Recap – Persons Unkown 1.07 “Smoke and Steel”

If you missed last week’s episode of Persons Unknown, “The Truth,” take a few minutes and read a recap here.

This week’s episode begins with Joe pointing out the location of security cameras hidden in Janet’s room. With a can of spray paint, Joe obscures their gaze. Janet is perturbed that they even need to go through this exercise. She wonders if Joe is still watching the rest of the Captives, but he assures her that he is not. He explains that he is no longer one of the conspirators. He was kidnapped and brought to the town, too, just like thousands of others before them. Joe insists that the kidnappings are for the greater good. Janet doesn’t believe him, and leaves for the lobby.

In the hotel lobby, Janet is met by the rest of the Captives. She tells them about her conversation with Joe, including the excuse that this is all for their own good. Bill pipes up, saying that Joe is just telling them what they want to hear. Joe, having followed Janet downstairs, insists he is telling the truth. He explains further that the organization he works for operates like a think tank, of sorts. They discuss what they believe will happen in the world, and then choose people they believe will do great things for the world and bring them to the town to see if their bets are correct. This is not what Bill wanted to hear, as he lunges at Joe and punches him in the face. After a few good kicks to the ribs, McNair is able to get to Bill to pull him off. Joe insists, again, that he is trying to tell the truth. Bill doesn’t want to hear it — Joe is scum, and so is anyone that believes him.

After his beat down, Joe goes to the Observation Room to see Tom. Joe is surprised that Tom even let him down to the room, but Tom explains that he wanted to say goodbye to his friend. He explains to Joe that his actions could force their employers to wipe out the entire town, and all eight people in it, including himself. Joe tries to get Tom to join him in revolting against their employers, but Tom fires back that he knows Joe’s actions aren’t about the program, but rather Joe’s feelings for Janet. He tells Joe that Janet is just experiencing Stockholm Syndrome, and that once they are out of the town, she’ll forget all about him; Janet is not interested in Joe.

At the hotel, Bill posits that the business with Joe is not good news for the rest of them. When asked what he wants to do about Joe then, Bill suggests that they take Joe prisoner. McNair dismisses this idea, saying that they need to just keep watching their enemy, Joe. Janet says that Joe is not their enemy, leading Erika to explode, “Why do you keep defending him? Whose side are you on, Bright Eyes?” Janet insists that she is on their side, of course, but that she believes Joe is too. Meanwhile, at the Shanghai Palace, Joe enters to meet Charlie. Charlie explains that he doesn’t really need to get back to his wife, Charlotte, because she is dead. In fact, when he was kidnapped, he was relieved because he figured he would be killed and escape his misery. “Life is full of surprises, though; the biggest of which was that I have a lot of fight left in me,” Charlie says. He continues, telling Joe that back home he is worth $80 million, so he can get Joe anything he wants. “Well, what do you want Charlie?” Joe asks. “I want out,” Charlie explains, again offering Joe anything he wants if he can get Charlie out of the town. Charlie extends his hand to seal the agreement, but Joe simply gets up and leaves the restaurant.

In Rome, Renbe and Kat sit at an outdoor cafe (an odd place to be, out in the open, after someone has just tried to kill them). Renbe runs through the craziness they have encountered upon their arrival in Italy, not the least of which was the attempt on their lives. Kat seems to be enjoying all of the mayhem, leading Renbe to ask, “None of this bothers you?” It doesn’t, Kat replies; in fact, she feels alive, and wants to get to the bottom of the investigation. They go to see Stefano, who has discovered Joe’s identity, but when Kat compares the name against her list of missing people, his name doesn’t appear there.

Back in town, Janet, Moira and McNair are in the hotel as the lights start flickering. They gather in the lobby, wondering if there is a storm, but they start hearing screams coming from outside. They rush to the town square to find Bill and Erika torturing Joe by forcing him into the microwave fence with sticks. Janet begs them to stop, but Bill moves to prod her into the fence, too. Erika stops him, promising to kill him if he touches her again. Bill turns his attention to Joe again, but McNair steps in to stop him. Joe swears, that he is telling the truth and that they can trust him. To prove his veracity, he actually walks himself into the fence. Janet runs to him and pulls him out of harm’s way. McNair and Charlie grab Joe’s bruised and burned body and take him back to the hotel. Later, Janet goes to see Joe as he tends to his wounds. She tells him that she has no idea who he is, or what he is up to, but that she wants to believe him. He promises that she can trust him. “That’s why you saved me,” he whispers as he moves closer to her. They are about to kiss when Janet pulls away. “I have no idea why I saved you,” she says as she departs.

Renbe and Kat leave Stefano’s and walk through the streets figuring out what to do next. Almost immediately, men begin to follow them. When they notice this, they begin to run. They are cut off, however, by an old man in a wheelchair. He rises out of the chair and tells them to come with him immediately if they want to be safe. Meanwhile, in his hotel room, Joe continues to black out the security cameras, yelling to Tom that he wants to talk to him. Tom isn’t in the Observation Room, though, so Joe gets in the elevator, under the watchful eye of Erika. As soon as the elevator doors close, Erika goes into Joe’s room, quickly followed by Janet. Erika starts to tear apart Joe’s room looking for any information. Janet searches the night stand, and pulls out the Bible. Inside, she finds a pipette of paper with a sketch of Janet that Joe had drawn. She tries to hide it from Erika, but Erika grabs it from her. Janet says that there is nothing for them to find, so they should put the room back together and leave.

A van stops on a Roman street, and when the back doors open, Renbe and Kat emerge with the old man in the wheelchair. He tells them to immediately walk to the back of the bank. Before they get the, the Ambassador walks up behind them and tells them to keep walking. He explains that Tori and Janet were taken by an organization that he has worked for for the last 31 years, the same organization that gave him his position and power. This group manufactures people and events (perhaps The Event, too? A little NBC synergy at work here?). The Ambassador was a retail manager when he was taken by the organization and guided into his current position. When he stepped out of line, they killed his wife, and they just did the same to Tori. If they knew he was talking to Renbe and Kat, all three of them would be dead, by “accident,” within weeks. Renbe and Kat need to expose the organization, and should start with the one person who was ever able to escape, Dr. Angela Barrigan. She is in South America, so they must go now, and stop for nothing.

Back in Joe’s room, Janet and Erika are finishing cleaning up. Janet goes to put the Bible back in the night stand, but she finds something wrong. She pulls on a cord in the drawer and a false backing is removed. Behind the drawer is a number of files containing dossiers on all of the Captives. Later, Tom is watching in the Observation Room (next to a memo with Joe’s picture on it), as he sees McNair and Janet leading Joe, in handcuffs, into the holding cell in the Sheriff’s office. Joe tells McNair that locking him up is not necessary, and although the Sergeant looks sympathetic, he locks the cell.

Upstairs in Joe’s room, Erika is looking through the dossiers. She hands Bill his dossier, commenting that it appears he likes parolees. Bill says that he used to run a halfway house, butErika adds that he actually used that halfway house to defraud the government. Erika swears that she won’t tell anyone if he will do her a favor. Moira then enters, so Bill scurries away. Erika tells Moira that she looked at McNair’s file and found that he is keeping a secret. She whispers it to Moira, just as McNair and Charlie walk in. Moira storms past McNair, so he follows her. He asks her what is wrong, so she asks him if it is true he killed people for money. He tries to explain that the truth is more complicated than that, but Moira doesn’t want to hear it, and leaves him.

Charlie enters the Sheriff’s office to ask Joe about the files. Joe swears that the files were planted. Charlie says that he believes Joe because Joe carries himself as a trustworthy man. Tom watches on his monitors as Charlie tells Joe that he will release him if Joe will do what he can to get Charlie out of the town. Joe promises that he will do whatever he can, so Charlie removes the lock and follows Joe out into the square. There they are met by Tom, gun drawn and pointed at Joe. Tom orders Charlie back to his room, so he runs off. Tom tells Joe that the Program saved his life, so he can’t go against it. Joe says that Tom used to be a smart, optimistic guy who was out to change the world, but the Program has corrupted him. Tom asks if Joe is willing to throw their friendship away for Janet, to which Joe responds that Janet is the best thing that has ever happened to him. Charlie watches from the shadows as Tom leads Joe to the Shanghai Palace.

Tom orders Joe to head toward the kitchen, but Charlie runs in to help Joe. Tom fires, and hits Charlie in the leg, dropping him. Joe rushes to Charlie’s side, promising Tom that if Charlie dies, Tom is a dead man. Tom responds that he knows (I guess it’s against the Program for the observers to kill one of the captives?). When Joe stabilizes Charlie, Tom ushers Joe back toward the kitchen. Janet (where did she come from?!?) enters from behind them and beats them to the kitchen. She grabs a wok full of hot oil and throws it at Tom, which begins to melt his flesh. He stumbles in pain into the burning stove, which sends him up in flames(!). He collapses on the ground as Joe puts him out with a fire extinguisher. Tom is dead.

Bill, Moira and McNair run into the restaurant and ask what happened. McNair and Moira grab a stretcher and bring Charlie back to his room. When they leave, McNair tells Moira that he wants to talk about his past. He tells her that when he was in the military, three of his best buddies were killed by the same bomber. He searched for the man, but could not find him. Then, someone from a mercenary company told him that they found the bomber. For $100,000 they wanted to know if McNair would kill the guy. This was the man who killed his friends, so he did. It turns out that the man he killed was actually an accountant who was going to testify against the mercenaries; he had non connection to McNair’s friends’ deaths. After that, McNair snapped, and did some bad things. He was just getting his life back together when he was kidnapped.

Renbe and Kat are at the airport booking their flight when they are led away by security. It turns out that they were just picked for extra screening. Stefano find them, however, and tells them exactly who they should speak to in order to get through security without being spotted and detained further. They board the plane and settle in to their seats. They are not traveling alone, however, as Stefano takes a seat in first class.

Janet visits Joe in his room, and tells him that Charlie told her about the planted files. She asks if it is true that he threw away the program for her. He answers in the affirmative, before complaining of a stiff back and the need to take a warm bath. He heads into the bathroom and sits on the tub as it fills with water. Janet, still in the bedroom, says that she doesn’t know what to do anymore. Megan’s birthday is next week, and she wont be there for her. Further, she knows that she should hate Joe, but she doesn’t. Janet just wants to get out. Joe says that Tom’s death opens some holes for them, so they may have a chance to escape. The plan he is forming will be very risky, and could likely lead to their deaths, so he wants her to think before she answers. She sits in silence, contemplating whether to trust Joe or not, when she begins to hear he sound of the water change. She looks toward the bathroom and notices that water is flowing under the door. She enters the bathroom and pulls the shower curtain back to find the tub overflowing, and Joe gone!

Commentary

I watched “Smoke and Steel” from my hotel room at Comic-Con (check out TVO’s Comic-Con coverage here), and found myself thinking, “This show should have been a hit here, but in all my hours of sitting in line, not once did I even hear the show’s name come up.” Then, as I wrote this recap on the flight home, I was trying to think why that was, and the conclusion I came to was summed up perfectly by this episode: the series is just too uneven. In “Smoke and Steel” for example, there were some really great moments, like the Ambassador approaching Renbe and Kat in Rome and further illuminating the group behind the abductions (see, the Renbe plot is growing on me!), or Joe’s disappearance at the end of the episode (best twist of the show so far, in my opinion). On the flip side, however, the Ambassador’s exposition about the conspirators should have happened a couple episodes ago, and the best twist of the series was clouded by the constant “she loves him, she loves him not” machinations Janet is being put through by the writers. We get Tom’s fnatastic death scene, but we still have no real idea who Tom was, why he was recruited, or how he and Joe became friends. We learned that McNair was a mercenary and went to some dark places because of it, but do we understand his character any better? After Moira was made very interesting the first couple of episodes by giving her numerous stories about her past, she has all but fallen off the map, left to simply make goo goo eyes at McNair.

Of course, if this series was designed to run over multiple seasons, allowing the characters’ backstories to be illuminated slowly would make sense, but this show appears to have been designed to last one season, maybe two, therefore, character development should move along quickly. This hasn’t been the case. For every intriguing tidbit the show gives, it is clouded or unfocused, leaving the audience to be unfulfilled by the development. The preview of next week’s episode seemed to say that we’ll be getting a heaping helping of Joe’s backstory (and presumably Tom’s as well), but with only six episodes left, and seven Captives, should an entire episode be dedicated just to Joe? I guess we’ll just have to watch and find out.

Alright, that’s what I have for “Smoke and Steel.” What did you think about the episode? Do you feel the series’ greatest problem is that it is uneven in execution, or am I totally missing the boat? What would you like to see in the second half of the season? Any theories on how the story will play out? Please leave your questions, comments and theories below or in the Discussion Boards. I’ll be back next week with another recap. Until then, I’m off to enjoy a cold, 1980’s cherry soda.