4400 *4.10* One of Us

[ShannonA]

Well, it took me all week to see the episode, but I gotta say, it was a fine episode.

I'm very pleased that they moved the Tom plot to completion so quickly. At first I thought there was some chance that Tom was faking it to catch out the other Marked agent, but clearly not. Nonetheless, I can visualize where this is going.

We already know that the Marked can't have powers. We also know that Tom is destined to take shot. Therefore it seems obvious that Tom is going to get shot up to drive the Marked out of him, and suddenly the good guys will have a way to fight these agents from the future.

Now, there has to be a plot twist here, so I can imagine the following as the season finale: Tom gets shot with promicin as the finale to 4.13, and then blood starts to stream out of his eyes and we fade to black. Maybe he even gets a last word in of "Kyle!?", who I imagine being the person who injects him, given the familial betrayals of this series.

I also loved the fact that we really seem to be centering in on the conflict in the future.

Clearly the thing in Kyle's head, who I still suspect as a future construct, knew that Tom had become Marked, and thus wouldn't keep Isabelle. I was momentarily certain that she was thus on the side of the bad future guys. But then she started talking about protecting the movement and Jordan. Now unless the whole movement has gone very wrong, that would put her on the side of the good guys.

So who knows.

...

My imaginary season finale goes something like this:

Kyle realizes that the thing in is head is an implant and goes against her, which is what leads him to destroy the Marked in his dad ... and the even greater shocker when it appears Tom is dying from the shot.

I guess we'll all see how that works out in three episodes (unless it happens faster, as they plot has been moving briskly this season).

[Fritzef]

Well, it took me all week to see the episode, but I gotta say, it was a fine episode.

I'm very pleased that they moved the Tom plot to completion so quickly. At first I thought there was some chance that Tom was faking it to catch out the other Marked agent, but clearly not. Nonetheless, I can visualize where this is going.

We already know that the Marked can't have powers. We also know that Tom is destined to take shot. Therefore it seems obvious that Tom is going to get shot up to drive the Marked out of him, and suddenly the good guys will have a way to fight these agents from the future.

Yeah, I had exactly the same thought after the original "Marked" episode.

Now, there has to be a plot twist here, so I can imagine the following as the season finale: Tom gets shot with promicin as the finale to 4.13, and then blood starts to stream out of his eyes and we fade to black. Maybe he even gets a last word in of "Kyle!?", who I imagine being the person who injects him, given the familial betrayals of this series.

That's a great idea.

I'm hoping that we're rid of Kyle's Cassie by the end of the season. Having a literal voice giving explicit instructions about what to do to make Collier succeed seems just a little too deus ex machina. I realize that the problem is implicit anyway in any story about the future changing the present to get the outcome they want, but having a direct oracle is just too in-your-face for me.

Given Cassie's name, I'm assuming that at some point Kyle will ignore her advice, with disasterous results.

Another thing that I liked about this episode--unless I'm confusing my episodes--was Collier's response to Sean's news about the 'will promicin kill you test'. One thing I've enjoyed about the series has been the moral grayness on both sides; in earlier seasons, Collier and his movement and NTAC both had their good and bad points. This season, IMO, things had tipped much more so that Collier and his refugees seemed to have a good deal less menace, to be a more positive force. His willingness to have fully half the world die--indeed, his rejection of the diagnositic test as a bad thing--punctured the 'kindler, gentler' movement like a cheap balloon.

I did wonder why the show went to so much narrative trouble to have Isabelle revert to childhood if they were only going to return her to adulthood in a week. Obviously, she is going to recover her powers, but they could have done something along those lines without regressing her.

Finally, it was nice to see Penny Johnson; I've enjoyed her work since she played Cassidy Yates on Deep Space Nine.

[ShannonA]

Another thing that I liked about this episode--unless I'm confusing my episodes--was Collier's response to Sean's news about the 'will promicin kill you test'.

I knew he was going to reject it, and I knew it was going to be because he didn't want to destroy the hope of the other half of humanity, but I was pretty amazed that his playing is explicitly for half the planet to kill themselves.


I did wonder why the show went to so much narrative trouble to have Isabelle revert to childhood if they were only going to return her to adulthood in a week. Obviously, she is going to recover her powers, but they could have done something along those lines without regressing her.

I did feel like that was the one false note of these last two episodes. It would have made the whole episode feel like a big reset button if not for the stuff going on with Tom.

Finally, it was nice to see Penny Johnson; I've enjoyed her work since she played Cassidy Yates on Deep Space Nine.


I especially liked getting to see the part where Isabelle was conceived, because that wrapped up so much of the past and present continuity into a nice ball.