Blogcritics Author: Temple Stark

Music Review: Intodown - Brave New World

Temple Stark — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:15:08 EST

We have an almost exclusively instrumentalist playground for sky-bound wonder, with a modern, self-disciplined kick.
In a world increasingly grown malnourished on less meaningful words, a break from the earnest mediocrity is welcome. So, we have Intodown's Brave New World, almost exclusively an instrumentalist playground for sky-bound wonder, with a modern, self-disciplined kick.Fundamentally Brave New World comes across as a solo performance, but a roving,...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

TV Review: Painkiller Jane - "Ghost In The Machine"

Temple Stark — Sun, 8 Jul 2007 17:02:15 EDT

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.

TV Review: Painkiller Jane - "Portraits of Lauren Gray"

Temple Stark — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:54:26 EDT

We, the white-knuckled regular viewers (chose your white knuckle reason) open today's installment of the Painkiller Jane oeuvre to the Evan Biddell First Look fashion preview. We're behind the scenes with Jeffrey Graham, a whiny stage director (or whatever the overtly snide and pompous are called) who, for being a guy, is a real bitch.The fashion show is filmed well but all we're seeing is pouts on chopstick legs walking back and forth endlessly. (Wait, you say that, in fact, is a fashion show? My bad.) Just when I was thinking, "So which one dies here?" on cue, Shannon, the Rebecca Romijn-Stamos look-alike keels over.Rather than us staring into the pained eyes of beauty, interrupted, she instantly has the look of being in her late 50s or early 60s. Emphasis on "late." She's dead.There's a model who glares who also seems to own the backstage area - or thinks she should. We're led to believe she's the neuro of this episode, one who controls others' minds and bodies with their own thoughts. With another show she'd be the feint, a well-played decoy to keep everyone guessing, could it be ... ? With this one ... well, let's just say she ends the episode more wrinkled than a T-shirt caught in a couch cushion.Voiceover Painkiller Jane says she was given fairytale books as a child that provided the appropriate and safe gender roles. She managed to ignore the plot device where the hero always saves the damsel. But being the graceful and beautiful princess with equally stunning hair never quite left her system.For an episode billed as one that would change Jane Vasco forever, I didn't quite see how. However, this tenth episode (actually filmed as the ninth) offers a decent wrinkle to the kill or wait-I-can't-be-killed dynamic of the self-healing Painkiller Jane. We find out that she can mentally and deliberately stop or speed up her own healing. She has sat down with Strikeforce Vicodin team member Dr. Seth Carpenter. They're investigating a bruise that won't heal. Jane nicely points out that her not healing has become unusual, while everybody else who visits the doctor's office has no such expectation. Jane still has lots of dreams — about things that don't die, zombies, vampires, Elvii and the reality of overpublicized celebrity skanks. Dr. Seth speculates about her mental activity affecting her body but he hesitates later when Jane tells him about experiments she did to prove it, while she was handcuffed to a bed. This dead model, Shannon, is not the only one to have been bitten by a neuro-tic(k). Riley "Nerd" Jensen says none of the several he uncovered, all 23 and younger, had rapid-aging genetic disorders. Also, those diseases work slowly, whereas these changes are a quick-as-a-kiss transformation.It's time for another work-from-the-inside operation — agents Maureen and Jane play model. And for one show Maureen - even with her new sno-cone blue hair - outshines Jane in the looks department. They're called new guppies by the whispering cranes at the Jacqueline Conoir fashion show, featuring DeMarco designs. Or as the show's coordinator, Arlene Watson, hisses and purrs while Jane tries to get in one, "dresses for women with single digit BMIs.""Jane you're up in three minutes" comes the call. Another model, Wanda Norton gives Jane the head-to-toe-to-head look, admirably, and kisses her cheeks, along with "Enjoy it while you can." Minutes later, Jan has aged five years or so and is late for her catwalk strut.But Jane finally does come out - and someone is shocked backstage. Someone must have touched her but - here kissy, kissy - who ... can ... it ... be?Apparently jazzed and juiced by being surrounded by other beautiful women and scared at her brush with older age, we get a rare sex scene, with Jane passionately lying with Heath Ledger-lite. Suddenly Jane, thinking about other things (not usually a good sign of being "in the moment") interrupts the smooching fun to ask whether she looks old. This is followed by a second interruption as neighbor Amanda Stone from a few episodes back comes in asking to borrow some clothes for a hot date of her own. Note, please, that Ms. Stone is obviously and at least a foot shorter than Jane Vasco. So Jane's thong is a knee length skirt for Amanda. Her miniskirt? A full formal.For such a dumb question, Amanda Stone, of the rebel punkiness 'tude, is killed when she later walks back into Vasco's apartment to return the dress: "It was totally hot, which means it wasn't on long" she says to a noise in another room. So much for the fun neighbor story lines.The rest of "...Lauren Gray" wraps up well. Connor and the rest of the crew round up DNA from the bosses, Jeffrey (glass), Wanda (not sure), and Arlene (hair), through "chance" meetings. The DNA rodeo finds one disgusting but unmistakable fact - model Wanda Norton is - gasp - at least 55 in real life. In other words, vampire-like, she's sucking the life and essence, and most important, youth and beauty from these models.You go, girl. Away, that is.Wanda Norton, in her hotel room, pontificates to Jane on the boo-hoos of the modeling world: "Being invisible is a lot worse than dying." They're sipping brandy but Jane is drugged in mere seconds. I'm guessing Jane's magical powers of healing don't extend to hangovers and resistance to drugs. Perhaps because some, like opiates, can be thought of as healing themselves?When she saw from the catwalk that her kisses don't age Jane, Ms. Norton realized she had her very own fountain of youth. Or as she describes it later, "You're a beautiful flower that doesn't die." Ah, that would be so sweet if Jane wasn't handcuffed to a bed when she says it.Ms. Norton, who we see with wrinkles on her neck, gives a sharp peck, but vanity quickly triumphs over self-control and Jane gets the full liplock treatment, except it's still quite a tender kiss. This lesbian angle is what a lot of Kristanna Loken (an openly bisexual actor) fans wanted to see as it's part of the original comic book. Previews for the next episode show Jane kissing Connor, which hopefully and most likely is taken completely out of context because ewwww, we don't want the show to go in that direction and she can do better.Wanda reveals that every time she kills a model she gets one of their quirks or compulsions, like smoking or candy. It happened with Amanda, she says, and now she gets migraines. When Jane finds out Amanda's dead she reflexively crushes a glass. And the cut in her hand does not heal - until she wills it so later.After Wanda leaves, and with every sinew and tendon tearing, Jane rips her hand backward to get out of the cuffs. Tremblingly she reaches out for her keys -- and Wanda comes back in and smacks her hand down. Ouch.The scene jumps briefly to Arlene talking about how Wanda is dating someone 30 years older than her. We jump back to Wanda's penthouse (office?) at 231 W. 71st Street to see an aged Painkiller Jane, long blonde hair surrounding a hag face -- we're talking 80 years old plus. She looks depressed -- and very much like Jane Curtin, to be honest. Has her self-healing ability suddenly failed her at exactly the wrong moment?Nope, it's one of those experiments where Jane has willed her body not to heal. Wanda realizes Jane's useless, throws a towel over her head regretfully and leads her outside to presumably leave her for dead somwhere.In the elevator, to save production money on make-up, Jane reverses the aging while hidden behind the towel and Horton hears a what? Jigga who? Jane decks her and Wanda dies in Strikeforce Vicodin HQ after suddenly being hit with all the stab, shoot, fall, and being crushed "quirks" Jane's been through.Awesome.Next episode, "Ghost In The Machine" 10 p.m. Friday, Sci-fi Channel.

TV Review: Painkiller Jane - "Trial By Fire"

Temple Stark — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 21:25:02 EDT

Ah, we start off in a courtroom. A drama usually can't go wrong with a courtroom scene; there’s instant conflict and precise adversarial roles.Before I get into the episode, let me step aside a moment to acknowledge at the beginning (in case people don’t get to the end here) that the impossible has been happening and people sticking with the show have been rewarded. Painkiller Jane is better than the stilted, ungifted acting and plodding plots it started with. I really wanted this show to work – and it really is. It’s been improving by leaps and bounds – just like a real superhero.This was a stand-up episode about Strikeforce Vicodin aka Team Neuro member Connor King being accused of serial arson and murder.Connor King is in the defendant’s seat after being arrested for a series of arsons including one house fire that killed Lucy Samuels. What’s been happening though is the team has been tracking a fire-starter neuro, and naturally Connor been seen at nearly every scene.Combine that fact with his combustible personal history and we have a conflagration. Connor King's shit is about to hit his least supportive fan. His former police partner is about to testify against him and among his record as a criminal are arson charges.“Ex-cop, ex-con -- kind of cute in a borderline, sociopath kind of way,” series heroine Jane Vasco muses. “Here's the deal, I’m able to heal and Connor isn’t.”It's a high-profile case and not only is the situation looking dire, Connor's government lawyers are working against him to keep the neuro program quiet. Connor cannot put Maureen, Jane, Andre, Riley, or Dr. Seth on the team (and certainly not former railway man and former team neuro member who’s lost in a subway tunnel somewhere, never to be seen again).We get to meet some of the leaders behind the team, including Gerald Morgan, delicately referred to only as "supervisor of Andre's team." Morgan is willing to sacrifice King to save the secrecy of the team. “He was always a liability,” Morgan says, which ain’t exactly a vote of confidence.Connor is feeling frisky in jail when Maureen comes to visit. She breaks the bad news that his background on the legit side of the law on Team Neuro won’t be part of his defense. He’s feeling despondent and hopes that his “going away present” is with a “sympathetic” Mo and “the Supergirl.”So they bond by hitting on each other, but also Strikeforce Vicodin becomes a legal defense team. Connor refuses to tell McBride more about his background, which strains their working relationship and gets the whole team tense.Instead, Connor tries to escape twice just because he feels there’s no hope; he has obviously been railroaded before. The first time the jailer gets a little trigger happy and fires into an occupied courtroom. Jane jumps in his way as she sees them ready to shoot -- and takes two slugs in the shoulder.Riley, who now sits at an upgraded bank of screens, is figuring out the connections again. The target houses are two-story blue houses that all face West – or something equally random and absurd. All but one that is, though no one can shed light on the anomaly. Riley suggests maybe the arsonist grew up in a similar house.McBride, who you would think would favor the law and order approach, has a cunning plan. It’s bold. It’s ambitious. When Bill Cole, the ex-partner, ex-cop, ex-cellmate, shows up at the courthouse, he’s given a message. He is told to go to the back of the courthouse and there’s McBride, gun in hand, pretending to be a hired killer for King to dissuade Cole from testifying.It seems to be a plan burdened and fraught with risk and doubt. If it doesn’t work, Cole still testifies and Connor gets hiring a contract killer to his list of charges. Luckily, Jane poses as a witness too, and McBride, which, of course, is rather convincing.In fact it works and Cole refuses to testify in court several times, pleading the fifth even though he’s been granted immunity. His loyalty to fear gets him a quick contempt of court.Scott Samuels, Lucy Samuels’ husband, testifies and he’s a just-the-facts-ma'am type. He gets about as emotional as a frozen rock. Doing their investigative due diligence, Riley and Maureen figure out that oil stains in a couple of the garages show that the arsonist arrives at the scene on a motorcycle. McBride points out the drawback to this brilliant sleuthing -- Connor rides a semi-custom Saxon chopper.Back in the courtroom, expert witness Dr. Erich Wilson creates some huge elaborate theory - involving basic magnifying equipment - about how the fires are started, yet don’t leave any evidence. Connor’s defense lawyer thinks he’s got the guy when he gets him to say the glass and the device would not have melted completely in a fire. Except the good doctor, as he talks, crumbles in his hands the device that had just burnt a small towel in a demonstration. It's made of crystallized sugar. Further evidence finds Connor King renting a storage unit, and several of the magnification burning devices are found there.It is a flimsy frame job – by Connor’s defense team against Connor. Riley later "finds” the original contract document online and finds it’s been modified and created recently rather than when Connor had the storage unit a few years ago. Morgan arranged the frame job.“I don't like your tone,” Connor’s attorney Richard Stanley tells McBride as the latter is getting pissed at the lack of support. Great response: “You're not supposed to.”McBride, going way out on a limb, says he’ll stalk Stanley for the rest of his life if he has to, and the country has spent a lot of money to do that well.Riley tries to find information on Samuels under the theory that they were the intended target with the others burned as cover. Somehow in his digital travels, Riley finds pictures of a beautiful woman - Ellen Drake - and mumbles, "If this isn't a reason for murder…" as he pastes himself into a picture with her.Turns out yes and there’s Blue Ridge Motel video footage to prove it. Ms. Drake owns up to the affair on the stand and it’s discovered Lucy has $500,000 worth of life insurance, just purchased. And, she’s low-risk as she doesn’t ride a bike like he does.Richard Stanley finally gets a pair and interrogates him fiercely - and Samuels sets the courtroom ablaze. He’s the neuro. Connor, hand-cuffed, runs across and deep-sixes the guy to the floor with a body slam.The moral of the story is Strikeforce Vicodin members realize they’re a team and everything is warm and fuzzy. Or at least warm OR fuzzy. "He is cute, isn’t he?" Jane repeats again, about Connor. And I only mention that because it looks like in the next episode Jane becomes pregnant. It's billed as "the episode that changes everything." She discovers a part of her power she never knew about.Next episode, airing June 22, “Lauren Gray” where Jane poses as a (pregnant?) model who is turning young women into old corpses.

TV Review: Painkiller Jane - "Friendly Fire"

Temple Stark — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:46:10 EDT

Betrayed – but this time not by the scriptwriters. This episode reaches emotional depths heretofore unexplored in the series. Note it just doesn't attempt emotional depth, it reaches it.Events start out innocently - or at least drunkenly - with Maureen, Riley, and Jane out on the town and Maureen, with a glazed shine in her eyes, is sitting, finishing up on a chameleon tattoo. Riley's the cheap drunk and completely wasted and Jane's the responsible one - or at least her ability to recover from body damage might take away the effects and eliminate all hangovers. Hey, now that’s an ability.We segue from Maureen getting ready for her date with a motorcycle and its rider and Jane helping Riley get in a taxi to her waking up to her alarm.Wait, that beeping is hospital monitoring equipment and she's sans glitter-red lipstick from the night before. Oh, and she's chained to a bed. No one, not her nurse or German-accented doctor will answer her questions. But she is taken out of her restraints and flexes her unflattering hospital gown-wearing self while sitting inside a big, empty room.Wait, she has a whole ward to herself?We see Nurse Wells eavesdropping on doc and another doctor talking about treatments. Expecting another insane patient, she's surprised that Jane was let out of her restraints. Later, she's surprised how much medicine they want to give her - dangerous levels. It's ten large needles full of a drug that she knows should cause huge pain, but doc knows Jane and knows it doesn't matter. He drills into her leg and a few minutes later Nurse Wells goes to clean up the needle entry sites and doesn't see the tracking marks she expected.Vasco, tired of being cooped up, starts walking the second floor. Her door is unlocked, but most other doors remain locked. A quick change into hospital maintenance staff clothes and she heads for the exit but pauses until she sees Strikeforce Vicodin colleague Dr. Seth Carpenter. He's told by another doctor in the parking lot that she's still unconscious so she decides to surprise him with the news that she's not.Dr. Seth trumps that surprise by dropping a bombshell and shouting for help. She gawps at him and asks, in so many words, what the fuck? Through a pitying glare, he puts her in her place: "What do you expect Jane? How should we treat you after you killed Riley?"Wha-haa-haaa? Wow. The weasel one is gone? Of course, he 's one of the few characters with, well, character.Because this was filmed 11th but is airing eighth, we're not sure if Riley could actually be dead - just like the Joe Waterman character who has completely disappeared from the team without any explanation. So the crew members make their appearances in the hospital, trying to get an explanation for Riley's death. But none are as devastatingly bastardish, cold, and cruel as McBride. He's all Alec Baldwin and says she was a mistake, and a rude thoughtless little pig. Well, McBride is pissed anyway that she can't remember anything and shoves her blood-stained shirt in her face.This is where McBride tells her she's neuro positive, or in other words, the same as those the team has been hunting down. The same as the group he said would always choose evil over good. To him now she's just an experiment subject. She's nothing.That's a pretty good plot twist, and acted entirely convincingly. It's only at the end where you wonder whether anything he said is valid, as it wasn't even McBride saying those things.He also rambles on about NICO being a failure but even after we find out NICO is - Neuro Internment Center Operations - this is just a throwaway part of the plot -- for this episode at least.Maureen visits and though she starts with a "Hey kiddo, how ya doing" she gets body-cavity deep on some of the questions she's asking and starts questioning McBride's motivations; that maybe he's got her locked up because he doesn't want to reveal that he made a mistake. "It doesn't sound like Andre," Jane says. "No, but killing Riley doesn't sound like you," Mo replies.Some indeterminate time later, Vasco makes another escape from her room, this time finding a way into the doc's office. Paper, flip, paper, flip. She's reading something about new study breakthroughs to do with neuros – and that they may have been achieved through unethical behaviors, as with Jane, now.Dr. Seth then visits Connor King who only shows up to say he now wants to kick her ass. All the visits and even Jane finding the NICO is all a part of the manipulation she's in the middle of without knowing.NOW it's even more like a video game and comic book.Someone is trying to find their HQ through Jane. Someone with an accent. Somehow these people in the hospital are setting up this elaborate illusion, in a way an extension of the previous episode, "Higher Court."And suddenly, we see Riley alive. There's some huge manipulation going on and at first, naturally, I think her whole team's been in on it. But as they talk back at Deckard Street HQ it's clear they don't know where she is.McBride is trying to put the pieces together about what happened after the tattoo parlor. Maureen says Vasco wasn't drunk. "She had a few beers and tequila. A few tequilas."Back at the hospital Nurse Wells is spilling the beans about what she's seen. She tells Jane she's the only patient in the hospital and what she heard the doctors say. She even says she saw the doctor change from doc to Maureen before entering her room.And while I think the nurse is part of the act, another greatly timed and executed surprise takes place. The nurse, she’s talking to Patient Vasco, but it’s the doc and he suddenly gets the strangling urge and kills her. He’s a shape-shifter, which explains why each of the crew visited her separately. It is “Maureen” pushing Vasco in a wheelchair out of the building.Jane reaches for a security guard's gun – and has to shoot another one. The guy she shot gets back up and shoots Jane in the back as she and Maureen fall out through the lobby window.Clearly “Maureen” is planning to get herself and Jane to the HQ. The other doctor is looking down through a window, smiling.There’s just one problem. As she gets into the car, Maureen doesn’t have that bum-crack tat she just got. Seeing that, Jane feeds her a line about a boyfriend she supposedly stole at the academy. “Maureen” just accepts it and Jane is behind the wheel leaving everyone behind in her dust. Wait, nope. I thought she would but the sensible thing – absent from so many shows – doesn’t happen. Instead as they drive, she uses her credit card twice for the same $23.47 amount – and Riley’s got her tracked. Once for gas and once while paying for a snack and leaving a tip to get to that amount.Jane finally pulls up to where she says is NICO. And Team Vicodin is there waiting. We get the pleasure of watching Maureen chip Maureen.They jump back to the hospital a little while later but it’s been completely cleared out. Except, nice touch to the end, as they drive away the camera zooms in on something lying on the ground. It’s a pen from the company Vonotek, from the pilot episode.A reward for the faithful viewer.

TV Review: Painkiller Jane - "Higher Court"

Temple Stark — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 16:01:04 EDT

Maureen is the emotionally scarred one in this episode. A guy she's getting close to, Tom Larsen, suddenly walks off the top of the building where she and the guy and 40 or so others are partying -- if partying can be considered standing around on a rooftop with drinks in their hands.Strikeforce Vicodin team leader Andre McBride refuses to believe it's a neuro case, getting quite pen-up-the-ass about it. That is until Painkiller Jane talks to a black guy at the same place, The Sky Bar -- where Maureen's friend walked off the roof as casually as breathing. Jane's acquaintance is intense, as only a friend who's been through a lot can be. However, we get no indication of this. Jane gets the same vibes that he might try and walk on air so spends more time trying to protect him, including inviting him back to her place.Whether he took her up on her offer (or what might have transpired if he did) remains unanswered. But her vibes set the ball rolling on an investigation. The guy who died has no identity, or rather one that should be as obvious as anyone else's. Riley pushes past what he calls the "all signal, no noise" to find the guy's real name -- Gene Crowley, a former Mafia accountant.We get flashes of this dowdy-looking guy in a green room. He has a slight Russian accent and he reads out the name of some other high-flying, BMW-driving suicide. That guy drives of a cliff without so much as a scream. We see him and it's clear he doesn't realize what he's doing. Turns out he's a contract killer.Later, the neuro rubs his finger over a picture and it looks like the guy's daughter may have been killed, somehow, making him the avenger, but never as suave or playful as John Steed.Michael Varga, a shoe store owner now, is another person who has turned state's witness and been given a new identity. A total of four have died in a variety of ways, but all suspicious; Kevin Moree, plane, Halle Watson, drowned. Officer Cook walks into the police department, keys jangling, and it looks like he's going to shoot himself, but he doesn't. We linger on Sheila in a cloudy evidence lockup room. Cook and Sheila know each other and swap a little flirtation. Then he gets called away. We suddenly see a blue-tinged hallways get all its colors back. The neuro literally materializes where Sheila is sitting and starts looking, through her eyes, at some case files in a briefcase. The neuro looks like a younger, less smug David Stern (NBA Commissioner).Maureen - who looks like she has a slimmer face here - realizes the guy who was falling for her was a sleaze so feels better, but the whole team wonders what's going on. Judging by the personal criminal history of the people in charge, Maureen starts to think this neuro is bucking the evil trend (well, except for the old sentimental neuro in "Piece of Mind") and works for the good guys.Jane tries to convince Maureen that the neuro needs to go behind bars, giving her what the faithful - with the emphasis on faith - have come to know as the responsible, do-the-right-thing, follow-the-rules McBride speech.Gregory Hazen, currently Monty Lento, and the neuro are in a subway. Hazen keeps stealing glances then gets up at the Water Street ... no, Graham Street platform. It changed to our eye, from what Hazen is obviously meant to see to reality. Hazen walks down from the above-ground rail and the neuro creates a whole new landscape around him. This time, though, the new vision hides the four SF Vicodin team members who follow Hazen and see him act strangely. Hazen's vision is the classic car auction he wanted to see, though really it's an empty lot that extends into an abandoned manufacturing plant.By the way, don't ever try and get a job where this crew hangs out -- through all the episodes it's clear, no one makes anything anymore. The vision is quite complex and involves beautiful models, stroking imaginary cars, and a man Hazen talks to about a 'Vette. But it's clear Hazen is going to get himself ground up in one of these machines. Our team is watching and wondering.Finally, the guy opens a secure area and flips a switch to reveal a downward pointing cutting laser beam. We see it and Team Vicodin move to turn the switch. Maureen is the one who quickly finds the switch - but she hesitates to turn the laser off because she knows the next victim will have a seedy, criminal past as well. What's wrong with taking out a few bad guys?And then comes the sweet part of the show - Jane gets hurt. She whips over the fence where Hazen and the laser are about to become. Apparently, but unconvincingly, she can climb over this seven-foot fence and get to him before she can get to Maureen and make her push the OFF button. While it's great to see Jane injured - as this is the purpose of the show - she pushes Hazen out of the way ... and then, um, well, why couldn't it stop there? Answer, it could have. Jane didn't need to get in the way.And while we have watched Maureen struggle for being happy to kill criminals she finds out Hazen was a defense attorney, not a murderer. McBride gets his "I told you so" moment after Maureen says, "I almost let that man die." No, darling, you really did let him die - he just got saved. Hazen lawyered for Robert Grant who murdered his wife and kids. Hazen did his job and got the guy off due to faulty evidence, Wow, hours after the laser sliced through her back, she's still got scars there. Dr. Carpenter suggests that she was under it so long that her flesh started healing while the laser was still burning. Doc gets to probe Jane, but only in the most clinical of ways. There's coolness and increased sensitivity; she thinks he's pressing hard and he is not.It's been clinical but sitting there without her shirt on, she pushes an odd sexual moment with the doc and colleague. But it goes nowhere.Connor King, former prisoner, is gaining access to the witness protection program on some computer somewhere. Riley got him in. The computer he's accessed has all their pictures and a detailed layout of their Deckard Street subway HQ. He rushes back there -- and sees a dead Riley and Mcbride, and destroyed equipment. It's obviously an illusion to us but not to him. Perhaps Connor was somehow involved and the neuro wants him to think he's got nothing left to live for?In fact McBride, Maureen and Riley are standing there trying to get through to Connor but before they do - and brilliantly for the show - he starts firing guns everywhere at the masked gunmen he sees. It seems like he's in a game. He does the arms extended, double-clip drop, Tomb Raider pose. And yesssssss, Painkiller Jane gets shot tons of times.Bleeding, she's finally gets through to him. "If it wasn't for Jane and her freakazoid healing, I'd a killed all of ya," he say but he's embarrassed to have been fooled.Riley somehow finds out that their neuro is Ruben Hennessey, whose 19-year-old daughter was killed by a guy who should have been "three strikes and you're out" before he could go for number four. He is disgusted by the criminals AND the system and is "inexacting" his revengeTeam Vicodin lets the news run a completely false report about Connor King successfully shooting them down. It's the first step in a quick and dirty reverse trick on the neuro himself - to make him see what isn't really there. Jane walks in to where he is and is believable as an illusion because she shoots a huge hole in her hand and holds it up to him. It's where he works, which they just found out, though a first thought is, "If it was so easy to find him why didn't they before?"Stunned by the action, Jane walks up. Boom, he's chipped and left to wonder what hit him. She does feel pain though and her hand is killing her, her blood is left on the wall.THERE WE GO! Instantly the best one because she's doing what she's supposed to be doing -- getting hurt a lot to save the day. As a sly aside at the end, McBride and Vasco drive up to a prison - and we find out the captured neuros usually get taken to this specific detention center to be held. But that may change, though we're not told why.Because this is airing sixth but was filmed third, I'm putting it in that position of the story arc - and it still wouldn't have fit in, but it's good. This is an episodic show, rather than one that has threads of story weaving together all the episodes. But since we're dealing with a very small cast of characters, that hurts. This small band of thespians has to be able to act to carry that closeness. Not yet, that's for sure, though this one was a cut above the rest, ironically making me see something I want to see.Next episode, yes, as we have been led to suspect, Painkiller Jane is identified as a neuro, and she goes a little crazy at the thought (though she had perhaps suspected, too?).

TV Review: Painkiller Jane - "Breakdown"

Temple Stark — Sat, 26 May 2007 14:51:10 EDT

Let's get to the end of this episode first.If you (yes, just the two of us, apparently) have been following this show and reading about it, there's been heavy speculation that Painkiller Jane is a neuro. For those who haven't been watching, Jane Vasco is a latecomer to a team that tracks and neutralizes neuros, who are genetically altered or damaged humans.The malfunction in their brains manifests in a variety of ways we've been seeing in the show so far, from mind control, to being able to raise the dead.At the end of this episode Dr. Seth Carpenter, the resident doctor of what I've been calling Strikeforce Vicodin tells its leader, Andre McBride, that an analysis of Jane's blood reveals DNA characteristics very similar to that of the neuros.Jane's body heals itself of bullet holes, electrical frying, falling from great heights or anything. Though she has this talent, she still feels the pain of it all happening so it's not something she enjoys doing. But as part of the team to track neuros, her ability hasn't played much of a part in the last few episodes, including this one. This show is often thought to be stealing from Heroes but the concept for Painkiller Jane started in the comic book of the same name printed years ago.Andre, though surprise may be outside the realm of his emotional A to Z, tells Dr. Seth to keep that knowledge to himself, for now.One of the mysteries of the show for the viewer is why the episodes are being aired out of order from how they were scheduled to run. The Painkiller Jane website accidentally gives the answer to which ones are airing when.** But not why.Knowing that "Breakdown" was supposed to air as the fourth episode instead of the sixth, the revelation from Dr. Seth causes me to mentally scan over the last two episodes to see if they make more sense imbued with this additional information. In one way it does; it explains Andre getting closer to Vasco, as much more of a confidant than anything else. Maureen Bowers joined SF Vicodin at almost the same time and she and Vasco were close friends. Now? Not so close.Though the most interesting part of the show is its potential, there was a story to be told in "Breakdown."I'm not sure what I was doing while watching this, but I realized after it was all over I hadn't detected a plot. Now the show can be criticized for a lot but it always has a plot, however anemic at times. I blame my fugue on a neuro. I did come away with the feeling that this was the second best after "Catch Me If You Can."Maureen and Jane are interviewing people about weird experiences they've been having. A lot of flashing back and forth of images, of climbing on furniture, of feeling trapped and things floating in the vision: flowers, hats. Two of the interviewees are in a hospital, another is long-time whacko Henry Perkins - identified as Patient Zero - who killed his family and neighbors with a butcher knife. They visit him in Greenmore Psychiatric, a mental hospital. Maureen and Jane are buttoned up and looking business professional beautiful in black. After all, why wouldn't they dress up for the psych ward?The people they're talking to have the same nightmare, or at least parts of what appear to be the same nightmare. Mass hallucination is ruled out (good move).Jane and Maureen walk in Greenmore as Dr. Lewis visits a few patients, including the butterfly-drawing Elyse Danzig, who looks like an even skinnier Ashley Judd. Theresa is a looker, with a mad killer foundation seeping through the surface. "Got into medicine to try and cure people ... ah ... I've became a warden," Dr. Lewis says, hesitantly, as if he’s forgotten his line. The two talk to him about nightmares and that a variety of different people are having them. He's skeptical, saying dreams are a combination of fact and fantasy and can rarely be taken literally. “A cigar is just a cigar in some cases,” Jane says, with a Freudian nod.Jane wants to talk with Perkins and hospital staff approach him with Hannibal Lecter-like caution; all weapons removed, security on alert. Perkins has a long face, strong hands, and a robotic voice, Hal more than R2D2. And he's taller than Jane. She tries to get into his head and it's clear he enjoys causing people fear, but in this case he's a nightmare victim too, having three times stacked furniture to try and escape from something he can't remember.She does a good job getting inside his head; too good as he breaks his restraints in a freakout. Though a few questions seem to calm him down, one more puts him over the edge and he starts hitting her with his arms, rather than closed fist.Dr. Lewis is there to give her a calming brandy. She, of course, is fine, as Dr. Lewis remarks, perfectly healed from any bruising. "That brandy worked better than you thought” she says, sauntering out the door.A nifty little exchange takes place later, that continues to hint that McBride and Vasco may become more than just colleagues. Though she doesn't look much different, McBride back at HQ says she "looks like crap." ... "I guess you're not asking me to the prom." ... "You're no good to me like this." ... "Well, how am I good to you?"Voiceover Jane says she barely sleeps at all these days, a couple of hours a night max. She does sleep that night but wakes up with her own nightmare remaining on the shuttered, silver screen of her eyelids - a mom flashback, and water, and what looks like flotsam from a plane crash. The next morning, her furniture is stacked high against the walls.Dr. Seth finds a narcotic in her bloodstream and Lewis' brandy is the only thing she's ingested out of the routine of "salad and wine." Lewis cops to it after they track him down, he says he "offloads” this nightmare to others, but never the complete nightmare because it would kill people. He says he discovered what he could do after he accidentally stumbled into Henry in the hall and felt a great relief as his pain ebbed awayBut rather than take his word for it as they seem to have done with every other neuro, they double-check Dr. Lewis and, oops, Dr. Seth says it's the wrong guy. His blood isn't the same as other neuros.Faced with the medical evidence. Dr. Lewis says he was trying to protect Elyse, who came to the hospital as a 9-year-old, having been found adrift off the coast of Maine. Elyse does not deliberately give other people the nightmares, it just happens.Jane lies repeatedly and constantly to try and get Dr. Lewis to show them where he moved Elyse. This includes breaking her finger in front of him so he can watch it bounce back into place. But he doesn't break. He walks with Strikeforce Vicodin to the motel and he persuades them she would be scared off if they all went in at once. so he goes in first. He grabs her and tells her she needs to "give me all of your pain. All of it, for good." Amazingly she complies, which seems selfish.Now, go back to the beginning for the end.-- Next Episode, "Higher Court" airs June 1 on Sci-Fi at 10 EDT** The Painkiller Jane episode guide lists the six episodes aired so far, pilot to the most recent. When you click on each episode the URL and the title in the browser window shows when the episode was supposed to air. For the record, so far, pilot first, "Toy Soldiers" second, "Piece of Mind" fifth, "Catch Me If You Can" seventh, "Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself" sixth, and "Breakdown" fourth.The reviewer at AfterEllen has apparently given up after the fourth show ("Catch Me If You Can"). Even the person who writes the very brief episode capsules at the official site can't resist a shot of sarcasm in descriptions of what's going on. It makes me wonder if the focus of the show is going to be deliberately more camp. It's about supernatural powers. It doesn't need to be taken deadly seriously, though sci-fi fans are some of the most devoted to the reality of their unreal worlds.

TV Review: Painkiller Jane - "Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself"

Temple Stark — Wed, 16 May 2007 15:23:19 EDT

This isn't meant in a bad way, but I'm tired of Painkiller Jane not feeling pain.For a show about a self-healing genetic oddity, this episode is the second in a row that had nothing to do with Jane Vasco's ability. And the one before that only had one moment that lasted about five seconds. That's just an unforgivable oversight for the show. It's like ER set in a Zen garden, or Sesame Street on the 100th floor of the Empire State Building. Painkiller Jane is supposed to feel pain, not the audience. After the highlight and the promise of last week's story - the best in the series' five episodes to date - this one was a step back, and a disappointment. Proceed with caution.The one saving grace of this episode was furthering the story line about Jane Vasco's parents. Her mother appears as a vision, a personification of Vasco's deepest fear of being hated rather than loved by the woman she idolizes.The one overwhelming killing force of this episode was the acting. God, there's less ham on a pig farm. By comparison, Jim Carrey has nuance. It gave Everestian meaning to the term "over the top."While the idea of someone who can heal themselves is as old as, well Jesus (and beyond), it's at least more original than this cliché-ridden hour. The horror starts with the title itself, of course, "Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself," identified as a quote from "some president" in the show.What we had here was not the House of Usher.Strikeforce Vicodin, en masse, take up residence in an FBI safe house to try and find out why the protected witnesses who stay there always get scared out of their wits. They feel anything but safe.The show opens with an unknown woman who freaks out as she sees visions of the walls cracking and bleeding around her. She's a hematophobic who pales, screams, and kicks her legs at the sight of blood. Another agent afflicted by arachnophobia saw scorpions underneath his blankets. Apparently only Team Vicodin has emotional scars and fears, while crime witnesses only have run-of the mill phobias.An FBI agent we see later, Russell Camp, is framed through a window looking in. He's also frozen in front of the door where the screaming woman is, oblivious to her noise.In a wildly successful attempt to ramp up the "hard to resist" part of the show's catch-phrase, "hard to resist, harder to kill," we are treated to a shower scene. Voiceover PJ , while rinsing, talks about how people can look serene on the surface but it almost hides a fear that lies beneath, and fear is more of a motivator than anything else. You can make cleansing a daily ritual, she says, but that fear will stubbornly remain. PJ has a tiny tattoo star on her left wrist, and a running horse that made me flash back to my terrifying "My Little Pony" avoidance days.In a way "Nothing to Fear..." reflects this, too. The surface plot of this episode is almost purely meaningless, but it's the underpinnings of the characters that give it any meaning at all.The FBI and a Senate Committee want answers as to what's happening to witnesses and others brought to the house. There have been a series of incidents says Team Leader Andre McBride. "What sort of incident?" PJ asks. "If you show up at my house tonight I'll demonstrate," misogynist Connor King replies. "Oh, you mean a minor incident?" That gets my nomination for the second best line of the show.People who stay at the house on the hill (that's the image we get in the very first frame) always seem traumatized and tortuous interrogation methods, mind control drugs, or other psychosomatic abuses are suspected. The ubiquitous spook of the press has also caught wind of l'affair ergot peyote.Strikeforce Vicodin are outside the house. Maureen Bowers and PJ walk up the stone stairs first, unlock the door, and step inside. It's a house out of place inside and out, but the furnishings are nicer looking than the building itself. There's a lot of old wood, and worn edges everywhere.As the two walk around the house, prying into every room and corner, groans can be heard loudly and often. Turns out that was me, as the onslaught of clichés begins. There are the windowsill flies of Amityville, bare trees, indoor gusts of wind, two-note piano tension, crows close up or contrasting against a gray-clouded day, creaking staircases, and creakier cabinet doors. There was even that Psycho shower sense of vulnerability from PJ's shower meditation. I didn't quite get it for obvious reasons the first few hundred times I rewound the tape.** Strangely we never saw a graveyard, though we had a completely out of place, life-size statue of an old priest that could also have been Charles II, or some other long-haired hippie (wigged out) dude from the 17th century. King and McBride walk past it as they're checking out neighbors and a barn.Jane walks to the room where the woman saw the blood on the walls. It's a nicely set up bedroom and it has electricity. I was beginning to have my doubts. She searches through old clothes in a cabinet. As she closes the door (squeaky), she sees some undertaker-looking guy in the full-length floor mirror. And we're not talking the wrestler.She walks out when suddenly there's tinkly music box music. I'm not sure for a while whether she heard it or it's just mood enhancement for the viewer. She walks back into the room and flicks on the light switch again. Now it's more of a child's room with stuffed animals, dolls, and a ballerina music box. PJ sees a person sitting there who at first appears to be a girl brushing her long blonde hair. She looks on stunned and then she says, "Ma?"Back at subway headquarters, PJ doesn't say exactly what she saw, but she does say she saw a woman who disappeared when McBride came up behind her in the room. Maureen asks if she got a look at the woman's face. PJ stutters and says "No, it all happened so fast and she was gone."Through NSA satellites, Riley "Nerd" Jensen pops up someone on his computer who has repeatedly been seen outside the safe house. It's not the woman PJ saw. "It almost makes you believe in ghosts," says Connor through a macho smirk.McBride says they'll all have to stay at the place to analyze what's going on. Well, not all. In McBride's house (No. 28 - as in Amityville's 28 days?) he says he knows she hasn't told him the full story. "What you saw meant something to you. It's so simple, just tell me what you're not telling me."She refuses and he dumps her off the case, because what she saw affected her too deeply, "so deeply you can scarcely talk about it and that makes you unreliable.""I'm the one who heals and recovers quickly, remember?" she asks him. "Only on the outside." This wins best line honors.Back at the house, things are going from worse to even worse. For instance Riley has a black bandanna around his head looking like a wishy-washy underfed pirate. He starts mumbling about horror movie trends and how he seems to be primed for prime time poltergeist activity. He's in the basement setting up wires for his single laptop. As he talks to himself, he backs into a bird cage scaring the crap out of himself. He makes a few pathetic stumbling motions with a knife he has in his hands. The cage still has a dead bird in it.Then he starts hearing a whining cry. "Spirit of the dead child," he says. "That's the worst. It's always the worst." It sounds like a cat to me, but turns out it's a doll at his feet he's stepped on.As his nerves start to settle down, suddenly over their radios, McBride sounds the alarm: "Security breech in the kitchen." They all rush in, guns drawn - and it's Vasco grabbing a bite to eat. She looks at the guns and the reaction: "Okay, I don't eat too much."Riley finally identifies the woman. It's Anna Robson, who's been around the house ever since her husband, Carl, was brought to the house for questioning. While he may have been there, official FBI records don't show he was there, and in fact his identity and other records have disappeared for some reason."So, the broad's a neuro?" asks Connor, who has more lines in this episode than the first four put together. Joe Waterman, the training guru member of Strikeforce Vicodin, is not a part of this episode , and he wasn't around for the last one. As night settles in over our intrepid ghost hunters, Riley's in the dining room, his laptop hugged to his bosom, looking down the long table wondering if he's seen the Ghost of the Machine.McBride, just after we heard that everyone needed to bed up in the "buddy system", is seen sitting up in bed alone reading a thick book. Perhaps The Pearl or The Perfumed Garden. Either way he reaches for the lamp and switches off the light to kip down for the night.Suddenly, we see guys in full-fledged Vietnam camo-gear. It appears he's flashing back to a time when he got some of his men lost. As each says they should have used a map and he could have done better, they get mowed down by gunfire. McBride, before this the epitome of cool boredom, gets all panicky girly. Well, very unmanly, anyway.We are saved from further facial expressions and tears by an alarm. Not the clock-radio but someone caught wandering around outside. It's the fair lady Anna Robson. Asked why she keeps on coming back to the house she says she still believes her husband Carl is still there "in one form or another." She followed the FBI agents when they took her husband to the house (a safe house, great FBI security, guys), and then she never saw him again. He was being investigated for a kidnapping, and he worked for the people who lost their daughter."He was different," she rhapsodizes. "He could take my hand and instantly I would experience whatever Carl was feeling: joy, pain, sorrow, even anger."Jane says a lot of couples are like that, but Anna says it wasn't just her. She tells a tear-jerker about a homeless guy they encountered on the street. Carl gave the guy $5 and when he gave it to him, he held his hand. The man who looked like he had nothing to live for, she says, was given back his hope."It was as if this man just lit up inside."Someone says it's a touching story. I can't tell if that's meant to be a pun, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt and say no. Either way, the sympathy is short-lived as Connor points out that she's been around every time something bad has happened so she's probably the neuro. Most of the rest of the team believes instead that given these odd powers of restoration, it's likely her husband is the neuro.A little while later, McBride is back in his room, stoking a fire while wearing his turtleneck sweater. He tells PJ it seems people experience the fear, specific to the individual, he or she fears the most. He points to the hematophobe and the arachnophobe. He says he saw men dying under his command because he made a mistake. The Vietnam flashback wasn't an incident that actually happened.PJ still can't tell him quite what she saw, but she does say she saw a woman close to her. As they talk it up, Connor is downstairs listening to his music with earbuds. He looks up and his eyes go wide."What are you doing down here? How did you find me." We don't see what he sees. Connor backs up against a fireplace, unlit, and he too becomes a whimpering, terrified person — as opposed to a strong, terrified person who keeps his cool. It seems way out of character.Connor has disappeared. Riley's ultrasound sweep can't hear a peep or find him sucking his thumb anywhere. He can't be contacted on his radio. But through a GPS connection, Riley finds him walking across town. He's gone AWOL, and tells McBride he can do more outside the house than trapped inside doing nothing. McBride speculates that as a former prisoner, Connor may react even more adversely to being cooped up.Where are those beloved time or location stamps from the last episode? This one would read, "Kitchen five minutes later." Maureen and Anna are talking in the kitchen and when McBride calls, she tries to leave the kitchen and opens doors and keeps on finding herself back in the kitchen no matter how many times she tries to get out. Not too sure what personal fear this addressed, but she breaks out in a sweat."I feel like I'm losing my mind," she tells McBride who has walked into the kitchen and breaks her out of her trance with the intoxicating aroma of pomme frites. "It's alright. It's just the house," he replies.Vasco in the front lobby of the house hears the music box again and drops her cup. She sees herself at the top of the stairs, as a child. I think. She hears a lullaby and when she gets back up to the blood room, it stops.Her mom is there at the mirror again, playing with her hair. Her mother is a cold-hearted bitch. She is also a gorgeous knockout, but doesn't look the type who would keep on brushing her hair over and over. When PJ sees her, she gets a goofy smile again and tears up with joy."This is always my favorite time," mom muses. "I have the house to myself. Your father's gone, and you're gone. I get to be alone.""You ... you like to be alone?""It gives me time to think. I think about you and wonder what's so wrong about you. ... Can you imagine what it's like to have a child, a beautiful child, only to find yourself frightened by the very thing that you love the most?""You're frightened by me?""You were never like the other children," the mom muse continues. "Before you could talk I knew you were different. All the dreams we had for a child..." She turns around and spits out, in a voice deeper than the Grand Canyon, "... only to discover I was the mother of a freak."Daaaaaaaaaaamn. That little shredding of PJ's security blanket could have been done way more subtly. It's over the top. This is like one of those X-Files Halloween specials that they play for fits and giggles, ones where they break away from the intensity of the show to have a little fun. It's like it, except the Painkiller Jane creative team is playing it seriously. So far, everyone except Riley is just emotionally devastated sitting here. These people are supposed to be seasoned vets of all kinds of nastiness but they are folding like they've been in the house of horrors for months instead of one night.PJ is sitting on the floor in another room, dumbstruck and stunned to incapacity. McBride and Maureen come up. Maureen nicely points out that what she saw, whatever it was, wasn't real. "The fear is real. What you saw is not," McBride clarifies."Is there any difference?""Yes. We can conquer or at least learn to live with our fears.""You're right," PJ says."I never doubted it," which is a weird arrogant line.Riley is trying to nail down what's happening. He thinks he has it, and asks if she touched anything, turned on a light or plugged something in. PJ turned on the light switch. McBride had turned off the lamp. Maureen, she'd just turned on the coffee machine. Riley reacts like a buffoon. "I am right. I'm right again."He adds the extra information, that Connor just told him his MP3 player was plugged in "and he was listening [dramatic pause] to music.""Wow, that really explains it Riley." Again, Maureen voices my exact thought. I'm getting to like her. She's like the conscience for the scriptwriters. Riley says Carl is affecting everyone through the electric circuits and he wasn't affected because where his computer was plugged in was on an separate circuit added later. "Well, Riley, you're on a pretty big limb with this," McBride offers.Neurological activity is electrical, and the chip from the chip guns "interferes or short circuits a connection in the brain."To prove his balance on his limb they all head down to the breaker boxes in the basement. They don't see the box but there is a hollow, a door that has been boarded up. It doesn't look like that at all, but Maureen says it looks like that. A handy destruction sledgehammer is nearby, and after three bams, they can see in. A few more and the drywall holes are big enough to step through.The circuit-breakers are behind there - and so is an interrogation room, with a mini-electric chair. As they're in there, Connor comes back with a Russell Camp, assistant special agent in charge of the northeast division of the FBI. Connor slams him through the opening. What Connor saw helped him remember the sad sack Camp was. He'd heard of his "unconventional interrogation techniques."Camp, with Dwight Elkins was the agent who brought Carl Robson to the house. Camp tries to explain himself, that it was an emergency situation. A five-year-old girl was still missing. We didn't know if she was dead or alive and "Carl Robson lawyered up. We needed to know."Finally, fifth episode in, we get a glimpse of what he's good for - a solid fistful in the stomach. He beats on Camp, and has an electric arc going with the wires in his hands and aims for the testicles. That gets him talking. Turns out, during the interrogation they gave Carl a jolt and he up and had a heart attack. He wasn't the right guy; the guilty party was found a couple of weeks later,McBride starts to say Camp is a primo candidate for appearing before the Senate Committee. But before he can say anything else Carly the Vengeful Ghost somehow makes Camp reach out for the wires in Connor's hands and its self-sizzle time. Thank God for Riley, because when the obvious is in need of a statement, he's there. He says that during the electric moment that killed Carl Robson all his energy, his neuro energy, was transmitted to the house. All his brain activity was passed into the circuitry of the house.Conner ever the alpha male where Riley is more of a C+, bets that the weird power in the house isn't gone and they go back inside the house to prove it. Riley reaches for the coffee pot and flips the switch. He fakes losing his cool. But because his acting was as equally overwrought as the others during their moments of terror, the viewer has a moment of doubt that he could be playing it real."Oh God, oh God, oh God, anything but that.""What's wrong?" comes PJ's worried query."It's ... it's ... it's decaf. I hate decaf."Ha ... .... ha.The sun sets on PJ as she says that maybe those who appear vulnerable, like Maureen or McBride are strong and vice versa. And that's an epiphany for her. She shows up at McBride's house again."I think I'm ready to talk."A truly horrific episode. I now have thaasophobia (fear of boredom) and what I'll call monotophobia, a morbid fear of clichés.Next episode "Breakdown." It sounds similar. A neuro introduces nightmares to affect people. The show airs Fridays on the Sci-Fi Channel at 10 p.m. EST and 1 a.m. EST.**Note, I don't record this on tape, or TIVO it. I watch it twice and take notes. This is what can be referred to as a joke.

TV Review: Painkiller Jane - "Catch Me If You Can"

Temple Stark — Fri, 11 May 2007 09:02:51 EDT

"It's getting better all the time. It's getting so much better all the tiiiiime."I was already in a musical frame of mind as I couldn't get Dave Clark Five's "Catch Us If You Can" out of my head. (Here they come again, mmmm-mm-mm ...) But the Beatles tune also seems to apply. This is the episode that may help stem the criticism of the show; there's much less to criticize. This episode is more developed, and we meet a lot more people who don't seem to have the milk of human kindness suckled out of them. A lot more happens during the day too, which is refreshing. The conversations are more snappy in their back and forth like they've never been before ... better all the tiiime.Different this time around are time stamps on the screen which definitely help move from scene to scene. In this episode specifically they were important, but you can see why other shows use them; they are the transition the brain needs to go from action sequence to people sitting around a table to, let's say, someone getting shot.Speaking of which: A guy gets shot in this episode. Just one for a change. It happens at the beginning and the rest of the show is Team Vicodin trying to prevent our girl Jane from killing him. Got that?There's some Enya/Nine Inch Nails (circa Pretty Hate Machine) hybrid music launching us into the show. There's an assault on a building from people in camouflage. We see the faces of Mighty Misogynist, Maureen, and McBride (aka 3M) on some guy's green-screened PDA. We quickly find out it's Team Vicodin out there in camo. Boy, they're great at this secret squirrel sleuthing stuff; someone's spotted them and tagged them and hung them up on the trophy wall before the battle even gets started. Except this time, they have an excuse for being found out.The shooter - some slacker-looking dude who doesn't know how to shave - has mines and tripwires set around the building. Still it's not enough. After thumb-squirting his chewed wad of gum on the gun-sight, our Neuro Of The Week shoots and misses a couple times before scoring direct hits on our fearless leaders.Painkiller Jane makes a brazen assault with her best Tomb Raider pose, Desert Eagles deftly directed and firing endlessly in each hand. It appears she gets hit and just lies there. We know - 'cause we're gifted that way — she must be faking because she can heal herself without trying. She continues to lie there long enough for him to come downstairs - and see PJ. They know each other.They exchange very brief pleasantries — Wassup? How's it hangin'? — and then PJ whips out her nail-gun and chips him. Or is that, chip-gun and nails him?In short, the guy they're after has seen the future, and the future is them. So to answer, yes he can be caught. Here we go again hmm-mm-mm...But, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. That was just the opening scene, and we walk back to the future from there.This episode is about looking for answers: Why is David Hasselhoff so big in Germany, Painkiller Jane Vasco voiceovers. Good question, but then Europe sans-UK only seems to look for meaning in its classical music. "Answers don't always deliver satisfaction."Wednesday 8:12 p.m.PJ and a guy named Brian are happily, almost giddily for Jane, walking down a moody fog-filled street. At first I thought the guy, clean-shaven, was the shooter, but it wasn't due to the fact he was prettier. Brian is a reporter — and also the guy PJ kisses in the opening credits of every show. Vasco explains in a voiceover and in so many words that they've been going out just long enough where she can kiss him and leave him wide-eyed and blue-balled without any explanation. They do the Tom Cruise camera angle to make her look shorter than him. (Have I mentioned she's 5'11"? Because she is and I ... that's just ... and I want ...)She promises to make it up to him - and then... well, I'm getting ahead of myself again. As they walk it starts to rain and mindful of the high-quality leather they're wearing and with apparently limited options, they run into a bingo hall that looks like it's being run in a laundromat. The bingo was a funny (ha ha) absurd touch I liked - "Man Alive. Number 5. Two Fat Ladies. 88" Wait, two fat ladies are there.Vasco says she has to go make sure she doesn't look like a drowned sewer rat and heads for the toilets. I don't know what kind of place this is, but there's a flock of stalls in there, more than in any airport bathroom I've ever seen. In stupefied amazement, Vasco notices an envelope taped to the mirror with her name on it. She pushes or kicks or peeks under all the stalls to see if anyone's around. Because of the aforementioned number of them, this takes a full 20 minutes of the show.When she opens it up there's a small-sized DVD and a single sheet of note paper that reads, "3 of your team will die." Alriiighty then.When Brian appeared in the picture, literally, was the point when I remembered what I had read in my newborn research on the show and its actors. Happy to be in my own world, there were quite a few things I felt I wasn't understanding about the world of Painkiller Jane and Kristanna Loken so I started reading around. Turns out the powers that be are running these episodes out of sequence. So it wasn't just my imagination talking when I thought, where the fuck did this guy come from? Back at HQ, they're watching the DVD, and it's the same guy we saw dead from the original scene.He's talking directly to PJ. With the sincerity of Kurt Cobain, he's saying he doesn't know who she works for but maybe she can help change the inevitable. Maybe he doesn't have to die. Maybe 3M won't have to die, and maybe, just maybe, she can help avert all the other disasters he's seen."I can't stop them, but maybe you can. ... Please don't come after me. Keep your team away. It's the only way to save their lives and mine."Vasco mentions Brian to Maureen, who doesn't look put out that PJ's going out with anyone. Let's wave the lip-lock fantasy between the two bye-bye. Apparently Painkiller Jane is bisexual in the comic book the show is based on, Loken's open about her homosexuality in real life, and has done a few well-received star turns in HBO's The L Word, where the L word is seven letters and rhymes with lesbian. Anyway, that's the skinny on the street.Temple's Vascoesque Voiceover: You know, sometimes information just becomes information I don't need, baggage that becomes unwieldy to even the seasoned TV traveler. Live and learn, but a lot of things just aren't important to understand a TV show. And seriously, why IS Hasselhoff popular in Germany?Thursday, 8:53 a.m.Riley's been "tracking" weird calls about a being able to know what's happening in the future. The police apprehended the guy after an airport scare but let him go. Not before the dirty media took video footage. Gulp. It's the same guy on the DVD. Turns out his name is Ethan Grant. Gulp. Vasco shows them the DVD message. Coincidence? Nope.McBride wants to stop Grant from being able to see the disastrous end of lives. With a glint in her eye, PJ points out that rather obvious aside, that "3 of You Will Die" if they all go after him, a suspected Neuro. Why go after him, PJ asks. "No crimes have been committed and in fact he's saving people's lives. Why assume he's trying to hurt anyone?""Because he can," McBride snarls in return, adding that being able to figure out presidential motorcade routes and the final season of Lost in advance can do great damage to the country.A little Riley Nerd juice dribbles on the keyboard and they've found the poor boy's sister's apartment and head over for gin and juice. They have to settle for coffee and cookies, though. Sarah Grant, 403 Morningside Lane is the fair one's address.We see Ethan suffering from information overload. We see him sitting in front of TV screen, with images flashing and tumbling around him. He seems to be filtering a lot of visions to detect the worse. But he still knows people are dying.Thursday, later in the afternoonTeam Vicodin catches up with the sister at her big, rug-bedecked place. Sarah serves coffee in nice china cups. The apartment has hardwood floors and looks expensive, except she tells them she was heading to work -- in the middle of the day? When they tell her they know what her brother can do, she stops in her tracks and starts unburdening.She knows of her brother's talent, but it's a new development. It's progressed from vague feelings to outright visions of "When and where and how many people are going to die." Though he has been there, Sarah doesn't know where he is now."When these premonitions first started," she says, "he was afraid they were the result of some secret government experiment. And now he's afraid they want to dissect him and he probably wouldn't like I was talking to you."Ethan told his the sister the same story about three dead federal agents. Sarah got the feeling he was saying goodbye, but in a tingly moment of cool, you realize she's talking to the woman who shoots him. He calls in while they're there and starts talking on the phone about 11 people dying in a six-car traffic pile-up accident after a traffic light and five blocks of power go out. A transformer explodes at the Westdale Power Station within the hour. Thursday, 4:30 p.m.The outdoor BBQ traffic accident happens because no one listened to Jane as she's left hangin' on the telephone as she and McBride head to the scene. They eventually get there and it's a fiery mess. I idly wonder why Ethan couldn't have called a warning in early, but I quickly stomp that wonder into submission. Anyone can wonder themselves into a funk and a pointless exercise of criticizing the indefensible. That's too easy; all shows can crumble under such scrutiny.PJ beseeches Andre to stop the pursuit of this Neuro. "You have to let this one go, Andre." He says they can help the guy get rid of the visions and lead a normal life by chipping him.The sleuthing continues and they find themselves in a military surplus store near where his sister lives. The owner behind the counter says she he told her his name was Sam Whitaker. After trying to downplay his purchases — ropes, water purification kits, and other survival gear — she finally owns up to selling him a couple of rifles and knives.Just then nosy parker Jane eases open a small cabinet out on the shop floor and sees grenades and semi-automatic weaponry inside. See, the cabinet was unlocked with the key still hanging in the hole. It happens. It does. Threatened with closing up shop for selling these illegal items, the owner opens up like Britney on a drunken binge. Apparently, he was freaky enough to attract her attention, but she wasn't going to let the idea of a homicidal serial killer deter her until her own very ample ass was on the line. He's been buying "enough guns to supply an army" and trip wires, she says.They get some of his order forms and while the address is no help - his sister's - they see a doodle of three crescent moons. Maureen makes the connection back at Vicodin HQ; the logo is from a pair of trendy Tosrona sneakers and their trendily closed factory is downtown.The team, being very focused, decides they really need to go after the crazy guy with guns so he doesn't injure and maim with his stockpile of weapons. Jane looks at them all skeptically. They all dutifully trudge over there and it looks like the same place where the final scene unfolds. There's even an orange door and we know he dies in front of one.Everyone's inside, with flashlights. They're all in camo and it all amounts to nothing. He's not there. "So much for the doodle clue," Maureen says in a weird moment where she voiced the exact phrase I was thinking.Friday, 5:05 p.m.Ethan's wearing a gas mask, sitting somewhere with the images and scenes flashing all all around him, again.Riley's lifted fingerprints off the receipt from the gun place and discovers a treasure chest of aliases and info. PJ stands near and Nerdboy snaps a glance at her own treasure chest."Brinkers Men's Gym," and John Robbins flash on the screen.Riley continues his infatuation, and she uses it to get him away from the computer and in search of "audio files" of Ethan's calls. In what we who can't think of any other words to use, this was overplayed, ham acting. Riley literally stumbles away to please her. Jane scribbles down the gym info and deletes it. She's going there alone to protect her team. They believe that everything is predestined, and she's determined to live the freewill lifestyle that says things can change.Ethan and Jane do a little dance around rows of lockers. PJ wants to bring him in, but he says it's too late for him to break out of his fate, but she needs to "find a way to take one link out of the chain." What, like taking him and chipping him? Or imprisoning him temporarily?She has a chip gun but he doesn't want to be changed. About to ignore him and his whining about living in a world where pain rules, she's all set to lunge when a couple of bouncer-types come in saying she's not allowed in a men-only gym. Though she could probably find a way to kick their asses all the way down Main Street and back, she leaves quietly.Saturday, 2:14 a.m Subway HQPJ takes the "break" part of breaking the chain seriously. She knocks out team members Riley and Connor King with a syringe full of something suitable. And while they're out she lays waste to Riley's computers, so he can't track Ethan or her. And this isn't pull a spark plug so the car won't start damage, this is serious baseball bat to the head, heart, and gonads force. (Doesn't Riley have backups? Arrogant geek.)Jane packs a bag and heads out of town. McBride ain't following her; he's focused on Ethan. They go back to the sister's place and with computers down, they search it out with good old-fashioned detective work. Crimes were solved before computers, he says. Good point. Where's Sherlock Holmes when you need him?We get a split screen device, twice as nice. Production values rise again. She's driving, looking wired and worried, and Team Vicodin is at the sister's place as Connor the Misogynist pulls hair out of a shower drain. They're going through everything and finally open a closet door and see dirty boot marks. A dirt analysis helps them narrow down where Ethan's been.PJ's car overheats, but she doesn't care. She's happy to know she can't get back into town before the fatal shoot-out.Saturday, 23:52Ethan is working out, doing push ups and getting ready to die fitter than he's ever been.Jane, parked, sits in her car and for some reason I missed, sees that she's not so isolated after all. She's been parked next to a Metropolitan Police Training Unit. And there's an orange door. Oh sheeeet.She tried to change the future — and couldn't. There's some fair to decent internal foreshadowing in this episode and almost everything has a logical place in the story. PJ notices Andre's Ford Expedition right outside as well. She reaches back to grab her own com headset so she can hear what's going on.And the opening scene plays out, with mysterious steam and smoke all around. Except I've got to think that all of Team Vicodin is wearing their Kevlar. Andre confidently says the three can't die because, "It wont be what he predicted. Not without Vasco."What better Famous Last Words can there be?The shots start flying. "I don't think the stealth approach is working," Maureen says. Connor goes all stupid, wanting to charge the guy. McBride, almost as stupid, wants Maureen to lay down some fire as he runs out to fire on the guy. He gets shot down like a rabid dog. Maureen goes over to help, and sees a wide open gash in the wrist heal (which is the only recognition of Painkiller Jane's power in this episode). The body filling the clothes has lady lumps. It's PJ trying, successfully to draw fire.Vasco drugs Maureen (or chips her, I couldn't quite tell) so she won't do anything stupid, which the look on Maureen's face says she badly wants to do.The beautiful music starts again. Ethan thinks he's killed the three and is ready to die. He walks out to Vasco. "So, here we are. Yeah, here we are" and she whips out the chip gun. "It will suppress your abilities. No more premonitions."And she fires. No one dies."But I saw my own death.""You shouldn't believe everything you see," comes the reply and PJ is clearly feeling vindicated that it is possible to change things.Except, nothing's quite so easy in Jane's world.We've just seen all the team members walk up giving a feint to the "3 of you are going to die" message. But remember, Ethan has rigged the place with bombs and tripwires. As they walk away from the scene she trips a wire with her foot and they both get launched into the air. Of course, she's okay, but he's a little dead. PJ killed him after all, and she really doesn't like this idea that the future is foretold and everyone's just going through the motions. She sheds a tear, likely wondering if she will always live a "pain, no gain" lifestyle.They search the basement of the training facility. They see this is where Ethan has all his survival gear, "gas, medications, medical supplies, gas masks," and Maureen picks up a drawing of PJ that has "JANE 113" scrawled on it. What's that, Maureen asks. Good damn question. And one with no satisfying answer. Not yet.The walls are covered in drawings of all kinds of disasters, including dams breaking, airplane crashes, and one with a mushroom cloud and a Population 0 sign in the front, dam breaking, car crash. McBride wonders aloud whether these are things he saw but had not happened, yet. If Ethan can see the future, Vasco thinks, he may have known a lot about her, and wonders why he didn't want to share that personal history with her.The coroner takes Ethan Grant's body away.Next episode, Jane Vasco: Ghost Whipper ... People experience mental breakdowns in a haunted house. Okay, it's actually called, "Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself." The show airs Fridays at 10 p.m. EST and 1a.m. EST.EPISODE NOTES Now that I've been reading up, there's an angle of all this I haven't appreciated. In the show there's been knowing smiles and a few phrases, such as she'd be happy to be in the middle of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a great distraction and ... Where was I? Oh yeah, the original comic book character Painkiller Jane was bisexual. This may or may not have helped Kristanna Loken get the part as she's an openly lesbian woman. Some speculated Maureen Bowers was already her bed partner, though not live-in bed partner as Loken is frequently alone in her apartment. But this episode seemed to dispel that idea.Just last episode PJ had this weird smile on her face when Riley was seemingly showing an interest in her. I attributed it to something else, but since there have been a couple of these smiles when sexual attraction has come up in the show, I'm starting to think it'll be a real sub-plot before the end of the season.-- Even before it aired, other reviews and comments really seemed to pin their hopes on the fourth episode, as if saying, if you haven't got what it takes now, you never will. And as mentioned, the episodes are now being aired out of sequence so there's goes any pretense when I look for evolution of character traits and story arc.The Doc is in this episode for less than a minute and Joe Waterman, mentor guy is nowhere to be seen.Now that I've read about the show I've started noticing the short cuts as a result of the small budget. I hadn't even thought of the budget before, but apparently it's no one million dollar an episode deal. Of course, the blue screen of death from the out-of-control train in the opening scene of episode three was a big clue as well. In this episode it's obvious they're wandering around a back lot of the studio.Lastly, I've been enjoying some of the reviews titled "Painful to Watch" that complain about the show being cliche-ridden. Comedy gold.

TV Review: Painkiller Jane - "Piece of Mind"

Temple Stark — Thu, 3 May 2007 14:25:15 EDT

Jane and Strike Force Vicodin become the bad guys for one episode - and they let a Neuro live.The show gets into a groove here, not so much trying to explain the why of Painkiller Jane the phenom as tell a story. I know, I was shocked as well. They writers have 19 more episodes this year to get into the nitty-gritty of why former DEA Agent Jane Vasco can be wounded, scarred, shot, stabbed, and heal in short order.Speaking of short, Vicodin's resident computer geek Riley "Nerd" Jensen gets played by a Neuro who can take over people's minds, and make them forget a little or everything. He becomes the pawn for the Neuro to hatch his dastardly world domination plans to, um, grab a painting of a little boy holding a floppy basket. Wait, don't go. Why he does it is almost convincing (it wasn't a groan moment) if you can buy into the, as yet, incomplete puzzle of who and what Neuros are.We open looking down on a train rattling down open-country tracks. Inside the engine, the train engineer says he can't remember how to throttle back to steer the thing. As a result, it's going too fast and derails, leaving a typical smoky but flameless train crash scene. (Think Fugitive in the daytime.) The driver, Jason Hampton, has a spotless record and he's not likely to just go off the rails without a reason. Vicodin team member Joe Waterman, knows him. Remember, Waterman's a former railway man who for some reason became part the team that now has its HQ in the same subway where he used to work.)We have a Liberty Mutual Insurance ad moment - without Half-Acre's "Hem" - where PJ helps an old lady who was bumped pick up all her groceries, and they share appreciative smiles. "What ever happened to common courtesy," PJ voiceovers. "Is everyone involved in their own personal drama today? Well, let's just pretend I didn't ask that."At HQ, Riley notes an Edgar Dawson has had a similar mindswipe experience. Dawson's a supra-wired ubërmensch to millions of Digg fans who want to hijack HD-DVD codes. And Riley has posters of him in his bathroom. Well, maybe. Since both are computer teKheads - they share the geekenese language - team leader Andre McBride gives him the nod to go out into the field. Usually Riley's stuck in front of the monitor, fielding communications, and watching everyone else get their hands dirty.Riley gets a little enamored at the thought. He has a similar reaction on seeing PJ in sports bra and lycra short shorts after he breaks into her apartment. Wait, huh? With a gun briefly pointed at his face and a righteously pissed off Vasco staring him down, he said he heard voices and she didn't answer. She was singing with iPod buds on and didn't hear. He keeps his leering eyes on the prize and asks if she maybe has wine and can they sit and ... "NO." Riley's pumped up on the energy crank of working the mystery out among the players, and wants PJ to check out a pharmacy break-in with him. She turns him down as she's in chill mode, ready to put her feet up.That's later. First, Geek and Edgar are off in their own circuitous discussion about code and thermo-radiological spectrum waves (or something). But in talking to him, Dawson's forgotten key elements of his hardware creations and hyper-relays. Dawson helped design a better railway switching system used all over the world. Hmm, trains seem to be rapidly becoming a central focus of what's going on 'ere.Meanwhile, a homeless guy finds himself on the receiving end of a body falling on his head. A guy in a long coat falls through the bannister of an outside stairway onto this gormless, homeless guy. Except suddenly homeless guy - helpfully called Patient John Doe just about 50 seconds later - has advanced medical knowledge and talks the talk. An EMT crew turns up in a shitty part of town in record time. Hell, they show up in what would be record time from one wing of the hospital to the other. The homeless guy takes over and in the middle of the fray, figures out how to save a life.But the soon-to-patient Doe suddenly keels over, exhausted. The guy who he has just healed walks off with no one noticing.Doe ends up in the hospital and starts telling anyone who'll listen that he is Dr. Allen Rafferty from Johns Hopkins. That's not right. Strike Force Vicodin's Doc Carpenter knows of Dr. Rafferty, who's a neuro-muscular specialist. And homeless guy, you're no Rafferty. Carpenter is seen looking at a drooling Robert Crumb of a character while a psych ward nurse (it could be the missus, though) explains to him Rafferty's precipitous decline from genius to drunk to suicidal sad sack.From that moment, we go to where Riley gets his eye-popping moment of PJ, not a hard body (hooray) but a regular, work out twice a week bod. And tall. I think I've mentioned that. After he can speak and gets past the request for wine, which coincides with PJ donning a red silk bathrobe, he tells her the only drugs taken in the pharmacy break-in, near where the homeless guy was, were hemoglobin accelerators. This factoid is promptly ignored for the rest of the show.McBride makes the synapse jump that the three victims are all connected.The scene changes to Riley being the dumbass, socially inept dork that he is, walking through Shady Back Alley carrying a fancy, expensive-looking tracking device. He hasn't got the pimp walk down and suddenly he's jumped by a group that clearly aren't the Guardian Angels. He's left roughed up and wobbly. Just as suddenly Riley's blurred vision sharpens onto Patient Doe, standing above him in the alley, who mumbles what he thinks are Riley's injuries: fractured baby back ribs and crows' feet.Riley is able to report into his walkie that talkies that he found the Neuro behind Seventh and Coulter streets. 'Cept when Strike Force Vicodin shows up, he runs from them, having forgotten who they are. His arm had been grabbed as he sat there and his mind is n00bed.Back at HQ, Techboy looks zoned out and the others are fumbling around the comm system trying to get it to do something. The Team powwows and out pops the brain storm that the Neuro is sick and in search of the knowledge to make him better. They're trying to figure out how the train fits into all this. Designated woman-hater, Connor King snipes at PJ again, saying she's to blame for Riley "losing his mind."Unlike the others, Riley has had a complete memory meltdown, which I thought was a clever computer tie-in by the writers. He sits in front of a bank of ten monitors to try and bring the RAM memories flooding back. Though for a second it looks like he knows what he's doing, instead he completely bollocks up the works. "System failure. Warning, systems failure." He's next seen fists pumping in front of a screen, after making a double albatross putt.The Neuro, by the name of Simon Connolly, comes in to HQ to reveal all. He's leaning on a cane and looks fragile. Turns out he's dying soon, though we don't know why. With Riley's brain dump he's able to get in, copper bracelet and all. He has also realized what he is. What he is is a balding guy who looks like a 55-year-old Jon Cryer. Not chatty by nature, Connolly lays it on the line -- help me or I fry Riley's brain for good. He's right, it would be for good, Riley's a half-shaven weasel of a character and if PJ didn't feel guilty about not heading out with him, she'd probably not worry too much about team loyalty, seeing as how she's only been there long enough for one menstrual cycle. (Hey, does her body heal those before ... anyhoo ...)Riley's "piece of mind," of course is restored before the end of this Happy Hour.Connolly says he can steal, transfer, and restore knowledge. He says he's given back Dr. Rafferty's mind as proof of his good intentions. McBride justifies the great train robbery as serving a higher cause. Connolly, having touched them all as a homeless guy and in an earlier HQ visit during the night, has given them all the extra-sensory train-spotting knowledge.,Freight line 122 (#6425 by the way) has cargo he needs. He says he's more than willing to be "chipped" after it's all over. Since he knows of Vasco's ability, she is given the most "physically challenging" task of the operation. I've thought since episode one that Painkiller Jane is a Neuro herself and she certainly feels an affinity for Connolly. So when he asks her whether she knows for sure she's on the "right side," and that her being different is a lot like him being different, it's either a complete red herring or a wildly unsubtle clue. The way this show is written, I'll go with the latter.With unscheduled track switching, hijacking the official train TV monitoring system for a minute and PJ onboard, SF Vicodin successfully decouples the car they need with the cargo they need. Inside is an electrostatic pulse of 15,000 volts protecting, well, the team doesn't know. (It's that painting I told you about up top.) However, PJ in her first test of powers in this episode, is going to have to go through the voltage to unplug the power surge. She has a rebellious, pouty moment, saying it "could fry whatever gift I've got."Of course she does it and looks shocked (sorry). "Don't ask me if I'm okay" she moans as smoke seeps from all around her body.The painting entirely underwhelms everyone, Simon says he's the subject of the painting done before the artist became famous and the art worth millions. Simon says it means experiencing life as it was before he turned into an abnormal Neuro. Simon says touch your nose.As Connolly sits in his oversized apartment looking at the painting, he says he's ready to be chipped. Vasco feels more than a tug of sympathy and can't shoot the chip into the guy's nape. McBride has to instead, only PJ discovers later that the gun was firing "blanks." Connolly gets a tracking ankle bracelet and is told to stay put or he will be shot. PJ goes back to visit him. "What makes people special is not always what you see on the outside," she voiceovers. "With this one simple, beautiful gesture, Andre proved he was an open book" and as conflicted as she is about what they're doing.NEXT EPISODE: This Friday, May 4 at 10 EST on the Sci-Fi Channel, "Catch Me If You Can." Someone can see the future, and sends messages back to PJ, but are they truth or dare? I'm waiting for an episode to be called "Neuromancer." Is that so wrong?