One of my most favorite movies ever is Strictly Ballroom, and the scene at the end with everyone twirling to “Love is in the Air,” still makes me smile 17 years later. While only Andy burst into song (badly) in this week's episode, “Momstrosity,” it was a balm and an ode to love, in a way, as Carter finally manned up and admitted he loves Allison (just not to Allison) and Henry, in realizing he was falling in love with Grace, decided to tell her what happened and broke her heart in doing so. In the middle of all of that, we had tossed off one-liners in a cheeky nod to James Cameron that actually worked in the service of the story and were corny and fun.
The episode begins at the ¾ mark with Fargo behind the wheel of his Subaru (hey, Subaru logo, how’s it going?) driving like a bat out of hell through the woods as Carter, Kevin, and Charles holler about “Did we lose her?” only to find out pretty quickly “her” is Tiny, the Titan Rover, and that’d be a “no.”
Credits.
The episode begins with the familiar “12 hours earlier” placard, beginning that morning at S.A.R.A.H. as Jo showers and we see her through the shower door in emerging close-up. The door opens and she turns around to find a mini-bot named Emo lovingly admiring her frame. She is not amused. Once robed, she carries him into the kitchen and hands him to Carter, who introduces Emo as Kevin’s school project, Eureka’s answer to carrying around a bag of flour or an egg for a week.
Sheriff Andy drops in and S.A.R.A.H. is very pleased to see him. She tells him his readings are a bit wonky and offers to run a diagnostic, so he plugs into her mainframe (dirty!) and is overtaken with a goofy lovestruck grin just as Jo passes through and shakes her head.
At GD, Jack is delicately explaining to Allison about Kevin’s virtual peep on Jo via Emo, and she protests that because she’s a doctor, Kevin should be fine just asking her what he wants to know. Jack clues her in that mom outweighs doctor, and says he can talk to Kevin on their camping trip. She hedgingly agrees. Fargo nerds by and announces their departure time and makes overtures of delegating authority in his absence, which Allison greets with “uh huh, yeah, I had this job,” before realizing Emo has departed. We follow Emo on a little wander around the halls of GD (and hee that the wee robot gets no attention from anybody who passes him).
Carter comes across Henry, who begs off camping so he can stay and work with Grace on her memory project. They banter about Carter’s lack of traction with Allison and he says he has a long term plan. Elsewhere at GD, Emo has found Tiny. Back in Grace’s lab, as Henry sits in a chair wearing a diagnostic helmet contraption, she says she’s going to do some emotional tests. She starts with elation and is overjoyed to find that Henry associates joy with her. She bounds into his lap and in an act of supreme stupidity/mercy/love, he tells her what happened to the five plus Charles and that he wasn’t married to her before he jumped. She thinks he’s joking and he assures her he’s not. She’s struck and bails off his lap and leaves just as the device short circuits on Henry. I was afraid that would mean toasted or amnesiac Henry but it didn’t, thankfully. This is the first sign something’s twitchy with the GD equipment. Side bar – Grace could have seen for herself he was telling the truth if she had just tested his memories on confusion or fear. Just saying.
Commercial.
We pick up at GD where Grace is checking out her gear. Jo notices the frostiness between Henry and her but is called onto her next case…the Martian Rover, Tiny (who isn’t), is being packed up for NASA and has acquired a stowaway (Emo). At Allison’s, Fargo and Carter load their cars as Andy inquires about courting rituals instead of the police duty hand off, so Carter says if anything comes up to call Jo. Allison comes out with Emo and hands him to Kevin. Charles saunters up (not smoking!) and invites himself. Carter says no, Charles says he can go out with Allison instead, so Carter relents and puts him off to ride with Fargo. Good times!
Once in the woods, Fargo dispenses with the stake-in-the-ground-and-pull method of tent pitching and instead flings a box into the woods and presto, you have B.U.F.F.Y (biomechanical unfolding fully automated yurt), a swanky AI-loaded tent complete with mini-bar and flat screen. Kevin sits down to play videos and Charles tuts that this isn’t camping. Carter confiscates everybody’s gadgets (Fargo unloads so many he could have just handed over his vest) and they commence with “real camping experiences.” Kevin snits about giving up his gameboy and Carter tries to have “the talk,” but both Charles and Kevin shut him down, with Kevin asking when he turned into his “mom.”
At the lab, Allison’s experiment on Larry goes awry when it tries to commence with a brain dissection while she’s insisting, “Stop, no!” and Larry pretty much wets himself. She gets him out of the device and that’s strike two for AI glitches of the day. Next, Zane is checking diagnostics and finding out that it’s one of eight SNAFUs in the queue as Jo’s called away to Café Diem, where Vince and AI Vince 2.0 are arguing because kale is being delivered to tables requesting cholesterol specials. Andy is sticky sweet with Jo and starts to serenade her. When she shuts him down, he asks if that’s what heartbreak feels like and she twigs that all the AI has gone crazy.
Henry and Grace have a sad chat in his garage about whether he loves her and Henry realizes how grief stricken she is about losing her Henry and being lied to. He says he wanted a chance to know her and she says she just wants her Henry back. He apologizes again. She sobs about losing her husband.
At Camp Testosterone, Charles and Carter start measuring each other as a mate for Allison and Kevin stomps off in a huff, so they go look for him. In the interim, Fargo tries to leave his hut and she shuts him down and then cocoons him. Back at GD, Zane runs a list of all the AI models affected by feelings overwhelming their programming, and hey, look, there’s Tiny. Out on the highway, in the back of a truck, Tiny wakes up.
S.A.R.A.H. calls Jo and asks moony Qs about Andy and Jo realizes S.A.R.A.H. was the culprit because Andy knows he went wonky at 8:27 am, so they trek off to discuss with her how to hit undo. Zane laughs about her download roofie while Jo huffs that ”hello, it’s gone rogue,” and then he gets to work.
At the empty truck, Allison mounts the troops, including sharpshooter Jo, to bring Tiny in, especially because she’s out in the woods in fairly close proximity to the boys weekend, and she has a laser that can slice and dice a planet, which the boys find out for themselves pretty quickly.
In the woods, Carter and Charles snit and search as it grow dark. At a stopping point in the hunt for Kevin, Charles tips his hat about being lonely in the present day and just as quickly lets the moment go. Kevin emerges from the woods and confronts Carter about hiding his feelings for his mom when he thought they were friends. Carter can't answer him when Kevin asks if he loves her. The trio reaches Fargo and Carter cuts him loose from B.U.F.F.Y and acts as the diversion to sweet-talk Tiny while the guys high tail it to the car. They’re gunning it out of the woods, when Kevin yells about Carter, so Fargo impressively swings back around, dodges Tiny, and throws the door open for Carter with a very serious “Come with me if you want to live.” Hee. Carter calls Allison from the car and they catch up on everyone’s MO. Then we’re back at the starting scene.
They lead Tiny back to the arsenal at the end of the highway and bail out. Tiny descends upon Kevin, pinning him to the ground. Allison screams, “Get away from him, you bitch” (hee #2) and is greeted with Tiny repeating it about Emo, who’s nestled in Kevin’s backpack, and who we realize was why she broke out. Carter and Charles wrestle Tiny’s laser away from Kevin while Allison sets Emo down in front Tiny. Tiny unpins Kevin to scoop Emo up, and order is restored. Kevin runs to Allison and Carter concedes that they were lucky Charles was there to help.
Back at S.A.R.A.H., Zane has reprogrammed everybody except Andy and realizes he doesn’t want to, so he leaves him and S.A.R.A.H. to sort out their new romance. Henry comes to Grace’s and gives her his wedding band and agrees he’s not her Henry, “yet.” She’s packed him a care pack and takes the ring with a sad smile that maybe she could love this Henry, too. So many emotions.
The next morning at S.A.R.A.H., she’s remarking on the lovely morning when Andy emerges, getting dressed. (Let that spin around a bit.) Carter and Jo agree they don’t wanna know. At Café Diem, Carter admits to Kevin that he does love Allison. Kevin says he can pursue her as long as he doesn’t hurt her. Carter puffs out a bit and essentially tells Charles (who’s reading USA Today and not NYT or WSJ (??)), “Game on,” and Charles bemusedly remarks, “Good luck with that.”
So, COME ON already with Allison and Carter. If we find out at the summer cliffhanger (BOOO) that in this reality, Nathan never died, you and I will be fighting, SHOW. Four seasons/five years is enough now, y’all. Let’s put them together, see how things go, and let them torpedo it themselves. Kay? I will say, though, that Allison has compartmentalized the kiss now that she's so focused on Kevin being normal. I'd like some glimpse that she still wants Jack.
I liked that Jo figured out the McGuffin this week, instead of Jack, and that she’s settling into the security role. This week she didn’t moon as much over Zane, which I also liked. No sense in pining over him when he doesn’t remember everything. Much like Henry and Grace, if she still wants a relationship with this Zane, pursue that, but don’t shoehorn this Zane into who he was before. Interesting that there was a small glimpse into Charles’s emotional state because he’s been fairly calm, cool, and collected about being dropped into 2010 alone. As long as THAT’S not the way they try to throw him with Allison, pursue it. I'm not totally on board with Henry telling Grace the truth, although the ethics do get sticky if they had resumed/started a sexual relationship, so I guess he pre-emptively chose the high road. I hope they do work out a way for them to be together. I certainly feel for Grace's lost past. I'd like to know how long they were married. I've missed it if the show said.
Only three eps left until hiatus (again, BOOOO). Colin Ferguson Tweeted last week that they would know something about whether there will be an S5 pretty soon and today teased that something is "afoot." Pull the trigger, already. Sister network USA has no problem renewing its established shows.
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