Try, Try Again:
Written by: Charlie Craig
Directed by: Michael Nankin
Original airdate: July 17, 2007
Synopsis:
As Fargo readies his desk, being Allison’s new right hand man, a fellow worker named Larry bullies him, jealous of his position. The top brass are in town for the official transfer of control from Stark to Allison, and once their passwords are entered, the entire computer system is shut down as the transfer is implemented. Stark gives Allison a cheap as hell nameplate as a welcome gift.
Meanwhile, Fargo finishes up in the bathroom but discovers a device in his pocket that wasn’t there before he went into the bathroom stall. As he does, he activates the device which turns on a force field around him, not allowing him to even touch the water faucet.
Victor, a scientist who works in the storage area and ready to retire, alerts Allison to a missing category red device. Carter is called in by Allison but she is no nonsense as she informs him of what’s happening. Carter hides his own nameplate present for her after seeing Nathan’s gift and he leaves. He questions Victor who tells him he saw someone he describes as sounding like Fargo. Carter meets Larry when he is looking for Fargo, but eventually finds Fargo with the device which has increased the size of the force field so that Fargo is now floating, unable to touch the ground, and actually pushing out the walls of the bathroom stall. Since Allison doesn’t know anything about the project the device comes from, Carter has to find Stark and ask him for assistance. Together they find the scientist, Dr. Todd, who developed it, is fishing with a sonic based fishing rod, even hitting Carter with it a few times, not wanting to talk with him or Stark about his work. Eventually he relents and explains how a man died while they were working on the force field, due to the field expanding without any way to shut it down. They were forced to drop the man and the force field into a shaft and throw in a 3 megaton bomb after him to contain it.
Henry has therapy with Beverly and she questions his wanting to continue exploring science at GD. He argues that it’s the approach to science that is the problem, not science itself. When Henry reviews the last footage of Kim on the day of her accident, he notices Beverly coming into the frame with a gizmo in hand. Stark comes by to tell Henry he needs his help to save Fargo.
Carter confronts Larry, insinuating that he had motive for wanting Fargo out of the way. He leaves to take Fargo to Henry’s garage but Allison’s boss, General Mansfield, wants her to authorize the nuclear option, to which she refuses to do for now.
At Henry’s, they try his goo gun, built for crowd control, covering the force field in a strong paste, but the force field keeps expanding, and the goo is broken apart.
Allison is concerned that both Stark and Henry failed, being very short with Carter, telling him she is going to have Fargo moved to section 14, the area that Dr. Todd mentioned. She tells Carter that the hard copy of the inventory is in the physical records room and he heads off.
Jo and Carter eventually discover that Victor was the one who took the force field device, and they confront him. They learn that along with taking numerous other gizmos, he chose to frame Fargo so he could get away, while he sold the gizmos off for parts.
Fargo dictates his last words to Beverly which clanks mainly of his affections for Allison , Jo, and Beverly herself. As the nuclear device is brought in, Jack realizes that the force field is still growing, but not at the same rate that Dr. Todd said it would. They do some checking and theorize that since it was stored next to a magnetic device, its power was drained, making it expand at a slower rate. Stark convinces Todd to come back and help, saying that while they both made mistakes at GD, they have the chance to help now.
General Mansfield reprimands Allison for not using the nuclear device but she stands up to him, telling him she’s in charge, at least until the computers are back up and running and then he can fire her.
They manage to cut the power to the device using a magnetic field, but the force field turns on to its secondary power source, gaining power from the wearer. Jack surmises that if they can cause Fargo’s heart to stop beating for just a second, the force field will shut down. Jo takes the sonic fishing rod and shoots Fargo with the force field finally turning off. Allison works quickly and brings Fargo back to life.
Allison and Stark share a tender moment as she tells him GD needs him, and that she does too. He steers things back to them working well together and things are left up in the air.
Advanced Research:
Director Michael Nankin directed Heroes S04E15 “Pass/Fail.”Vincent Gale played Dr. Todd, and he is the real life husband of Jennifer Clement who played Susan Perkins in season 1. He was in 8 episodes of the 41 episode series Snowpiercer, as well as 28 episodes of SyFy’s Van Helsing series. He was a lead in the short lived series Breaking News (a news room procedural/sitcom/dramedy?), and has made appearances in Supergirl, Arrow, Supernatural, and has handled a few voice roles such as X-Men Evolution, Star Wars: Outlaws (video game), and Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century (a defrosted Holmes teams with a robotic Watson and a female Inspector Lestrade to stop the criminal rampage of Moriarty's clone). He was also in 5 episodes of the 50 episode series Bates Motel. Currently he has a recurring role in Allegiance (a rookie agent working in Surrey, her hometown, who faces the limits of the judicial system as she battles to exonerate her politician father).
Christopher Jacot played Larry Haberman. The character is named after an assistant that writers Charlie Craig and Thania St. John had on a show called Booker, where they first collaborated. He starred in an anthology series called Slasher (featuring rampaging serial killers leaving carnage in their wake as their next victims fight to stay alive), Popularity Papers (two best friends are on a quest to discover the answer and conquer middle school), and was the voice of Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes animated series.
General Mansfield was played by Barclay Hope. He’s had a number of roles in his life, most notable in Riverdale, Stargate SG-1, and PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal (a science team that works for the Office of Scientific Investigation and Research (O.S.I.R.) investigates the reports of supernatural phenomena).
Stark’s Global Dynamics passcode is 2554766, which spells out ALLISON on a phone keypad.
Allison’s Global Dynamics passcode is 8675309, a reference to the song 867-5309/Jenny by Tommy Tutone.
This episode was shot first, before the season premiere. However, unlike season 1 these episodes are not out of order as it was just a case of scheduling. It also meant that the reference back to the book of sonnets was argued with the studio, as they didn’t think it was the right object to use, and briefly a keychain was considered. The book itself was purchased by the prop department the day before shooting, because actor Colin Ferguson requested something to do in the scene while his character was left alone downstairs.
Buntzen Lake in Anmore, British Columbia, is a popular, scenic filming location near Vancouver. Known for its mountainous backdrop, it featured heavily in Lake Placid (1999), Freddy vs. Jason (2003), and Hot Rod (2007). The lake served as "Crater Lake" in Smallville and as the clown's lair in the It (1990) miniseries.
Unpredictable:
Written by: Thania St. John
Directed by: Robert Lieberman
Original airdate: July 24, 2007
Synopsis:
Jack plans a surprise birthday party for Zoe with the help of her friend Pilar and while dropping her off at school, sees Allison and Kevin, noting to her that Kevin seems to be in a good mood, with her noting he’s changed and opened up more lately. Jack asks her out for coffee but she has to leave for a meeting, telling him to ask again sometime. Suddenly the weather turns from a nice day to very windy and rainy.
Jo asks Jack about a possible promotion but before he can act on it, his ex wife Abby walks into the office asking about their “agreement”. Unfortunately there’s been a problem at Eureka’s spa and Jack sends Jo to check it out while he and Abby go to talk. Jack tells her how Zoe is doing great here in the town, but Abby suggests that it might just be his perception rather than hers. She suggests that after the party, she and Zoe could leave to get back to their lives, and there’s obvious tension when Allison and Stark show up and they begin chatting.
Beverly counsels Henry and determines he needs more time to deal with Kim’s death, though he wants to get back to work at GD. During their conversation he asks her if she was seeing Kim for therapy and she confirms it, but denies ever having met her at Kim’s GD office because she wouldn’t have the right level of clearance for that. Henry however, saw Beverly on the security cams inside of Kim’s office at GD.
Jo finds out that the spa’s hot springs have frozen over and it’s actually snowing. When Jack and Henry join her, they find a scientist, Neil Baxter, frozen solid. They look into his work and discover that he was quite the Lothario around GD.
Meanwhile Allison receives an anonymous email containing a file showing a great amount of personal information about Kevin.
Abby surprises Zoe by picking her up at school and driving her to the bunker but Jack quickly arrives and their secret agreement comes out: that Zoe was allowed to live with Jack for a year, after which she would leave to live with her mother. The agreement and the fact that she wasn’t told about it has Zoe upset. Suddenly a strong dust storm kicks up and they’re forced inside. Sarah reports that she knew that the weather was going to be strange all day because she got the report from the local meteorologist, Pete Puhlman.
Jack visits Pete and he shows off his Cumulator 2100, the most sophisticated meteorological predictor in the world, explaining how a pressure drop over the hot springs has been causing the strange weather.
Allison meets with Beverly telling her she needs Henry cleared to work at GD and Beverly balks. Allison decides to go over her head and Beverly leaves, rushing home to gather supplies from a hidden wall vault: money, a gun, several passports, but leaves behind a gizmo. She calls someone and explains the Henry situation, telling the person on the line that she's coming in to strategize.
Jo finds a cabin in the woods owned by a Dr. Steven Whiticus, who was the last person to call Baxter and they go check him out, questioning the wife, reasoning that she may have had an affair with Baxter which caused Whiticus to enact revenge. They split up to investigate but Abby shows up worried that Zoe has run away but Jack assures her that she is a teenager and likely just decided to go out. Abby tries to goad him into arguing but he says he has a job to do so if she wants to talk she needs to go with him. They drive to Whitticus’s cabin but another freaky weather event has them taking cover inside it.
Jo questions the wife and she admits to the affair but Whiticus interrupts them to show off that he’s managed to create a miniature typhoon, rainstorm, and snowstorm in separate enclosures in his basement lab.
Jack and Abby talk about the last year but he is soon distracted as he sees something he’s been looking for, a control panel that activates a giant satellite dish. He joins Jo at Whiticus’s house and Jo is ready to take him in for the murder of Baxter but his wife reveals that he is practically blind and can’t leave the house. He explains he built the satellite to re-freeze the polar ice caps but there were calibration problems that caused his eye accident so he shut the experiment down.
Allison confronts Stark about the information she was emailed and he tells her that they only studied Kevin at GD so that he wouldn’t be at risk due to his connection to the artifact. Before they can discuss it further, a freak hailstorm occurs and they retreat into the car where Kevin freaks out because of the noise and yells for it to stop when suddenly the car shakes and it does.
Jack calls Allison and together they go to see Pete and call him out on his amazing predictions. Jack explains that if Whiticus had succeeded with his weather machine, Pete would be out of a job. He explains they found footprints at Whiticus’s satellite dish that seem to match his shoes and Pete breaks down, telling them he didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Unfortunately the coming storm he created is threatening to destroy the whole town. Luckily Whiticus, Henry and Jack come up with the idea to use the satellite dish and the GD reactor to heat up the nearby lake in order to create steam to disrupt the storm. Jack rushes to the cabin and while he has trouble reaching the control panel due to the extreme weather, he manages it and the lake heats up, disrupting the storm instantly.
Zoe talks with Pilar about her parental situation but she leads her to Cafe Diem where everyone is waiting for her for a surprise party. Allison and Stark talk as she tells him that she knows that he sent the anonymous email to her. She then tells Henry that she arranged for all of Kim’s research to be unsealed for him.
Jack and Abby dance, and Abby tells him that she and Zoe will return to LA and when he knows what he wants to do with his life, he knows where they can be found.
Advanced Research:
Director Robert Lieberman has a lot of television credits, and he also directed the alien abduction film Fire in the Sky, and D3: The Mighty Ducks.
According to the map shown to Jack by the meteorologist Pete Puhlman, Eureka is located at Green Peter Lake in southwest Oregon.
November 3rd 1957 was actually a Sunday, not a Tuesday or Thursday. It was also the day Russia launched Sputnik 2 into space, with a stray dog named Laika on board. She was the first animal in space.
Kevin's IQ is revealed in this episode. When Allison opens the KB-201 file, Kevin's IQ is 182.
When Henry agrees that the reactor didn’t cause the flash freezing, he says it would have also caused “China Syndrome x5” which is a nuclear meltdown scenario that there would be nothing to stop the meltdown tunneling its way to the other side of the world. There was also a movie in 1979 called The China Syndrome starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas that follows a television reporter and her cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant.
Puhlman was played by Patrick Gilmore. He had a recurring role in Intelligence (organized Crime Unit procedural, also with Matt Frewer), and a main role in Grace Point (a remake of the British series Broadchurch). He had a supporting role in School Spirits (Maddie, a teen stuck in the afterlife investigating her own disappearance, goes on a crime-solving mission as she adjusts to high-school purgatory), You Me and Her (lives of a throuple), and Travelers (Hundreds of years from now, surviving humans discover how to send consciousness back through time, into people of the 21st century, while attempting to change the path of humanity, with Erik McCormack), as well as a lead role in Jann (Jann Arden stars as a fictionalized version herself on a quest for renewed fame). He was also in Stargate Universe as Dr. Dale Volker.
Olivia d’Abo played Abby. She showed up in Growing Pains as two different characters. She was in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan The Destroyer before she was best known for her role as hippie/free spirit daughter Karen on the original Wonder Years. She was in Wayne’s World 2 as Betty Jo, Garth’s love interest, and was in about half of Jonathan Silverman’s The Single Guy series (struggling New York writer attempts to find success and dates). She’s done a number of voice actor roles as well, such as the Mortal Kombat animated series, Batman Beyond, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Justice League Unlimited, Invader Sim, The Animatrix, and most notably, The Legend of Tarzan as Jane, replacing Minnie Driver in a related video game as well. Most recently, she has had a recurring role in several episodes of a soap opera called The Bay, appearing in the latest two seasons (fictional Los Angeles coastal suburb's elite indulge lavish lifestyles while surviving the riptide of organized crime and deep, dark scandal- read synopsis ep1 and latest).
David Nykl played Whiticus. He had a recurring role on Arrow, Anatoly Knyazev, and also Stargate: Atlantis playing Dr. Radek Zelenka.
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