade would make it a plot point at some time. Sadly, it comes when Reena has her brief respite. Her time in the sun passes, as she must help her new friend shuffle off this mortal coil.

Even when she’s doing good, Reena can’t help but hurt people.

Those familiar with comics, and feminist commentary on comics, will be aware of the term “Women in Refrigerators”. When watching the first half of Charlie Jade, I frequently feel as though Reena’s suffering serves no real purpose and falls in that category. So for me, it’s nice to see Patricia McKenzie get something more to do this week than get smacked around. She does a nice job with the quiet scenes at Rosalie’s house. Imagine what she might do with actual plot developments.

Final Thoughts

Um, things are rough for Jasmine? Does anyone care right now? They gave her what, 45 seconds? Skip her, or give her something to do.

Things are heating up between Paula and Charlie. I think those kids are in for a…no. Not really. That’s another weird sidetrack.

In the end, I think this is the best or second best episode of the first eight. If you’ve made it to here, I can only conclude you’ve decided to ride the show all the way to the end and I salute you. you’ve made an excellent choice that will be rewarded in the weeks ahead.

Coming Up

I’m excited to let you know we’ll have our exclusive Pop Critics interview with Alex Epstein up this Wednesday. Be sure to come back for that so you can be ready for the changes to come starting with next week’s excellent episode.

What did everyone else think?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.

Diamonds are Forever

Remember that gangster’s pinkie ring Charlie wears? The one he pawned to pay for his sweet ride? Charlie hits the shop, looking to retrieve it. Instead he finds the owner dead and the ring missing.

A flashback to five years earlier shows us Charlie as a soldier of some sort, on a sweep with his partner. Charlie lags behind as she bursts through a door and opens fire, killing a man and his wife. She scans his implant, then cuts that recognizable ring from the man’s hand, passing it over to Charlie with a smile on her face. Charlie hears steps at his back and spins, weapon at the ready. He finds a small child in his sights and recoils. Happy partner takes the kid out with one quick shot.

Over the course of several more flashbacks throughout the episode, the story gets filled out more. Charlie and his partner were acting on orders to clear out terrorists and locate an arms cache. But there was no cache, and the C-3s they executed were no terrorists.

Because of this history, we understand why Charlie goes to such lengths to recover the ring. Tracking down a low-level criminal plugged into the crime scene in the neighborhood surrounding the pawn shop, Charlie roughs him up until he gets a name: Jasel Eckman. Charlie wastes no time in finding Eckman and telling him he wants his ring back. Even if Eckman doesn’t have the ring, he’ll know where to find it, but Eckman wants to know what Charlie would be willing to pay. That evening, we find out.

Charlie, with the help of his tricorder slash sonic screwdriver slash magic wand, breaks into Eckman’s cutting works and steals a synthetic diamond from its incubating chamber. A big fat diamond, being grown with Vex-Cor tech.

Karl’s slow on the uptake. He first assumes Vex-Cor wants to replace real diamonds with counterfeits. Then Charlie shows Karl the scar on his wrist. The chips Vex-Cor uses to classify and track everyone in Alpha are diamond chips. If Vex-Cor is growing synthetics here in Beta, it must mean they intend to institute large-scale tracking. Tracking with the same type of chip Charlie cut from Andrea Bridger‘s wrist back in “And Not a Drop to Drink”.

Charlie and Eckman engage in an intricate dance. Eckman wants his diamond back. Charlie wants his ring. Eckman’s goon tells Charlie to be careful for Karl, and any other friends he might have.

Friends like Paula.

Charlie returns Eckman’s diamond and Eckman lets Charlie know he’ll get back his ring. Charlie then suggests Eckman pay more attention to whom he’s working for and tells him what the diamonds are for.

When Ren Porter brings Eckman the next set of seeds to be grown, he asks what they’re for. He’s heard Charlie’s words, but backs off quickly when Porter challenges him. A Rand is a Rand and Eckman is a businessman.

Finally, Eckman’s goon returns Charlie’s ring and as he puts it on we flashback one last time to see Charlie, disillusioned, as he walks away from his service, keeping only the ring and the clothes on his back.

Karl: So when are you going to tell me what this is really all about.
Charlie: Blood.
Karl: What are you talking about?
Charlie: It’s a reminder. Reminds me of what I was. So I can hold on to who I am.

Meet the New Board

In Alpha, Essa informs 01 Boxer that the new board members for Beta have been approved, though she thinks they’re unusual choices. Intimating that she knows 01 is manipulating the messages he’s transporting between the verses, she reminds him the link will be reestablished soon and “then the situation will be clear.”

Poor Julius. The guy’s the head of a multi-versal corporation bent on complete and total domination, and yet I feel bad for what 01′s putting him through. Staring longingly at a bottle of booze, Julius can’t get a drop to drink because here comes new board member #1, Cool Slide. Cool is a rap impresario in the P. Diddy mold and is happy to be getting his hands on a company with Vex-Cor’s resources. Cool will be creating a new division and running it: Vex-Rap.

Julius isn’t done with the board, unfortunately. Next up: Myeeko Stiles. This fashion maven will be running a new division called F-Vex. Just what a corporation seeking total control needs: a fashion house. Julius once again looks longingly to his one true friend in Beta, his bottle. Oh, in case you didn’t catch it, Stiles needs to see Vex-Cor’s books. Looks like 01 has some exciting accounting plans up his sleeve.

Ahhh. Alone at last. Julius pours himself a stiff one. But there’s a dead fly in his glass. Or…oops. That’s not a real fly, it’s a bug: “Eat me, 01.”

At the Glass Door, Julius and 01 have a little dance of their own, as fraught with threat of violence as Charlie’s was with Eckman. 01 still has all the power; only he can travel to Alpha.  Even though Julius senses, just as Essa has, that 01 is manipulating the slates, there’s nothing he can do about it. He knows if he’s wrong and goes against home office’s wishes, he’s doomed. All he can do, like Essa, is issue toothless warnings to 01.

Reena: Locked and Loaded

Reena’s rape and reprogramming finally get a target. Her suave benefactor gives her her first – and only – mission. Julius is a bit too regular. On the same day each week, he stops on the way home and spends 15 minutes with his daughter at the playground. Reena’s mission is to strap on a bomb, walk up to Julius, and kill him.

However, it seems Reena’s programming was incomplete, or her Gamma-born sense of right and wrong is too strong. She kills the terrorist who was guarding her and runs. Jumping a fence, she lands on the windshield of a moving car. The driver helps Reena, taking her away from the scene and away from her captors.

Jasmine? Really?

I don’t even know where to stick this, Jasmine gets such short shrift lately. At this point in the show, she’d become an afterthought to the writers and they just didn’t seem to know what to do with her. But here she is, in her one scene in the episode, having her chip status upgraded to C-2 by a hacker. Frankly, other than the fact that it effects the diamond chip in her arm I have no idea why this scene is in the episode at all.

The writers were really starting to spin a bit by this point. Reena’s story had been careering out of control for weeks and Jasmine ended up with disconnected scenes like this. More importantly, while 01 was moving forward with his schemes and plans, Charlie was merely reacting. Fortunately for us, only one episode remains under the original writing team. After that, things pick up.

We’ll get into that in much more detail when we present our Pop Critics interview with Alex Epstein, Executive Story Editor and writer from episode #9 through the end of the series. Look for that interview coming next week.

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.

In case anyone’s forgotten, Charlie works for Karl. He gets a couch and a hundred Rand a day to investigate Vex-Cor. But there’s a price to pay for being in Karl’s employ. This week, the price is getting his butt kicked by some white supremacists while following the trail of missing organizer and activist Themba Makandi.

Charlie Jade doesn’t take place in a vacuum. The geography of Cape Town – the ocean, Table Mountain, Robben Island – frequently come into play. The history of the city and South Africa also inform much of the show’s writing. The disappearance of Makandi is certainly more resonant in the South Africa of Beta than it would be in the North America of co-creators Chris Roland and Robert Wertheimer. The wounds of Apartheid are fresh and a source of much current pain.

So when the white guy, one step removed from a Lethal Weapon villain, says they must protect the Volkstadt and then has Charlie busted up, he seems the most likely culprit. But things are never so simple in a world with Vex-Cor.

Dumped on an empty street, Charlie gets a vision of Alpha. A truck bears down on him and barrels right through him to no effect. Because we now know water matters, I’ll point out that it’s raining in Alpha, but not in Beta. I love the way Jeffrey Pierce plays this whole scene. He’s not suicidal, but defiant in demanding the universe try its best to kill him. It seems as though he wants the truck to kill him in order to prove he’s actually alive.

Is this Vex-Cor, or Enron?

Vex-Cor’s been siphoning off power; we saw the first evidence of that back in the opening when the light flickered during Charlie’s interrogation. Charlie’s been trying to hack and track, but he can’t figure out where the power’s going.

01 Boxer knows why the power’s going, but not yet where. He shows up at a power facility in a sweet old Bentley to deliver a slate to Julius. Of course 01′s motives are never as unsubtle as they at first appear. He’s not just trying to vex the Vex-Cor chair by showing up with a couple of bimbos in tow; neither is he merely challenging Julius to act. Palming a small camera, he hands it off to a Vex-Cor employee mere feet from Julius. 01 plans rationally, but acts with the bravado and rashness of an adolescent.

Back in Alpha, Essa watches the report from Beta on the progress of the link and the overall state of that branch’s business. Bryon Boxer calls and she makes a veiled threat regarding 01, but the old man needs to see him soon. At death’s door, he needs to see his son. Essa demonstrates the power of Vex-Cor in Alpha by having her secretary send the President on his way after waiting for two hours so she can go see Bryon.

The Making of a Hero

Charlie’s been a reluctant hero at best, but it’s not hard to understand why. Coming from a world where everyone has given up and given over to Vex-Cor and the other four companies that rule, he’s inured to caring. If nothing you do matters in the grand scheme, eventually you don’t do. It falls to Karl and the humanity Tyrone Benskin brings to his portrayal to teach Charlie how to care. It falls to Karl to teach Charlie to be a man.

Charlie speaks to Makandi’s wife who convinces Charlie with her strength and love for her husband to continue the search.

But Charlie makes a little detour to follow 01 first. Riding a skateboard – yet another sign of 01′s maturity level – he heads for a playground to meet with Trevor Sykes, the stooge with the camera. Charlie trails and listens in with his phone slash tricorder slash dessert topping. Sykes hands 01 a photo of the temporary link and learns it’s, “an insane, crazy ride that’s gonna blow your mind, that’s gonna set you free, that’s gonna set everybody free. And I’m gonna blow it up.”

Karl calls Charlie, interrupting his quiet stalking time, and 01 disappears.

Charlie returns to the Makandi investigation, where the trail grows cold at Regrow Industries. The trail is truly cold – chilled down to 77K by the tanks of liquid nitrogen in use at Regrow.

To combat his recurring and worsening headaches, Charlie will try almost anything. So he seeks out some muti medicine. Except, of course, he doesn’t. He’s following another lead in the Matandi case, trying to see if Matandi was targeted for outing a charlatan.

Brought before a sangoma, the old man asks for something from Charlie’s pocket to determine the type of headache he has. Charlie hands over a blue stone which seems to excite the old witchdoctor. Through his translator, the sangoma tells Charlie he has “the most difficult type of headache to control.” Charlie then becomes belligerent, first asking for the “rubber hand”, then asking if the sangoma had anything to do with Matandi’s disappearance.

Looking around the morgue, an attendant asks what he’s hoping to find. Several bodies have been cut open, and organs removed, so Charlie tells him missing body parts. He asks if it could be muti healers, but the attendant points out the witch doctors are no surgeons.

Charlie’s given up. He stares out Karl’s window and argues with him about Makandi.

Makandi’s dead. You get it? People who disappear, they don’t just come back, Karl.

Maybe where you come from. Maybe in your world it doesn’t matter how or why, but in this world it’s important to know what happened. It’s important to know the truth. I want to know the truth!

It’s your world Karl, it’s not mine. I just want to get back to mine.

Then Charlie spots a Regrow truck driving by outside. A truck filled with LN₂. It all comes together: the chop shop from the pilot, the tanks, the missing body parts in the morgue. He rushes to Regrow and finds it abandoned, a bloody scene of dismemberment and organ harvesting. The only evidence left, Makandi’s distinctive glasses.

The Making of a Killer

In direct contrast to Charlie’s development as man and hero, Reena is being turned into something far uglier. Her captors show not the humanity of Karl Lubinsky but monstrosity. Reena’s been beaten and bloodied, and now wears bandages on her eyes. Whether from her injuries or something more heinous, she’s temporarily blind. As she sits in dark solitude, she relives the horror of being raped by one of her captors. In the flashback but unseen by her, we watch as the suave, smooth leader coolly follows the proceedings. Finally, he “jumps” to action and pulls the attacker off her before showing false compassion.

Just another mind game in the endless series to break Reena down and rebuild her as a weapon.

When her mentor later cuts off her bandages, he speaks gently to Reena, telling her “I saved you. Now you’re one of us.”

He gives her the opportunity to prove her fealty a short time later. She hears her rapist speak and reacts. Her captor hands her a pistol and encourages her to kill the bastard, watching on proudly. Whether the gun was actually loaded I leave for the rest of you to guess.

Jasmine’s Journey

Honestly, even I’m not as interested in Jasmine this week as usual. She’s on the street, suffering and alone, but other than the shock and disgust of encountering her mother, there isn’t much going on with her. Then again, as Reena’s journey is counterpoint to Charlie’s, Jasmine’s is counterpoint to Paula’s.

Jasmine has lost the love of her life, her sun and moon. Paula is finding hers in Charlie.

This week sees the return of Paula’s father, last seen wielding a cricket bat back in “Sand”. He warns Charlie not to hurt Paula, but seems warmer to the notion of the two of them together. At least he’s not grabbing any sporting equipment at the moment.

Question: what should we make of the fact that Jasmine’s mother lives (and we’ve no sign of her father) and that Paula’s father lives but her mother does not? Anything?

Walking to dinner, Paula wonders when Charlie’s going to open up to her and say something real. He’s not ready yet. But a siren startles them as an ambulance rushes by and Charlie takes the opportunity to end that line of questioning and continue on to dinner.

Meanwhile, the ambulance continues to the scene of a hit and run. Trevor Sykes wasn’t very good on a skateboard, I guess.

The Link to Charlie’s Headaches

On each brownout, Charlie’s headaches are worsening. He realizes there’s a connection between the links, the power drains, and his headaches. He also knows 01 wants to blow up the link.

While Charlie investigates Regrow, Karl calls a contact. He gets the address of a dry cleaner where his contact assures him the power has been diverted. Grabbing his camera, Karl stakes it out.

01 modifies a bug, turning it into a bomb.

Julius grows impatient, sure his nemesis is going to attack the link before it’s ready, but his security chief, Ren Porter, tells him all will be fine. The link will be up in 20 minutes. We’ll be seeing more of Ren, played by Langley Kirkwood, in the weeks ahead. Interesting story how he got his job as head of security…the last guy got killed in a bathroom.

Ren leaves, 01 drives up, and Karl calls Charlie. But it’s too late. 01 released his bug on its suicide mission. The link is destroyed and Charlie’s way home is gone.

Aftershocks

With the link destroyed, 01 remains in his position of power. Essa can’t remove him and she certainly can’t kill him. Until another link can be constructed he can continue his machinations. To what end remains to be seen.

Charlie and Karl go to Thembi Makandi’s funeral and we see that Charlie is beginning to understand the importance of truth. He’s still a product of Alphaverse, but thanks to Karl’s efforts is learning to appreciate the value of human life and human struggling. Who knows. He may become a hero yet.

Sadly, Reena’s learned a different set of lessons. What ugliness her future holds is unclear, but what is clear is that her path has been dictated by others.

Thoughts? Questions?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.

That wasn’t a slow one at all, was it?

This is usually the point where those of us who are fans of this fantastic show can stop promising it’ll all be worth it if you just hang on a little longer. This is the point where the newbies become converts and start proselytizing right alongside us. This is also where we see the real crime of SciFi‘s quick hook.

Had the network stood by this show until this week’s episode, and had they been smart enough to then promote next week’s episode with a marathon of the first five episodes, they could have picked up a lot of new viewers. Because all of you remaining, those who’ve been patient through a month of slower, mysterious episodes, would have been telling all your friends to give Charlie Jade a second look. Oh well.

Instead, it’s just us: the ones who already knew, and the small band who trusted us this far. Good for us! Let’s dive in, shall we? Trust me. The water is fine.

01 Gets Off…

…of Betaverse!

Finally acting like an actual PI, Charlie’s on a stakeout outside the Glass Door. He spots a mysterious man in a gray flannel suit and gives chase but the man seems to vanish into the ether. Charlie’s reminded of Jody’s Invisible People from back in episode 2, “Sand”. After losing the mysterious stranger, Charlie turns a corner and spies 01 having a little party in the alley behind the club. Because he’s a PI (and not because he’s a perv, or anything) he peeps.

As 01 gets close to climax, he pulls out a bottle of water and pours it over his head. At first he starts to fade out, then he finally disappears! Now, *that’s* an orgasm. N.B. this is one of many, Many, MANY scenes throughout the course of this series that make it clear why it should never have been broadcast at 8pm. Either the SciFi execs never watched, or they never intended it to remain on Fridays.

Charlie spots the dry footprints on the pavement and finally makes some sense of the footprints he’d seen back in the pilot.

Besides making things clearer for Charlie, this should start answering some of our questions:

• How does 01 travel?
• How did 01 appear out of the bathroom at the Glass Door back in “Sand”?
• How did 01 get into Elliot Krogg’s hotel room in “You Are Here”?

Of course, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t know everything.

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Charlie pawns his ring to buy a car, picking up a sweet Audi which can’t be too cheap. The pawnbroker must be right when he says, “this is a very unusual ring.” Charlie again spots the man in the gray flannel suit.

Charlie will espy the mysterious stranger twice more in the episode, finally taking his wallet at knife point. He doesn’t strike me as cut in the Vex-Cor mold, neither is he like Reena’s captors. Who he is, and who he works for will remain a mystery for now.

The Three Faces of 01 Boxer

In Gamma, the local Vex-Cor chairman walks along the beach leading a delegation of what appear to be political representatives. They come upon 01 Boxer, who stands serenely in the surf as the waves caress his feet. Pointing to an island just off-shore, the chairman talks of the need for a “permanent home for fanatics, militants, revolutionaries.” 01 pictures the cells of Robben Island while the chairman speaks.

This 01 Boxer is not the petulant child of Alpha, nor the psychotic malcontent of Beta. His persona, in fact his entire physical bearing, changes from verse to verse. Michael Filipowich does a great job capturing the subtle and not-so-subtle changes 01 undergoes as he travels, but why does 01 change at all? Charlie certainly seems the same in Beta as in Alpha, so what makes the 01 who casually killed a man in Beta the same man who contemplates the horrors of Robben Island and says “it must never come to this” while in Gamma?

This man of contradictions is the only thing keeping the tenuous connection between the verses in place. As Essa’s courier, he keeps the lines of communication between the home office and the Beta and Gamma branches up. Using encrypted slates, the messages between the worlds are kept secure from prying eyes. Except obviously, 01 can hack the slates.

Watching Julius’s most recent message to Essa, 01 learns a temporary link will be reestablished in three weeks. He immediately heads for the shower and another verse.

Reena’s Torment

Okay, I don’t know about the rest of you but of the tortures Reena endures throughout this episode, it is the music that hurts me the most. Maybe the electrodes to the skull hurt her more, I don’t know, but the music would make me lose it. Of course, that’s the point. This isn’t interrogation: it’s brainwashing. I don’t know who this group that captured Reena last week is – Vex-Cor, random terrorists, or something else entirely – but I can tell you what they’re doing. Breaking her down for some higher purpose.

On a side note, because I’m not going to talk much about Reena this week, on Saturday I finished “Y: The Last Man”. I’m not going to say much, other than I cried a couple of times which is pretty damn impressive for a comic. However, it struck me that for the film adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra‘s masterpiece, producers could do a hell of a lot worse than casting Patricia McKenzie as Agent 355. I’m just sayin’.

Jody and the Invisible People

At his favorite restaurant, Charlie tells Karl about 01′s disappearing act and flirts with Paula. Quick tangent: do you guys think he goes for the service, or the ceviche? Regardless, things are looking good for those kids, I tell ya. Which of course makes the cut to Alpha to see Jasmine and her plight that much more poignant. Charlie’s possessions are being taken by the state. Jasmine is a possession. Jasmine is of no use to the state.

Charlie heads back to the desert to get some answers. Jody’s mom is still a wacko with a gun, but the reasons start to make more sense. Jody recognizes a picture of 01 Boxer and her mother becomes more defensive. Charlie tells her it all has to do with water. Then she tells him about the water.

Before Jody was born, her parents lived in a town near the reactor where the groundwater became contaminated. People got sick, there were birth defects, it was bad. Charlie visits the town, now buried by the shifting sands of the desert, and finds another blue stone. He also finds a conveniently located faucet dripping water.

On investigating the town’s history, he learns a pharmacist, Aaron Bridger, was charged with dumping “outdated cough syrup down the toilet” and served 11 years. Obviously the contamination was from the Vex-Cor facility, but he was set up. Charlie has an address, so he and Karl go to investigate.

Bridger died three months earlier, but his wife Andrea agrees to talk to Charlie. She lost everything because of Vex-Cor – her child, her husband, her home – and came to Cape Town where she set herself up as a psychic. She can’t read people’s minds, but she does see a grim future of “poverty and filth, armed soldiers, violent confrontation everywhere.” But Charlie recognizes the world she sees is not the future. It is his home.

The reluctant hero does something finally and truly heroic. He buys Andrea Bridger passage to Patagonia and cuts the chip from her arm. Patagonia, because it has no value to Vex-Cor and he believes Andrea will be free of her visions at last.

This chip is almost certainly the same as the ID chips Vex-Cor uses in Alpha. Now we know they have the tracking ability in Beta, so expect to see more about the chips themselves in the weeks ahead. Andrea gets in a cab immediately and Charlie waits behind. Knowing Vex-Cor will be signaled once the chip is removed, he lies in wait. What we get is one of the best close quarter fights you’re likely to see this year.

I’ve heard great things about the bathroom fight in Eastern Promises, and Burn Notice has some of the best hand-to-hand on the air right now, helped greatly by star Jeffrey Donovan‘s black belt. Still the claustrophobia in this fight, the mix of grappling with striking, and the way water plays such a crucial element make it very intense. A couple of the punches are a bit roundhouse for my taste, but there are a lot of elbow strikes reminiscent of Krav Maga and other more practical styles. There’s never a doubt that Charlie will survive, but when his head was underwater, there was a moment I actually believed he might do so by shifting out of the verse.

Instead, he kills the Vex-Cor security agent.

Beaten, bloody, and limping. Charlie heads back to the desert. He fills his bottle from the leaking tap and pours it over his head. No screaming, no crying, just a silent drop to his knees when he doesn’t dematerialize. Nicely, quietly played by Jeffrey Pierce.

What did everyone else think?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.