Previously on Defiance, Irisa was revealed as a seer after she smoked a little hookah and did a little blood oath with a giant Irathient called Steampunk Sukar. Luckily, her omniscience kicked in just in time for her to save the city from a Hellbug infestation. Everybody else had job problems. All the assholes in town kept reminding Amanda she’s up for reelection in just a couple more weeks, one of Kenya’s bacon-loving clients literally exploded mid-coitus, and Stahma Tarr’s job of bending the world to her whims got pretty tedious because the only thing bigger than Datak’s ego is a blue star.
Another day, another way for Nolan and Irisa to piss off the entire Castithan population of Defiance. This time, they bust up a gun-running operation, only whoops: The guns weren’t for Datak and his bullies; they were being smuggled in by Datak and his bullies on behalf of the City Council. They made a deal with him – without Amanda’s knowledge, by the way – to get them some weapons because with the stasis net still down, the town’s a sitting duck for whatever Arkfall mutant thing is lurking in the forest. How happy is Amanda about this? As happy as Datak is about never being asked to to join the City Council. Which is to say: The exact opposite of happy.
If you’re having a really shitty day because the various alien races in your city are conspiring with the humans in your city to undermine your authority and turn the whole place into a mob town, one good way to relieve stress is to have a drink and a laugh with your sister. Unfortunately for Amanda, as she’s on her way to do just that, she is accosted by an angry wife of one of Kenya’s clients. The angry wife calls Kenya a whore in about eleven different ways, and so Mayor Rosewater just socks her one right in the jaw. Professional? No. The correct way to be a big sister? Yes.
Amanda’s day gets even worse, though, when she shows up at Need/Want and finds her crush/the town sheriff enjoying a romp with her sister. What Amanda doesn’t know is that it’s not a paid-for romp. Kenya has developed actual feelings for Nolan, so she tells him maybe they can keep having sexytime fun together, for free. Well, but the gun thing and the getting trolled thing and now this thing conspire to make Amanda grumpier than we’ve ever seen her. She lays into Kenya about how her profession isn’t respectable and she just had to cold-clock some random woman to defend her honor and wouldn’t she rather be doing a safer thing for her vocation. Which: That seems a little silly since the only other work in this town is, like, mining alien artifacts and investigating murders. They don’t get to finish their sisterly scuffle because one of Kenya’s clients starts hollering about how one of Kenya’s workers stole his money.
Kenya chases her girl out into the street and into a seedy part of town where that Bio-man from the pilot, the one Nolan deactivated by punching him real hard in the ass, is slinging whatever is the alien version of heroin. Kenya’s not scared very much, but she realizes they’re in big time trouble when the back doors of the Bio-man’s ice cream truck(?!) open up to reveal like a dozen junkies he’s kidnapped. Five seconds later, Kenya and her girl are bound and gagged in the back of that truck.
OK, and the whole time all this stuff is happening, Kenya and/or Amanda are flashing back to when they were little kids. See, Amanda actually raised Kenya because their mom was killed during the Pale Wars. Except for that’s just a pretty lie Amanda has been telling Kenya. What really happened is that Amanda and her mom were out scavenging when bombs started falling all around them. Amanda insisted that they hurry back and get Kenya, who was just playing hopscotch out in the street while brimstone crashed all around her, but Mama Rosewater decided to save her own skin instead. Amanda rushed back for her baby sister, told her their mom had been killed, and gave her an amulet to protect her: The medal of St. Finnigan.
And you thought the only thing Amanda had in common with Katniss Everdeen was her side-braid.
The Bio-man takes his prisoners back to his lair, which, by the way, he shares with his gay ol’ boyfriend. The Bio-boyfriend, who is human, is like, “Oh, good, moron, you kidnapped the mayor’s sister. Well, so much for keeping our adrenaline-extracting operation secret, you twit!” These guys are extracting adrenaline from junkies by hooking them up to some kind of haunted house Matrix and draining their fight-or-flight-fluid while they’re in a state of heightened terror. Kind of liking working at Monster, Inc., actually, except for there’s a lot less cuddly blue KITTIES! and a lot more angry Volge.
Inside the Matrix, Kenya keeps herself and her girl safe, running and ducking and hiding, and whispering words of encouragement and affection to her.
Back in the city, Nolan and Amanda are turning the town inside-out looking for Kenya. They run up on a little Newsie who’s wearing Kenya’s St. Finnigan medal and that’s when they know she’s in real trouble. But that little Dickenson street urchin doesn’t give a fuck. He’s legit wearing a necklace stolen from the mayor’s sister and staring down the city’s chief lawkeeper but he still demands to be paid for his intel. He even tries to run off after Nolan slips him a fiver. He finally says the Bio-man took Kenya, and since Nolan knows Datak owns the Bio-man (because of the aforementioned ass-punching), they head on over to the Tarr’s to do a little recon.
Obviously, Datak is a real twat, but to be fair, if someone dragged you out of bed with Stahma Tarr, you’d be pissed as hell too. Nolan demands information with his gun, and Datak tells him he can go fuck himself. Amanda appeals to his ego, says he’s already a hero in this town and can be an even bigger one if he’ll just help her track down her sister. Datak says that she is correct, that he is a hero, but that she treats him like some kind of gangster boss trash, and so she can go fuck herself too.
Nolan and Amanda skulk off into the night. Datak is right and they know it, but he’s also a dick and he knows it. Lucky for everyone, Stahma is the Once and Future Queen of the Universe, so she fixes all the problems. This scene is actually really wonderful, not only because Stahma’s Machiavellian awesomeness increases tenfold every episode, but also because it adds multiple layers to Kenya Rosewater. And plus, Jaime Murray is a damn goddess. She is crushing this role so hard. OK, so Stahma sneaks out and finds Amanda and tells her this story:
“My husband frequents the Need/Want because dudes, right?” – Amanda’s face when Stahama says this, like, “Datak could be sleeping with you, but he’s sleeping with … not you? So he’s a creep and an idiot?” – “Well, your sister’s girls won’t look at me in the street. Maybe they feel weird about being prostitutes, or maybe they’re just grossed out because of having sex with such a weasel, but Kenya, she looks at me right in my gorgeous face and thanks me for sharing my husband with her. That girl really does get what people Need and Want.”
Stahma wants to help Amanda help Kenya, but it would be oh so much easier to get Datak to cooperate if he could just have a teensy-tiny seat on the city council.
Over in the Bio-man’s lair, Kenya realizes that she’s trapped inside the Matrix, which means, of course, that Jenny Schecter is Apocalypse Jesus, which I think we’ve all known in our hearts for a long time now. She breaks free from the computer-coma and goes right ahead and smashes the Bio-man’s boyfriend over the head with a beaker full of poison and kills him. Bio-man walks in just in time to see him hitting the floor, and boy, is he angry. He’s halfway to pulverizing Kenya when Nolan zooms in and pumps his Bio-guts full of lead.
Once they return to the Need/Want, Kenya tries to give her girl her St. Finnigan medal because it gave her courage for a long time and now she knows her girl needs that some thing – but her girl says it’s a St. Christopher medal, that she grew up with nuns and she knows a thing or two about antiquated saints. Kenya storms over to Amanda’s office and demands an explanation, so Amanda tells her the truth. Their mom abandoned them and Amanda found that necklace on a soldier whose name was Finnigan.
Man, this writing is tight. Sister stuff gets me more than any other stuff – y’all know how I feel about Emily and Katie Fitch – so I’m just bawling over here about these two.
Guess who got a place on the town council after all? Mmm hmm. Mr. Stahma Tarr. He takes a seat with the rest of Defiance’s leaders while Stahma sits out in the lobby and weaves a literal web and Nolan calls her a snake. Stahma smiles at him, says, “You’re very sweet.”
You know what else would be sweet, lady? Another bath.
Next week: Irisa kidnaps the guy who one time kidnapped her, Nolan makes a play for the older sister, and Amanda, sadly, takes her hair down out of her side-braid.
