When things start going really well for you, that’s when you know something’s about to go wrong, especially in television. On the latest episode of Killjoys, Kiss Kiss, Bye Bye, the crew discovers what happens when you go too far down the rabbit hole.
We open up after last week’s episode, when Dutch told John and D’avin that they were going to go kill Khlyen. To that end, John’s working on figuring out how to use the tracker to locate him. All he’s able to get is a picture. Meanwhile, D’avin and Dutch go target shooting, to take the edge off. D’av makes a good point about the two of them: they’ve both got their pasts held back from them, and he’s worried about the person he really is. Meanwhile, John sticks the neural implant on him, and gets a visit from the doctor.
Dr. Simms has somehow gotten out of jail, and tells them that she’s tracked down a former patient of the elusive Dr. Jaeger: a man named Greyson, who’s currently locked up in a prison. He agrees to take them to where he got treatment when they break him out.
This sets them jetting off for utopia: a bit-coin/redditor’s ideal nesting ground. It’s a space station where anything goes: lots of neon lights, fake leather and lots of cyberpunk type things going on. John splits off to check up on the neural implant, while Greyson finds the doctor. D’avin gets high on a free drug sample and makes out with Dutch. Greyson comes back and brings them to Dr. Jaeger’s assistant, who confirms that she works with memory: they steal her pad with crucial data.
When they land back on Westerly, they’re grabbed by some Company men who drag off Dutch and throw her in jail for kidnapping Greyson. There’s no word on why D’avin or John aren’t grabbed, but while in jail, Dutch gets a visit from Delle Sayeh of the Nine from a couple of episodes ago. She tells her that she’ll let her out, so long as she gets a favor from her. Dutch agrees, so long as she gets some time alone with Dr. Jaeger.
The team then heads over to Jaeger’s office, and finally gets to meet the woman: portrayed, as it happens, by Amanda Tapping of Stargate SG-1! This makes me happy: Tapping recently directed an episode of Dark Matter, but it’s nice to see her on the other side of the camera. They chat, Jaeger tells D’avin that he killed his entire squad during a psychotic break, and that she removed his memories of the incident. D’avin asks for the memories back, and stalks off, with Dutch in tow. They finally break down and have sex on the ship - it’s nice to see them get that out of the way - it’s been looming for a while now. John walks in and storms off - he’s worried that any breakup will put him in an awkward place - siding with either his brother or his friend.
While this is happening, Jaeger does something on a computer. Back on the ship, D’avin’s nose starts to bleed, and his eyes dilate. He attacks Dutch, who fends him off and ties him up. John returns, gets filled in and watches D’avin while Dutch heads off to Jaeger to figure out what she did. Jaeger’s packing up her office, telling her that she’s been hung out to dry by the Company: her research involved getting soldiers to turn on one another on command, and that after D’avin failed, she had them put the kill warrant on his head. Meanwhile, D’av escapes, stabs John and heads to Jaeger’s office, where Dutch forces her to deactivate his programming. Then, she orders her assistant to wipe Jaeger’s memories, destroying all the research.
This was a really interesting episode after a couple of lackluster ones. The first thing, this one had each action building on each prior one. The team goes to one place, finds out one thing and move onto the next. It’s a neat trick, and it allowed the writing team to stuff a LOT of story into a single episode. This episode also didn’t feel as contrived: a couple of this season’s episodes felt like they were designed to provide back story or crucial story elements, rather than having those parts come out naturally. This one felt far more natural, and I hope that we’ll see more along the way.
One complaint that I do have with this episode is that it doesn’t feel like anything’s going to stick out of what happened with this episode. Yeah, D’avin wasn’t at fault here, but people don’t emotionally react to that sort of thing rationally: John might be his brother, but he’s taking it very, very well. That being said, Dutch seems to be disturbed by it, but I can’t imagine that it’ll last long.
I think that this is a problem with some of the more serialized adventures: there’s really no lasting consequences for the characters: by the end of the 40 minutes, everything is made up and back to normal. Some of the more structured, story-based shows avoid this, but this really isn’t one of those shows. It’ll be interesting to see how long this lasts, and if there’s a lasting impact. I hope that there is.
A couple of other points:
- What the hell happened to Greyson? The last point where we see him is in the doctor’s office, then he just vanishes.
- Dr. Simms isn’t... Dr. Simms. She’s one of the Nine, apparently, slumming it, or something. More mysteries, but it seems like she and D’avin are done.
- The Khlyen part of this episode died off really fast: it started as a ‘track down Khlyen’ episode and ended as a ‘D’avin’s got problems’ sort of episode. There’s only a handful of episodes left in the season, and it seems like they’re going to have to make some progress there.
- There’s a location that doesn’t feel like Vancouver: it’s when they’re out shooting the autotarget: the different trees might seem like a really minor thing, but after seeing most of the planets of Stargate SG-1 and other similar shows all taking place in pine forests, the subtle change in scenery is very welcome.
- Finally, there’s more people saying that war’s coming to the Quad: we’ve seen the seeds planted, and I’m betting that we’ll see some movement for the season finale.