The Ev3nt: Mommy Dearest

Hey guys, sorry this is so late. Traveled back to Atlanta to see the family for Thanksgiving, and, well, holiday madness set in…

The episode starts off with some soulless lawyer protecting what I’d guess is a rather large industrial corporation against some poor, defenseless, widowed black woman. Apparently the woman’s husband died of some condition that may have been (and probably was) the result of unsafe working conditions in a factory. The lawyer tells the lady that she’s looking forward to tasting her tears as she destroys her case in front of a jury. Then she receives a text message. Then some guy eating lunch gets the same message! Then a cop! Then a professor (he’s clearly a professor, because he’s wearing a tweed jacket!)!!! And the best part is, the text message is displayed EXACTLY the same on every different phone it appears on! Way to go, guys! Chalk one up for EPIC laziness!!!

Text as seen on a shitty flip phone…

Text as seen on fancy iPhone 4…

Seriously, would it have killed them to maybe alter it a little bit? Everyone in the damn world knows how texts are displayed on the iPhone, and it’s not like this. And, to those of you willing to argue the whole “they’re super technologically advanced and could easily have created their own hidden cell network and altered the software on the phones to be identical,” I say this: if they did that with something so popular and recognizable as an iPhone, they’re doing a terrible job of blending in. If I saw someone’s iPhone pop up a text like that, I’d immediately be all like “wtf?!?” and then panic and shoot them in the face.

/rant off…

So, moving on, more and more people keep getting these texts, and before you know it they’re all gathering in a convention center or ballroom at a hotel or something. Wow…speaking of failure to be discreet. Maybe choose something a little more low-key. Like a field in the middle of nowhere.

Also, this is one of the Others that shows up…

Now, I can’t recall whether they truly don’t age, or just age incredibly slowly, but I think it’s the latter. Or maybe it’s that this isn’t their real form at all, but since that hasn’t yet been even mentioned as a possibility I’m going to discard that suggestion. So, here’s my thing. If they age super slowly, then this guy would be like 9 billion years old. That’s ok. But it stands to reason that these Others, like any other biological entity, eventually start to deteriorate. So if you were to go on a mission across the galaxy, why wouldyou bring some guy who’s already this much older than everyone else? Seriously, it’s like if someone asked “what three things would you want if you were stranded on a desert island?” and you answered “blonde triplets, and endless supply of food, and a geriatric?” NO!

/rant off…again. Sorry…

So, anyways, Sophia shows up at this congregation and addresses everyone. She gets a standing O just for saying hello, so…well, you know the speech will be well-received.

Intro!

After the intro, she’s still in the same room, but there are only 5 people in addition to her and Stevie B. She’s telling them that Stevie made some good progress in getting them closer to being home, and basically gives a status update. No one will make eye contact with her, though, so she asks what’s going on…and again, no one will make eye contact or speak.

When the people you’re addressing are doing this, you can probably go ahead and take your name out of the running for homecoming queen…

FINALLY she singles out the soulless lawyer from the beginning of the episode and demands to know why they’re exchanging knowing glances right under her nose. Soulless tells her that most of their people don’t want to go home anymore…they want to stay, because earth is a great place. Personally I think she’s just really itching for an opportunity to represent BP in their oil spill hearings.

Also, each of the 5 representatives seems to have a different accent…I guess these “sleepers” are from all over the world? I was kinda under the impression that this was a US thing, but I guess it makes sense that they’d be everywhere.

Sophia hears them out, and tells them that it’s not an option to stay, because if they stay it’ll wipe us out, and that’s against whatever intergalactic oath they all swore before they began the journey.

The Englishman reminds her (and thus informs us, the viewers) that they left their home planet in the first place because it was barely livable, and alludes to other danges of returning home as well, but doesn’t go into detail. Sophia isn’t hearing any of it. Stevie stands up and tells everyone that the decision is final, but that they need to go home and tell their people that they’re going home, and Sophia doesn’t care that Earth invited you to sleep over because your family wants to have dinner with you and families stick together, dammit! Also, that they’re going to retrieve some key module tomorrow, and that’s the first step on the road home.

Sophia is mad at Stevie for letting her get blindsided like this, because he was supposed to keep his finger on the collective’s pulse, but he was too busy building a financial empire by cheating the stock market. Stevie tells her he’s got a meeting with some bankers, and that he’ll see her tomorrow when they go to get the Key.

Note the shadows creeping in from the left. Something tells me he’s up to no good….

So Stevie heads out to the lake to meet with Soulless…she tells him that if they go through with the devious scheme they’ve hatched, the other representatives will accept him as their leader. She asks if he’s going to be able to go through with it…and he says yes…that he’ll kill his mom after they’ve retrieved the key.

Shleila is making out in some cheap motel somewhere, and the phone rings. It’s chick agent! Where has she been the last 5 weeks?? Guess it doesn’t matter…anyways, she calls to tell them that one of the missing girls on Sean’s list from a couple weeks ago has mysteriously turned up! She tells him she’ll text the address over so they can practice what they’ve learned from reading their Nancy Drew books.

ANOTHER question. Does anyone know how Vicky’s accomplice is no longer in Chick Agent’s custody? It’s like they just wanted us to forget that whole thing, since he is clearly out, and she’s clearly not dead or hostage somewhere. Also, what, she’s just back working with the FBI? In an office. Her entire field office was shot to death, and some super secret group wanted her dead because she knows they exist because she helped Sean escape from them, but they’ve just dropped all animosity towards her and she’s back to work as usual? This plot is feeling very saintlike to me. Get it?

Anyways, the girl’s parents live in Tulsa, Oklahoma…so Shleila get in the car and start driving. I love how they just keep making these 12+ hour road trips like it’s a Sunday drive. I have to drive back to Chicago from Atlanta tomorrow, 5 days after making the trip down, and boy oh boy am I dreading it. Ugh.

At the hospital, Mr P and Weasel are checking in on the status of Darth Hatter when Hatter’s wife comes in. Mr P drops a load of shit right in her lap about how they all hope he gets well soon, etc., and she tells him that he’s like family to her husband.

Right…if family routinely took part in plots to fly large airplanes into you at your son’s birthday party…

Darth Flowers is having a little chat with the would-have-been assassin. The assassin tells him that Darth H is under very heavy guard and it would be impossible to try to kill him now. Flowers tells him “do, or do not…there is no try,” but that he has a different assignment for him. He’s to track down a girl they recently lost. I guess since he failed to kill an old man, hunting down a girl is more to his level. Darth Flowers tells him to clean up after himself.

Magically, one commercial break later Shleila is already in Tulsa! I love how 12 hours passes in one timeline and time barely moves in another and yet all of this stuff is happening simultaneously. Also, it was light when they left, and it’s light now, but they drove for 12 hours. /facepalm. Yeah, I know they drove west and are now in central time instead of eastern, so really only 11 hours have passed…but I wasn’t really under the impression that they were leaving just after dawn.

Anyways, Sheila bangs on the door for a while and screams about not leaving until they get to speak with someone, and finally the door opens…

What are you? Jehova’s Witnesses? Encyclopedia salesmen?

She tries to shut the door on them a few times and Leila drops another “you’re our only hope,” and yet again the door opens. She tells them that her daughter really doesn’t remember anything, and when Leila asks to speak to her daughter she says now. Then her husband comes home and tells them to GTFO. Then the little girl comes out of the bedroom, but stays hidden in the shadows. She apparently met Leila’s sister, but before she says anything more her parents hurry her back into the bedroom. The husband again threatens to call the cops, so Sheila leaves.

Back to Stevie and Soulless, doing their very best TV14-rated horizontal polka. She’s worried that Sophia may be onto them, and he tells her to stop doubting him. Yeah, they’re talking about his mom while doin’ it. Ew. She then tells him to stop thinking he’s as smart as his mom, and he goes limp as a bizkit, and tells her to get off of him. Anyways, she gives him a gun, they make out again, and she leaves.

Now Stevie’s aboard an airplane with his mom, and she gives him a nice little backhanded compliment about how he handled her stepping back in and taking over from him better than she expected. She then goes on to tell him that he botched the whole deal with Mr P and that they could’ve gotten out of Inostranka at any time if they’d wanted to, but that it would’ve given away the sleepers, who he has now compromised.

This guy may not be the world’s best actor, but he should win an award for so accurately acting out the whole “getting scolded by mom” thing…

She then tells him a story about how when he was little he was terrified of the rain, and how one day she tried to cure him of this silly phobia by taking him out into a storm and stayed out there while he cried his eyes out. The moral of the story is that Stevie is not a strong person, and she should accept that. She’s just making it easier for him to pull the trigger, right?

They arrive at their destination and go downstairs into some underground vault. Stevie puts in the wrong password on the safe twice, and his mom gets a bit worried…but third time’s a charm, apparently. They open the safe, and a weird looking block of gray matter emerges. Sophia reaches inside and retrieves the key.

I’m sure someone thought he was getting a raise for this CG work, but good lord…this is tragic.

She pulls out the key, and proclaims that it’s still viable, which I suppose is a good thing and turns around to see Stevie pointing a gun at her. He takes the key from her, and tells her to turn around. She refuses, and tells him she wants him to see her face when he shoots her. He gives some speech about how it’s his turn now, and she scoffs at him and tells him he’s not strong enough. She should be warned that it’s always the ones that are the biggest pussies as kids that turn into serial killers, but whatever.

“You don’t have the cajones. I know this because I’m your mother and thus saw you naked many times as a child.”
“The doctor said they were this way because you breast fed me until I was 14!!!”

Ya know, failing to prove your mother wrong is bad enough, but failing to do it when proving her wrong would mean assassinating her, the leader of your people, it’s even worse.

Back in Tulsa, Shleila apparently went and waited in the car for the family to leave because Sean saw packed bags by the door. Conveniently for them, since they didn’t bring steakout snacks, the family leaves soon, and so Sean follows them. Little does he know, someone else is following him!!! The hunter becomes the hunted!!!

They all pull off at a gas station, and Leila follows mom and daughter into the bathroom. The little girl tells her mom she wants to help Leila, and steps out of the shadows…

So, whatever they are doing to the girls at this facility, it turns then into Snow White’s dwarves…with the comically large noses and huge puffy bags under their eyes…

Abby tells her some minor details about the place, and that she saw Samantha, and that’s really it, and then the assassin that Darth Flowers sent gets impatient and starts shooting outside so they run!

As they run off, the assassin shoots the dad in the knee! And then everyone runs into a cornfield!!! And then the mom trips and hurts her ankle, and so Leila and Abby run off and Sean helps the mom along. Sean then tells her to keep going, and tries to lead the assassin away from the girl, and he starts to take the bait until the girl starts screaming. He’s gaining and gaining on the girl and Leila, and then…

Gorilla comes outta fuckin’ nowhere!!!1!!

Sean and the assassin scrap for a bit, and Leila tries to run up and grab the gun but he shoves her down and then starts choking Sean, and Leila just stays down while Sean is choking to death and then Sean grabs a rock and smashes his skull in. Sean then digs through the unconscious assassin’s pockets and finds a slip of paper that the guy just happened to have kept on his person…

He was after Leila!!!

Of course, they don’t really explain any of this, so I’m left to guess that they let the girl go because they had no further use for her, and it would draw Leila out of hiding. But why do they want Leila, anyways?

Back at the hospital, Darth Hatter wakes up and his wife is in the room, and she tells him that some people came to the house and threatened her and the kids if he talks. She tells him to remember the children when Mr P comes in the room, and there’s a crescendo in the music and…scene!!!

Soulless is waiting for Stevie B by the Reflecting Pool, and has this very satisfied grin on her face.

You know the one…the one where she thinks that the guy she seduced has offed his mother and is now fucking the leader of their people…

Except Stevie doesn’t walk up to meet her…but rather Sophia. Soulless tries to blame Stevie for the whole plot to kill her, and Sophia clearly doesn’t buy it. She tells Soulless to get on her knees and pulls out the gun. EXECUTION!!! But, it’s not an execution. Instead, Sophia gives her a choice. Total exile from all of her people, or Soulless can shoot herself in the knee!!!

Stop shooting yourself!! Stop shooting yourself!!!

Now, Sophia is considering this a way of proving Soulless’s allegiance to her, but in truth, if my leader made me shoot myself in the knee to prove my loyalty, and I actually went through with it, I’d probably not be so loyal after that. Anyways, Sophia just leaves her bleeding on the ground, crying, and gets back in the car with Stevie and they ride off.

Well, I think all we learned is that Sophia is a stone-cold bitch! Other than that…yeah, more questions than answers…as always. WHYY?!?!?!?!