A mysterious gang infiltrates a building and takes its office workers hostage to complete some unknown plan. Kennex and Dorian make their way to the hostages in an attempt to save them and discover the gang’s secret purpose.
The Breakdown
Kennex wakes up with a squeaky synthetic leg. He tries olive oil on the joint like Dorian suggested and it works. Meanwhile, a security guard flirts with a woman in an office. When he goes back to the security desk, a group of guys come in and shoot him to gain access to the building. They go into the server room and install a device in the floor.
Kennex and Dorian bicker as they drive to work. Dorian knows Kennex tried the olive oil but is too stubborn to say thank you. They get a call to investigate the shooting at the office building. When they arrive, Dorian is able to salvage the security video footage showing the gang. The elevators have been shut down, so they make their way upstairs to the office. The gang has taken everyone in the office hostage. They activate their device, which shoots some kind of beam through the floor, cutting right through to the ground floor and killing a policeman.
Kennex and Dorian keep making their way up the stairs to find the gang, against Maldonado’s orders. Police cut communications down inside the building. Because of this, everyone making emergency calls gets bounced back to Dorian. Dorian answers the calls to get information about the situation. A woman named Paige managed to hide from the gang. The gang puts phase two into effect, shooting a random office worker and dropping him out the 25th floor window with a sign taped to him that says “No cops, stay out”. This causes the police to initiate hostage protocol. They deliver a phone to the gang. They demand safe passage to the border and a fission igniter – a device used to detonate a megaton sized explosive. The gang gives Maldonado 43 minutes to make arrangements. Maldonado has Rudy make a fake fission igniter to give to the gang.
Meanwhile, Paige is feeding Kennex and Dorian information, but she starts breaking down. Kennex tells her a story about when he fell through the ice while ice fishing with his dad. He tells her that as soon as his dad was with him, he felt safe because he wasn’t alone. Kennex tells Paige that she’s not alone, that he’s with her and that everything will be okay.
Back at police headquarters, Stahl finds out that the gang leader is a man named Lucas Vincent, a high level operative in a terrorist cell called the Holy Reclamation Army. Kennex and Dorian get in a firefight with one of the gang and they take him down. Turns out he’s wearing a device called a face maker in order to pose as a known member of the Holy Reclamation Army. Dorian gets damaged in the firefight and begins to shut down. Kennex has to MacGyver some repairs and manages to get Dorian working again. Meanwhile, the gang finds out that Kennex and Dorian are in the building and send some men to guard the stairs.
Paige leaves her hiding place to be with her sister, but leaves her phone on so Kennex and Dorian can hear what’s going on. Rudy finishes the fission igniter and they prepare to send it to the gang. When they get the igniter, the leader tells his men to alert their other gang. Turns out, the igniter and the hostage situation was all a diversion for something else – a heist at a palladium storage facility. While the second gang finishes their heist, the first gang prepares to kill the hostages.
Dorian climbs up the elevator shaft and through the air ducts to reach the hostages. He takes down most of the gang, but ends up pinned down by the leader. Kennex arrives wearing the face maker and takes out the leader before he can shoot Dorian. Kennex tells Maldonado about the palladium heist and how the communications jammer is blocking the alarm system. They turn off the jammer, allowing the security system to trap the thieves. Dorian disarms the bomb.
Kennex meets Paige and her sister face to face while Dorian gets patched up properly. Dorian and Kennex go out for noodles to celebrate. Dorian tells Kennex that he experienced fear of death when the gang leader pointed the gun at Dorian’s head.
The Analysis
There were lots of twists and turns in this episode. Nothing was really as it seemed and it was a lot of fun to discover that what we assumed to be true, or where we thought the episode was going, often turned out to be merely a pretense to conceal the real, actually rather mundane, truth. The heist itself turned out to be a far less interesting purpose than the ones we had imagined the gang might be up to. They certainly cooked up a convoluted enough cover story that not only would have put the blame on a known terrorist group, but would have kept the police scratching their heads trying to guess the non-existent reasons behind the raid.
True to form, geek gods Karl Urban and J.J. Abrams managed to sneak a Star Wars reference in early on in the episode. Kennex pretends to lose connection so that he can hang up and ignore his Captain’s orders. Kennex quips, “It was a boring conversation anyway”, quoting Harrison Ford’s Han Solo after he blasts a communications panel. A reference was also made to “old timey” singer Elton John (in case we forgot it was the future). It should be interesting to keep track of references, not just for geek value, but to see how this future remembers certain things from our present. I don’t anticipate that these references will become overbearing – the writers know better than that – but the occasional comment could definitely add a little extra something from time to time.
As always, the interaction between Dorian and Kennex is the heart and soul of the show, which might explain why this episode seemed to be missing something the first two episodes had. Something seemed to be missing between them in this script – their interaction didn’t seem to have quite the same thoughtfulness or spark. Granted, there was a lot going on this episode, but things like the story about Kennex and the ice seemed slightly awkward and forced. You can’t win them all, I guess.
