In the aftermath
of the drive by at the sandwich shop, Marla (quite possibly the worst
parent in the world) leaps into action – teleporting him and hitting her secret
stash of cash after having Stephen drop Astrid and her dad off at the bus stop.
She tells him to pack while he would rather talk because HUGE BIG REVELATION of
the secret she has been keeping for NO DAMN REASON. She’s busy but the best she
can manage is “it’s the only way I knew how to help.” She tries to get him to
run saying, as his mother, she protects him but Stephen is hella pissed at the
severely awful job she’s done so far.
When Jedikiah and some gun toting minions burst in – apparently
to help (he, like everyone else in the world, doesn’t know about Marla). He
wants some time alone with Stephen which she allows after she and Stephen have
a brief, telepathic conversation.
Alone, Jedikiah assures Stephen it was the Founder who
ordered the hit on Astrid and Jedikiah is totally the good one. Now enough of
these silly making deals with the Founder, come back to Jed and all will be
forgiven. Stephen’s not buying that because of the whole Jedikiah ordering his
dad’s death – but Jedikiah wants him to know the truth and offers him access to
his mind.
Where we see that Jedikiah and Roger clearly had a close
relationship. But they still have a difference of opinion – Jedikiah, with a
very very very very sketchy view of evolution, believes that paranormals have
evolved to replace his species (normal humans) so humans simply have to kill
them – and to do that he has to ally with the Founder for REASONS. Roger would
rather everyone not kill each other and he opposes the Founder – which worries
Jedikiah because the Founder will force him to go after Roger and his family.
This is your ally to preserve your species?
Back to reality and he tells Stephen he tried to warn Roger. That’s his excuse. And he doesn’t think they can run and avoid the Founder so they should all stay, Stephen keep working for Ultra and they can all rely on Jedikiah to keep them safe. Stephen… agrees.
Oh for the love of sense – someone get me a drink,
there’s no way I’m getting through this episode sober.
Away from the sucking void where intelligence should be,
we have some plot – a man called Alexis appears to be in police protection when
a paranormal knocks out two of his guards then starts garrotting him.
Alas, the void drags us back – Stephen drops in on The
Tomorrow People HQ and isn’t amused to see, in a time when he’s facing death
threats and drive by shootings, Cara’s kicked John out for Refusing to Respect
Her Authoritay! Stephen goes out and finds a rather drunk John to take home to
crash – much to Marla’s surprise (I would say inviting people home without
informing parents is an arsehole move, but after what Marla’s pulled, Stephen
has the Everest of moral high grounds to perch upon).
Which is basically what he tells her – she lost the right
to make decisions when she spent a year drugging him. She protests that she
protects them and he hits back that’s what he’s been doing for months. She
agrees to one night before they leave but she doesn’t buy the idea that his dad
is going to save them all (does she even know he’s dead?)
Next day it’s back to work with Jedikiah and investigating
Alexi’s murder (well, trying to find the Paranormal anyway), they’re watched by
a pouty Cara who goes back to base to tell Russell about a paranormal who can
apparently kill which is supposedly impossible (barring a few exceptions who
she Does Not Want To Talk About).
Stephen goes home to check with John about paranormals
who can kill (since John is one of them) and John takes a second to try and get Stephen to
forgive his mother. Um… no. Really. John is confident that all of his fellow
classmates are dead, but that doesn’t mean Jedikiah hasn’t started up the
program again without telling anyone.
Back to Ultra, Stephen joins Hillary in hunting the killer’s teleport signature (he figures out that he uses a lot of energy to teleport – whatever that means because that has never been explained); they arrive on the scene and it turns out Paranormals can sense each other teleport (that’s new… oh consistent world building how I miss you). When they arrive, Cara is there much to Stephen’s annoyance since stepping out of line now could mean Jedikiah going for his family – but Cara has a species to save.
Cara and Russell find him but decide they need to
confront him in a private place where the murderer can use his murder powers to
murder them without anyone seeing. He and Russell fight and Russell is much
better – but the guy still escapes but leaves a large suitcase full of money
behind. Stephen tries to take it but, no, Cara asserts her Authoritay and she
takes it.
Back at Stephen’s home John is being all domestic and has
cooked a full family dinner, giving Marla chance to lament how she never sees
Stephen (uh, because he’s out battling these super powers he never knew he had
because, oh yes, you kept it a secret). Oh and it turns out that Marla didn’t
realise what Ultra was and that it hunted Tomorrow People – which leads to the
revelation that Stephen is a heroic double agent (not how I’d term it) who is
saving their species.
Cut to a flashback of Roger visiting Marla after 4 years
away to tell her goodbye (wrong order, there) because he’s endangering her
At Ultra, Hillary has captured the man who hired the
hitman and threatens to torture the contact info out of him. While Cara and
Russell ride the public transport while broadcasting “we’ve got lotsa money!”
telepathically. Presumably to every Paranormal in the city. Quite why Ultra
doesn’t pick up on this, I don’t know.
Hillary’s plan is to get Stephen to contact the hitman
arranging to meet to hire him – which they do. The hitman asks if he’s a cop
and how it’s totally wrong to lie about that (nope, nope, nope, law doesn’t
work that way. It’s not entrapment to lie about being a cop. It’s entrapment to
set someone up to commit a crime, encourage someone to commit a crime or
otherwise provide extreme incentive to commit a crime that they wouldn’t
otherwise commit and then arrest them for it). Then he and Haley fight him and
cuff him – Stephen contacting Cara to let her know
But Cara has just seen the guy get on a train with her.
There are two of them – twins. This confuses them for a shockingly long time.
Cara captures hers – who definitely has powers – but the one at Ultra is human.
Stephen realises that this is why he has large power signatures when he
teleports, he’s teleporting someone else.
The paranormal twin at the Tomorrow People HQ seems far
more nervous and worried – especially about what his brother will do. At ultra,
the murdering, human twin is cocky and Jedikiah plays on how jealous he must be
of his brother’s super powers (just like him – and yes, Stephens giving him a
total “aha that’s you!” look). But Jedikiah has an evil plan (because he’s
evil, remember), to have the paranormal twin’s powers transferred to the
murdering twin with Science!
Stephen tries to get Cara to give up Cyrus, the
Paranormal but no she protects all Tomorrow People! (Except for the many
criminals before – but this is Cara’s AUTHORITAY!) she also protests that he’s
merely an ACCESSORY to murder so that’s totally ok. She’s also reading his mind
now because she accuses him of being his uncle’s lacky – hey, going undercover
to help the Tomorrow People and here’s Cara’s response… Stephen makes a
completely justified dig about the place falling apart without John and leaves.
Stephen confirms with John that Jedikiah is really eager
to try and make power transplants work – though he hasn’t yet. And captured
brother starts mentally calling for help, making Cyrus panic and desperately
try to go to him. Stephen confronts Jedikiah on being evil, again – and Cyrus
turns himself in (though Cara may be involved).
Stephen tries to appeal to murdering brother, Nathan’s, better nature but he doesn’t have one. Are we shocked? Really? It’s ok Cara totally has a plan and she thinks it’s a great idea to keep her deep cover operative constantly guessing about what’s going to happen next and completely unsupported because she’s skilled that way.
Cyrus hugs Nathan to say goobye and whispers “waistband”
in his ear – Nathan grabs the gun hidden there and shoots the guards, Cyrus
providing paranormal cover. Nathan starts garrotting Jedikiah with the handy garrotte
he has lying around and Stephen and Cyrus say nooooo
Stephen uses telekinesis to move a tranq gun into Hillary’s hand and she shoots Nathan – he staggers back and is shot repeatedly by the guards while Jedikiah yells “no!” Aww his experiment is over. Cyrus teleports out and Jedikiah falls to his nears almost in tears (awww he wants his powers). Stephen STOP SAVING JEDIKIAH’S LIFE!
Later, when they’re alone, Stephen asks why Jedikiah got
so worked up and accuses him of keeping Roger’s body around in the hope of
doing the power transfer.
Cara gives the money to Cyrus (accessory to murder) who
is so upset that his brother (the murderer) is dead – apparently she was paying
them to kill Jedikiah. John drops in to ask Cara if they’re really reduced to
hiring contract killers. She think it was necessary and goes on to call John
family and asks him to come back with her. He refuses, given the givens, he’s
not putting an assassin – him – at her disposal. He leaves and sad music plays
At home Stephen and Marla talk and she marvels at him
fighting the war after all she did to keep them safe (errrr… what did she do
again?) and she admits that maybe she was wrong about Stephen and Roger. She
promises to stay, try and provide a normal life and not bury her head in the
sand any more
And Jedikiah goes to ramble to his brother’s frozen body. Is anyone shocked that he lied about Roger being cremated? And it’s very very very creepy.
This episode was ridiculous.
Marla… the only way she knew how to help? Shall we recap
again? Nah – go
read my rant at the end of last episode’s post, it applies. At very least
when she saw Stephen working for Ultra WHO SHE KNEW ABOUT she should have
stepped in.
And she doesn’t know about Ultra? When every paranormal
on the street does? When her husband worked for them? WHEN SHE’S A TELEPATH?!
And what about her husband talking about “bringing danger to their doorstep”
did she not realise?
Jedikiah’s philosophy is… bizarre. Paranormals have
evolved to “replace” humans so humans have to kill them? Unless they’re going
to start mass killing humans, which, biologically they can’t the only way that
can happen will be by severely out breeding them. In which case we’re talking
all of humanity being gradually replaced with humanity with powers and pacifism…
Option b please. Especially since it’s not like
paranormals are a new species.
And that’s aside from the fact to “protect his species”
from paranormals he’s allied with a megalomaniac super paranormal which is…
strange logic. Almost on par with Marla’s
But let’s take it to the next level of mind numbing
foolishness. Not only does Jedikiah think this memory is an explanation of his
actions but so does Stephen! His excuse is “yes I murdered your father but I
totally warned him first!” this makes him the good one?! Seriously?! And even
aside from his father’s death, Jedikiah has killed a lot of other people. We’ve
seen it, he’s not a good guy here.
But it gets worse! Because even after the memory of the
Founder forcing Jedikiah to kill his own brother, they’re then expected to
trust Jedikiah to keep them safe?! Were the writers drunk when they wrote this?
Was it a ludicrous game of madlibs? Or do they hold their audience in such
contempt that they think this “logic” will work for them?
And Cara’s leadership is awful! Why is she hunting the
murderer? The Tomorrow People has always been pretty happy for Ultra to take
out paranormals who were criminally dangerous – if anything they gave up on
people too soon. But now she and Russell have to chase down a breakout who
kills because… what? Is this a way to make Stephen Respect Her Authoritay!?
Especially since his family is on the line – hey what better way to make a
power play?
Everyone on this show is such a fool they should all wear
bells and motley! They don’t have one working brain cell between them! Watching
it I can feel my brain slowly killing itself in some sympathetic attempt to try
and connect with characters who make toads look like Einstein. It’s actually
so… so… I don’t even have words for how ridiculous it is, but it actively
annoys me how mind numbingly awful this writing is.
I also love the way the writers have cast 20+ year olds
to play teenagers so we can have the school scenes and then have Stephen hire a
hitman and now have said hitman say “excuse me, you’re 16…”
