Our recap finds the hostages at the center of numerous bargains...

"Casualties of War"

"When Simon ‘convinced’ Sophia that Thomas had really gone off the deep end, it was ridiculous. I actually feel stupider after watching it"

The passengers from Flight 514 will die before the day is out unless action is taken. Thomas offers an antidote if the President releases all detainees at Mount Inostranka; the President counters with an offer to execute all the detainees unless Thomas gives him the antidote.

Damn! Tough love, baby. In the end, the President gets the antidote and the people are saved (hooray!) for the small price of letting Sophia go. Through flashbacks, we see that Simon was second-in-command of the second group of aliens, and that Thomas spent his time after the crash advancing our Earth logic and science in order to get us to a point where he could rebuild their ship. Leila gets a hold of Sean and lures him into the Texan Trap of a police station, but cottons on to the plot through an ill-timed screen saver viewing. She tries (and fails) to break out of the station, then tries (and fails) to reason with Vicky - but Sean saves her in the end. He hasn’t saved anyone in a week, I was starting to worry. Go Sean!

Assembled in the war room, the President and his counselors discuss the condition of the passengers from the plane. They were sick at the end of the last episode and they're worse now – in fact, they will die before the day is out! Just at that moment, Thomas calls to offer an antidote that will save all of their lives, if the President will release all of the detainees at Mount Inostranka. The President refuses, but Thomas gives him two hours to think it over.

"Although having just threatened to kill everyone, the President says that carbon monoxide is barbaric. Seriously. What was he intending to do, kill the detainees with adorable, fuzzy kittens?"

In a flashback to 1944 we see Thomas and Simon leading the unhurt aliens away from the crash in Alaska, to some CGI Quonset huts. Sure, CGI is pretty, but it won’t keep you warm at night! Anyway, it’s revealed that Sophia has tasked Thomas with repairing their ship, but Earth science is nowhere near the level that it needs to be for them to fix the ship and escape. After the Quonset huts but still in the 1940’s, Simon tracks down Thomas, who apparently abandoned the other aliens in order to take a job at Los Alamos where he helped the scientists develop nuclear fission. Simon is horrified - this country is at war; do you know what they will do with that knowledge?

Thomas doesn’t care, as long as it helps them repair their ship. (A couple of things - we get it. Thomas is a mad prioritizer; his resumé would read, ‘focused and goal-oriented.’ But don’t pound it in any more. It’s good, we get it. Also, they replayed the scene after the crash where Sophia sends Thomas into the world and tasks him as the leader. I think this is the third or fourth time we’ve seen this. Again, we get it. Let’s take a few things as read: there is a second group of aliens, Thomas is focused to a possibly psychopathic degree, and Sean Walker is a people-saving hero. Got it. Moving on...)

Back to the future: as the condition of the passengers worsens, the President gives his wife the update about the antidote, and Thomas’ demands. She seems to be the voice of reason: why would you let those people die?

They are only asking you to release the detainees, which you were going to do anyway! Excellent point. The President says that this was before Sophia lied to him about the presence of other aliens in the world. Well boo-hoo, seriously. She’s not your eighth-grade girlfriend, why are you being so petty? Back at the war room, Thomas calls back and asks the President if he will release the detainees in exchange for the antidote - the President offers him a new scenario, where if Thomas doesn’t give them the antidote they will kill all of the detainees. There’s a termination protocol built into the camp, where they release carbon monoxide into the living quarters of the detainees. Although having just threatened to kill everyone, the President says that this is barbaric. Seriously. What was he intending to do, kill the detainees with adorable, fuzzy kittens? Torture them with the comfy chair?

Simon and Sophia review the blueprints of the camp and they realize that it is possible, that the President may in fact follow through on his threat. Sophia won’t believe that Thomas would let the innocent people from the airplane die. Their conversation goes something like this:

Sophia: Thomas would never, ever do that!
Simon: Oh yes, he would!
Sophia: Oh, OK then, I’m totally convinced.

OK, that’s not it verbatim, but it’s honestly that quick of a turn around. Maybe Simon has a crazy alien convincing power or something that just doesn’t work through the TV. Maybe if I watched it in HD, I would be convinced as well. I’d be thinking, this sucks, and Simon would say, “The Event rocks!” And I’d respond Oh yeah, The Event totally rocks...

Sophia orders Thomas (through Simon) to release the antidote, but Thomas doesn’t care. Finally, they come to an agreement – Thomas will give the antidote to the President, and they will release Sophia only. The President agrees. And Sophia ends up on a metro train.

In the mean time, Leila is still at the police station, thinking that she escaped from the bad guys and not knowing that she’s being used to lure Sean Walker to the station. (As Xander Harris memorably stated, she needs to “act baity.”) The bad guys are getting anxious to have everything done by daylight because there is a time constraint – they have taken over a police station, which may actually get some traffic in the morning. Plus, they are all vampires. I wish.)

Vicky has a flashback to a prior job, where she was told to kill everyone in the house (including her partner? Oops!) but when it comes to killing a baby, she can’t do it. Sean Walker had gotten a cell number for Vicky from her mother, so he calls an old friend to see if he can track her through her cell. He also buys a cell charger! And gets his voicemail! And calls Leila back to tell her he’ll be at the Police Station of Doom in an hour! To die horribly! Just at that moment, Leila notices that the police officer in front of her doesn’t match the pictures on his screen saver. She tries to break out through the bathroom window (shouldn’t they be reinforced or something? I mean, it is a police station, I can’t imagine she’s the first person to try to throw a garbage can through the window and escape.)

Anyway, she doesn’t succeed, and the bad guys throw her in the file room, where she gets some exposition with Vicky and the CPA. Leila tries to reason with Vicky about killing innocent people, sparking another flashback to Vicky with the baby she saved from the murder house. The CPA is on the roof and sees Sean Walker arrive with Agent Claire. Suddenly, Sean gets a call from his hacker friend, who tracked Vicky’s cell to the Snyder police station (the call is coming from inside the house!) Agent Claire wants to run, but Sean instead sends Vicky the picture of her son to her cell phone. He says that either he gets Leila, or Vicky’s son’s pictures go viral. Vicky proceeds to shoot everyone in the police station except Sean, and he gets Leila and leaves. Outside, Claire shoots the CPA but he’s still alive – in the end, Sean and Leila make their escape, making out in the backseat, with the CPA in the way back.

Why didn’t Vicky take Sean Walker’s phone away from him? That’s where the picture of her son is. Sean could totally screw her over and put the picture out on the net anyway. Of course, he could have stored the picture in multiple places, but shouldn’t he at least try?

OK, so this episode wasn’t too bad. There was a lot of action. But I think, like the previous episode, that it’s the clunky dialogue that really gets me. When Simon ‘convinced’ Sophia that Thomas had really gone off the deep end, it was ridiculous. I actually feel stupider after watching it. But again, the action was really good and the stories are developing. Maybe I’m being super picky. Next week – bring it, alien menace! We’ll remain open minded till then.

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