Thursday, September 7, 2017

Travelers, Season One, Episode Nine: Bishop

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The opening of this episode is clearly meant for anyone who has been with someone who has just irritated the piss right out of them. Secretary Hayes is out for a jog with his wife and he stops when he gets a phone call about pushing through a pipeline, though it will cause environmental damage. Hayes is completely smug and ends the call. Hayes complains to his wife that the exercise is going to kill him but what actually kills Hayes, is his wife throwing him off an overpass that he had stopped to lean against.  Mrs. Hayes looks around to make sure no one is looking and then breaks into hysterics.  And that folks is what they call stone cold extra. 

After having a little chat with David's boss, Marcy thinks that everything is okay but it turns out that David is uncomfortable with the game they are playing. There's a lot of unacknowledged sexual tension between Marcy and David and the strain of going through this day after day has become too much.  David asks Marcy if she can get her own place. I guess this means that Marcy lost her subsidized apartment when the government learned that she's no longer disabled. Marcy promises to leave that night and an awkward David tells Marcy that she doesn't have to rush.

Now that Jeff has made trouble for Marcy and Carly, it's MacLaren's turn. Jeff pays a visit to the FBI field office to have a man to man talk with MacLaren. Jeff makes it clear that he's trying to get his family back together and that he knows that MacLaren has been paying visits to Carly.  Jeff even questions how MacLaren's wife would feel if she knew that MacLaren was spending time with a woman half her age.  That's enough for MacLaren to tell Jeff to back up and that he knows that Jeff used to beat Carly.  MacLaren suggests that Carly no longer has any time for a beat cop who thinks it's okay to leave her bruised and bloodied. A frustrated Jeff decides to leave but he's not done messing with the Travelers yet.

MacLaren heads to his car to find a package and a note which says that he is to keep the package with him at all times. Inside the package is some kind of device but having no idea what it is, MacLaren takes it to Philip to be scanned. When Philip doesn't come up with any answers, MacLaren hops in his car to head back to his office only to have another Traveler hop in the back seat of his car. MacLaren is given a solo mission.  MacLaren is to board a plane and save someone's life. MacLaren is concerned by this because he's never been on a plane before. 

In an effort to win the custody battle with Jeff, Carly decides to apply for a job at a landscaping firm. Carly has no experience and she doesn't even have a GED but her enthusiasm is enough to persuade the owner to give her a shot. Unfortunately, when Carly arrives for work the next day, she's told the job is no longer available. Carly asks to be considered for the next opening and is told that there will never be a job there for her there. It turns out that a background check on Carly revealed that she has pending charges for assault an officer. That's right, Jeff decided to charge Carly, even though he had been regularly beating her. Carly tries to explain but her justification falls on deaf ears. 

Missing the make up mid term has some pretty bad consequences for Trevor. His mother is out of town and so it's Gary who informs Trevor that they've decided to send him to military school, so that he can pull up his grades and gain some discipline.  Trevor wants to talk this out and see if they can come up with some kind of compromise but Gary will not budge an inch. I think in this case we are only sympathetic to Trevor because we know that he isn't the same person any longer but when you consider everything his parents have been through, it really isn't any wonder that his parents are at their breaking point. None of this is to say that sending someone to military school against their will is a good idea.

Moving on with operation fuck with the Travelers, Jeff decides to pay a visit MacLaren's home.  Smiling like the Cheshire cat, Jeff tells Kat that MacLaren has been having an affair with Carly. Because Kat already believed that MacLaren was up to no good, she buys Jeff's story hook line and sinker. Kat's next move is to call MacLaren to confront him about Jeff's story but given that he has a plan to catch, MacLaren has no time for explanations.  Kat decides that MacLaren is probably having a rendezvous with his mistress and books a seat on the same flight.


Since David gave her the boot, Marcy has been hanging out at the warehouse. Philip tries to help Marcy by drawing out the spinal fluid that she uses to make medicine to slow down her seizures but because he's trying once again to get off heroine, his hands won't stop shaking. Philip apologises for being so caught up in his life that he hasn't helped Marcy more with the problems that she's been dealing with.

Marcy heads to David's to pick up her things. David is feeling guilty for giving Marcy the boot and he tells Marcy to take what she needs to be able to set herself up. When Marcy refuses, David offers Marcy his kettle, before admitting that he misses her so much already. This softens up Marcy enough that she finally tells David the truth - she's dying. We still don't exactly know what Marcy is dying of yet but we do know that she doesn't have long left. David is upset that Marcy was going to leave without telling him and brings up how guilty he would felt if he had heard that she'd died alone. For the first time they really kiss but of course, this is when Philip contacts Marcy to tell her that MacLaren is in trouble.

Trevor and Gary have pretty much always been at odds since Trevor arrived. Gary sees the change and chalks it up to Trevor seeing him for the first time as a flawed human being. Trevor points out that Gary hasn't exactly been treating him great and Gary apologises for the distance between them. Trevor suggests that they should get together later to watch golf. Of course, just as Trevor is about to join his father on the couch, Philip contacts him about MacLaren and Trevor is forced to slip out.  There's no way Trevor is getting out of military school now.

Carly has had enough of Jeff messing with her life and is super pissed that he cost her a job.  Jeff, smug bastard that he is, lists the various times she's assaulted him recently. Carly responds by telling him about how her host was supposed to die that night when she tried to defend herself against Jeff's attack. Of course, Jeff thinks that this is an indication that Carly might need mental health treatment. Carly threatens to march into the police office and tell Jeff's fellow cops but he's completely unbothered because Jeff knows that his fellow officers wouldn't believe anything like that of him. A frustrated Carly hands the baby to Jeff and tells him that he can make it up to her by looking after his kid. Jeff balks at this but Marcy is adamant that she needs to look for a job.

Because Jeff has become such a problem, Marcy tries to reach out to MacLaren but of course she gets no response.  Marcy then heads to the hideout to see what Philip knows.  This is when Philip realises that the plane that MacLaren is on is supposed to crash, leaving behind no survivors. The team gathers and races to the location of the plane crash but have difficulty raising MacLaren on the comm.

Just as previously happened, a fire starts on the plane. The device that MacLaren was warned to keep on his person at all times finally opens up. Philip is finally able to get in contact with MacLaren and he explains that it's a two person stasis device, meant to protect MacLaren and Bishop, the man that MacLaren has been tasked with saving. MacLaren tasks the team with making the device save three people but it's more than the machine is capable of. MacLaren however does learn that the tail end of the plane survived the crash, so he decides to put Bishop and Kat in the stasis bubble. When MacLaren heads to grab Kat, he is stopped by the flight attendant, who has clearly been taken over and ordered to stay on his mission.  MacLaren sets up Bishop and Kat in the stasis bubble and heads to the rear of the plane just before it crashes.

The team is there to meet the plane when it crashes and Carly resuscitates both Kat and Bishop.  Marcy starts to freak out when she realises that she doesn't know where MacLaren is, or if he survived. Bishop is taken over in short order by a Traveler and is surprised because he expected to be met by EMTs. Trevor and Marcy race toward the end of the plane where MacLaren was located when the plane crashed, only to watch as Traveler medical team scoops him up and drives off.

It seems that Jeff has been moved up the bad guy rank.  At this point, I see nothing redeemable about his character and I'm ready for him to die.  I don't blame Carly one bit for wanting to break protocol and take him out.  Jeff is a typical abuser. Jeff thinks that he owns Carly and therefore has the right to control her or punish her should she choose to disobey.  While he's not wrong about MacLaren and Carly having a thing for each other, he has some nerve acting like the wounded party when he clearly made a hobby of beating Carly.

The Director doesn't seem to give much time between transitions. Given that the team's mission didn't end very well with the antimatter laser beam and then they broke protocol when they went after a missing child, clearly the Director decided that it would be best not to give MacLaren a lot of notice about this recent mission, so that his team couldn't improvise. This decision doesn't bode well in terms of the level of confidence that the director has in MacLaren's team.

Now we know that Marcy is dying but we don't know exactly why. I wonder if her consciousness can be moved into another body? As it is however, things look bleak right now. I will say that I am glad it looks like David and Marcy are going to be together even if Philip does have the worse timing ever. I also want Marcy to be a little less predatory when it comes to David. Marcy has all of the power in this relationship and she's manipulated David's feelings from almost the moment she met him.