This week, this musical montage is at the front of the episode. It’s a nice change.
- The mailman delivers Al’s letter to Celia.
- Aaron is staring at his sleeping daughter.
- Demetri is staring at the Random Wall of Fun.
- Celia is hosting a press conference on her front porch: the future can be changed.
- Mark and Liv are on a romantic weekend at the beach.
- Nicole’s on a cliff pondering her fate, then she’s immediately at the hospital.
- Bryce is drawing his pictures again.
- Dylan and Lloyd are doing magic tricks.
- Everyone welcomes Janis back to the office.
Lloyd is in Dylan’s hospital room, watching coverage of Al’s death and what it means, while writing an email saying that they need to come clean about their role in the blackout.
Janis, now in Stan’s office, is handing over her badge and gun. Stan doesn’t want to think it’s a resignation, and he won’t accept it. He thinks it’s because she’s had a rough couple of days (shot, attacked, and came back to work to find out Al jumped off the building). He just needs her to work. Janis doesn’t know what Al’s game changer means to her and her baby. Stan points out that if Al’s death means anything it’s that their choices still matter.
Dylan and Lloyd are doing magic tricks when Simon walks into Dylan’s room. He knows the little boy and starts to be a little friendly before Lloyd rushes him out of the room. Simon announces that one of the other team members forwarded the email Lloyd sent. He doesn’t want to come clean about anything since he’s still doubting that their team had anything to do with it.
Mark gives Liv a gift but before she can open it, he gets a phone call from Demetri. Turns out that the tattooed assassin showed up in a murder video in Barstow. After an apology to Liv, Mark rushes back from the beach to deal with the situation. When he gets to the office, he greets Janis, and she gives him flowers for Liv as a thank you for stitching her back together. She has a present for Mark, too. Photos from the crime scene!
The murder victim might not be important, but Dem’s going to check into him anyway. In the meantime, they’re going to talk to the eyewitness who shot the video. If they can find tattoo guy and lock him up, then he won’t be there on April 29 shooting at Mark. He wants to prove Al’s theory that the future can be changed right.
At the hospital, Liv opens her gift. They’re a lace bra and panty set that looks a little too familiar seeing as they’re the exact set she’s wearing in her flash forward. Personally, I think that’s just wrong. Wearing lingerie your husband gave you when you’re cheating on him with a guy he already knows about? Please, that’s what Victoria’s Secret is for, people. The married panties and the cheating panties should be kept separate.
But that’s only my opinion.
Bryce knocks on the door and asks if everything’s okay. He gives her the rundown of what ‘s happened while she was gone. People came in, some lived, some died, everyone had visions Bryce wanted to get talky about. Just another day at the hospital.
Tracy is having a huge nightmare. She wakes up screaming and then starts hoping around the room, looking for her prosthetic leg. She doesn’t want to talk about what’s wrong with her, and now that she’s back, he can’t figure out why she doesn’t even want to tell her mother she’s alive. If he’s going to keep her secret, he needs answers now.
Liv discovers that Dylan is STILL in the hospital. He was supposed to be released while she was gone, and something tells me that wasn’t a coincidence. Bryce explains that he was complaining of pain and he’s got DVT. Bryce guesses that Liv’s annoyance about Dylan’s presence in the hospital has more to do with Lloyd than Dylan himself. Lloyd interrupts and starts asking questions about Dylan’s condition, but then Simon walks up and starts taking over the interrogation. He introduces himself as a friend of the family who’d like to take Lloyd out for a little while. Is Dylan well enough to be left alone? When Liv confirms that he is, and actually that he’ll probably be ready for discharge in a couple of days, Simon tells Lloyd pointedly that that means he’s absolved of any guilt, parental or otherwise. As Liv and Bryce walk away, Simon admires her legs. He asks if Lloyd is sleeping with her, and he tells him that that’s none of his business. Actually, everything Lloyd does from now on is Simon’s business since he’s a loose cannon. He proposes that they settle this in a “civilized” manner, the same way that they settled whose name went first on the application for the Sloan Fellowship:
Texas Hold-Em, No Holds Barred. If Lloyd wins, they go public; if Simon wins everyone keeps his or her mouth shut. Simon points out that the gods did it all the time. When Lloyd balks at being called a god, Simon asks what else he would call having 20 million deaths on his shoulders.
Demetri, Mark, and Janis go to talk to Ingrid but find out that the tattooed guy might have gotten to her first. The Barstow homicide cop handling the case points out a lucky coincidence though: tattooed guy got the wrong roommate.
Simon and Lloyd are playing cards with two other people. Lloyd’s not doing well. Simon says that when he loses, he’ll be glad that he was prevented from confessing to a mass murder. This alarms the other three (the players and the dealer), but Simon explains it as a Manchester figure of speech.
Ingrid’s in custody, talking about what she saw in the alley. 911 put her on hold, so she used her cell phone to shoot the video. The victim gave his assassins a case, but the rest of her memory is pretty sketchy. She thinks she heard something like “Q.E.D.,” but she couldn’t tell them what that meant.
At the game, one of the players starts making small talk about the vision changing and the inevitability index that’s in all the papers these days. Simon says it’s a crock. The future can’t be changed since fate is predetermined. Then, he too says “Q.E.D.” Lloyd says it’s typical Simon behavior…do something wrong and then hide behind intellectual rhetoric. Simon claims that Lloyd’s not the only one who lost someone, but when Lloyd presses for an answer, he won’t say who he’s talking about.
Nicole is thinking about her vision at the hospital. Liv knows what she saw, and she and Mark are worried about her. Nicole says she shouldn’t be because the future can change. Everything’s back to being up to them again.
Tracy’s ready to talk. She tells him she’s been on the run because they were fired on by Jericho PMC (a Blackwater-type operation), supposed friendlies. They knew she knew about a raid that they had done in which an entire village was slaughtered. The Humvee attack was meant for her. She thought she was the only one who survived, and since she lost her leg, that’s how her DNA ended up in the remains. She doesn’t want anyone to know because it’s not safe. So Aaron meets with Mark and shows him the picture he took of Tracy. He trusts Mark to keep their secret safe and to look into the Jericho situation.
That night, Mark’s talking around what he saw with Tracy. He doesn’t use names, but he thinks that this might mean that visions are set in stone after all. Liv thinks they just might have to work harder to make sure they don’t. Mark’s a little surprised that Liv’s not wearing his present. She asks what the point would be since he’ll just take it off her. In actuality, she’s thrown them away.
Back at the office, Mark, Dem, and Janis are walking through a plan with Stan. They want to use Ingrid as bait to draw the bad guys out. Mark’s confident that they’ll try to hit her tonight, so all they have to do is protect her and wait. Besides, they’re pretty sure they have a mole in the department. If they catch the tattooed guys tonight, they might be able to figure out who that is.
Tracy and Aaron are having tea. He tells her that he told Mark, and she flips. He reminds her of her flash forward. The fact that she even had one proves she’s going to be alive. Guess he missed the whole Al thing. He describes a guy he saw, and Tracy recognizes him as the field medic who treated her.
Dem and Mark are watching outside the building where Janis and Ingrid are tending to her birds. Dem’s falling asleep in the car and tells Mark that now that Zoe knows what’s coming, she wants him to quit the FBI. Dem won’t do that though. Ingrid tells Janis that in her flash forward, she was blonde and living in New York. She can’t believe she’d ever give up her birds, but at the end of “all this,” she wants Janis to take one as a thank you gift. Janis says that if she loves her birds she wouldn’t make that offer.
Suddenly they’re interrupted. Janis follows a noise, and once the lights go out, Dem and Mark rush into the building. They see the tattooed guy, but instead of taking him into custody, Mark forgets that whole finding-the-mole plan and kills him.
Outside, Janis explains to Ingrid that they can’t protect her on their own. They need to put her in witness protection, and Ingrid is surprisingly okay with this. She thinks it was her future all along.
Back at the world changing series of poker, Simon’s feeling confident. He proposes that their hand is Winner Take All. Simon thinks he’s won with a four of a kind, but Lloyd pulls out a Straight Flush and takes the whole thing. He invites the Dealer to keep the chips. He got what he came for. When Simon asks how he beat him, Lloyd flashes the Ace he’d really had in his hand and explains that sleight of hand is Dylan’s favorite magic trick. As a compromise, Simon can hit the first draft of the announcement, though.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the hobbit is beyond ticked.
Back at the office, Dem confronts Mark about killing the tattooed guy. Was it about taking him out first? Because that’s what Dem was thinking. He doesn’t really blame Mark. After all, he would have too.
Janis is looking up sperm donation on Wikipedia, and Stan comes up behind her. He gives her an affectionate squeeze, which coupled with the kiss on the cheek he gave her at the beginning of the episode makes me wonder if the solution to her lack of man issue is a lot closer than we might think…something to ponder, considering that she’s not that embarrassed about her Wiki search.
But hey, it’s not all about the personal projects at the FBI. Janis shows Stan an enhanced copy of the Suspect Zero video. There’s something on his hand that looks like a ring. Stan tells her he need s the video blown up a little more. If they can tie the jewelry to the guy wearing it, they might just have a lead.
Mark arrives home to find Liv doing laundry. He tells her that he killed a man because he had a shot at changing their future and he took it. She knows that it’s a problem for him, but maybe April 29th is going to be another day at the office for him because he got to his guy first. They have a second chance.
If Al were here, he’d point out the obvious: it’s a tattoo, not a birthmark. That means other people can have it.
Like, say, the second suspect from Ingrid’s video. He displays his tat when he rolls up on what looks like an airplane hangar and hands a briefcase to another guy with the same tattoo. We also see that same tat on yet another guy loading cases of something outside. The number of people running around with those tattoos makes me wonder if there was a sale at The Ink Store or something. Tattooed guy #34601 brings the case to the man sitting at the table inside the hangar. He opens it, sees that there are only six rings instead of the promised seven (maybe the hobbit got his already?) and makes a remark about how after the first atom bomb test, Oppenheimer remarked that they were “all sons of bitches.” Then, he literally shoots the messenger, or at least guy who brought him the case, and walks away into the darkness.
