Persons Unknown: The Lost Episode

OK, everyone, I know what we’re gonna do today. We’re sending NBC massive amounts of hate mail. At the end of last week’s episode, they announced this week’s two-hour finale… without mentioning the episode they were planning to skip. If you read the comments on last week’s recap, you’d have found out that there’s a Lost Episode between last week and this week. Yep, the Peacock was going to just skip a crucial hour of a plotty suspense series just to get the whole thing over with on time. Hey, we may pick on this crappy show, but it’s our crappy show. Kinda like how you’re the only one allowed to pick on your little brother. So, screw you, Peacock. The show you decided wasn’t worth airing? I’m recapping it anyway. This is why people download shows illegally, morons.

SO. Here’s your Lost Episode recap, and then I’ll do the finale in two parts afterwards. It’ll take longer, but what else have we got to do? The series is over, probably for good based on how the network just threw it under the bus. So, to make a long story short, if you’re reading this and you haven’t seen the lost episode yet–go watch it and then come back. In fact, don’t give the peacock any more money by watching it on their site. I don’t know where else you might find it… but I bet my friend Itbay Orrentay does. I hear he’ll take care of you.

So Janet walks into a funeral with Megan. Whose funeral? Grandma’s? Could it be…

Ding dong, the witch is dead?

Oh, it’s just a dream. Shoot. Janet wakes up as the casket slams shut, and runs to jump in bed with Erika. Erika strokes her hair and talks about how amazing and brave her Bright Eyes is and how much she wants to get into her sweatpants and anyway, she’s getting a bit carried away actually having gotten Janet into bed with her.

Meanwhile in the skies over South America…

The Airplane love continues this week!

Mark hides his severed thumbs inside a box of chocolates to sneak them through customs.

It’s true. You never know what you’re gonna get.

McSmarmy greets Erika and Janet as they emerge from their love nest. He says Janet looks tired. With that silver tongue, she’ll be his in no time. Erika says it’s none of his business and she can take it from there. And now he really wants to make it his business. Instead, he takes a cold shower and decides to switch teams. Down in the barbershop, he engages in some hot shaving action with the old guys. “I can’t wait to get you in this chair,” he says to Bill.

Just clean the lather off it first, k?

McNair happens by and observes that they must be nuts to let The Enemy hold a razor blade to their throats. Bill and his one functioning brain cell scoff, but Charlie looks at himself in the mirror and decides to cowboy up.

I’ll go. I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go.

(Speaking of which: ever hear the theory that Ferris Bueller was Cameron’s alter ego, like in Fight Club? Heard it from Loula. Blew my mind.)

Markat gets through customs with the box of thumbs, somehow, despite getting their alibis completely mixed up. However. Mark’s old cop friend meets them there to book Mark on suspicion of kidnapping Janet. Interesting. Wonder why The Program waited until he was back Stateside to nail him? South America seems like a lot better place to make someone disappear.

Meanwhile, Kat runs straight to work to file the story of a lifetime. Only one problem: she doesn’t work there anymore. Someone else (*cough*The Program*cough*) bought the paper, turned it all respectable, and fired her. “No more Margarita Fridays, no more stories about aliens.”

BO-ring. Hey, check the lower right corner.

Janet, coming in from a long day of shopping out on Main Street, says hello to McSmarmy in the lobby. He makes a clumsy move for her hand. The old fake-stretch-arm-around-the-shoulder would’ve been smoother. On his hand is… a wedding ring. And a scar. He tells Janet a sad sad story about being a school principal and trying to save his family from a fire. I believe approximately none of this blarney. But it works, or so Liam thinks, and so he takes her down to Mission Control to show her all his fancy video equipment, and how they “nudge” the Townies this way and that and see what happens.

“I wouldn’t call the pain wall nudging.”

“And yet it’s been weeks since anyone tried to actually leave the perimeter.”

He has a point. And yet it’s been weeks since I listened to any of these rationalizations of how great The Program is.

Out in the real world, Kat’s lost first her job and now her apartment. The Program has gone all Sandra-Bullock-in-The-Net on her, canceled her cell phone and credit cards, and done everything short of brainwash everyone into thinking they don’t know her. Just in time, along comes our old friend eDick, who tells her they think she stole pain pills from children with cancer and sold it to junkies.

Kat kicks herself for not coming up with a story like this back when she ran a newspaper.

Charlie and Bill meet up at the hotel bar for their second date. Bill is so nervous he’s already started drinking. The date starts out like this:

“I was just thinking about you.”

“That’s a little scary.”

“I have a proposition for you.”

These two have totally had the best lines in the series all summer. Bill thinks the two of them should go ask McSmarmy for a job in The Program, on account of how nice he’s been to them and everything. But Charlie isn’t interested in selling his soul. “Bill, you gotta stop looking for the easy way out of things all the time.”

Does this mean no third date?

Meanwhile, Janet and McSmarmy are on their first date down in Mission Control. It’s going better than it did for me the nerd in your high school who tried to impress chicks by showing them around the computer lab. “If only [the other townies] could understand what awaits them on the other side of all this,” he says.

“Liam, are you even aware of how creepy that sounds?”

They must get Netflix on that rig. He’s obviously watched Star Wars a few too many times.

Darth Smarmy goes on to throw Joe under the bus and talk about how everyone’s personality is just a set of learned habits and no one really has any free will. So she kisses him and asks if that’s a learned habit too. The poor guy tries to toe the Party line, but he can’t resist the Power Of The Dark Side.

Raise your hand if you can resist the irresistable Janet Cooper mojo. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

They come out of the elevator holding hands and (of course) run right into Joe. Awkward! Janet’s even more pissed at Joe now, cuz like, it’s totally his fault he lied to her and then she had to go make out with the computer club dork just to make him jealous.

It totally worked.

McSmarmy pulls his razor. You know Janet is digging the competition.

All we’re missing now is Crazy Eyes joining the fray.

Back home in Frisco, Mark gives the cops his “I know it sounds crazy, but” speech. This works too, because they’re going to turn him loose. The Feds are coming to town to check up on those thumbs, though, so the local cops are going to screw up his paperwork and call it a day.

Meanwhile, the writing’s on the wall in Moira’s room.

SCORE

Now I’d like to introduce a new segment we’ll call Thinly Veiled Lovers’ Quarrels. Part one: Bill complains to Charlie that “you haven’t said a word to me since we had that talk.” Yeah, I know, but wait. It gets better.

“I don’t wanna do this alone. Do it with me.”

Charlie pops Bill upside the head. “Wake up!”

Definitely no third date. Bromance, we hardly knew ye.

Part Two: Erika’s pissed at Janet for seducing McSmarmy. In a last-ditch attempt to out-crazy her competition, Erika tells the truth about how the real Erika was her sugar mama in prison before the guards offed her. She got the tattoo in her honor (or, more likely, while she was still alive, to show whose bitch she was). Janet’s not listening, though, so Erika fixes her crazy eye on Joe for help.

And now for the followup segment: Sloppy Seconds.

Meanwhile, the other two corners of this love rectangle are meeting up out at the gazebo. Liam’s going to pieces cuz he thinks he might actually get some Janet’s got him doubting his life with The Program. No wonder intimacy is forbidden, he says. Dude, that’s just what they told you in training to make you feel better. Wow, McSmarmy hasn’t gotten out much. He’s completely lost it over Janet. She’s feeding him the same line she used on Joe, saying she wants him to escape with her. Liam snaps and runs away, telling Janet to stay away from him or she’ll be sorry.

Obvious statement? You decide.

Meanwhile in the Hall of Doom, Number One is given the box of thumbs by a minion with an eyepatch. “What’s wrong with this picture?” she says as she opens the box.

I’ll tell you what’s wrong. That guy should’ve blown up in the underwater station way back when Charlie died on Lost…

…orrrr there’s one thumb missing. Yeah, probably that.

Mark walks down the street as a free man. He’s picked up by a mysterious Jaguar. Oh wait, that was The Usual Suspects, back when Chris McQuarrie could still write. No, it’s just Kat trailing him.

Keyser Soze this guy is not.

Liam goes where he always goes to console himself after a meeting with Janet: back to the barbershop to give Bill a shave. In comes Charlie, who tells McSmarmy their souls aren’t for sale. Liam loses his cool… and his grip…

Finish him! Do it!

Now that Bill’s lost a little blood, he sees reason and leaves the barbershop with Charlie. More fickle than Janet, that one. The bromance is back on!

Mark and Kat make it to a safe house of some sort and she wants to open a bottle of tequila to celebrate. Wait a sec–“That’s not a worm in there.”

Thumbs up!

Janet finally gives Joe the time of day. No doubt she realized he can’t be that bad compared to McSmarmy. He tells her Liam is a born liar and her plan to seduce him will never work.

Methinks he gives the guy too much credit.

Ask him for the truth about those burns of his, he says. So she marches right off to Liam and demands complete honesty. Oh, the hypocrisy. McSmarmy is so far gone he doesn’t even think to ask if Joe put her up to it. The truth, is, his family did not die in a fire. His Hotelmates did, back when he was in Level 1. He thought maybe if he killed them all, The Program would let him go free. Instead, they made him middle management. This will surprise no one who’s ever worked in an office.

Janet makes her exit as fast as possible and I can’t blame her. Even she doesn’t deserve this loser. Meanwhile, the loser calls up Number One and tells her Janet’s definitely on board, because they have this incredible connection, and he’s going right out to get a tattoo with “Guard Her Heart” written on it, and you can hear the last nail going in McSmarmy’s coffin before you even see Number One’s face. She calls her eyepatch minion (now with suspicious facial wound) back in and says to get her eight red cards, seven for the Townies and one for the crazy Irish guy, if you please. Just like she’s ordering ham on 5, hold the mayo. Patchy notes that this will be the second flush this week, which is confirmation that Markat and The Italian were in a different town last episode. Just in case you weren’t paying attention.

And get me 007 in here on the double.

So, you think you’d have any chance keeping up with the finale if you hadn’t seen this one? I actually haven’t watched the finale yet. I didn’t want to spoil anything in this recap by accident. If you did watch the finale without watching this one, let us know what you thought. But no spoilers please, just in case.

One thing I wonder about: does it seem like maybe they got the episode titles backwards? This one was supposedly called Seven Sacrifices. Last week was Identity. Seems like they work better the other way around, no? But like I expect NBC to care about those kinds of details.

On to Part 1 of the finale recap. Don’t forget that hate mail! See you back here in a couple days!