So the other night, I’m sitting in a wine bar in Baltimore (Maryland, not Street) talking books with the woman sitting next to me. At one point, she mentioned that her cousin had written a novel that had been turned into a show on ABC this year.
Guess which one she was talking about.
This week’s episode, in my opinion, was the best we’ve seen so far. Huge payoffs on some of the main questions, not as much focus on Dylan and Lloyd (who are really starting to drive me batty with their taking-over-Mark-and-Liv’s-lives thing), and an ending that was so shocking that I had to watch the last few minutes twice to make sure I saw the whole thing.
But we’ll get to that.
The episode opens with someone reading a letter written to a woman named Celia. The author doesn’t know who she is or where she lives, but he does know that she’s a single mom of two little boys. He also knows that she didn’t have a flash forward. As we hear this, we see Celia and her twins approach her car. She finds a note stuck to her windshield that reads, “We know you’re one of us.”
The note is from the same people whose stickers lead Al and Demetri to that house of bodies last week.
Speaking of Dem, he’s in the kitchen working on the computer. He shuts it down when Zoe comes in and jokes that it’s porn. In reality, it’s the blue hand site, www.alreadyghosts.com. Zoe reminds him that he needs to be at the printers at six to pick out a wedding invitation. He asks if she can just do it, and pretty much guarantees that he’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight.
Mark and Liv are in their bathroom getting ready for work. Liv tells Mark that she’s covering the ER again. She goes on and on about how she wishes there was someone else, but since there are only two doctors working at the hospital these days and she doesn’t trust Bryce to save anyone’s life without getting all vision-happy, she’s the only one left. All right, maybe she doesn’t say that, but you know that’s what she was thinking. Mark tells her he trusts her, and she says she trusts him too. But when she walks away, he throws the floss back like he really doesn’t.
In the elevator, Al, Dem, and Mark are talking about how Dem’s relationship with Zoe has completely changed. It’s like even when they’re getting along, he can’t help but do something to piss her off. Mark reminds them it’s a changed world, but Dem misses the old one. Al asks if that was the one in which Dem used to crash on Al’s couch and play Madden until four in the morning. Al also claims that he was cheating, but Dem says that it was simply finding a way to change the game.
The guys make it into the morgue, and they learn that the blue hand group suffered from self-inflicted gunshot wounds even though someone else arranged the bodies and covered them up. One of them is the Rutherford from Al’s flash forward case. Looks like the dominoes are beginning to fall.
Aaron gets to work and finds that some guy who served with Tracy in Afghanistan is waiting for him. Mike Willingham meant to come by earlier, but it’s hard because he’s a little screwed up in the head from the blackout and the usual adjustment to civilian life. He’s been spending a lot of time looking for a job. Mike gives him a knife that Aaron remembers from his flash forward. He hasn’t seen it since Tracy deployed, but she’d made Mike promise that if anything ever happened to her, he’d give it to her father. Aaron’s convinced that it means that “it’s all happening” and that he really will find Tracy alive.
Stan, Mark, Dem, and Al are meeting over the suicides when Fiona walks in. Stan invites Al to say hello to his vision, and they do that “nice to meet you again for the first time” thing. Kind of cute. She explains that she saw the report about Rutherford’s death and hopped on a plane since she knew from her flash forward that she’d be working on the case in the future. Luckily, she came to the right office as far as that line of thinking is concerned, but Stan seems to have forgotten signing off on the Big Board of Randomness that’s taking over Mark’s office and asks what they’ve got in the present. Dem tells them that the people who killed themselves are all ghosts. As in they didn’t have a flash forward. Fiona is concerned. Dem assures her that she’s not the only one.
Dem pulls up the Ghost website, and shows them that the social network the ghosties have set up for themselves. There are events all over the world, including several in LA over the course of the next week. It’s like a book club with bullets. They need to shut them down, and according to the website they need to go downtown tonight to check the time.
Fiona and Al are working on the Rutherford case. He tells her that the dominos seem to be falling into place. Al remembers some of the details from the dossier, but she only remembers him and the bird. He’d left for a phone call, and she was watching the bird. She wanted to do something to help it, but there was nothing. That was the worst part. She asks if what the phone call was about, and he tells her it was his attorney. He claims to Fiona everything was fine, but his flash forward reveals him crying and telling the attorney that he killed her.
Dem’s getting ready to go to the book club with bullets, when Zoe walks in completely ticked. Turns out he really will be sleeping on the couch tonight since guess who forgot to meet her at the printers? She tells him that he’s been checked out since Seattle and the blackout. It’s his excuse for everything. She tells him she needs him to be honest, and he tells her that the more she jumps down his throat, the less he wants to be here. He should probably just make plans to go home with Al tonight since after a comment like that, he’s probably going to wish they had a dog with a dog house.
Nicole is volunteering at the hospital, trying to atone for whatever she’s done in six months time to deserve being drowned. Bryce is skipping an Intern Conference to help out at the ER as well – Bryce seems to be having some problems with commitments considering that earlier we learned he’d also been blowing off his mandatory counseling sessions. Liv pawns Nicole off on Bryce, and they’re about to go do something doctory when a Japanese patient walks over to the nurse’s station freaking out about her flowers.
Mark, Dem, and Al are on their way to “check the time.” They’re also playing fashion police. Dem doesn’t like Al’s cardigan, Mark thinks Dem’s jacket makes him look ridiculous, and Dem points out that the FBI agent in a Police t-shirt (and not the Sting police either) is just over the top. They find the projected clock they’re looking for, and enter the club.
In order to enter, one of them has got to play Russian Roulette. Dem and Mark hesitate, but Al grabs the gun and clicks. Dem thinks that there aren’t any bullets, but the game-leader reveals a live round in the gun. Mark’s ticked at Al for doing that, but Al says, “Not today” and tosses him the bullet on which the same thing is written on the side.
What they find is one of those “anything goes” clubs. The bartender pegs them for newbies, and tells them that the Renault changes at every gathering. When Dem still snarks about how Al could have been killed, he points out that he was fine since he knew he was going to be alive in six months.
Lloyd walks into Liv’s office. He thanks Liv for her help, and since he doesn’t want to ruin her life, he announces that he’s taking Dylan back to San Francisco when the hospital transfer goes through. She’ll do everything she can to take care of it ASAP.
Nicole reveals that she speaks Japanese by calming the woman down and explaining to the astonished group that her dad was stationed in Japan and she’d picked it up. When she came home, she took it in school. Bryce shows her the picture that he drew of his vision. She had a symbol behind her that he doesn’t know how to explain. He knows it’s an Asian character, but he can’t figure out what it means. Nicole realizes that it isn’t finished, and after she draws it for him, she tells him that it’s a Japanese character for “Believe.”
Aaron’s packing up to go home for the night when Mike shows up again. He’s a little weirded out by the way they left things the way they did earlier, and he explains that he was in the Humvee with Tracy when it blew up. As much as Aaron wants to believe, he knows she died. He saw it.
Mark, Dem, and Al are appalled by what they’re seeing, and then Renault shows up. He shows his blue hands and is about to shoot himself in the head when Mark jumps him and the rest of the FBI shows up. Renault claims that he wants it to end, but Mark assures him “Not Today.”
Tonight’s Renault is a former high school teacher named Jeff who freaked out after the blackout. Mark wants to know if it’s because he didn’t have a vision, and Jeff tells them that he actually did have a vision of horrible nothingness in which he didn’t exist and never would again. Al flashes a look at Dem who looks strangely unphased. Mark wants to know how they find these people, and Jeff tells him that they just get on Mosaic and look for folks who didn’t have visions. Guess they didn’t see that one coming.
Dem pulls out the photo of the blue hand that shot Janis. If he doesn’t start talking, they’ll charge him as an accessory after the fact. Jeff says that the script for their conversation has already been written; they can’t escape the inevitable. Al wants to know what would happen if April 29 comes and goes and he’s still here. What then?
Fiona’s packing up for the night, and Al invites to come over for dinner. He’s making a batch of Dirty Rice, his favorite dish. She turns him down due to jet lag. As he’s leaving, he tells Fiona that he’s been thinking about the bird. What if she tapes the window. That way the bird will see it, and not crash into it. It might crash into another one, she says, but admits it’s a nice thought.
Mark and Dem are building the Big Board with the clues they found that night. Dem points out that everyone deals with his ghost status differently. At least Dem doesn’t have the uncertainty. His murder was on a dossier. Mark asks what’s going to happen on March 15, and he thinks he should get angry about what’s coming instead of simply accepting the inevitability of it. Dem points to the Big Board and says that it’s all come true. There’s no way out for him.
Mark, Liv, and Charlie are watching cartoons. When Charlie gets tired, Liv announces that it’s time for bed. She heads up, but Charlie stays downstairs with Mark who suddenly gets teary-eyed.
Al makes his Dirty Rice and remembers his flash forward.
Dem brings Zoe her favorite cinnamon rolls, and a confession. He tells her that he didn’t have a flash forward, and that’s why he’s been such a jerk. Zoe tells him that she knows what she saw, and she’s convinced that they can choose the vision they can believe in. She’s choosing hers because she’s choosing hope.
The next morning, Mike comes back to the phone company at Aaron’s invitation. Aaron thanks him for everything and then offers him a job.
Nicole and Bryce are at Bryce’s place. He’s showing off all the drawings he’s made of the woman. Nicole’s convinced she’s in Japan, and tells him to put his story up on Mosaic.
Al walks silently through the FBI offices, pausing to drop something on Dem’s desk. Then, he takes his jacket off and heads up the stairs. He sees Mark and Dem, but blows off the meeting. Dem grabs the thing off his desk and finds a note from Al attached to the letter he wrote to Celia. Dem’s note reads “There is always a way out.” Concerned, he opens Celia’s letter.
As Mark goes on and on about Renault, we see Al heading to the roof interspersed with images of his flash forward. He learns that she was taken off life support and that the boys will be going to foster care.
Suddenly, Demetri yells at everyone to stop. They rush to the roof and find Al assuming the pose. After a few moments of “We can talk about this,” and “Don’t do it,” Al points out that if he’s not here in six months, then that means that they can change things. What he saw doesn’t have play out the way it did. He found a way to change the game. Then he takes the plunge, complete with the obligatory extra rushing towards the body to make sure that the smashed form on the concrete was utterly and completely dead.
I know. What. The. Frak.
In a voice over, Demetri reads the rest of the letter. In it, Al explains that he’s releasing her from the dread that not having a vision has caused her. It’s his final gift to her.
They take Al’s body away, and as Demetri reads, we see a bunch of things interspersed.
- Celia and her twins
- Stan crying in his office
- Mark coming home and embracing Liv (I’m assuming she doesn’t know about Al.)
- Fiona taping up her window
- Aaron looking at his photo of Tracy
- Bryce drawing his mystery woman
- Nicole flitting around the hospital and passing Dylan’s room
- Simon – who hasn’t been seen AT ALL during this episode – looking at a name bracelet that reads “Annabelle”
- Aaron heading home.
- Demetri and Zoe holding hands at their home
Then Aaron walks into his house. He puts his stuff down and gasps. Sitting at the kitchen table is a woman who says, “Hi Dad.”
Is it Tracy?
