Recap: Incorporated S01E05
Well. We sure found out a lot in this episode.
We found out how Ben ended up where he is, and how Elena got where she is. We found out how Hendrick got into a position to help Ben.
First–Elena is at Arcadia because after the fire, her father couldn’t pay his debts, and ended up in debtor’s prison (which unsurprisingly exists in this future). Signing away all her rights for 20 years got enough money to get her father out of prison, with some left over to support him and her brother.
I wonder if it simply didn’t last, or if it got frittered away? Her father obviously has his problems, as we see that Theo pretty much hates him, and said that he took refuge in drinking and pretty much abandoned Theo. This explains how Theo ended up where he is.
Incorporated: Working Hendrick
Hendrick saw a gap in the back door of the system and was able to set himself up in the Green Zone, and ended up a suit. Once a heartbroken Ben/Aaron saw him slumming it in a Green Zone club, he twisted Hendrick’s arm (so to speak) and got Hendrick to set him up with his false identity so he could go look for Elena.
We find out a bit more about why Laura is a cutter–she was assaulted in the Red Zone. We still don’t have a lot of details, but she goes through therapy to deal with it, and it looks like she’s learning to fight back for herself.
We learn that Julian has a heart–Laura confesses to Julian that she’s having PTSD dreams again, and he tells her about his war experiences, and how an enemy mole got the men in his unit killed. This explains why he’s so determined to squash corporate espionage.
Ben is late to his meeting about the mind reading program, and he missteps a bit by using Krauss’ name and over promising. Krauss tells him to be careful. The board looks like a bigger nest of sharks than simply Krauss. Yikes.
I was right in my guess–the recruiter was the one to burn down Elena’s father’s restaurant. 90% closure rate, remember? Cold, but corporate through and through.
We get back to Roger Caplan, who thinks he has Elena where he wants her, and that he’s going to learn everything he needs from her.
As I figured, he was in over his head with Elena. Physical threats are nothing in a world where tissue regeneration is easy and you’re just a piece of company property–she’s endured far worse than Roger. She talks about men who have tried to cut and drown her. Damn. Basically, she’s been the victim of corporate stress relief; no one sees her as a person, she’s more like office equipment. Life is cheap in this future.
Ben had a tracker installed on Roger’s handheld last episode, so he followed Caplan to the hotel. He’s seen Elena go up in the elevator, and he’s gotten himself in the room below (those hacking skills again). He hooks up a sound device to hear all of this, and when Roger starts cutting Elena’s face with a corkscrew, he uses his device to release some sort of contaminant into the air and set off an alarm. The hotel gets evacuated, and Elena gets whisked away by her handlers. Caplan wasn’t going to get anything from Elena anyway–he still thought Ben’s name was Ben at this point.
Ben? Can I call you Ben?
Then Caplan gets the bright idea to contact Elena’s father. The easiest way for him to do this without having to know any of the redacted information is to have the SPIGA system send her father a notice that Elena had died, and he was to meet Roger at a specified place to get her death benefit. Classy, Roger. Way to show that the only person you care about is yourself.
Elena’s father shows up–of course–and Roger continues the fiction that Elena is dead. By this time, he’s figured out that Ben’s name isn’t Ben, so he shows Elena’s dad Ben’s picture…and he tells Caplan that Aaron is the one responsible for Elena’s ‘death’. Caplan takes advantage of how much he hates Aaron to get all the information on Aaron.
Watching Roger’s tracker, Ben figures out what’s going on. He meets up with Roger, and he’s ready to give up the promotion to keep Roger from turning him in–until he sees that Roger was recording their entire discussion. Now we see how desperate Ben really is to save Elena. The two tussle, and he strangles Caplan to death.
Ben calls the only one he knows he can trust–Theo. Theo helps him load Caplan into his own car. Since these cars run on auto-drive anyway, he sets the controls to drive Roger Caplan toward the southern border, where the car will be picked clean and the body dumped when it finally stops.
Theo is pretty pissed when he figures out what his dad has done, and he tells his father that Elena isn’t dead but refuses to explain any further when his dad comes to Theo looking for a place to stay. Theo wants nothing to do with him.
Ben goes home and cleans up. He burns his clothes and heals the evidence of his fight with Caplan and goes to bed like nothing happened. After what we’ve seen of Laura, it’s fairly evident they really don’t know each other.
I wonder what will happen when Caplan doesn’t show up for work in the morning?
Previous Episode: Cost Containment
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.