Jackson and Abe have travelled to Japan to follow the
rest of his father’s research. Their first surprise was finding out that
Richard married again, a woman called Minako. This causes Jackson no small
amount of angst because he realises Minako faithfully stuck by Richard as he
was abandoned by his job, his other family and had a complete breakdown –
especially now that it was clear that Richard may have been wrong. Of course,
Abe is there to make Jackson feel better
Minako takes them to an irradiated island off Fukushima
which Richard used for all his research where, after their plane encounters
some angry bats, they crash and Minako dies
Really? Already? She was introduced, made it clear she
was the perfect, mild, supportive wife (heya stereotype) and then promptly
dies? And, again my complaint from last week is that we’re making a big thing
about this being a global problem but so far Abe is the only POC and the only
non-western character as part of the group.
On the island of Dr. Oz they find he has been pursuing
some creepy experiments, including pulling out horses’ eyes when the “defiant
pupil” appeared and generally being very ominous without producing much useful
data. Seriously, so far every piece of data that Richard produced says the same
thing “animals attack! Defiant pupil! End of the world!” no wonder he was kicked
out of the academic community. Random assertions are not evidence even if you
do repeat them over and over and over again.
In Los Angeles, Jamie manages to convince Mitch to come
see a senator she knows with his evidence of telepathic lions. Mitch is
unwilling because he’s Mitch and because he doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of
evidence but Jamie insists. Of course when they get there, Mitch learns that
Jamie has actually been fired from the paper and this is all her pulling him
along. But she manages to convince him to go to an emotional tour of the
graveyard where there are many deaths from the “cancer cluster” she asserts was
caused by Reiden chemicals. This keeps him on side long enough to speak to the
Senator – only to see the Senator has pretty much given up. After many many
investigations into the company they’ve just failed to make any ground.
Jamie is devastated and gives up completely, heading to
get drunk and drop it all. I don’t think Mitch is onside, but she does look
very very sad so now he’s deciding to chivy her back into the fight (and
smacking down said senator. There’s not a lot of people who make comments about
genital size to a politician’s face… is a statement that was true last year.
Thank you for that America, by the way). Still, Jamie has completely given up.
And over to Slovenia where Gaspard (the mysterious French
man who recruited Chloe) is showing Chloe the dog massacre and asks for her
expert opinion. Treating it as a human attacker she concludes that the animals
are practicing, honing their skills. How ominous…
He then goes on a tour – he picks up Mitch in the bar
where he is watching Jamie’s pity party. Gaspard recruits Mitch – and Mitch
insists Jamie gets to come along. Yay pity inclusion!
Gaspard then goes to Japan where he’s found where Jackson
and Abe are on their irradiated island – rescuing and recruiting them
I’m not sure where he gets all his information but I
guess he’s an ominous spy figure in a suit, fiction loves the idea that these
people are all knowing.
Gathering this whole team together Gaspard now has his
team (with Mitch snarking) to solve the problem – and he tells them of several
more animal attacks so we know it’s escalating with several animals all around
the world.
Ok, back to my complaint. I love that the dream team has
been established – but this is a global disaster, we’ve established this
repeatedly, and we have a team of 6 people. 5 of them are White. 2 are French,
3 are American. This is a damn poor global team, especially since even Abe seems
to be there more as a sidekick for Jackson rather than being an expert in his
own right
