"Haunted" Staring: Matthew Fox, Russell Hornsby, John Mann, Michael Irby, Lynn Collins Hi, I’m Diandra and I’m a glutton for punishment. (Hi, Diandra!). Gah. Seriously, why am I recapping a show that aired several years ago for only seven episodes (U.S.), of which I only have three and which stars a guy I just started recapping movies of? (Pause). Okay, who’s the wiseass who said “because you’re a crazy bitch”? I’ll deal with you later. Ahem. Pilot 1x01, Guest staring Robert Knepper and a bunch of people I don’t know. We open on a blurry shot of a pipe dripping water. At least I hope that’s what it is and I didn’t accidentally download some amateur fetish porn or something. Never mind. John Mann is marching toward the camera in the pouring rain, holding some sort of bag. He’s barely out of frame before we see Matthew running up behind him, like twenty feet away. Seriously, where did he learn to tail people, The Vaughn-Bristow School of Worst Spies Ever? We only know he’s trying to be discreet because he hides behind a wall, peaking around the corner for a second, but really I’m thinking the only reason the guy hasn’t figured out he’s being followed is he is apparently incapable of LOOKING BEHIND HIM. The World’s Worst Tracker whips out his cell phone the second he gets in the building to call his partner so we can establish that his name is Frank, his partner’s name is Detective Marcus Bradshaw and he needs backup at the old Fairmont Hotel because he thinks he’s found “Billy Mason and his babysitter David”. Marcus says he needs ten minutes and makes Frank promise to wait for backup to get there. Frank says yeah, sure, “scout’s honor” and hangs up. Except he clearly wasn’t actually a boyscout as he then whips out his gun and goes charging up the stairs after Mann. The janitor mopping the floors is understandably alarmed to see some drenched man in a trenchcoat waving a gun. Frank does absolutely nothing to assure him that he is not just some mob hitman or something and gestures at him to shut up and get the hell out of there. The janitor does so obediently, not even bothering to ask if he’s got a badge or anything. Seriously? Does this happen a lot at this hotel? Remind me not to go there. Frank picks the lock and bursts in on nobody. He does, however, find a newspaper on the bed with a repeating diamond and hash mark design scribbled all over it to make it obvious it’s A CLUE. It also has an article about a couple boys being kidnapped (the youngest of which is identified as Billy Mason) and we linger on their pictures for a moment. He hears a noise and goes to open the closet. The older boy falls onto him, gasping and choking and bleeding. Frank lowers him to the floor, calling his name a good dozen times for the idiots who haven’t yet put two and two together and figure out this is David. “Help us,” David gasps. Frank asks where Billy is. David just looks to the side and Frank turns just in time to see somebody whack him in the head with a crowbar. Frank blinks awake as Mann - “Simon” (according to the label on his work shirt) - drags him across the roof of the building in the pouring rain. Um...he was right next to a window in the room, but instead of opening it and shoving Frank out he decides to drag him up to the roof (potentially past a witness or two) so, what, he’ll make a bigger mess when he hits the ground? Then again, maybe the people in this hotel wouldn’t question somebody dragging a body through the halls. Anyway. He drags Frank to the ledge and kicks him in the ribs for no reason other than he’s a sadistic bastard. Then he hesitates long enough for Frank to kick back and knock him to the ground. But he’s a spry sadistic bastard because he whips out a knife and stabs Frank in the side before he can even get more than a few inches from the ground. Frank gurgles and slams back to the ground, spitting a little blood. Simon bounces to his feet and snarls “Simon says it’s time to die”. Writers, if you’re going to rip lines from random action movies the least you could do is cite your source. Simon kicks Frank over the ledge but Frank snaps to just in time to catch the gutter and avoid splattering the sidewalk below. Now, while I have no doubt that the gutter I attempted to remove last winter was nailed to the house so solidly that it could have held my entire bodyweight I’m guessing it’s safe to assume that I am a good hundred pounds lighter than Matthew Fox so I’m calling bullshit on this. Simon is not finished with the cliché spewing yet as he crouches down, pokes at Frank’s hand with the knife, and smirks “say goodbye”. In a move that totally defies the laws of physics, Frank lets go of the ledge with one hand, grabs Simon and yanks him over the side to his death. On a side note, while I was recapping this scene I paused the screen and walked away for a minute and when I came back I found a close-up of Matthew with an expression that makes him look like a lost vampire from “Angel”. It was seriously creepy. Um...yeah. So Frank pulls himself back up onto the roof and presumably passes out. I will assume that the rain is making the huge puddle of blood around him look worse than it is. Fade out and fade in on an emergency room. Let me just tell you right off that this scene is totally evidence that the writers and sound effects people on this show were not speaking to each other. Doctors and nurses are flitting around Frank noting that he’s not breathing and they can’t hear any “heart sounds”. This last part is said while a PERFECTLY STEADY BEEPING IS COMING FROM THE HEART MONITOR IN THE BACKGROUND. There’s at least a five second delay before the sound guys realize their mistake and flatline the damn thing. Really, people, try to keep up. “He’s crashing” a woman announces. Oh, really? What was your first clue? We pan across the doctors’ faces as they continue babbling in medical lingo, their voices getting distant and warped and we stop on Frank, fully dressed, standing next to the bed, looking down at himself. A doctor waves a penlight in DeadFrank’s eyes as a woman repeats that he’s not breathing and has no pulse (yes, THANK YOU, WE KNOW! Maybe you can DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT instead of POINTING IT OUT EVERY FEW SECONDS.) and a guy starts asking if Frank can hear him. Well, seeing as his spirit is currently walking out the door of the ER I’m going to say no. They try to shock him and shoot him with adrenaline while GhostFrank wanders into the hall to find a good dozen people headed in the direction of a light at the end of the hall. Gee, I don’t think the metaphors are obvious enough here. (And as my mother pointed out: “That’s a really bad hospital.”) He kind of smiles when he sees a little boy standing at the end of the hall beckoning to him and his voice over says “Kevin?” He’s distracted when the doctors shock his dying body again and when he looks back the little boy is turning to leave. He starts to follow when Simon appears and spins him around, clamping a hand over his mouth and saying “gotcha!” with this totally crazed smile. This segues clumsily into the doctor triumphantly saying the same thing as Frank coughs awake back on the table in the ER. One of the doctors announces that he thinks Frank is going to make it. I’d say that’s a pretty safe assumption. Next day. I assume. A nurse tells Frank (“Mr. Taylor”) that his ex-wife arrived at the hospital. Frank groans “Why the hell did you call her? So she can kill me again?” Oh, no he doesn’t either. But seriously, Frank, did you forget to change your contact information or are you and your ex one of the elite few couples – along with Bruce and Demi – who manage to stay really close friends even after the split? Nurse says she has five minutes because he needs to rest because, y’know, coming back from the dead can take a lot out of you. A pretty brunette - who he calls “Jess” - parks herself on the edge of the bed and greets him with a smile. He asks how the babysitter is. For those of us who can’t add two plus two (which I understand is actually 7) she says “David didn’t make it”. He asks if they found Billy. Yes, Frank is actually asking questions about the case while lying in a hospital bed after being stabbed to death and resurrected. Dude...you really need a vacation. Also? I’m pretty sure he was stabbed in the ribs so why is the bandage on his shoulder? Jess assures him that every cop in the city is looking for him but they tore the building apart and he wasn’t there. He asks her to hand him the phone so he can call Billy’s parents. She ignores him and asks what the hell he was thinking going in by himself. That’s the problem, dear, he wasn’t. She points out that he could’ve been killed. He says he was. She doesn’t appreciate the gallows humor and says he can’t keep just charging in like that because he’s not a cop anymore. Probably explains the lack of a badge. He says if he was he’d still be waiting for the warrant from the D.A. Oh, pbbbbttttt. She gets a page and rushes off, but not before telling him to stop punishing himself because “it is not going to bring our son back.” Yeah, welcome to the pilot episode: lots of clunky exposition loosely constructed into a plot. And in case that line wasn’t clear enough, this entire back story will now be spelled out through flashback. Frank and Jess are in bed. She’s behind him and they’re both giggling insanely. Fill in your own blanks here. She stops licking his back when she hears a noise from the other room. “What was that?” Clueless, who apparently can’t hear anything around his own heavy breathing, says whu? They’re quiet for a minute and hear something that is either wind whistling outside the windows or a small child’s muffled moan. Frank assumes the former. Jess makes a half-ass attempt to go check on Kevin and Frank stops her with the lame excuse that Kevin is afraid of his own shadow and would freak out if he thought there was anything “out there”. Crack of thunder. He latches onto this as an explanation for the noise as opposed to the ominous symbolism we know it is. They start making out and the camera pans away. So obviously Frank has issues with thinking things through. Or with the right body part. So, of course, the next morning he goes to wake Kevin up and finds the bed empty and a hole cut in the window screen. Jess enters the room behind him and just stands there in shock. He barks at her to call it in and they both run from the room. Flashback over, we go back to the hospital, where Frank just stares blankly at the ceiling and doesn’t react at all. Just kidding. Of course he cries. It’s Matthew Fox. You don’t hire him and then totally pass up an opportunity to make him bawl. “Look,” Russell Hornsby tells Frank in his car (or Frank’s car...it’s all kind of unclear) some unidentified time later. “All I’m saying is you should wait. Give yourself a week or two before you get back in the game.” Interesting how the “you should take a vacation” talk sounds a lot like the “you need a girlfriend” talk, isn’t it? Frank insists he’s fine. Russell says yeah, whatever, you almost died, man. Fine my sweet black ass. I may be extrapolating a bit. Frank chuckles that “almost” doesn’t count. Awfully giggly for someone who was headed for the light a couple scenes ago (which could be months their time I guess). Russell...I guess we’re supposed to recognize his voice as Marcus from earlier...nags a bit more and Frank says fine, already, MOM, just leave me alone! A depressing oboe honks as Frank enters his office (ah...good old Mark “X-Files” Snow). He hits play on the answering machine to find a message from a total sleezebucket (it’s totally obvious from his voice) who wants someone to tail his wife for no apparent reason other than he’s a controlling bastard, something from an insurance company, Jess calling to check on him and a frantic call from Billy’s father wondering if he found Billy along with David. Yes, he saw him just before he was knocked unconscious, stabbed and nearly thrown from the roof. Oh, and judging from the presence of a kitchen next to the office I’d say this is Frank’s *apartment*. My bad. Cut to Frank sitting in Billy’s parents’ living room, trying to reassure them without making promises nobody can keep because both David and Simon are dead and nobody else knows where the hell the kid is. Mom asks if he thinks Billy’s still alive. He stutters and makes fish faces and says he has no clue. Yes, Jack Shephard isn’t the only one with an inherent inability to comfort people in distress it seems. She flees the room, her husband on her tail. Frank stands and suddenly grabs his head in pain as a weird metallic whistling noise whooshes across the soundtrack. “Help us,” a voice whispers. He frowns and goes to press his ear to the wall like maybe somebody in the next room is pulling a prank. Then the picture of Billy two inches from his face leaps off the wall all by itself and he starts looking a little shaken. Frank’s apartment, sometime later. Okay, I already said in my recap of an episode of “Lost” that I have no problems with Matthew Fox but his character on that show drives me absolutely insane so after four years I’ve pretty much been conditioned to grind my teeth every time I see his face. But when some woman enters with the cutest little dog and he smiles, pulls the dog (who he calls “Gus”) into his lap and starts doing that baby talk thing non dog-people make fun of the rest of us for I pretty much forgave him for everything. Seriously. Cutest thing ever. The woman notes that she hasn’t seen him smile like that in so long she almost didn’t recognize him. No kidding. And ditto. Frank frowns and notes that it’s Friday night and doesn’t she have a date or something? So I guess she’s just the dog sitter. She perkily says no and she’s got plenty of time to hang around and distract him from his work. No, not like that. Shut up. He hands her a beer he pulled out of his ass or something and she starts spewing exposition. How long has he lived there? ‘Bout a year and a half. And he still hasn’t unpacked? Hi, single male workaholic. Or, as he says, it’s not really his home. Yeah, yeah, dead son, trouble moving on blah. That night he’s lying in bed still mostly dressed and covered in papers (it’s really sad) and Mark Snow is playing a song he totally recycled when he started working on “Ghost Whisperer”. Actually, I think he recycled a lot of the music from this show on the assumption that nobody would recognize it as I was apparently only one of about a dozen people who watched “Haunted”. Anyway. There’s a noise in the next room and Gus wakes up instantly and whimpers. Did I mention Gus is really freaking cute? I love him. I manage to tear my eyes from him (and stop cooing stupidly) and notice just how many fewer tattoos Matthew had when this was shot. Huh. Also, the bandage over the knife wound is almost on top of his shoulder now like maybe Simon came at him from above. At this rate it will be on his back by the end of the episode. Frank grabs his gun and goes down the hall. He comes to a closed door with fogged glass windows, behind which we can see a fan running and something that looks only vaguely human moving around. Frank whips open the door to find water on the floor and a stack of boxes under the fan, the top one spinning in exactly the opposite direction as the fan blades. Now, I’ve compared this show to its successors (namely “Medium” and “Ghost Whisperer”) a lot in terms of reactions to dead people popping up randomly. Melinda drives me nuts because while she claims she’s seen dead people all her life she still feels a need to scream like a helpless female at least once per episode (note to Melinda: you could take some lessons in subtlety from Patricia Arquette). Frank, being new to the whole seeing dead people thing, totally has an excuse to freak out, however. But either this is not spooky enough or I remember him panicking more than he really did because he just looks at that box spinning all by itself like “huh...that’s weird”. He grabs it and sets it on the table and finds a picture of Billy sitting in a pool of water inside. Day. Marcus bangs into his office to yell at Frank, who is hunched over a file drawer, about waltzing in and riffling through his shit any time he feels like it. They’re not partners anymore, damnit. Frank just hands him a picture of the newspaper he found at that apartment at the beginning. He says it’s a “hunch”. “You know, that little feeling that you used to get before they promoted you.” There’s a joke in there but I’m too lazy to find it. Marcus says he’s really not in the mood for Frank’s sparkling personality right now and asks what the hell is so special about a kid drawing on a newspaper. Um...Autism and OCD aside, I doubt most elementary age kids would draw deliberately repeating patterns like that, genius. Frank says as much and stresses that this is a clue. Marcus thinks it’s flimsy. Frank says he’s working on it and Marcus snaps that he can’t let Frank walk out the door with an active case file because he’s not a cop anymore and the boss’ll have his ass if anything happens. Frank tells him to look the other way then and totally gives him the pretty please, puppy dog eyes. Marcus NoSpine caves instantly and Frank says he owes him one as he scampers out the door. “Yeah, you owe me more than that,” Marcus mutters at his retreating back. Should I be jumping on the slash subtext here? Oh, forget it. Morgue. Simon’s body is laid out on the table and he is basically covered in enough tattoos to pass as an extra in a prison movie (which he did two years later). A coroner who looks barely old enough to be wearing a lab coat uses a blacklight to show Frank a tattoo Simon had covered. It says “Lolita”. Dr. Naïve thinks it’s a reference to an old girlfriend. Frank thinks it means he was a child molester. I’m sure if this show had gone on longer than it did we would have found the former more likely and the latter a convenient red herring. Frank asks if there’s anything else. Doogie Howser 2.0 says they found traces of a chemical used in photo developing under his nails. He goes into the next room to “find a camera” to photograph... something and Frank leans in real close to Simon, inspecting his tattoos like maybe he’s looking for future inspiration. Y’all can see where this is headed, right? I thought so. Simon’s eyes open and he sits up, grabs Frank by the neck and growls “storm’s coming Frank.” And even though he’s only using one hand he’s apparently stronger than Frank, who collapses to the floor like a rag doll. He comes to with Doogie waving a penlight in his eyes asking if he’s all right. Well, let’s see...he passed out suddenly and comes awake choking and grabbing his neck. What do you think? Frank sits bolt upright, eyes darting around the room, still grabbing his neck and then says he just got dizzy. Yeah, that’s totally believable. Doogie asks if he should call a doctor. Frank points out that he *is* a doctor and Doogie reminds him that his patients don’t have to drive home. “Don’t be too sure about that,” Frank gasps and leaves Doogie to wonder just how long Frank’s brain was without oxygen when he died. And to prove that my maturity level is in reverse thrust, I just accidentally called the ME “Doodie” and it made me giggle for a good minute straight. No, I’m not drunk, but I’m beginning to wish I was. Frank and Jess (speaking of typos I really need to stop calling him Jack) are drinking coffee in somebody’s kitchen. “I think maybe something’s wrong with me,” he says. That’s never a good way to start a conversation. Trust me on this. She decides to take the high road and let him continue. “Ever since that night I got stabbed...I’ve been seeing things.” She asks what kinds of things and he takes the exact wrong direction and says he saw Kevin on the “other side”. Dude, you can say you’re seeing ghosts without bringing up your dead kid. Naturally she starts going on the defensive but he keeps weepily babbling that he feels like he’s going crazy and he needs to tell somebody. She reminds him that she told him he could keep punishing himself for Kevin all he pleased but she wasn’t going to let him take her down with him. “Kevin has been gone for nearly two years!” And now they’re both crying. Did I mention it’s also raining outside? Yeah. He sobs that he just wants to KNOW, damnit. She says she’s not like him - she’d rather not face the fact that their son was murdered and my god does she look like Evangeline Lilly in this scene. Seriously, she talks exactly like her. It’s weird. He just sniffles and the scene changes to him getting ready for a shower, looking like nothing happened. Yeah, nice editing. Way to totally deflate a perfectly good emotional scene. Elsewhere in the apartment, Gus is watching something move around and whimpering. How a dog with such a pretty coat and two beautiful, different colored eyes can still manage to look like a scrappy little mutt I don’t know. I seriously want to pick him up and cuddle him. The ceiling fan starts all by itself. What is up with this ghost and fans? The light flickers in the hall and Frank, head under a stream of water, winces as the metallic whistling starts again. And I should note that there is a bottle of "body lotion" in the caddy hanging from the showerhead that says “Waterlily” very prominently. Yeah, that’s not girly at *all*. The water suddenly turns to mud and he yips and turns it off and crumples to the floor. I’m assuming it’s mud anyway. From the closeup we get of it running down the drain it looks more like hot chocolate or something (entirely possible). Through the frosted glass he sees a kid in a school letter jacket walk by and disappear, whispering “help us” again. Frank wipes whatever that crap is out of his eyes and stumbles out of the shower to find the diamond/hash mark symbol in the fog on the mirror. Speaking of child molesters, we cut to a park where T-Bag (Robert Knepper and I’m going to keep calling him T-Bag because his character’s name is never mentioned and totally unimportant) is playing chess when Frank and Gus approach (apparently the dog doesn’t need a leash). T-Bag (wearing heavily milky contacts to signify his character is blind) recognizes them from twenty feet away and asks why Frank is “so down”. Frank is baffled. Rain Man says when he’s in a good mood he skips his left heel when he walks, which he can naturally hear over the noise of about a hundred other people milling around and children squealing nearby. Frank tries the “I’m losing my marbles and seeing shit that isn’t there” speech again. T-Bag says people who are crazy don’t think they’re crazy, they think everybody *else* is crazy. But suppose it’s real. What does it mean? Frank has no clue but two years later, Matthew experienced a distinct sense of déjà vu when he had this exact same conversation with Terry O’Quinn on “Lost”. T- Bag thinks maybe he has a ghost. Really? You got that from “I’m being haunted?” Wow, you’re brilliant. Frank asks if he really believes that. T-Bag says it only matters what *Frank* believes since it’s *his* ghost and adds “sometimes it’s not what you see...it’s what you don’t see.” Okay, writers, no more stealing lines from fortune cookies. Frank takes this useless information and goes back to the crime scene and finds a patch of discolored carpet. Before we can figure out what that means a screwdriver starts spinning on the table all by itself. Frank grabs it and the closet door behind him creaks open and the voice (obviously David) says “help us”. Again. Some more. Clueless McGee is just poking his head around the door when the janitor from earlier walks in the room to ask what he’s doing. Frank says he’s a PI and flashes some credentials (where the hell was that earlier?). Janitor says yeah, now he recognizes Frank – “you’re the guy that got ‘im!” He babbles some more about a “freak like that” living right under their noses (clunk) and Frank asks if he ever saw Simon with the other kid. Janitor says he’s seen the kid’s picture in the paper but he hasn’t seen him around here. Then he shiftily says they should leave because the cops said they’re not allowed in there. Frank exposits that if Simon was the super he was Janitor’s boss and does he know if Simon did a lot of photography (clunk clunk)? Janitor chuckles that he barely knew the guy – he was just the boss. Frank goes to leave and Janitor asks where he’s going with that screwdriver. Frank says he forgot he had it, gives it to him and, after an awkward pause, slips out the door. Clunkity clunk clunk. Okay, so I just took a break from recapping to eat, drink beer and watch the Lost season finale. If I start getting really loopy, confused or slip and call Frank “Jack” repeatedly, you’ll know why. Frank’s apartment office. Frank has three computers going at once and Marcus on speakerphone. I don’t know what kind of money PIs make but I’m guessing most of his income is going into the electric and phone bills. Marcus says the janitor’s name is Martin Eugene Grant and he doesn’t even have a traffic ticket – he’s clean. Which obviously means he’s guilty. Frank exposits that the Lolita tattoo and the photo chemicals point to child pornography but where the hell is the camera equipment? They didn’t even find photographs in the apartment. Marcus says the obvious: they were taken somewhere else. Frank says yeah and if they find that they’ll find Billy but where the hell is it and what does this symbol have to do with it because it obviously means something. As he’s staring at the picture of the newspaper on one of the computers the monitor goes completely dead. He taps a key stupidly and Marcus asks what’s going on. Mark Snow bangs an ominous chord and David appears outside the door with the fogged glass (which all of Frank’s doors obviously have for sufficient dramatic effect). Gus whimpers and the other two computers and the phone line all go dead. Frank looks at the monitor with the blinking “fatal error” message and mutters “I hate technology”. Oh, wait, that was me. Actually, David says “help us” again and Frank follows him down the hallway. What the hell is he wearing? Is this what semi-formal is supposed to look like? A somewhat mismatched combination of formal and casual? Why am I worrying about this? He says he’s trying but David needs to help him understand here. “Just tell me what it is.” He turns to see David disappearing into a closet behind him and we get quick flashes of David laying on the floor gasping “help us”, Frank giving Martin back his screwdriver, David flying out of the closet, somebody unseen hitting Frank with a crowbar and the closet door at the scene creaking open. That enough for ya, Frank or should he draw you a diagram? Frank is driving in the rain, talking to Jess on his cell (bad!), babbling that Billy is still at the hotel and he’s on his way to pick up Marcus and they need a warrant. She says based on what? “Remember how I told you I was seeing things?” Oh, for fuck’s sake, Frank. You couldn’t come up with a better story or just say “a hunch” or something? “Oh, come on,” she moans. “I’m supposed to go to a judge with one of your visions?” Somewhere Allison DuBois is rolling her eyes and muttering “yeah, good luck with that.” He says it may be their best chance of saving Billy. She asks him to be logical and give her something she can *use*. He reminds her that logic is what told him not to worry about a “bump in the night” two years ago and it got their son kidnapped. Low blow, dude. He says he knows it doesn’t make sense but he is NOT going to ignore another sign, damnit! He stops in front of a house and Marcus gets in the passenger seat. Marcus sits entirely too quietly while Frank spews the entire pitch for the series about the door to the other side being left open when he was brought back from the dead. His phone rings. It’s Marcus, still standing in front of that house, asking where the hell he is. Frank gapes and looks at the passenger seat where Simon (who else?) is smirking evilly. Simon grabs the wheel and (again, with one hand) causes Frank to careen out of control and crash into a light pole. Apparently being dead gives him some sort of freakish strength. Windows break and the car is old enough to not have any airbag whatsoever but Frank just stagers out without a scratch and runs the rest of the way to the hotel in the rain. It is so obvious this episode was slapped together haphazardly. Apparently he’s grown a brain in the last few seconds because he finds the hidden passageway in the back of the closet faster than one would expect given the intelligence he’s shown so far in this episode. He whips out a flashlight and his phone and calls Marcus. “I found it,” he gasps. “That’s nice,” Marcus snits. “What the HELL is GOING ON HERE?!” Except it comes out as “stay where you are. Jess just called. She’s got a warrant. We’re on our way.” And how did she get a warrant? Feed a judge a plate full of bullshit and then break the sound barrier to whip the paperwork through extra fast? I guess we won’t find out because Frank’s cell phone loses the signal at that moment. Probably because you’re walking into an underground tunnel, sweetie. In fact, I would be surprised if it was still working. My cell loses its signal when I’m away from windows. And where the hell did that scratch on his forehead come from because I sure as hell didn’t see it when he got out of the car. He exchanges the cell for his gun and makes his way through a maze of tunnels while Mark Snow cranks up the creepy music. He finds a room covered with photography equipment and pictures that may or may not be pornographic (this was a network show, after all). He stops on a couple shots of Martin looking creepy, then finds a television with a video feed of Billy curled up on a mattress somewhere apparently alone and follows the wire behind it to what must have been an old elevator shaft with a ladder. Back in the room, the passage behind the closet slams shut ominously. I don’t know what the point of that was since Marcus already knows where he is, but whatever. At the bottom of the ladder Frank finds some stairs down to an old subway tunnel, the diamond symbol plastered on the wall right next to them. Billy’s voice calls from below suddenly, pleading for help and Frank, gullible moron that he is, follows it like a lamb to slaughter. He ends up in a room off the main hall and is lured all the way to the back before he realizes it’s not Billy the voice is coming from but Simon mimicking Billy. And the door slams shut and locks from the outside. “You can’t save him, Frank,” Simon taunts. “You couldn’t even save your own son.” This, naturally, pisses Jack off and he shoots the lock until the gun runs out of bullets (and a couple more times after that just to be sure) and goes charging down the hall, reloading along the way. And it is now about six hours since I finished the last paragraph and I am sucking down coffee trying to wake up. Yes, even a one hour program takes me several days to recap. Gah. Frank comes to an old rundown subway car. Y’know, it’s been years since I watched “X-Files” but all these dark, vaguely creepy locations with people poking around with a flashlight and a gun are making me nostalgic. And the music, of course. The old synthesizer of “gee, isn’t this weird?”. So Frank is poking around the subway car when Martin comes out of nowhere, knocks the gun out of his hands and starts beating the shit out of him. Oh, goody, a fight scene without dialogue. Those are always easy to recap. Bang bang thwap crash boom. Frank gets in a couple punches but basically it’s becoming clear how, exactly, a dead guy can overpower him with one hand tied behind his back. “You shouldn’t have come back,” Martin snarls while trying to choke Frank with a conveniently placed chain. Frank uses this distraction to get the upper hand and punches him right through one of the car’s windows. He staggers out after him and asks where Billy is. Martin, still trying to stand up, doesn’t answer, so Frank kicks him, puts a gun to his head and asks again. Hang on, when did he pick up the gun? Or did he learn very quickly what took Mulder, like, four seasons to figure out – carry two guns because you will always lose one in a scuffle/chase? Did I miss something? Marcus shows up to spew clichés at Frank like “don’t do it” and “he’s not worth it”. Again, I ask what the point was of locking the door to the secret passageway if Marcus could get here so easily anyway. Frank makes crazy faces and screams a little more and the whistling starts again and Martin turns into Simon and tries to taunt him into pulling the trigger. Frank starts shaking and gasping and lets Martin go, snarling that he “got lucky”. He storms off. Don’t know where he thinks he’s going but I hope it involves sticking his head under cold water because he really needs to settle down. Martin’s lawyer is going to love this. (“He’s a loose cannon in desperate need of some antipsychotics.”) While Marcus is reading Martin’s rights, Frank goes by a part of the train or something right at the moment when Billy coughs and we have the obligatory rescue moment where Frank tells him everything is okay now and looks like he might cry. Oh, look, it’s the Los Angeles skyline. Guess that answers my questions about the show’s location. I’m pretty sure Mark Snow just totally slipped the “X-Files” main theme melody into the score right there. Sneaky bastard. Jess finds Frank standing next to an ambulance along with Billy, who is in the process of being smothered to death by his parents. He has bruises and cuts all over his face, which will most likely be completely healed by the next episode even if it takes place less than a week later. Jess mumbles something about Frank beating himself up. He says he’s fine. She says yeah, you almost die, start acting schizophrenic and tell me you’re having visions of dead people. You’re the poster child for psychological health. He lamely says okay, he’s not *always* fine “but right now I’m pretty close.” What the hell does that mean? And we end on Frank going back to the park, where we see T-Bag fussing with his chess board. Frank ignores him completely and just stuffs a baseball in the chain link fence. The baseball has the following written on it: Kevin: NEVER give up! Dad’s # 555-7789.” Yeah. With such a strong pilot episode it’s a wonder this show didn’t survive the season! (Diandra reads back over the last sentence). Yeah, sarcasm doesn’t really come across in type, does it? ~Diandra