Everybody has experienced the feeling of waking up in the morning and not knowing where they are. Or at least I hope a lot of people have experienced it, because a lot of the next paragraph is going to sound pretty crazy if that is not the case. So, you wake up, and you are kind of lost. Usually this comes right after a dream that is a little too real. This happens to me during one particular dream sequence I've had. In my dream, I am still in college (I graduated in 2001) and I am about to walk into a test. As I go into the test, I realized I have no idea of the subject matter. I also find out that this test will determine if I graduate or not. I curse myself for having spent the night before getting tanked, stoned, or chasing co-ed tail, but just before pen goes to paper, I wake up. I look at my surroundings, and I realize that I am in my true reality. The sun is coming through the window in my bedroom, and I have to get to work.

Now imagine if you woke up and you were in your alternate reality? Wouldn't you be so confused, especially if you could remember what happened in your "real" life? This is what faced Tom Baldwin in the last episode of the 4400. He wakes up, and everything is different. His son is actually affectionate, and when he goes into work, nobody knows who the 4400 are, including Diana. What the hell is going on? Was the entire thing a dream?

I know what you're going to say, and the whole "what if this whole story we concocted was really a dream" idea has been kicked around in many a television show. I remember when they suggested Buffy was simply crazy and imagining her vampire slayer stylings, a lot of fans of the show almost completely went off the deep end, and to be honest, it is usually a plot line that shows pull out in their fourth or fifth season when things are moving slow.

What about Tom? Like anybody who is going through this type of experience, he first thinks it is a trick, but how can so many people be in on the joke? They tell him that he just got back from medical leave after having been tortured for three weeks after going undercover and then being discovered during a dirty bomb investigation. Tom has no idea what it means, and instead, tries to find what some of the 4400 are doing. He looks up David Navarro (the mind reading baseball player) and he is a hall of famer. He looks up Richard Tyler and he's been killed in action. He looks up Maia Rutledge, and there is actually an address is Seattle for her. When he goes there, he sees Maia Rutledge! Finally, somebody remembers the 4400, except it isn't Maia Rutledge, it is only somebody who looks like what he thinks Maia Rutledge is supposed to look like. It is Maia's granddaughter of course, and Tom realizes that he must be crazy.

When he comes home, his son has thrown him a surprise welcome back party, and he finds out that he is married to a woman named Alana that he has never met before in his life. Searching for answers, Tom seeks out the only thing that gave him a clue that he was sane. When he went to take down the guy who set him up to be tortured, there was a room in the building (an art museum that in the 4400 reality we know belonged to Jordan Collier, who is the Governor in Tom's current reality). Before, it is a black obsidian door and inside he saw some sort of surgery table. Now, it is just a regular door. Still, it's the sanest place he knows, and decides to sleep there until Diana shakes him awake. Apparently, he was in the middle of some storeroom just talking to himself. She says she wants to get to the bottom of this, and with that said, she tranquilizes him.

After Tom wakes up, he is under intense interrogation (and held down with soft restraints). He tells the doctors everything he knows about the 4400, and people are looking at him strangely. They do let his wife visit him, and when she talks to him, she tells him that she is in the same boat as he is. She just met him the day before, and has no memory of them being together, but she does have a memory of the "true" reality Tom also talks about. Not only does she know about the 4400, but she is one. They decide that Tom is going to fake sanity in order to get a chance to get out of the mental hospital and help get to the bottom of what happened.

Posted by J-Unit on July 24, 2005 12:56 AM