We begin the episode finding out that Ben/Aaron’s dad committed suicide, leaving him to fend for himself. He grew up a child grifter, playing blind to garner sympathy while begging. Yikes. Already a tech prodigy though, apparently, as he got his hands on goggles that he could use to copy someone’s eyes with to fool the rationing machines into giving him food. That’s how he met Elena and her brother, as well as his mysterious friend who we met in the first episode. The one we presume helped him become Ben.
This might answer some immediate questions of how much he actually loves his wife, and how much of it might be a con. Since he’s grown up grifting… I feel a bit sorry for her. We already saw she’s a cutter with some trauma in her past.
We find out that Ben set up his unwitting victim from the first episode to look like he was stealing security protocols. Does Ben have anything to do with the issues in Jakarta, or is he just making it look like Chad does in order to make sure no one believes him and he gets dropped into a deep dark hole? He’s got to know he runs the risk of them figuring out Chad is innocent. Security dude Julian is already suspicious, as he reminds Krauss that her son in law works in the department Chad came from.
The company is torturing Chad with ultrasound? That’s seriously messed up.
Julian and Krauss get more suspicious when they find out that the trip to the bar in the Red Zone was Ben’s idea. Sloppy, dude. He tries to get his friend to side with him to lie and say it was Chad’s idea. Maybe the old techniques are still the best. I still don’t think Julian is that dumb.
Poor Theo. I think he’s in over his head with the fighting. He’s too eager to find his sister, he’s letting Terrence rush him into riskier fighting.
Laura is pretty conniving herself. She tries to use Krauss’ desire for grandchildren to get her to have a heart concerning Chad’s family. The solution, though, is pretty cold. They won’t help the wife, but they can place Chad’s kids with another family and they’d never see their mother again.
Ben slips his piece of stealth computer tech under Julian’s desk to avoid detection while he went to see Krauss (they’d have found it in his pocket otherwise), but some enterprising person finds it before he can grab it back. Or so it appears? Instead, he gets called to Julian’s office to talk about the sound gun he used on Chad to make him sick enough to leave his office. He didn’t sign it back in when he was done. We learn that Ben covered his tracks pretty well digitally to give himself an alibi for when the security files were downloaded, so this also gives us his bona fides as far as his hacking ability. Pretty damn good. Julian still smells trouble, though. And where the hell did his stealth tech go?
Krauss is pretty cold, too. It’s pretty clear she doesn’t really care if Chad is guilty or not, she wants him out of the way. In the end, she has Chad’s memory wiped (hell of a Non Disclosure Agreement) before Julian can confirm anything Ben says about the sound gun. Chad gets unceremoniously dumped in the Red Zone, not even knowing who he is.
And OMG, does SyFy just cast Rob Archer in every show that calls for a ‘huge muscular dude’ role? He’s the opponent in Theo’s fight. He beats the ever loving crap out of Theo, but in the end, Theo cheats to win. He wasn’t supposed to win. His opponent ends up dead, and Theo has to replace him as the winning fighter. He’s in way over his head.
We discover at the end of the episode that Ben’s little piece of stealth tech ended up in his ‘friend’s’ hands. This looks ominous.
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JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.