Primeval: New World -- Ep. 11
I'm sure you all recognise these by now. Don't click if you don't want the spoilers. On the other hand, if you do, well, I warned you, right?
So, this episode is this sort of episode:
A lot.
So, we get a cold open on Dylan and Mac being chased through some boiler rooms somewhere, both of them wearing lab coats, ending on them waiting in terror for the men chasing them to catch up to them in their hiding spot.
Yeah, that's only the first occurence you'll get of this sort of video.
So, Ken's been in prison and has been brought out to see this guy, in a room I could have sworn I've been in when I was at summer camp when I was twelve. It's an odd sort of interrogation room, very grade school chic. But I digress. This is Colonel Anderson Hall emerging from the super-sekrit door behind the mural.
So, Col. Hall asks Ken about the failed op to recapture the bird, about Ken being on the scene, about how the failure could totally be pinned on him.
In an amazing act of naivte, Ken tries to suggest it's all Major Smarm Douglas' fault things failed, and the Col. makes it rather clear that he's fully aware that Ken tranqed Ahab Douglas. This cues the first of many flashbacks. Ken's really not sure what to say to that, especially after his whole bid to get his handcuffs taken off.
I told you there'd be a lot of these.
In an amazing break with the usual, this establishing shot of Cross Photonics is not done with time lapse photography for only the second time in the series thus far.
Then while Dylan stomps around irritably in the background, dragging cases around and ranting about how everything is Ken Leeds' fault, Toby and Evan are trying to figure out what the security card Leeds left them is supposed to open. They're hacking around and Toby is chiding Dylan for naming the Leggy, as though Dylan was the one to do it (I miss Leggy so much, and as of right now I'm in denial and pretending he ran back to the Pleistocene and became BFFs with Danny and they ran around having Benny Hill-like adventures with Molly and possibly Doctor Who and . . . hmm . . . Donna, I think. Yeah, Donna. I think she and Danny would have the best snark-fest -- maybe this shouldn't have been a parenthetical, it's awfully long).
Ahem.
They're having a lot of trouble with it and Dylan is very snide about the whole thing. Then Evan tells Toby that the hacking skills he's been trying to have plausible deniability about are needed to see if they can't track down the lock for the key card.
So, Hall asks about Leggy's death, about how he came to be shot in the head (la la la I can't hear yoooouuuu!!!). Cue another flashback, this time of Dylan shooting Leggy in the head (Leggy! No --- no. Deny, deny, deny), remembering wiping down the gun to take away her fingerprints.
So, Ken is earnest and tries to pass off shooting Major Smarm as hallucinations caused by ketamine, as "Sometimes people have different versions of events," and tries to keep the cover-up going on behalf of Dylan. but Hall is onto him. All but accusing him of covering up for the civilians.
So, Dylan is still snarking, this time about the illegalities of hacking the national defense systems, while Evan and Toby just roll their eyes and Toby keeps hacking away. She finds a hole in the system.
It's inside a nondescript building, wherein we hear a familiar sound. It's the grating whine and high-pitched noises of a phone modem. You remember those? These ones:
It's Ken's computer in the old Project Magnet office. He left it on and Toby hacks into the system through it. And then can't go further because she doesn't recognise the programming language. It's Fortran. I'll let Wikipedia fill in the blanks because I'm too lazy to look up a truly reliable source, but basically it's a programming language from the 50s. Which Evan knows, so he takes over, zipping through the system and setting it up to download everything on there in order to figure out what the hell is going on.
Cut back to Leeds and Hall. Leeds was authorised to help Evan, not put Project Magnet at his disposal. Leeds declares that he had thought he had latitude to make decisions in a grey area like that. Hall smacks him down, and when Leeds points out that if this is a court martial there should maybe be a judge or lawyers, Hall explains that since this is so top secret, things like due process don't exist.
Then Hall says he's trying to save the world, and I pretty much decide that until we hear otherwise, I'm going to cheerfully assume Helen got to him in her spare time, in between courting Philip. I think it's a reasonable assumption. Hall also asks why, if Project Magnet has been performing surveillance on paranormal stuff for decades Evan Cross got there first, and Leeds answers with his usual butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth innocence, "Because one ate his wife, sir. Well . . . most of her."
In an absolutely grimly appropriate cut, Dylan, looking about furtively for Evan, informs Toby that she's found the police report on Brooke's death. Then, before leaving to take the result of their download of everything in Project Magnet's archives to Evan, she passes the report to Toby, one would assume to hide it from Evan.
Who knows, maybe this will lead to something later on. Maybe.
Ken claims he was the one to make contact with Evan, that Evan only trusts him, so he should be left to liaise with Evan and his team. Hall points out that someone else contacted Leeds first, and that someone wasn't Evan.
It was Ange's legs, striding down a hallway, in a shot that is really far too long to be anything but the opportunity for someone too admire them. They are very nice, after all. Then there's more flashback of their first meeting from the first episode, and this is becoming quite the flashback ep.
And Evan is complaining that Leeds called Ange 'striking' three times in his initial report. Dylan, who is being really quite catty this episode, inquires if Evan is jealous, and Evan is . . . yeah, he's totally presenting as jealous as he declares that it's not the point.
Toby meanwhile has found a supposedly empty and abandoned building that the card is supposed to work on, and they start making plans to break into the lab there where Leggy was tormented before being killed let free to roam through time as Danny's sidekick titannis. It'll be a spinoff. Danny and Leggy Do Prehistory.
Hall declares that the way to get to Cross is Angelika Finch, and Ken tells him that since Ange and Evan had a falling out he, Leeds, is the only one with a way in. Hall declares that what they need to do is cut out the middle man.
This leads to a cut directly to a bunch of soldiers running through Evan's factory, pounding on the door of the Super-Sekrit Dino-Hunting Hideout. Then he calls in a guy with one of those one-man battering rams. He rams the door, once, twice . . .
"Just a minutes!" sings Evan from inside.
He graciously opens the door, smirks as he informs the soldier that he can't comply with any orders to give him technology because there's nothing there to seize, then gets arrested and carted off. He is dragged to the top secret military hideout, the one that looks like a summer camp meeting room for rainy day activities and assemblies, and finds out they've kidnapped Mac. Who is unhappy to see Evan. I can only assume he was hoping to break out the handcuffs in a more congenial setting.
Well, okay, he accuses Evan of dragging him back into things, as though it's Evan's fault Hall is a jerk. It's really kind of a lover's tiff sort of argument. I bet the makeup sex when they finally get past this will be really great.
This is when Evan gets to meet Hall for the first time. He determinedly tells Hall that Mac isn't part of his team anymore, demanding that they let Mac go, at least. Mac is hauled off unceremoniously and Evan heads into the lion's den to chat.
Boy, these are harder to find than you'd think.
Mac is dragged out of the building, wanting to know how the hell he's supposed to get home from the middle of freakin' nowhere, because let's be frank, middle of nowhere in BC can be a helluva a lot of nowhere. The soldier doesn't answer him, just unlocks the cuffs and walks away.
It turns out that Dylan followed them when Evan was taken, and she talks Mac into coming with her to find out what the hell they're up to in the lab. Mac is dubious, but lets himself be convinced. I shall now take a break from 'shipping my P:NW OTP and comment that Dylan and Mac remain very cute together and I'd love to see them have a wild affair with lots of monkey sex. I mean, as long as Evan's going to have his hangups about Brooke and Ange and guilt and dinosaurs there's no reason Dylan and Mac shouldn't have a good time, right?
So, Hall is all, "We've gotten off on the wrong foot," and "You're filing for bankruptcy?"
And Evan's all, "Yep. Bankruptcy."
"How convenient."
To which I say, dude, if you knew how bad a CEO the man is, you would not say that. He doesn't need a keeper, he needs a ringmaster and a lion tamer and whips and chains and a chair and this metaphor totally got away from me in a totally different direction than I intended.
Yeah. Right.
So, they have backs and forths about civil rights and liberties and there's X-Files and Guantanamo written all over this. Because Hall wants Evan's detectors and is making vaguely threatening comments about having been able to seize them if he wanted to, trying to pretend that he's not playing hardball. It's the sort of commentary that makes people make faces. Like Evan's as he contemplates that notion.
Or this face.
In a return of the dramatic flashback, we see Leggy as he runs from the dumpster Evan first saw him in last episode. We see the closeup of his leg, we then see Evan angrily telling Hall that he saw the scars on Leggy. Hall is all, "Well, obviously I'm making a dinosaur army for World War Three," and Evan is, well . . . yeah. That face.
Because that's just annoying. Then Hall tries to feed him some bullshit about how good scientists have open minds and bad scientists think they already know the answer. To which I offer a quote from my grade seven homeroom teacher.
"Don't be so open-minded your brains fall out onto the floor."
I do rest my case, ladies and gentlemen.
So, Dylan and Mac are hiding in the bushes, Mac unsure that they should be breaking in, more in terms of practicalities of escape than anything else, and Dylan is very dismissive of his trauma over seeing his own dead self on ice and his attempts to research the A-R-C thing, which has been scrubbed off the internet entirely.
That must be a job and a half. Do you suppose Lester's got someone on staff whose job it is to scan the internet and crash and wipe every single website, picture, video, etc. of ARC-related stuff?
A truck comes along and security is so lax they can cling to the bottom and sneak in that way, to get past the security perimeter. Man, this is even worse than the guy who wouldn't properly check the women's washroom last week.
So, Dylan and Evan manage to get in, starting on their way to check out this secret lab.
Hall apparently has a whole team of scientists that are coming up with a plan that's gonna benefit everybody. Now he really starts sounding like he's been talking to Helen. When Evan asks why the plans were being kept a secret from Leeds, who was, after all, supposedly in charge of the team, Hall cheerfully tells Evan that Leeds is a liar.
Hall brings Leeds in, all, "I think it's time we tell Mr. Cross the truth."
So, after a commercial break we come back to Leeds claiming that the natural courses of extinction mean that obviously it's totally fine to take animals out of the timeline. Leeds also, in a moment of unbelievable stupidity, tries to compare stealing an animal out of time to not being worries about being struck by lightning. Then Evan tries to make a point and Hall says that if Mr. Cross is right they may have made a big mistake.
I think the old man kind of covers my reaction to that. So, we cut back to Dylan and Mac, wandering around a secret lab that looks like nothing so much as an elementary school, minus the colourful grade school paraphernalia. Really, it doesn't even look 1950s industrial, just . . . school-like. It's distinctly unimpressive, which I suppose is good camoflage, but still.
They find their way to the locker room, Mac steals a pen, and while Dylan stands watch, he breaks into the lockers using bits of deconstructed pen. I am duly impressed, and I don't even care if people do it all the time. They steal lab coats and start exploring the facility, now entering bits that look like a sci-fi'ed up grade school.
Evan paces angrily, arguing with Leeds about dinosaur stealing and with Hall about his stupid and finds out that Leeds has been in and out of the anomalies collecting specimens for Col. Hall. Evan can't believe what he's hearing, and we cut to Dylan and Mac who can't believe what they're seeing. A dead and chopped up pachycephalosaurus and a thing in a display case. I don't know what that is.
And Dylan, as is her wont, starts emoting and empathising. Remembering seeing the headbutty cuteness of the pachycephalosaurus in a flashback to better days of headbutty cuteness.
And lays a hand on the animal, as though she's got some sort of touch-psychic power or something, I don't know. It's all very Grey Owl and Pocahontas as she feels the animal's pain and remembers her flashback of the tranqed pachycephalosaurus and reassuring him that he's going home.
She continues to emote at us, recalling the ornitholestes and how they'd been hoping to get them home from the woods.
Then her coup de grace. She emotes at a foot. Really, she is a champion empathiser. Just, only for animals and dead people. Mac clearly gets very short shrift from her. I suppose if he wants her to feel sorry for him, he'd better grow some extraneous fur, some scales or find a way to die horribly.
Anyhow. Leeds, you have been a butthead.
Which is sort of the point that Evan makes to Leeds and Hall. Because Leeds is all, "I was trying to do the right thing," and Evan asks, "And what is the right thing?
So, Mac and Dylan are taking pictures of everything, now that Dylan's finished dripping angst all over everything in sight, when there is a slam and a thud and they are warned by the dramatic strings that they must flee. Well, okay, there's more brass in that, but you know what I mean.
So, Leeds is sent away and Evan is informed by Hall that they've sent fifty-three teams through on retrieval missions, and as Evan can see, nothing has changed. Then he starts talking about going back in time to seed oceans with magic algae to prevent global warming. Because Hall has two small children and he wants to save the world, for them. God knows if he just wanders through time, willy-nilly he can just fix everything.
Evan points out that the only way to find out if it'll work is to do it, but if they do there's no way to fix it if they screw up. There's no do-overs.
But Hall's not done yet. He has a dramatic reveal for Evan. "But sometimes we do get do-overs." After all, just look who's coming through the door. It's Ange. God help us all. And there she is, shooting that slightly pouty vaguely Cindy Crawford look of reproach at Evan, as she always does.
And Evan's kinda like this, and the rest of us are kinda all with him on that.
We catch up with Dylan and Mac, arguing and Dylan attracting attention like whoah, and if this wasn't going to be top-heavy with borrowed pics and YouTube I'd probably put something in here too. But I won't. Anyhow, they're coming up on the exit when they see a bunch of soldiery type people coming in, and now the building that started out looking like a school looks like a hospital that probably closed down in the 50s.
So, we pick up with the chase scene that we started with in the open, and I wonder why we started with this chase, save for the drama, as though they couldn't have used the whole Leeds in prison thing for their teaser instead of this, because it's really kind of silly.
And Dylan shouting the whole way. "Oh!" "Uh!" "Crap!" actually, that last one she practicall shrieks, and I wonder how it was she has not figured out that they probably don't even need to chase the pair of them, they can follow them by Dylan's squawking the whole way down. Which they do. Then they hit on one of those, "Please please please don't let them look around the corner," kinds of hiding places, and they do, but they miss on checking the effing door there. Which is small, yes, but they don't check it. So naturally Dylan and Mac come crawling out of that.
See third pic above.
Evan can't believe what he's seeing, and Hall starts to play Father Confessor. And she falls for it.
So, Evan tries to convince Ange that she's being stupid, why is she there, these are bad people . . .
"Evan, Project Magnet has what we never had. Resources, the ability to control these creatures!" Note that she doesn't really seem to either notice or care about Evan's point that they're bad people. Either she doesn't believe him or she doesn't care, who knows? The point is, you suddenly want to throttle her.
And Hall is smirking internally as he gets all, "Awkward!" Evan is not amused, and Hall really starts in on the whole, big gentle eyes and understanding looks schtick. Well, she gets defensive at first while Evan paces in the background, agitated, but then Hall asks the big question, why did she agree to come here?
And he's very understanding as she starts talking about things on her conscience, and I keep waiting for him to break out the rosary and call her My Child. She starts talking about Sam and the other guard, how they died, how Ken had fixed it to make it go away, "But it didn't go away. I knew those people." And then she tries to throw blame at Evan. She's all about saying that all he did was ask her to cover it up. It's like she's pretending he never broke down and cried on her shoulder, she's acting like she never made him get to know all his employees, she pretty much gets Evan staring at her incredulously, because he can't believe his best friend is throwing him under the bus like this.
"You mean the industrial accident," he says with a barely concealed smirk. He's prompting her, half pretending that he didn't know a thing about it. He's playing her like a lute and Evan looks about ready to leap across the table and . . .
Yeah. That.
Then we get a flashback of the two security guards dying, which if you'll recall was because Sam didn't warn the guy, he didn't wait for backup, she didn't think to hide somewhere instead of running all over . . . and thus the snarfling.
And Evan tries to get Ange to understand that this is an evil government operation and they'll be doing terrible things and why can't she see through this. And Ange leaps to her feet in fury, telling Evan that if he's so concerned about what they're doing he should get involved, change things from the inside. They can take Wolfram and Hart and turn it from a Bad law firm to a Good one!
And Hall sits there, continuing to exude practiced nonchalance and innocence, goading them.
And Ange walks away, tears in her eyes, after informing Evan that she's taking the job with the Sun Group and she'll be gone for a while. And Evan is just trying to keep up now, because Hall is a bastard and willing to use every bit of emotional manipulation he can to get Evan to buckle, including airing dirty laundry everywhere.
Mac and Dylan are trying to escape. Sort of. They get out of the air vents or whatever would have that huge grille in front of it, and when Mac says that they should leave, Dylan insists they stay to find out what's going on. And while it's pretty obvious there's more going on, I can't help but wonder at the mentality that says that they should keep risking capture over this. But despite Mac's misgivings they keep on looking.
And there are stacks and stacks of samples and a computer program that is called "Chromista Las System". Which Mac points at, saying, "Chromista." I can only assume to tell the viewer it's Important. And Dylan explains that Chromista is the kingdom to which algae belong. So, the plan to seed ancient oceans with algae really is in development. I can only assume Hall and his people are in denial about the effects lampreys and zebra mussels have had on the Great Lakes and the imported critters have had on Australia and the areas of choking misplaced algae on other aquatic ecosystems.
They keep looking, Mac discovering bacterial samples and Dylan finding the growth charts, because they're not just making algae, they're probably trying to make biological weapons or something. Beautiful. They've been taking bacterial samples out of the dinosaurs for purposes unknown.
Do you have any idea how much I miss the old Primeval where you could trust parts of the government?
So, Evan has been taken away somewhere and Leeds is called into this room that still looks to me like it belongs at a summer camp or a school and not a super-sekrit government facility.
Leeds is denied permission to speak freely and gamely goes ahead anyhow. He took the initiative when the government just wanted him to go away. He led the teams, he got the samples, he informed the government and they should keep that in mind when they sentence him for tranqing a fellow soldier.
Looking earnestly up at the colonel, Ken declares that he's sure Evan will do what's right, that he'll save lives, that he'll help and that he trusts Evan. And when Hall asks, he says, yes, he's on Evan's side. Hall says Ken's going to prison. Unless he plays ball. And by playing ball, that means, "Whatever deception you need to do in order to get Cross to work with us."
Ken refuses, so he's going back to prison. Period.
Hall waits until everyone is out of earshot, loses the smug grin and pitches a hissy fit, because no one is doing what they're supposed to.
Dylan and Mac are taking pictures of everything, because a microscope will tell you so much, when soldiers come bursting in and take them captive. They're going to get marched away to somewhere kinda doomy.
So Mac tries to take them down, one on four, they tase him, knocking him out, and Dylan is grief-stricken and horrified and we really do need to be glad they're not mounties, because they'd probably do to him what they did to Robert Dziekanski, and no one needs another dead body.
Okay, maybe it's too soon, but there's only so lighthearted I can get with this, I'm too aggravated.
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So, we come back from the commercial break and Dylan and Mac have been dragged into the camp assembly room and Hall is filled with glee over his catch. Evan is trying to keep up his front, but Hall's worked out that Evan was busy keeping him distracted while Dylan and Mac ran their information raid on the lab.
There's still a moment for Mac and Evan to exchange almost tender, very speaking glances. As long as they keep that up, I'm not letting this 'ship go.
Hall pretty much says that if Evan doesn't do what he says, he's sending Dylan and Mac to prison. Evan is in a corner, even as Dylan expresses her willingness to go to prison over this and keep Hall's skeevy hands out of things. But Evan can't let them do that.
He takes a moment to exchange a long a searching look with Dylan.
Then another long and searching look with Mac.
Then he agrees. Hall gets Evan's tech, gets Evan's next invention, gets full cooperation or the two go to prison.
Maybe it's a threesome they're having. You think?
First we have the requisity time lapse photography of Cross Photonics, because we'd nearly gone a whole episode without time lapse and something bad might have happened if we didn't use it. Maybe someone's being blackmailed by someone with a specialty in time lapse.
This is when the lady of soundtrack sorrow (Concept trademarked by cleolinda industries) begins to sing. In one of those moments where they use wordless (or unintelligible in this case) singing in the background to add to the pathos of the moment, Mac and Evan share a long look, Mac nods and they start forward. Slowly. Very slowly. There's a lot of slow happens here.
They're up to something with the Mac in the freezer. Our Lady of Soundtrack Woe continues to sing softly in the foreground.
Ken is being taken back to his cell. He sees something. The world slows to a dramatic crawl. It's Angelika.
It is Angelika trading sweet, deep looks with him. Oh my God, I 'ship them so much. Except that Ken's horrified to see her, and she's cold as ice.
Theeeeeeeeeeeeeyy crooooooooossssss paaaaaaaaaaaatttthhhhhhsssss, eeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyeeesssss oooooooonnnnnnnnn eeeeeeeeeaaaaaach oooooooootttttthhhhhhhheeeeeeeerrrrrrrr (hey, this is in North America, we say the 'r's at the end of words, I can totally do that) loooooooooooocked oooooooooonnnnnnnn . . . okay, I'm tired of the ent-speak. They keep staring at each other, going from Ken to Ange, her head turning to follow him until it's too far and she has to turn back forward or else walk into a wall. Also because if her head turns much further someone would have to call a priest in before she started vomiting pea soup. I suspect Ange is too much of a prude for public masturbation with a cross.
Although private masturbation with a Cross . . .
We cut to Dylan, Evan, Mac and Toby, in black, in a graveyard, the women with calla lilies (I think they're calla lilies) and we suddenly know what they were up to with the Mac-in-the-Freezer. Ken sees his doom, the cell, coming up, knows there's no hope he'll leave it.
Ange is there, all weepy eyes and knocking on effing Hall's office door what the hell is she doing is she crazy oh my god is he expecting her is she having an affair with him or just is now his flunky I can't even . . .
Over all of this Our Lady of Soundtrack Sorrow continues to be incomprehensible, because I think there's words, but I can't tell what they are, someone who's better at French than me listen because maybe I'm missing something thataways.
(Oh my God, Ange, what are you doing?)
Ken walks slowly into his cell, clearly numb. Mac stares down at the grave of his AU self, contemplating . . . something, while the others give him comforting pats as they leave, Toby and Dylan having put their flowers on the grave. Evan is the last to leave, but for once Mac doesn't acknowledge Evan at all.
Ken sinks onto his cot, clearly in despair, because all his scheming, wide-eyed innocence, sarcasm, intelligence and everything has come to nothing. Mac turns his back on the past he never had and walks slowly away, because ARC!Mac has been laid to rest finally.
With a nod to every soldier who ever died ever, a nod to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a counterpoint and emphasis on Ken Leeds, who has metaphorically died, he has certainly 'given up his life' for others to live in a more metaphysical sort of way than literal, we go from the deeply affecting gravestone to Ken, staring into nothingness in contemplation.
And lastly to the final shot, the bolt on the door being shot home. It's all over.
See you next week folks, for part one of two and probably more overuse of the dramatic Dun, dun, duuuuuuuuuun!!!!!!
Go on to Episode 12
Back to Primeval Archive
So, this episode is this sort of episode:
A lot.
So, we get a cold open on Dylan and Mac being chased through some boiler rooms somewhere, both of them wearing lab coats, ending on them waiting in terror for the men chasing them to catch up to them in their hiding spot.
Yeah, that's only the first occurence you'll get of this sort of video.
So, Ken's been in prison and has been brought out to see this guy, in a room I could have sworn I've been in when I was at summer camp when I was twelve. It's an odd sort of interrogation room, very grade school chic. But I digress. This is Colonel Anderson Hall emerging from the super-sekrit door behind the mural.
So, Col. Hall asks Ken about the failed op to recapture the bird, about Ken being on the scene, about how the failure could totally be pinned on him.
In an amazing act of naivte, Ken tries to suggest it's all Major Smarm Douglas' fault things failed, and the Col. makes it rather clear that he's fully aware that Ken tranqed Ahab Douglas. This cues the first of many flashbacks. Ken's really not sure what to say to that, especially after his whole bid to get his handcuffs taken off.
I told you there'd be a lot of these.
In an amazing break with the usual, this establishing shot of Cross Photonics is not done with time lapse photography for only the second time in the series thus far.
Then while Dylan stomps around irritably in the background, dragging cases around and ranting about how everything is Ken Leeds' fault, Toby and Evan are trying to figure out what the security card Leeds left them is supposed to open. They're hacking around and Toby is chiding Dylan for naming the Leggy, as though Dylan was the one to do it (I miss Leggy so much, and as of right now I'm in denial and pretending he ran back to the Pleistocene and became BFFs with Danny and they ran around having Benny Hill-like adventures with Molly and possibly Doctor Who and . . . hmm . . . Donna, I think. Yeah, Donna. I think she and Danny would have the best snark-fest -- maybe this shouldn't have been a parenthetical, it's awfully long).
Ahem.
They're having a lot of trouble with it and Dylan is very snide about the whole thing. Then Evan tells Toby that the hacking skills he's been trying to have plausible deniability about are needed to see if they can't track down the lock for the key card.
So, Hall asks about Leggy's death, about how he came to be shot in the head (la la la I can't hear yoooouuuu!!!). Cue another flashback, this time of Dylan shooting Leggy in the head (Leggy! No --- no. Deny, deny, deny), remembering wiping down the gun to take away her fingerprints.
So, Ken is earnest and tries to pass off shooting Major Smarm as hallucinations caused by ketamine, as "Sometimes people have different versions of events," and tries to keep the cover-up going on behalf of Dylan. but Hall is onto him. All but accusing him of covering up for the civilians.
So, Dylan is still snarking, this time about the illegalities of hacking the national defense systems, while Evan and Toby just roll their eyes and Toby keeps hacking away. She finds a hole in the system.
It's inside a nondescript building, wherein we hear a familiar sound. It's the grating whine and high-pitched noises of a phone modem. You remember those? These ones:
It's Ken's computer in the old Project Magnet office. He left it on and Toby hacks into the system through it. And then can't go further because she doesn't recognise the programming language. It's Fortran. I'll let Wikipedia fill in the blanks because I'm too lazy to look up a truly reliable source, but basically it's a programming language from the 50s. Which Evan knows, so he takes over, zipping through the system and setting it up to download everything on there in order to figure out what the hell is going on.
Cut back to Leeds and Hall. Leeds was authorised to help Evan, not put Project Magnet at his disposal. Leeds declares that he had thought he had latitude to make decisions in a grey area like that. Hall smacks him down, and when Leeds points out that if this is a court martial there should maybe be a judge or lawyers, Hall explains that since this is so top secret, things like due process don't exist.
Then Hall says he's trying to save the world, and I pretty much decide that until we hear otherwise, I'm going to cheerfully assume Helen got to him in her spare time, in between courting Philip. I think it's a reasonable assumption. Hall also asks why, if Project Magnet has been performing surveillance on paranormal stuff for decades Evan Cross got there first, and Leeds answers with his usual butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth innocence, "Because one ate his wife, sir. Well . . . most of her."
In an absolutely grimly appropriate cut, Dylan, looking about furtively for Evan, informs Toby that she's found the police report on Brooke's death. Then, before leaving to take the result of their download of everything in Project Magnet's archives to Evan, she passes the report to Toby, one would assume to hide it from Evan.
Who knows, maybe this will lead to something later on. Maybe.
Ken claims he was the one to make contact with Evan, that Evan only trusts him, so he should be left to liaise with Evan and his team. Hall points out that someone else contacted Leeds first, and that someone wasn't Evan.
It was Ange's legs, striding down a hallway, in a shot that is really far too long to be anything but the opportunity for someone too admire them. They are very nice, after all. Then there's more flashback of their first meeting from the first episode, and this is becoming quite the flashback ep.
And Evan is complaining that Leeds called Ange 'striking' three times in his initial report. Dylan, who is being really quite catty this episode, inquires if Evan is jealous, and Evan is . . . yeah, he's totally presenting as jealous as he declares that it's not the point.
Toby meanwhile has found a supposedly empty and abandoned building that the card is supposed to work on, and they start making plans to break into the lab there where Leggy was tormented before being killed let free to roam through time as Danny's sidekick titannis. It'll be a spinoff. Danny and Leggy Do Prehistory.
Hall declares that the way to get to Cross is Angelika Finch, and Ken tells him that since Ange and Evan had a falling out he, Leeds, is the only one with a way in. Hall declares that what they need to do is cut out the middle man.
This leads to a cut directly to a bunch of soldiers running through Evan's factory, pounding on the door of the Super-Sekrit Dino-Hunting Hideout. Then he calls in a guy with one of those one-man battering rams. He rams the door, once, twice . . .
"Just a minutes!" sings Evan from inside.
He graciously opens the door, smirks as he informs the soldier that he can't comply with any orders to give him technology because there's nothing there to seize, then gets arrested and carted off. He is dragged to the top secret military hideout, the one that looks like a summer camp meeting room for rainy day activities and assemblies, and finds out they've kidnapped Mac. Who is unhappy to see Evan. I can only assume he was hoping to break out the handcuffs in a more congenial setting.
Well, okay, he accuses Evan of dragging him back into things, as though it's Evan's fault Hall is a jerk. It's really kind of a lover's tiff sort of argument. I bet the makeup sex when they finally get past this will be really great.
This is when Evan gets to meet Hall for the first time. He determinedly tells Hall that Mac isn't part of his team anymore, demanding that they let Mac go, at least. Mac is hauled off unceremoniously and Evan heads into the lion's den to chat.
Boy, these are harder to find than you'd think.
Mac is dragged out of the building, wanting to know how the hell he's supposed to get home from the middle of freakin' nowhere, because let's be frank, middle of nowhere in BC can be a helluva a lot of nowhere. The soldier doesn't answer him, just unlocks the cuffs and walks away.
It turns out that Dylan followed them when Evan was taken, and she talks Mac into coming with her to find out what the hell they're up to in the lab. Mac is dubious, but lets himself be convinced. I shall now take a break from 'shipping my P:NW OTP and comment that Dylan and Mac remain very cute together and I'd love to see them have a wild affair with lots of monkey sex. I mean, as long as Evan's going to have his hangups about Brooke and Ange and guilt and dinosaurs there's no reason Dylan and Mac shouldn't have a good time, right?
So, Hall is all, "We've gotten off on the wrong foot," and "You're filing for bankruptcy?"
And Evan's all, "Yep. Bankruptcy."
"How convenient."
To which I say, dude, if you knew how bad a CEO the man is, you would not say that. He doesn't need a keeper, he needs a ringmaster and a lion tamer and whips and chains and a chair and this metaphor totally got away from me in a totally different direction than I intended.
Yeah. Right.
So, they have backs and forths about civil rights and liberties and there's X-Files and Guantanamo written all over this. Because Hall wants Evan's detectors and is making vaguely threatening comments about having been able to seize them if he wanted to, trying to pretend that he's not playing hardball. It's the sort of commentary that makes people make faces. Like Evan's as he contemplates that notion.
Or this face.
In a return of the dramatic flashback, we see Leggy as he runs from the dumpster Evan first saw him in last episode. We see the closeup of his leg, we then see Evan angrily telling Hall that he saw the scars on Leggy. Hall is all, "Well, obviously I'm making a dinosaur army for World War Three," and Evan is, well . . . yeah. That face.
Because that's just annoying. Then Hall tries to feed him some bullshit about how good scientists have open minds and bad scientists think they already know the answer. To which I offer a quote from my grade seven homeroom teacher.
"Don't be so open-minded your brains fall out onto the floor."
I do rest my case, ladies and gentlemen.
So, Dylan and Mac are hiding in the bushes, Mac unsure that they should be breaking in, more in terms of practicalities of escape than anything else, and Dylan is very dismissive of his trauma over seeing his own dead self on ice and his attempts to research the A-R-C thing, which has been scrubbed off the internet entirely.
That must be a job and a half. Do you suppose Lester's got someone on staff whose job it is to scan the internet and crash and wipe every single website, picture, video, etc. of ARC-related stuff?
A truck comes along and security is so lax they can cling to the bottom and sneak in that way, to get past the security perimeter. Man, this is even worse than the guy who wouldn't properly check the women's washroom last week.
So, Dylan and Evan manage to get in, starting on their way to check out this secret lab.
Hall apparently has a whole team of scientists that are coming up with a plan that's gonna benefit everybody. Now he really starts sounding like he's been talking to Helen. When Evan asks why the plans were being kept a secret from Leeds, who was, after all, supposedly in charge of the team, Hall cheerfully tells Evan that Leeds is a liar.
Hall brings Leeds in, all, "I think it's time we tell Mr. Cross the truth."
So, after a commercial break we come back to Leeds claiming that the natural courses of extinction mean that obviously it's totally fine to take animals out of the timeline. Leeds also, in a moment of unbelievable stupidity, tries to compare stealing an animal out of time to not being worries about being struck by lightning. Then Evan tries to make a point and Hall says that if Mr. Cross is right they may have made a big mistake.
I think the old man kind of covers my reaction to that. So, we cut back to Dylan and Mac, wandering around a secret lab that looks like nothing so much as an elementary school, minus the colourful grade school paraphernalia. Really, it doesn't even look 1950s industrial, just . . . school-like. It's distinctly unimpressive, which I suppose is good camoflage, but still.
They find their way to the locker room, Mac steals a pen, and while Dylan stands watch, he breaks into the lockers using bits of deconstructed pen. I am duly impressed, and I don't even care if people do it all the time. They steal lab coats and start exploring the facility, now entering bits that look like a sci-fi'ed up grade school.
Evan paces angrily, arguing with Leeds about dinosaur stealing and with Hall about his stupid and finds out that Leeds has been in and out of the anomalies collecting specimens for Col. Hall. Evan can't believe what he's hearing, and we cut to Dylan and Mac who can't believe what they're seeing. A dead and chopped up pachycephalosaurus and a thing in a display case. I don't know what that is.
And Dylan, as is her wont, starts emoting and empathising. Remembering seeing the headbutty cuteness of the pachycephalosaurus in a flashback to better days of headbutty cuteness.
And lays a hand on the animal, as though she's got some sort of touch-psychic power or something, I don't know. It's all very Grey Owl and Pocahontas as she feels the animal's pain and remembers her flashback of the tranqed pachycephalosaurus and reassuring him that he's going home.
She continues to emote at us, recalling the ornitholestes and how they'd been hoping to get them home from the woods.
Then her coup de grace. She emotes at a foot. Really, she is a champion empathiser. Just, only for animals and dead people. Mac clearly gets very short shrift from her. I suppose if he wants her to feel sorry for him, he'd better grow some extraneous fur, some scales or find a way to die horribly.
Anyhow. Leeds, you have been a butthead.
Which is sort of the point that Evan makes to Leeds and Hall. Because Leeds is all, "I was trying to do the right thing," and Evan asks, "And what is the right thing?
So, Mac and Dylan are taking pictures of everything, now that Dylan's finished dripping angst all over everything in sight, when there is a slam and a thud and they are warned by the dramatic strings that they must flee. Well, okay, there's more brass in that, but you know what I mean.
So, Leeds is sent away and Evan is informed by Hall that they've sent fifty-three teams through on retrieval missions, and as Evan can see, nothing has changed. Then he starts talking about going back in time to seed oceans with magic algae to prevent global warming. Because Hall has two small children and he wants to save the world, for them. God knows if he just wanders through time, willy-nilly he can just fix everything.
Evan points out that the only way to find out if it'll work is to do it, but if they do there's no way to fix it if they screw up. There's no do-overs.
But Hall's not done yet. He has a dramatic reveal for Evan. "But sometimes we do get do-overs." After all, just look who's coming through the door. It's Ange. God help us all. And there she is, shooting that slightly pouty vaguely Cindy Crawford look of reproach at Evan, as she always does.
And Evan's kinda like this, and the rest of us are kinda all with him on that.
We catch up with Dylan and Mac, arguing and Dylan attracting attention like whoah, and if this wasn't going to be top-heavy with borrowed pics and YouTube I'd probably put something in here too. But I won't. Anyhow, they're coming up on the exit when they see a bunch of soldiery type people coming in, and now the building that started out looking like a school looks like a hospital that probably closed down in the 50s.
So, we pick up with the chase scene that we started with in the open, and I wonder why we started with this chase, save for the drama, as though they couldn't have used the whole Leeds in prison thing for their teaser instead of this, because it's really kind of silly.
And Dylan shouting the whole way. "Oh!" "Uh!" "Crap!" actually, that last one she practicall shrieks, and I wonder how it was she has not figured out that they probably don't even need to chase the pair of them, they can follow them by Dylan's squawking the whole way down. Which they do. Then they hit on one of those, "Please please please don't let them look around the corner," kinds of hiding places, and they do, but they miss on checking the effing door there. Which is small, yes, but they don't check it. So naturally Dylan and Mac come crawling out of that.
See third pic above.
Evan can't believe what he's seeing, and Hall starts to play Father Confessor. And she falls for it.
So, Evan tries to convince Ange that she's being stupid, why is she there, these are bad people . . .
"Evan, Project Magnet has what we never had. Resources, the ability to control these creatures!" Note that she doesn't really seem to either notice or care about Evan's point that they're bad people. Either she doesn't believe him or she doesn't care, who knows? The point is, you suddenly want to throttle her.
And Hall is smirking internally as he gets all, "Awkward!" Evan is not amused, and Hall really starts in on the whole, big gentle eyes and understanding looks schtick. Well, she gets defensive at first while Evan paces in the background, agitated, but then Hall asks the big question, why did she agree to come here?
And he's very understanding as she starts talking about things on her conscience, and I keep waiting for him to break out the rosary and call her My Child. She starts talking about Sam and the other guard, how they died, how Ken had fixed it to make it go away, "But it didn't go away. I knew those people." And then she tries to throw blame at Evan. She's all about saying that all he did was ask her to cover it up. It's like she's pretending he never broke down and cried on her shoulder, she's acting like she never made him get to know all his employees, she pretty much gets Evan staring at her incredulously, because he can't believe his best friend is throwing him under the bus like this.
"You mean the industrial accident," he says with a barely concealed smirk. He's prompting her, half pretending that he didn't know a thing about it. He's playing her like a lute and Evan looks about ready to leap across the table and . . .
Yeah. That.
Then we get a flashback of the two security guards dying, which if you'll recall was because Sam didn't warn the guy, he didn't wait for backup, she didn't think to hide somewhere instead of running all over . . . and thus the snarfling.
And Evan tries to get Ange to understand that this is an evil government operation and they'll be doing terrible things and why can't she see through this. And Ange leaps to her feet in fury, telling Evan that if he's so concerned about what they're doing he should get involved, change things from the inside. They can take Wolfram and Hart and turn it from a Bad law firm to a Good one!
And Hall sits there, continuing to exude practiced nonchalance and innocence, goading them.
And Ange walks away, tears in her eyes, after informing Evan that she's taking the job with the Sun Group and she'll be gone for a while. And Evan is just trying to keep up now, because Hall is a bastard and willing to use every bit of emotional manipulation he can to get Evan to buckle, including airing dirty laundry everywhere.
Mac and Dylan are trying to escape. Sort of. They get out of the air vents or whatever would have that huge grille in front of it, and when Mac says that they should leave, Dylan insists they stay to find out what's going on. And while it's pretty obvious there's more going on, I can't help but wonder at the mentality that says that they should keep risking capture over this. But despite Mac's misgivings they keep on looking.
And there are stacks and stacks of samples and a computer program that is called "Chromista Las System". Which Mac points at, saying, "Chromista." I can only assume to tell the viewer it's Important. And Dylan explains that Chromista is the kingdom to which algae belong. So, the plan to seed ancient oceans with algae really is in development. I can only assume Hall and his people are in denial about the effects lampreys and zebra mussels have had on the Great Lakes and the imported critters have had on Australia and the areas of choking misplaced algae on other aquatic ecosystems.
They keep looking, Mac discovering bacterial samples and Dylan finding the growth charts, because they're not just making algae, they're probably trying to make biological weapons or something. Beautiful. They've been taking bacterial samples out of the dinosaurs for purposes unknown.
Do you have any idea how much I miss the old Primeval where you could trust parts of the government?
So, Evan has been taken away somewhere and Leeds is called into this room that still looks to me like it belongs at a summer camp or a school and not a super-sekrit government facility.
Leeds is denied permission to speak freely and gamely goes ahead anyhow. He took the initiative when the government just wanted him to go away. He led the teams, he got the samples, he informed the government and they should keep that in mind when they sentence him for tranqing a fellow soldier.
Looking earnestly up at the colonel, Ken declares that he's sure Evan will do what's right, that he'll save lives, that he'll help and that he trusts Evan. And when Hall asks, he says, yes, he's on Evan's side. Hall says Ken's going to prison. Unless he plays ball. And by playing ball, that means, "Whatever deception you need to do in order to get Cross to work with us."
Ken refuses, so he's going back to prison. Period.
Hall waits until everyone is out of earshot, loses the smug grin and pitches a hissy fit, because no one is doing what they're supposed to.
Dylan and Mac are taking pictures of everything, because a microscope will tell you so much, when soldiers come bursting in and take them captive. They're going to get marched away to somewhere kinda doomy.
So Mac tries to take them down, one on four, they tase him, knocking him out, and Dylan is grief-stricken and horrified and we really do need to be glad they're not mounties, because they'd probably do to him what they did to Robert Dziekanski, and no one needs another dead body.
Okay, maybe it's too soon, but there's only so lighthearted I can get with this, I'm too aggravated.
This message has been brought to you by grilled cheese and coffee!
So, we come back from the commercial break and Dylan and Mac have been dragged into the camp assembly room and Hall is filled with glee over his catch. Evan is trying to keep up his front, but Hall's worked out that Evan was busy keeping him distracted while Dylan and Mac ran their information raid on the lab.
There's still a moment for Mac and Evan to exchange almost tender, very speaking glances. As long as they keep that up, I'm not letting this 'ship go.
Hall pretty much says that if Evan doesn't do what he says, he's sending Dylan and Mac to prison. Evan is in a corner, even as Dylan expresses her willingness to go to prison over this and keep Hall's skeevy hands out of things. But Evan can't let them do that.
He takes a moment to exchange a long a searching look with Dylan.
Then another long and searching look with Mac.
Then he agrees. Hall gets Evan's tech, gets Evan's next invention, gets full cooperation or the two go to prison.
Maybe it's a threesome they're having. You think?
First we have the requisity time lapse photography of Cross Photonics, because we'd nearly gone a whole episode without time lapse and something bad might have happened if we didn't use it. Maybe someone's being blackmailed by someone with a specialty in time lapse.
This is when the lady of soundtrack sorrow (Concept trademarked by cleolinda industries) begins to sing. In one of those moments where they use wordless (or unintelligible in this case) singing in the background to add to the pathos of the moment, Mac and Evan share a long look, Mac nods and they start forward. Slowly. Very slowly. There's a lot of slow happens here.
They're up to something with the Mac in the freezer. Our Lady of Soundtrack Woe continues to sing softly in the foreground.
Ken is being taken back to his cell. He sees something. The world slows to a dramatic crawl. It's Angelika.
It is Angelika trading sweet, deep looks with him. Oh my God, I 'ship them so much. Except that Ken's horrified to see her, and she's cold as ice.
Theeeeeeeeeeeeeyy crooooooooossssss paaaaaaaaaaaatttthhhhhhsssss, eeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyeeesssss oooooooonnnnnnnnn eeeeeeeeeaaaaaach oooooooootttttthhhhhhhheeeeeeeerrrrrrrr (hey, this is in North America, we say the 'r's at the end of words, I can totally do that) loooooooooooocked oooooooooonnnnnnnn . . . okay, I'm tired of the ent-speak. They keep staring at each other, going from Ken to Ange, her head turning to follow him until it's too far and she has to turn back forward or else walk into a wall. Also because if her head turns much further someone would have to call a priest in before she started vomiting pea soup. I suspect Ange is too much of a prude for public masturbation with a cross.
Although private masturbation with a Cross . . .
We cut to Dylan, Evan, Mac and Toby, in black, in a graveyard, the women with calla lilies (I think they're calla lilies) and we suddenly know what they were up to with the Mac-in-the-Freezer. Ken sees his doom, the cell, coming up, knows there's no hope he'll leave it.
Ange is there, all weepy eyes and knocking on effing Hall's office door what the hell is she doing is she crazy oh my god is he expecting her is she having an affair with him or just is now his flunky I can't even . . .
Over all of this Our Lady of Soundtrack Sorrow continues to be incomprehensible, because I think there's words, but I can't tell what they are, someone who's better at French than me listen because maybe I'm missing something thataways.
(Oh my God, Ange, what are you doing?)
Ken walks slowly into his cell, clearly numb. Mac stares down at the grave of his AU self, contemplating . . . something, while the others give him comforting pats as they leave, Toby and Dylan having put their flowers on the grave. Evan is the last to leave, but for once Mac doesn't acknowledge Evan at all.
Ken sinks onto his cot, clearly in despair, because all his scheming, wide-eyed innocence, sarcasm, intelligence and everything has come to nothing. Mac turns his back on the past he never had and walks slowly away, because ARC!Mac has been laid to rest finally.
With a nod to every soldier who ever died ever, a nod to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a counterpoint and emphasis on Ken Leeds, who has metaphorically died, he has certainly 'given up his life' for others to live in a more metaphysical sort of way than literal, we go from the deeply affecting gravestone to Ken, staring into nothingness in contemplation.
And lastly to the final shot, the bolt on the door being shot home. It's all over.
See you next week folks, for part one of two and probably more overuse of the dramatic Dun, dun, duuuuuuuuuun!!!!!!
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