With that arm-behind-the-back approach and the barest of information, Vasco is sent out on her first mission, to the pharmaceutical company Vonotek, with people she's just met. Like The X-Files and Doom, and others, the way to kill the bad guys here, the Neuros (plural), is by sticking a long spike in the back of their necks.
Those with the neurological aberration have a "unique ability to influence others" and to push past natural instinct survival skills and the natural ability to detect right from wrong. Proximity has to be close, within a couple hundred feet. No one knows why they are like that, but if the Neuro hunters can insert a chip, it neutralizes the aberrant neurology, without killing them.
Vonotek, where as a child Vasco once wanted to work, is thought to be illegally selling bad pharmaceuticals, perhaps using drugs rejected from other companies. A Neuro is thought to be leading the operation.
One of the Neuro hunting team's agents, Shannon Veiry (phonetic), was killed earlier in the investigation. That both she and Vasco are women is counted against them in the eyes of the rest of the team. Randall Hyde is the director of Vonotek and he's suspected of leading the illegal operation.
Vasco and Steve Ford get fake employee IDs to enter the facility and are extremely unsubtle about following Hyde. Hyde disappears somewhere as he rides down the elevator, which leads to the discovery of a hidden floor at the Vonotek building.
Excessive high-tech monitoring allows Hyde to be found via his heat imprint, and it also allows Vasco and the agents to be seen following and acting suspiciously, but viewers don't know by who at this point. Team member Ford suddenly starts beating on Vasco, without reason - and tangled together they both fall out of the building 46 floors up.
Painkiller Jane lands face down on the concrete, and would be in a much messier frame of brain matter than is shown. Viewers clearly know Jane Vasco isn't dead; this is a pilot episode and she can't be. Otherwise, you know, no show. A Neuro has controlled agent Ford, and he is very dead, like the dead agent before him.
There are allusions again to Vasco being a woman, and therefore, weak. "Knew she wouldn't make it," says one of her new team members, Connor King. By the way, this Neuro-hunting team needs a name. How about Strikeforce Vicodin?
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Hmm, Painkiller Jane is being repeated tonight on the USA Network at 9 p.m. (Pacific time). IOW, in 25 minutes ...