Last week’s Tomorrow
People saw Ultra raising its game. The organization dedicated to hunting
down super-mutants actually showed some teeth — but this week, Ultra is weaker
than ever. To the point where I’m starting to wonder if the boastful name is a
case of overcompensation. Spoilers ahead…
Seriously, there are moments in last night’s Tomorrow People where Stephen stands
around in the middle of Ultra headquarters, telling Darcy major secrets about
her mutant sister, which must be kept absolutely secret from everybody at
Ultra, and the dozen people sitting around them don’t even notice anything.
Also, it’s now established that apparently you can’t DM
telepathically, you can only tweet — because when John and Russell are playing
pool and strategizing telepathically, they decide that Piper must be able to
hear their conversation because she, too, is telepathic. Therefore, every time
an Ultra agent is in the vicinity of a Tomorrow Person, the Ultra agent ought
to be hearing the Tomorrow Person’s telepathic chatter — why isn’t Ultra
taking advantage of this?
These are minor nitpicks, because I’m stalling on talking
about the over-arching plot of last night’s episode, in which Stephen flips Darcy
with somewhat ridiculous ease.
In a nutshell, the episode’s “A” plot involves
Darcy’s sister Piper, who is a mutant just like Darcy. Piper’s run away from
home, just like Darcy did, and now she’s hustling pool using her mutant powers.
(Side note: none of the Tomorrow People seems to think of the thousands of
sneaky ways to become super-rich using
their powers without hustling pool or cheating at cards. Like, say stock market
fraud. Or embezzlement.)
So what happens after Ultra identifies Piper as a new
“breakout”? First of all, Darcy lets Stephen out of her sight in the
middle of their shift, so he can run to the Tomorrow People and convince Cara
to go search for Piper on their own. Darcy at no point tells the other Ultra
people, “Hey, I think that’s my sister. Let me go talk to her on my
own.” Instead, she masterminds a scary dragnet, guaranteed to drive Piper
into the arms of the Tomorrow People. (To be fair, maybe Darcy just doesn’t get
a good look at sis during all this?)
Later, when Stephen notifies Darcy that her sister is in
hiding (in a way that makes it super-clear that Stephen is still working with
the Tomorrow People, and is being a double agent) Darcy goes to see Piper at
the Chinese restaurant where nobody ever eats Chinese food. And instead of just
trying to convince Piper to come into Ultra and maybe join the team — because
obviously it worked out pretty well for Darcy, right? — Darcy calls a SWAT
team to come get her sister.
Then Darcy changes her mind after a 20-second speech
from Stephen. (In which Stephen apparently assumes that they’re going to take Piper’s powers, instead of offering her a slot on the team, and Darcy makes no effort to correct him or point out why she thinks Ultra is doing the right thing.) At last, Darcy throws away her life to allow Piper to escape.
Where was Jedikiah during all this? I’m so glad you asked.
He spends the entire episode spying on his secret girlfriend, who’s secretly a
mutant. He tails her to make sure she’s not using her powers, catches her using
her powers and then threatens to shoot her before snogging her. It’s good that
Jedikiah is getting his own subplot, I guess, but in the wake of his demotion
to middle management last week, this makes him seem even less like the badass villain
this show needs.
Also this week: Irene, the supergenius mutant who got shot
last week, spends the entire episode in the hospital, where none of the Ultra
people notices a teenage GSW patient who matches the description of one of the
Tomorrow People showing up.
And meanwhile, in the “B” plot, John and Russell
get themselves arrested in Ohio, where presumably they’re photographed and
fingerprinted, and Russell is forced to reveal his real identity to the cops —
but again, Ultra is asleep at the switch.
(In this “B” plot, we learn that Russell’s newly
dead dad was a demanding perfectionist, because of course he was, and Russell
became a card shark to try and pay off all the money his dad had invested in
his career as a pianist. What? Oh, it doesn’t matter. The point is, Russell
comes from an uptight Asian family, but now he’s become a fun wacko because
he’s running from who he really is or something. Meanwhile, John says Russell’s
newly widowed mom should be proud of the man he’s become.)
So why is Ultra so ineffectual, even by the standards of
great television secret organizations like SD-6 and Control? In a nutshell,
it’s to make Stephen look good. Right now, this show needs Stephen to be the
rebel who flouts all the rules — both Ultra’s and the Tomorrow People’s — and
gets away with it. The only way that Stephen can keep flouting the rules and
getting away with it is if absolutely everybody else around him is a moron. Or
playing him — which I still hope Jedikiah is, in some meaningful fashion.
