What's our cheesy intro going to be now?
"Two is the number of love, lives ever lost in breath. Sometimes its life(?) pursuit leads not to life, but death."
Spoilers lie beyond!
So, the episode starts with Our Hero finding Laila in an empty building. She says "he's coming back" and as locusts begin to smash into the window, we realize that "he" isn't Vincent. Then Our Hero wakes up, on a plane, and we realize it's all a dream. The FBI agent says that Vincent has never kept a hostage alive so long, which leads to the question of why they're so convinced that she's still alive.
But, we see that Vincent is alive, and has apparently decided to keep Laila alive so she can help him figure out the clock he got from New!Thomas, and also apparently decided to pour a bunch of bottles of lye down the drain in a random apartment for the hell of it. He gets her a cute blue dress to wear, and I can't tell if it's an attempt by the writers for him to be creepy in a thoroughly PG manner, or if it's an attempt to give their costume designer something to do.
Then, they get to the newspaper office, where the FBI is already there with a warrant to camp out in the office so they can be there to monitor the phones in case Vincent tries to call Our Hero again. Um, what? At this point, I'm not sure that they entirely understand what search warrants or wiretapping warrants entail.
Anyways, we see that Laila is not only alive but fixing the clock, and her and Vincent are having a conversation about dopplegangers and how Vincent saw someone who looked exactly like Our Hero and was curious about it. This time, the clock gives them a series of letters numbers, and Vincent makes what is now a classic Zero Hour Epic Jump to Conclusions, and immediately tells Laila to prepare to head off to wherever he's decided this is.
Then, Our Hero's parents show up at the office for whatever, reason, just as the FBI spots Laila and Vincent on a security camera in Paris. And we see that Laila did something to a security camera that a flashback showed meant was her signal to Our Hero for "stick your chewing gum under a desk" (yes, really! The plot demanded it, so it happened!) so Our Hero demands that the FBI find out what room they were staying in and look under all the desks, where they find the letters and numbers that they had gotten from the clock.
Within about 15 seconds, they replicate Vincent's Epic Jump to Conclusions and also get the idea that these letters and numbers are an old phone number! (Instead of being something permanent like a map, or stars. Because if you're dealing with the apocalypse, you want an important part of your plan to hinge on something that might disappear in 50 years) Anyways, they lead to Princeton, which is conveniently very close to where everyone but Vincent and Laila are right now.
The priest says he knows people who could help, and Our Hero says he's alright with this because because he knows where the only place that has "phone records" from 1938. Although Vincent tears the page from the 1938 phone directory in the Princeton library, Laila pulls out, at random, a couple different scientific journal looking things that tell them where they are thanks to a different flashback that features a truly pointless scene of them taking off their shoes in the library.
So, the parents say "When should we tell him?" and it cuts to a family photo or something that shows the Nazi doppelganger. And apparently there are wildfires in the pacific northwest (what?) that fit into the show in a way that I can't figure out, and an equally unexplained creepy looking child standing somewhere.
Vincent and Laila find the office, and then the FBI is ten minutes behind them, and it turns out the phone number was for Albert Einstein. Because, I don't know any more. And they have decided that Albert Einstein's sudden interest in spirituality was because he was another New Apostle. And they say "The church alone has had the courage to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom." Yeah. Tell that to Galileo.
Conveniently, they find out exactly where Einstein's clock is within about 20 seconds, and it's a grandfather clock this time. The priest, who is at apparently what apparently is a weekly poker game among the local priest, asks for information about Rosicrucians who fled Nazi Germany and are still actively operating today. The other priests seem to think this idea is pretty ridiculous, and when priest tries to explain more, the other priests say "That doesn't make any sense." They're the first characters to make an honest, rational assessment of this situation.
Then, Our Hero and the FBI Agent find that Vincent has already been where Einstein's clock was being stories.. Then, Vincent meets with the creepy child, saying "I have the first three clocks," and the creepy child is writing in some kind of code. Unless all my apocalypse tropes are wrong, his name is going to be Damien. I'm trying to figure out whether or not the writers are "edgy" enough to make the kid the Antichrist.
The assistant and a new blond FBI agent are discussing conspiracy theories about Einstein supposedly discovering an equation that would create a new form of power but erasing it because people weren't ready for it. Yeah... I'm not going to write a post on why people over-estimate Einstein as the Smartest Genius Ever, and why I've almost gone off on four separate tangents about Tesla here. Unless anyone asks me in the comments.
Back on topic, they realize the clock Vincent stole was an Einstein family heirloom, and therefore not the one he was given as a new!apostle. But Einstein hid the clock because he knew he was going to die. Conveniently, they figured out that Einstein hid the clock in... his mind? The word "epic" doesn't begin to describe the size of this jump to conclusions!
And then, someone has a device. She says it's an "electromagnetic spectrometer." As opposed to spectrometers that, I don't know.... wait, then she says "photoelectron spectroscopy will bounce x-rays off the surface of the board, and then based on the reflection the machine should be able to line(?) map the chemical composition on the atomic level." I think that energy source Einstein mentioned is generated by him rolling over in his grave after this episode. So, that seems to be the Research Fail of the Week...
So, then Our Hero can't figure out why Laila hasn't figured out it's the wrong clock, and this time the FBI Agent is the one to point out that she's smart enough to stall for time. Then we cut to Vincent and Laila, and she's doing just that, and they argue about love and sentimentiality. Vincent at least has more personality than Our Hero.
Then, Blonde FBI Agent points out that what he erased was a solution, not a problem, when they were looking for an equation, earlier. Do these people have no idea what math is, either? And apparently Einstein's files were random numbers and they're running a computer program to decode them. What. But Blond FBI Agent has figured out that the equation/solution (which looks to me like a standard integral) gives some words that say where the real clock is. And Laila left a trail of clock bits. And Our Hero is running into an empty building after them, but instead of trying to stealthily sneak to the room, he stands in the middle and yells "Laila," only to discover that it was a red herring by Vincent.
So now once again Hank (wait, that's Our Hero's name, right?) is looking to trade Vincent a clock in exchange for Laila. Vincent is asking about how they met and it goes on to a locust clock representing a locust that eats time. Vincent calls him "brother" and offers "solace" and "deliverance" and is just generally beating him up and asking random questions. FBI Agent comes in, chases Vincent, they get into a gunfight, but this show's shining moment of realism happens when both guns run out of bullets. It's less realistic in that the FBI agent isn't carrying spare ammo, and Vincent suggests that her husband was the target on the plane that crashed. (I don't think it's coincidental that the plane crash was the year that Our Hero and his wife met)
So the FBI is digging up a cemetery and finding Einstein's original clock before Vincent does. And they're like "The blond FBI agent needs to translate this!" because apparently calculus is a foreign language to everyone here.
Our Hero's parents are in church, and The Priest's friend tells The Priest that the sect is, in fact, still around, protecting "only the holiest" of relics, and the people they're protecting them from are something they call the "great pirates" or something. (Yeah, this is melting my brain already)
And then there's a lady asking Creepy Child what "my friend" told him.
And Einstein's secret is that he regrets helping create the atomic bomb (which is pretty much nothing surprising to anyone who's read anything by anyone who worked at Los Alamos) but this is "even more powerful" and has "crossed the line that separates man from the creator" and "could destroy not only man... but god."
The show leaves off at this dramatic line, like we're supposed to be stunned and horrified... but really, why? If you don't believe in God, whatever this is will be meaningless in spiritual terms. If you do believe in God, then he's supposed to be omnipotent and can either ignore it or smite whoever's trying this, right? And if you want to get all philosophical, you can say "God is an idea" but then realize that ideas can't be destroyed. (Even if you destroy humanity, their records remain, and even if you obliterate the planet, there are decades of TV broadcasts streaming away from Earth at the speed of light, containing information that contains that contains some of our ideas)
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