Persons Unknown S1E4: Exit One

"Never make major business decisions while being held captive."

We have to give this show a lot of credit for one thing: it seems to know exactly when to hit its marks. We were thinking going into this episode that they needed to break out of the story telling mode (abductees try to escape, learning both that any attempt is futile and that one or more of the abductees have a secret). They still hit all those notes last night, but there was a definite feeling of progression by the time the episode ended.

For one, we got confirmation that Renbe is in fact Janet's ex-husband and Megan's father. To which we say "neener neener" to all those commenters who suggested we were smoking crack when we accepted that reveal. Here's the thing about that: this isn't Lost. Or Heroes, or Flashforward or any of a dozen other imitators. This show ends at the end of summer. It's in and out in one season. We could be wrong about this but they really don't have time to get too convoluted on the reveals. When Renbe was revealed to be Janet's ex-husband we tended to believe it if only because clearly the ex-husband is going to come into play at some point and they seemed to have their main cast locked into place for the story.

In a similar vein, Joe's reveal last night had all the foundations already in place. We knew Joe had a secret and we were fairly certain there was a mole in the group. Lo and behold, Joe is the mole. We're not complaining about that. In fact we enjoyed the reveal. We're just saying that we're all so primed for Lost-level plot twists - and to be fair, we're sure they're going to attempt them coming up - but this is a basic locked room mystery in the Agatha Christie mold as much as it is a Twilight Zone or Prisoner rehash. Some of the reveals are going to be mundane in comparison to say, time travel or smoke monsters.

Continuing in that vein, it doesn't seem completely unlikely that Tori's father does in fact have something to do with her captivity. Her flashback revealed that he certainly had good reason to want to get rid of her for a while. To be honest, we found the revelation that he not only may have killed his wife, but that he also literally whored his daughter out to further his career a little over the top in terms of mustache-twirling villainy. That's a bit too Knot's Landing for us. It didn't help that her scene in the gazebo with Graham where all this was revealed was, we're sorry to say, delivered at a high school drama club level of acting. "He destroyed me a long time ago." "I WANT TO GO HOME, DADDY!" A performance worthy of YouTube. Sorry, but it was pretty bad there for a couple of minutes.

But as we said last week, it's best to think of the show as a summertime crossword puzzle. No, the acting isn't first rate and some of the reveals might even seem anticlimactic, but it's weird enough to keep us entertained.

In other town news, Bill the douchey used car salesman who isn't a used car salesman is nonetheless still douchey. And probably a small time criminal. That would explain his ability to hot wire the van and his eagerness to jump straight into blackmail when he finds out Charlie killed his wife. He proposes a chain of private theme parks called "Freshairrr" "Your kids can play without stinky homeless guys again." Unfortunately for Bill, Charlie, like everyone else in town, Has A Secret, which turns out to be that he wasn't so much a grieving husband who ended his wife's suffering so much as he was a stone cold killer. "Maybe my wife didn't have cancer. Maybe I was just tired of listening to her stupid ideas." Never have we cheered so much for a pillow. But alas, the stone cold killer leaves his blackmailer alive for some reason. Should've killed him. That's sure to bite him in the ass at some point.

So Renbe is freaked out and paranoid of mimes and men in blue worksuits until the pudgy not-threatening guy shows up to be pudgy and strangely threatening. He claims not to know anything about the weird white noise phone call thing. The cop guy has a picture of Renbe stalking Janet and Megan in the park, which implies he's changed his appearance as well as his name. Otherwise, wouldn't Janet recognize him? So what exactly is his deal? And what's the favor he asked his bitchy editor?

As for Joe, let's examine for a minute the exchange he had with cultural stereotype who turned out not to be a cultural stereotype Chinese guy. He calls Joe's actions a "level 5 breach of protocol," to which Joe replies, "Don't quote the training manual at me." Joe says he needs to know "the plans for Janet" and says he's not sure he can do this without knowing them. Non-embarrassing cultural stereotype turns serious and asks "Are you threatening withdrawal?" When Joe finally relents, he asks him if he believes in "the process" and tells him he needs to trust in "the results."

Hmmm!

To be honest, that could all mean ANYTHING, although we think it's fair to say that there's something of a military or special ops feel to the whole thing, given the vocabulary they were using. Aside from that, who knows? For us, the fun with a show like this is the ride to the end. At any rate, Joe and Janet have a definite love connection going on now so it'll be interesting to look at his actions going forward. And poor Tori left town with a grin on her face, oblivious to the dangers of cab rides out of town. We can't imagine she's going to survive her experience as well as Joe and Janet did.

As always, if you missed last night's episode, your blog daddies are here to take care of you:



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