“This is What it Sounds Like” raises the expectation that we might hear some Prince on Zoo this week, but don’t hold your breath for any more Purple Rain references beyond the episode title. Instead, hold your breath during the following: bear attacks, macho stand-offs, a horrifying bit of ocular surgery, and a big-ass betrayal!
Spoilers follow. Though, to be fair, that big-ass betrayal is one of the most obviously predictable things this show has tried to pull thus far. That doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy the crap out of it though!
Soooo. Chloe and Mitch’s hair-brained scheme to use the cellphone antennae in the favela where they already received a most frosty reception backfires, because of course it does. As we open, they’re being relieved of their freedom by Silva, a Brazilian kingpin who’s rightfully suspicious of foreign government types poking around his block. (Of course, Mitch has to make a funny: “I’m not a DEA agent. The only thing I know about the drug war is that drugs won ... so, good for you!”)
But there are bigger problems at hand than being kidnapped by gun-toting gangsters: the nasty chemical that’s been deployed to cull Rio’s tech-hating bat problem isn’t working. In fact, it’s making things much worse. Even Silva can see that the bats are bad for business, so he grudgingly allows Mitch and Chloe to MacGyver-together a device that’ll emit an elecromagnetic pulse. Of course, they don’t really know how or what they’re doing; the construction of a bat-busting machine is just a way to buy time until Abe, who knows his way around bad situations with bad men, can rescue them.
Back in America, Jamie, Jackson, and Agent Shafer (who’s officially part of the funky bunch now, it seems) deal with the aftermath of the car crash that killed Leo Butler and, more importantly for the plot, allowed Evan Lee to get his crazy claws on the Mother Cell. Rattled from the experience, Jamie struggles to remember any details that’ll help them track Evan Lee, while Jackson suddenly realizes the man’s pupil displays the same mutation we’ve been seeing in the animals. (Of course, we’ve been aware of that fact for weeks now.) “He was wearing a light-colored shirt!” Jamie remembers; cut to Evan Lee striding across a parking lot, wearing a very dark T-shirt, and bursting in on an unsuspecting optometrist.
“I want you to do something for me,” he orders, which can’t be good, and it isn’t: he wants a chunk of optic nerve extracted, which will require needling four inches into his skull. DUDE. Meanwhile, Agent Shafer hypnotizes Jamie to help jog her memory, and not only is she able to say that Evan Lee was driving a green truck, she’s also able to call up the first three letters of its license plate. While Shafer mobilizes the FBI, Jamie takes to social media. Who will find Evan Lee first?
Meanwhile, in Paris, a chic woman returns home from the supermarket to find A BEAR ROAMING AROUND IN HER HOUSE. While she hides in the pantry, freaking out (can’t really blame her), the furry invader paws through her cabinets, slurps out of her wine glass, and upends her fancy refrigerator. What’re you after, Reverse Goldilocks?? We don’t find out, because the bear suddenly drops into hibernation sleep, for reasons unknown.
As Mitch fumbles around building a fake bat-attractor for Silva, he suddenly realizes (based on a sudden memory, conjured as if by Agent Shafer, of a hot professor he knew in college who had a thing for bats) that he can build a bat-repeller that emits a high-pitched frequency instead. Still, he’s not hopeful it’ll work, and as the clock ticks (as the pair’s been told that if the machine fails, they’ll pay with their lives), he and Chloe have a bonding moment, sorta. He admits that his ego hampered his science career; she lets him know that she’s aware of the ill young daughter that he’s reluctantly estranged from, and encourages him to reach out. (He does, later, but it’s a big bust.) Nearby, Abe proves his badassery (yet again; he survived a lion attack, after all) by taking down a room full of dudes on his rescue mission ... and just as he’s making his move to free Mitch and Chloe, the bat-repeller starts shrieking, and the bats start fleeing. It don’t look like much, but it works!
Across the world, another man tinkers: Evan Lee, creating a concoction from the Mother Cell that he forces the doctor to inject into his bloody eye-hole. But just as Shafer, Jamie, and Jackson burst in (alerted to Evan Lee’s whereabouts by, yep, Jamie’s grassroots social-media outreach), the procedure has taken a dark turn. Jackson is able to grab the screaming fugitive and get him to sputter that Jackson’s father, the mysterious and unhinged Dr. Oz, turned him into the mutated, animal-minded man that became a killer. Then he dies. Au revoir, Evan Lee.
Ok. Remember how we thought Agent Shafer was a good guy? NOPE. He pretends to be interested in Jamie (wink, wink) but takes the chance to toss her hotel room, looking for the Mother Cell. And Jackson, watching the local news in the hotel bar, realizes that not only was Evan Lee’s body discovered, the eye doctor ... who was alive when they left ... was also killed in his office. D’oh! Is Agent Shafer in cahoots with Reiden Global?? YEAH he is. Though he tries to flee, Jackson’s able to tackle the Mother Cell-toting son of a bitch to the ground, and Jamie’s able to snatch up his gun. And shoot him. Multiple times. DAMN girl.
When we conclude, the Mother Cell is back in the hands of the good guys, who reunite at the Washington, DC airport. It seems certain a trip to bear-infested Paris will be next, though a certain federal agent’s corpse is probably gonna cause some complications, too...