Sunday, July 27, 2014

The Invisible Man 1.18 - Frozen In Time

Plot: We start at an open market, as Darien shops for clothes to match his questionable fashion sense, including a leather jacket with tassels. However, Fawkes soon realizes someone is following him and it turns out to be Kate Easton, the creator of the quantum computer in episode 1.8. She's returned from England because some of her associates have gone missing, and another, who she knows only through online conversations as Hit-O-Rama, has gone into hiding. The Agency can't afford a safe house, so she has to stay with Fawkes. There's a very male gaze sequence where Kate stretches the kinks out after her long flight, which causes uncontrollable invisibility in Darien again. Kate unwittingly takes care of that right quick by telling him she's engaged. Well then.

The next day, Darien tries to convince the Keeper to look into whether Kate's story checks out, without telling her what's going on. Eventually he has to tell her, though I'm not clear on why he was be secretive in the first place. Turns out 16 scientists have gone missing, experts in a variety of fields. Darien and Hobbes return to Fawkes' apartment to find La Llorna from 1.15 hauling Kate away. Turns out La Llorna is actually Allianora (we don't learn that until later in-story, but I had the captions on and they listed her name right off). With Kate abducted, the only hope is to find Hit-O-Rama, but the Internet service provider he's been using is not friendly towards the government snooping around. . . until they find these guys are from Fish & Game, pursuing a vile whale meat smuggler. I laughed out loud just typing that.

So they find him, but he wants no part of anybody, and opens up on them with a shotgun. They decide to wait for Allianora to arrive, capture him, then they'll find out where they're taking them. This leads them to a tractor-trailor with a cyrogenic unit inside, because nobody noticed the really obvious package van following them down an otherwise deserted road. Fawkes distracts the guards outside with a beehive he finds nearby. Aaah bees, they're stinging. And Africanized! He does rescue Hito, and captures Allianora with the same drugs she's been using on the scientists. It turns out that while whoever designed these freezing units has devised a way to safely thaw them out, that window only lasts 48 hours, and Kate's been missing 36 hours. And the Official and Hobbes' attempts to interrogate Allianora fail miserably. Darien cuts to the chase by offering to help her escape in exchange for rescuing Kate.

Escape they do, despite Hobbes putting bullet holes in the drywall. Allianora keeps her world and brings Darien to all the cryo-tubes, as her employers are creating what they call a library. And seeing as they've scrambled his GPS tracker, well, things ain't looking good for Fawkes. Oh no, another faceless goon and he's using the drugging thing on Darien! Oh never mind, Fawkes replaced the sedative with water before he left, and he easily escapes the cyro-tube and rescues Kate. Darien takes her to the hospital and calls Hobbes, but by the time he finds the "library", all the other tubes are gone. In the aftermath, Kate and Darien discuss how she and her fiance will go ahead and get new i.d.s, while Hobbes and the Keeper compare notes in the hallway.

Quote of the episode: Allianora - 'Saving books is useless without the minds that create them.'

The "oh crap" count: 5 (31 overall).

Who's getting quoted this week? Henry Kissinger, who noted even paranoid people have enemies. Probably because they, like Kissinger, are assholes. And someone said opinions are made to be changed, because that's how you get at the truth.

Times Fawkes Goes Into Quicksilver Madness: 0 (6 overall).

Other: Not sure I agree with that quote I used. Presumably other smart people would come along who could build on the things they found in the books.

I notice Darien doesn't have the uncontrollable invisibility issue when he makes out with Allianora.

There's a weird conversation between Darien and Hobbes about who Britney Spears was married to at that time, while they were following Hito's abductors. That was odd. Something else that's strange is that Hobbes is perfectly willing to make dirty innuendo about Fawkes and Kate, but is also unable to actually directly mention sex, as he's demonstrated in the past , such as when dealing with his ex-wife. I guess that's something to do with his difficulties with intimacy.

Speaking of intimacy, he and the Keep are moving closer. He was sleeping in the chair in her office when she and Darien came in. Sure, he says it's because there's no couch in the building where he can nap, but we know better. Keep came with him when they rushed the "library", and sure I think she really wants to get into a gunfight, and yeah, they needed someone to safely thaw people out, but you know she can't get enough of Bobby Hobbes.

Oh yeah, one thing about the freezing. How is it going to help preserve knowledge for a post-apocalyptic world, if you can't thaw the geniuses out after 48 hours? Were they going to hope some other geniuses survived who would figure out a proper thawing for people in longterm deep freeze? I have to assume they already have some method for that, but if so, why have the Keeper describe it in those terms to Darien?

In next week's episode, my single favorite line from this entire series.

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