A lot of what people who watch this show have been asking for is starting to be realized. People are wanting the guys and gals to have some back story, to add character to these characters so we know why, for instance, Riley is such a complete loner, socially inept computer whiz or how Maureen or for that matter Painkiller Jane Vasco got into the law enforcement biz.
With a title like "Ghost In The Machine" you knew the general plot before it started, so there has to be something else going on.
Vasco visits Connor – brutish ex-cop, ex-prisoner – at his place, which looks like the inside of a garage. He has an urban motorbike in his front room, not a Harley, not a chopper.
"Nice hardware," she says.
"Damn right? … Oh, you mean the bike."
As McBride pages the team, the bike starts up and his foot gets snagged between the back tire and the engine. Luckily he's wearing industrial boots and remains uninjured before she reaches over to turn it off. He's impressed with bike knowledge.
Strikeforce Vicodin is breaking into a red garage door, but we don't know why. Riley has a major in to their work, being able to view everything. They're inside when suddenly a wall of sound breaks vases and makes Riley's screens go white noise. McBride's ears are bleeding as they break through a wall with hell's choir facing them. A semicircle group of Columbine goth look-alikes have their mouths wide open to cover the one guy making the noise. (And is this a different neuro because what the fuck?)
Jane, the least affected of them all, of course, figures out that the kid making the noise is the one farthest from the window because it hasn't broken yet. Oh-kay. Just a few minutes later, in slow-down mode, the garage door slams down on Connor's leg as he's stretching for something else. Coupled with burns from a coffee maker and the bike revving, Jane wonders whether something else is contributing to his accident proclivity.
Jane voices her thoughts to McBride who's shadowboxing somewhere. She says she doesn't know enough about Connor to form more than an opinion. By the way, the show just pretends that blood flowing out of McBride's ears didn't happen.
Connor is a little pissed when he discovers everyone's talking about him behind his back.
"Vasco remains invulnerable to injuries and everyone around her," he says. Connor isn't aware of any skeletons coming out of his closest, he adds. But after McBride leaves he's obviously double-thinking whether that's true. A little while later Riley's going through Connor's files – with a lot of redacted info – until he goes wide eyed.
Before that we see a security guard get his leg chewed up on some machine. Like with Connor, it starts up for no reason. A few squelchy sounds later and he's gone, real gone.
Ah, we get too see a few slow-motion workout moves from Vasco at Deckard Street HQ. Some producer has made a conscious decision to show the sign more — a nod to the world of Blade Runner.
Riley comes downstairs to Jane pumping iron, arm curls, and the entire night he wasted at her whim — and then he says her hunch paid off. Connor was the leader of the Barrier Precinct Tactical Response Squad, and five of the 12 in the photo that Riley found have been killed. Joey Berlin was the security guard at Bassett's Department Store and he was part of the BPTRS. McBride says Connor is a risk and needs to stay away from the team for a while. There's loyalty for you.
Connor better be revealed as some amazing spook — or JFK's assassin, because the mystery the writers are building about his past is extraordinary.
Ah-ha, the tall guy in the episode "Catch Me If You Can" caught in the rain with Vasco is back and they seem to have been living together for awhile. By the way he's a reporter, the Lois Lane of this series clearly. Or he will be. That could be interesting. Vasco's got a secret, she isn't used to hiding them – though is used to hiding feelings – and he's going to smell the story.
This whole scene is kind of thrown in the mix of the show apropos of nothing, as is the fact that she finished a stack of crosswords in a couple of hours, in pen, while doing her laundry.
Connor remembers some letters that one of his old squad members wrote — and Vasco is asked to leave her cozy home environment to get them. Before she can get there, we see some guy with a mini-ice pick search through his Craftsman's tool cupboard and finds one of the Tactical Unit patches. She enters not very quietly and starts to disarm him but he's trained well and they get into it. He doesn't respect her as a woman and so she wins — well, almost.
Turns out William Hoyt Pearse is the guy, a member of the Tactical Response Squad. Riley runs aging software over all its members for Jane with an image they somehow got from somewhere.
Connor walks outside his place to be a draw for Pearse and out rumbles a nearby vehicle. Except, Connor gets out of the way and Pearse gets killed. Jane notices that it's the legs in most cases that seem to get whacked. With that, Harry Beaman is a name Connor comes up with and it turns out he's some bitter-ass in a wheelchair who blames Connor for sending him into a booby-trapped building looking for a perp.
Beaman looks 15 years younger than a picture from a decade ago. McBride notes that it was only after he was injured that he got his powers.
Joe Waterman, the train guru, is back. As they're all standing around he gets a chip gun near him and hesitates instead of firing it. Beaman manages to guide a steam stream right in his face and he falls off the main center platform. He's okay, which is sad because I thought we had an explanation for how he died.
They've split up with Connor and Vasco one way, and the rest escaping. Joe thinks he knows a back way out that doesn't need electricity. This way has a huge fan at the top of the column – like Willy Wonka's extra-fizzy soda. It suddenly turns on and starts spinning. We're supposed to believe that it's sucking air out of the column enough so they die. In fact they get all woozy in less than ten minutes. No. Bad science, bad.
A fan with that slow of a rotation and wide gaps would always suck air back in as well. It's a Bernoulli convection thing. It's a failed physics thing for the show.
Meanwhile Connor has what almost amounts to a declaration of love for Jane. He says he wants her near because if he lost her he'd lose the only thing he's cared about in a long time. Ohhhh wow, he kisses her — and Beaman watches, except I think Connor knows he's watching. On cue, Vasco gets crushed by the railcar. Beaman asks aloud: "Question: Can you live with yourself now?"
King comes up behind and doesn't bullshit around, killing him outright. His death gets everything working as it should.
As people have requested, the characters are fleshing out. This was Connor's moment. The reverence for Joe is a rich vein to mine. Riley seems to be a complete technoN00b and who knows what else. The rest of the crew isn't as familiar with death as Connor, and by extension Jane, who's died a few times.
We're back at Connor's place and with voiceover she gently strokes the bike and she thinks he's a well-built machine who shouldn't be judged by his cover. Having watched a lot of Magnum PI this past weekend, I've nailed down the problems with the voiceovers in this show. Painkiller Jane rambles on too long, and also too quietly. Thomas Magnum kept it short, and always related it to something that had happened in his life instead of ethereal, general bromides.
Next episode, "Something Nasty In The Neighborhood." For one team member it's the end of the line — we hear. Well, Waterman would be my guess. I thought he was a goner since he's been a gone for most of the series.
