Betrayed – but this time not by the scriptwriters. This episode reaches emotional depths heretofore unexplored in the series. Note it just doesn't attempt emotional depth, it reaches it.
Events start out innocently – or at least drunkenly – with Maureen, Riley, and Jane out on the town and Maureen, with a glazed shine in her eyes, is sitting, finishing up on a chameleon tattoo. Riley's the cheap drunk and completely wasted and Jane's the responsible one – or at least her ability to recover from body damage might take away the effects and eliminate all hangovers. Hey, now that’s an ability.
We segue from Maureen getting ready for her date with a motorcycle and its rider and Jane helping Riley get in a taxi to her waking up to her alarm.
Wait, that beeping is hospital monitoring equipment and she's sans glitter-red lipstick from the night before. Oh, and she's chained to a bed. No one, not her nurse or German-accented doctor will answer her questions. But she is taken out of her restraints and flexes her unflattering hospital gown-wearing self while sitting inside a big, empty room.
Wait, she has a whole ward to herself?
We see Nurse Wells eavesdropping on doc and another doctor talking about treatments. Expecting another insane patient, she's surprised that Jane was let out of her restraints. Later, she's surprised how much medicine they want to give her – dangerous levels. It's ten large needles full of a drug that she knows should cause huge pain, but doc knows Jane and knows it doesn't matter. He drills into her leg and a few minutes later Nurse Wells goes to clean up the needle entry sites and doesn't see the tracking marks she expected.
Vasco, tired of being cooped up, starts walking the second floor. Her door is unlocked, but most other doors remain locked. A quick change into hospital maintenance staff clothes and she heads for the exit but pauses until she sees Strikeforce Vicodin colleague Dr. Seth Carpenter. He's told by another doctor in the parking lot that she's still unconscious so she decides to surprise him with the news that she's not.
Dr. Seth trumps that surprise by dropping a bombshell and shouting for help. She gawps at him and asks, in so many words, what the fuck? Through a pitying glare, he puts her in her place: "What do you expect Jane? How should we treat you after you killed Riley?"
Wha-haa-haaa? Wow. The weasel one is gone? Of course, he 's one of the few characters with, well, character.
Because this was filmed 11th but is airing eighth, we're not sure if Riley could actually be dead – just like the Joe Waterman character who has completely disappeared from the team without any explanation.
So the crew members make their appearances in the hospital, trying to get an explanation for Riley's death. But none are as devastatingly bastardish, cold, and cruel as McBride. He's all Alec Baldwin and says she was a mistake, and a rude thoughtless little pig. Well, McBride is pissed anyway that she can't remember anything and shoves her blood-stained shirt in her face.
This is where McBride tells her she's neuro positive, or in other words, the same as those the team has been hunting down. The same as the group he said would always choose evil over good. To him now she's just an experiment subject. She's nothing.
That's a pretty good plot twist, and acted entirely convincingly. It's only at the end where you wonder whether anything he said is valid, as it wasn't even McBride saying those things.
He also rambles on about NICO being a failure but even after we find out NICO is – Neuro Internment Center Operations – this is just a throwaway part of the plot — for this episode at least.
Maureen visits and though she starts with a "Hey kiddo, how ya doing" she gets body-cavity deep on some of the questions she's asking and starts questioning McBride's motivations; that maybe he's got her locked up because he doesn't want to reveal that he made a mistake. "It doesn't sound like Andre," Jane says. "No, but killing Riley doesn't sound like you," Mo replies.
Some indeterminate time later, Vasco makes another escape from her room, this time finding a way into the doc's office. Paper, flip, paper, flip. She's reading something about new study breakthroughs to do with neuros – and that they may have been achieved through unethical behaviors, as with Jane, now.
Dr. Seth then visits Connor King who only shows up to say he now wants to kick her ass. All the visits and even Jane finding the NICO is all a part of the manipulation she's in the middle of without knowing.
NOW it's even more like a video game and comic book.
Someone is trying to find their HQ through Jane. Someone with an accent. Somehow these people in the hospital are setting up this elaborate illusion, in a way an extension of the previous episode, "Higher Court."
And suddenly, we see Riley alive. There's some huge manipulation going on and at first, naturally, I think her whole team's been in on it. But as they talk back at Deckard Street HQ it's clear they don't know where she is.
McBride is trying to put the pieces together about what happened after the tattoo parlor. Maureen says Vasco wasn't drunk. "She had a few beers and tequila. A few tequilas."
Back at the hospital Nurse Wells is spilling the beans about what she's seen. She tells Jane she's the only patient in the hospital and what she heard the doctors say. She even says she saw the doctor change from doc to Maureen before entering her room.
And while I think the nurse is part of the act, another greatly timed and executed surprise takes place. The nurse, she’s talking to Patient Vasco, but it’s the doc and he suddenly gets the strangling urge and kills her.
He’s a shape-shifter, which explains why each of the crew visited her separately. It is “Maureen” pushing Vasco in a wheelchair out of the building.
Jane reaches for a security guard's gun – and has to shoot another one. The guy she shot gets back up and shoots Jane in the back as she and Maureen fall out through the lobby window.
Clearly “Maureen” is planning to get herself and Jane to the HQ. The other doctor is looking down through a window, smiling.
There’s just one problem. As she gets into the car, Maureen doesn’t have that bum-crack tat she just got. Seeing that, Jane feeds her a line about a boyfriend she supposedly stole at the academy. “Maureen” just accepts it and Jane is behind the wheel leaving everyone behind in her dust. Wait, nope. I thought she would but the sensible thing – absent from so many shows – doesn’t happen. Instead as they drive, she uses her credit card twice for the same $23.47 amount – and Riley’s got her tracked. Once for gas and once while paying for a snack and leaving a tip to get to that amount.
Jane finally pulls up to where she says is NICO. And Team Vicodin is there waiting. We get the pleasure of watching Maureen chip Maureen.
They jump back to the hospital a little while later but it’s been completely cleared out. Except, nice touch to the end, as they drive away the camera zooms in on something lying on the ground. It’s a pen from the company Vonotek, from the pilot episode.
A reward for the faithful viewer.
