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“Painkiller Jane” Recaps: Episode 1.4 “Catch Me if You Can”

Discount Depp – The Geek Squad is in full stealth mode and armed to the teeth as they enter an abandoned industrial area. They scatter about soldier-style while some kid who looks like the Kmart Johnny Depp waits to pick them off with his sniper rifle. Who is this guy? And why does he have photos of the Squad members on this groovy little iPod-like device?

As Heartbreaker Maureen scurries “into position,” the discount Depp takes a shot at her. He misses and she yelps, “Incoming!” Somewhere across the compound, The Ugly One is probably muttering, “Duh!”

Speaking of The Ugly One, Andre radios him to find out if he’s in position, and before The Ugly One can respond, the discount Depp shoots him. And then shoots Andre. And then shoots Heartbreaker Maureen. Hmm. These are heavy casualties for any TV show. Is The Ugly One going to wake up and find out it was all a dream? Will I? Or is the Sci Fi channel taking desperate measures to try to fix this ailing show?

Discount Depp exits the compound and meets up with Painkiller Jane herself. He approaches her and casually says, “So here we are.” Jane resists the urge to launch into a voiceover and merely responds with, “Yeah, here we are.” Then she pulls a gun and sticks it in his face.

Vasco V.O.: We spend our lives looking for answers. Who am I? Why am I here? Why is David Hasselhoff so big in Germany? It’s like we always think that finding the answers is going to bring us some kind of satisfaction, when usually it just gets us more questions. The more things I learn about myself, the more I wish I could develop partial amnesia. Although with my luck, I’d probably remember the pain and not my name.
Yeah, we knew she couldn’t resist a V.O. for long. As she speaks, we see her walking through the city with a lesbianish-looking guy. He has pretty, feathered hair and a nice smile. Aw, Jane looks genuinely happy for a change!

I wonder what terrible thing is about to happen to her?

Feather Hair tells Jane that he did a story on her old boss at the DEA who is taking an early retirement. It seems he loved the job until he was shot. Jane expresses disbelief, but Feather Hair says that you never know what you would do unless you found yourself in that person’s situation.

Vasco V.O.: Brian and I have been going out just long enough for it to be exciting and scary at the same time. So much to learn about him, and so much to keep him from discovering about me.
Bingo! – A surprise rainstorm threatens to make Brian’s hair fall, and also sends the lovers scurrying into the closest building. Inside, a group of seniors are playing bingo. Jane heads for the restroom to clean up and finds a mysterious note bearing her name taped to the mirror. After tearing through the bathroom in search of whoever left the note, she opens the envelope and finds a disk and the message “3 of your team will die.”

Jane finds Brian and tells him that she has to call an end to their date, even though she can’t tell him why. He takes it well and she promises that she’ll make it up to him. She grabs him roughly, kisses him, then races out the door. I guess Brian’s just going to have to go home and eat a tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and watch some Grey’s Anatomy reruns while he gives himself a mani/pedi.

Geek Squad Headquarters — Jane beats it back to the office and slips the disk into a computer. She’s summoned Heartbreaker Maureen to help investigate the new mystery.

Discount Depp: Agent Vasco, I’m not even sure who you’re an agent with. But I know that in three days, you and your team will try to arrest me and things won’t go well. Three of your teammates will be killed. Then you will shoot me. I’ll die in front of the orange door. I know how this sounds, but you have to believe me. These things that I see all happen. I can’t stop them. Maybe you can. Please don’t come after me. Keep your team away. It’s the only way to save their lives and mine.
Jane and Heartbreaker Maureen squabble over the situation’s hoax factor. Jane’s taking it seriously, but Heartbreaker Maureen wants to figure out how discount Depp might have set it all up to make it look like a premonition. Maureen tells Jane to chill, that it might just be a practical joke, but as she says this we see the frozen image of discount Depp on the computer screen behind her. In extreme close-up and with the red lighting, he now looks more like a designer impostor Charles Manson. A new dawn, a new day — The sun is rising, but inside Geek Squad Headquarters, it’s always dark and gloomy. Andre has his monochromatic team gathered around the array of computers and is bringing them up to speed on their new case. IT dork Riley has been tracking a series of “unusual phone calls” — four so far, gasp! — and Andre thinks it might be the work of a neuro. Unusual phone calls? Forget the DEA, this group is more like a secret offshoot of your high school drama club. Four weird phone calls warrant this kind of attention? At moments like this, Andre and company need a big string of pearls to collectively clutch.

OK, OK, maybe these calls do require a bit of follow-up. One of them was to an airport in North Carolina, urging them to ground a flight that would later crash. This call and the three others like it were made by the same guy. Riley rolls tape of the man being taken in for police questioning. Yep, it’s discount Depp/designer impostor Manson.

Jane and Maureen exchange glances, then tell the rest of the team about the note and video left for Jane at the senior center. Riley determines that discount Depp is really Ethan Grant, a man without a criminal record. He told police that he saw the plane crash before it happened, and no evidence has connected him to the accident. The tape of Grant’s voice matched that of three other warnings about “bad things that were gonna happen” — a gas main explosion, a fire at a nursery school, and a tornado in Amarillo, Texas.

Jane points out that Grant’s track record doesn’t bode well for three members of the Geek Squad. Andre scoffs at the idea that anyone could see the future, but Jane takes a more sensible approach. Why risk it? And, she points out, Grant hasn’t committed any crimes (unless you count that terrible facial hair), he’s just been trying to help people by warning them in advance of these “bad things that were gonna happen.”

Andre is skeptical because, well, it’s his job to be skeptical. He wonders: If Grant is a neuro with precognitive abilities, what else might he predict? The Ugly One rattles off a few different sporting events on which Grant could bet big, and Andre sternly reminds him that there are bigger fish to fry, such as “future presidential security, transport protocol for nuclear weapons …” Ya know, the usual.

Jane still thinks they should leave Grant alone, but the more she advocates for it, the more gung ho Andre gets for finding the guy and bringing him in. And he’s willing to do it himself. Jane runs after him, demanding to go with him not because she’s so damn brave, but because she’s “the only one guaranteed to survive.”

Chez Torment — Ethan is sitting at his house having disturbing flashbacks of the tragedies he tried in vain to prevent from happening. He’s holding a hammer, but I don’t think he’s planning to hammer all over this land. I think it’s more like he wants to bash his own brains in.

No mules for Sister Sarah — Andre and Jane show up at the home of Ethan’s sister. It’s his last known address, but he’s not there. She tells them that he was only visiting when he made the warning call from her house. After getting arrested there, she doubts he’ll return. I detect a tad bit of bitterness in her tone. She tries to blow off Andre and Jane, but when Jane tells her that they know Ethan was trying to help by warning people of the plane crash, she stops in her tracks, telling them: “They wouldn’t believe him. They never do.”

An International Coffee moment — Cut to Sarah’s house. Now that she sees that they’re on her side, Sarah has invited Andre and Jane in for coffee and cookies. She tells them that Ethan’s whole psychic thing started a year ago, and before that he was “fairly normal.” (Ever wonder what your family would tell the police about you if questioned? “Fairly normal” wouldn’t exactly throw ’em off your trail, now would it?)

He worked as a graphic designer until “something changed.” He would get a feeling that something bad was going to happen, and “within a couple of days, something always did.”

Oh. My. God. I’m psychic too!

Ethan’s “feelings” got more specific, and he started to know more details about what would happen. He used the information to try to warn people, but was always told that “someone would look into it.” But they never did. (Cause of death? Bureaucracy!)

Andre again demands to know Ethan’s whereabouts (maybe she should have served him decaf) but Sarah tells him she really doesn’t know. Ever since he started having the premonitions, Ethan began to retreat from the world. Sarah says that Ethan thought the premonitions were the result of some secret government experiment and was afraid the Feds wanted to “dissect” him.

Jane tells Sarah about the warning she received from Ethan, and Sarah has an inkling that the body count this time would include Ethan. When he came to visit her earlier in the week, she got the feeling he was there to say goodbye. Just then, the phone rings and it’s Ethan saying “hello.” “Hello” and “something terrible is about to happen!”

Andre orders Riley back at headquarters to trace the call, and Sarah has a message for them. Ethan has told her to “tell the two agents that there’s going to be a terrible accident. A transformer at the Westdale power station is going to explode within the hour. Five city blocks will be affected, including the intersection of 4th and Delancey. A traffic signal will lose power, and when it does it will cause a major accident involving half a dozen cars. Eleven people will die.”

Jane wants to call the power station, but Ethan says that they won’t listen — Jane and Andre need to handle it. When Jane takes the phone to talk to Ethan herself, he says only, “Go!” and hangs up. Despite Andre’s warnings that maybe the warning is just a ploy to throw them off Ethan’s trail, Jane is out the door and headed for the electric company.

Gridlock’d — I don’t envy Jane. She’s sitting in rush-hour traffic with Andre while getting the runaround on the phone from the power station. If she were to simultaneously get her eyebrows waxed, I think we’d be looking at the grand slam of all irritations. Fortunately, her eyebrows are already perfectly coiffed. But her shapely brows aren’t working any magic on the drones running the power plant switchboard. Jane finally gets someone on the horn and tells them what’s going to happen, but mid-conversation, alarms across the city begin to sound. It’s too late. The transformer has already blown.

Pileup — Cut to the carnage of the major accident predicted by Ethan. Jane and Andre arrive on the scene, but they can only watch as the dead and injured are hauled away by paramedics. Somewhere out there, Ethan is saying, “I told you so.”

Here comes the rain again — Andre and Jane are walking in the rain and arguing about Ethan. Andre still wants to find him and even has his location, thanks to Riley’s trace on Ethan’s call to his sister. Jane is exasperated. Helloooo. The guy is obviously for real. She wants to know what part of “three members of your team will die” Andre doesn’t understand. Jane doesn’t want them to “hunt him down” like the “government thugs” that Ethan is already afraid of.

But Andre is full of surprises. He wants to help him. Andre figures that if Ethan is a neuro, they can chip him and relieve him of the torment of his horrifying premonitions.

Jane: No! You think Ethan’s a ticking time bomb that needs to be defused. You don’t care about helping him. Andre: You do. Jane: You’re a manipulative son of a bitch, you know that?
Andre says that Ethan called from a military surplus store near his sister’s house. As they get in the car to find him, Jane asks, “Are Connor and Maureen going to meet us? Are you sure this place doesn’t have an orange door?”

Propane and propane accessories — At the surplus store, Jane and Andre learn that the cashier knows Ethan as “Sam” and that he’s a regular customer. He comes in for “basics”: batteries, rope, water purification. Again, I ask you, what would your local shopkeep have to say about your purchase habits? What are the “basics” that the Feds would learn you just couldn’t live without? (Mine: Cherry Coke Zero, Altoids and Entertainment Weekly. And not necessarily in that order.)

The cashier is in the middle of admitting to selling Ethan a hunting rifle and some knives when Jane snoops and finds a stash of grenades and semiautomatic weapons. Whether Ted Nugent likes it or not, those suckers are still illegal. So the cashier gives up Sam’s address so that Andre won’t shut her down.

Unfortunately, the address is that of Ethan’s sister, but the paper on which it’s written has some suspicious-looking doodles in the margins. Jane thinks they look familiar, but she’s not sure why. They ask the cranky shopkeep for more info, but she says she doesn’t pry, “especially not with that one.” Why? Because, she tells them, he’s been stockpiling enough guns, ammo and trip wire to start his own army. Yeah, she should definitely continue selling him more stuff. Off the grid — Back at Headquarters, Riley is turning up a whole lot of nothing on Ethan/Sam, who has managed to elude pretty much every identification system the government has to offer. Riley admits that Ethan has a talent for staying off the radar, but is confident he will still be able to find him.

Andre is in full macho Fed mode: “A paranoid neuro with an alias and a gun fetish. Tasty.” Heartbreaker Maureen notices the suspicious-looking doodles on the paper from the surplus store. Trendy lass that she is, she recognizes it as the logo of Tosrona, a popular sneaker manufacturer. With a few taps on his keyboard, Riley has discovered that the downtown warehouse for Tosrona is empty — and a perfect place for a hideout.

Jane is still advocating that they leave the poor bastard alone, and when The Ugly One suggests that she’s just being a chicken, she reminds him that maybe he should be. She snorts, “I’m the one that makes it out alive!” Heartbreaker Maureen opens up the Fate vs. Free Will can of worms, and the Squad wastes a few minutes debating destiny. Jane is in the free will camp, but the rest of the team is more fatalistic. Jane, maybe it’s time for you to go solo. It worked for wonders for Justin Timberlake. Give it some thought.

The Ugly One and Heartbreaker Maureen agree (gads!) that if they don’t find and disarm Ethan, countless others might be at risk, and they don’t want that blood on their hands.

Sneaker pimps — At the factory, Jane, Andre, Maureen and The Ugly One are decked out in fatigues. As they scramble about looking for Ethan, they look dangerously similar to the way they all looked in Ethan’s premonition. The only real difference is that it’s daytime, and Ethan’s vision involved him gunning them down at night.

Jane and Andre happen across an orange door — the place where Ethan said he would die. Jane begs Andre to let her go in alone first but he charges ahead of her, barking, “We’re going in!” I think Andre is amped up on steroids in this episode. Ick.

Behind the orange door — Once inside, not much happens. No trip wire is, uh, tripped, and no gunshots are fired. And that’s because the place is empty. No sign of Ethan. Andre is kinda bummed, so Jane reminds him, “Hey, at least you’re alive.” Which reminds me of Natasha’s priceless comment, “Some people have war in their countries,” to Brittany who was mid-meltdown over getting disqualified from a challenge on America’s Next Top Model last week.

Décolletage decoy — Back at Headquarters, Riley has managed to lift some prints off the paper from the surplus store, and he’s running them through the system. In doing so, he finds that Ethan has many, many aliases. As Jane leans in to look at the screen, Riley looks down her blouse. Twice. She catches him and he pretends he wasn’t looking. Lame.

But Jane harnesses the power of her ample cleavage to hypnotize this numskull and sends him on a faux errand for some stuff she doesn’t really need. He literally trips all over himself to get it for her, and while he’s gone, she takes over his computer and looks a little more closely at a clue that has caught her eye. She jots down the info and then deletes it from the screen.

Workout — Jane follows the clue to Brinker’s Gym, where she finds Ethan. Well, actually she hears him. He’s hiding in the gym but talking to her across the rows of lockers in which he is hiding. Ethan sounds kind of relieved to see her, and she is quick to tell him that she believes his premonitions, including the one about her team.

Jane: How do I stop it? Ethan: You’ve gotta understand by now, you can’t stop fate. No one can. It’s like a living thing. It swallows us all into darkness. Jane: What are you doing here? Why did you send me that warning? Ethan: On the slim chance that you might save us all from the abyss. Jane: I don’t understand. Ethan: These disasters I see, they don’t just spontaneously happen. There’s a chain of events that leads up to each one. Jane: Where do I fit in? Ethan: By the time I see what will happen, my opportunity to break the chain has already passed. Jane: But not for me. Ethan: You’re our only hope. As futile as it may seem, it’s your only chance to save your friends from the darkness that’s been written on them.
In addition to being precognitive, Ethan is also a drama queen.

Jane tells him that she tried to warn her crew, but they won’t listen to her. Ethan snaps, “Now you know how I feel.” Jane tells him about the orange door at the Tosrona factory, and she asks him to stay away from it. She tries to convince him to let her take him into custody — safely. But Ethan keeps yammering about fate and destiny, so she takes the hard line with him instead.

She tells him that if anyone on her team gets hurt, she’s holding him personally responsible. But Ethan’s not hearing it. He keeps insisting that their fates are in Jane’s hands. She tries to chip him, but Ethan doesn’t want to have his “gift” taken away from him. He tells her, “Sorry, Jane, it doesn’t happen this way.” And he’s right, because at that moment two guys who have taken way more steroids than Andre enter the room and forcibly remove Jane from this “men only” territory.

Shake it up — Jane returns to headquarters, determined to “break the chain” one way or another. She shoots Riley and The Ugly One (With tranquilizers? Neuro chips? Botox? I’m just not sure) and they both go down for the count.

Dr. Feelgood — Riley and The Ugly One wake up in the infirmary with Dr. McDorky quizzing them about how they came to be tranquilized. McDorky tells them that she calibrated the dose to keep them both out for an hour, and then breaks the really bad news to Riley. Oh, he’ll be fine, but there’s been some damage to his “work station.” Noooooo! Not the computers! Noooooooooooo!

All right, Riley doesn’t say that, but we all know that’s what he’s thinking. Heartbreaker Maureen announces that she went to Jane’s apartment, where a suitcase and some of Jane’s things were missing. Andre knows what she’s doing. “Jane is still trying to change the future Ethan Grant predicted … without her, the premonition can’t play out.”

While Riley tries to salvage something from the wreckage of his beloved computers, Andre and Heartbreaker Maureen head back to Sarah’s house in hopes of finding Ethan.

Like 24 but without the palpable tension — We’re treated to the split-screen effect as we see Jane driving and eventually rolling to a halt because her car has overheated. Meanwhile, the Geek Squad is doing the really dangerous stuff — checking sheets on Sarah’s pull-out bed for any lingering Ethan DNA, rifling through garbage cans and pulling hair samples from the shower drain.

This is a good time to go get a soda or take the dog for a walk. Or both. And if you time it right, you will miss a brief but still pointless voiceover from Jane (see below).

Vasco V.O.: The car had overheated and so had I. The only thing that mattered to me was that I not be able to get back in time to fulfill my destiny.
Hack job — Back at Headquarters, McDorky is performing his one-man show version of CSI (mercifully, sans unitard). Andre has him running samples on everything they collected, including some dirt. When McDorky tells him that it may take months to get dirt sample results back from the EPA, Andre instructs Riley to hack into the EPA’s system instead.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here — Jane is still cooling it in her broken-down car at a few minutes before midnight when she sees someone scurry across the road in front of her. She follows the person to the entrance of a large complex. It’s a police training facility, and it looks way too much like the Tosrano warehouse. Complete with orange door.

Jane, this is part where you get back in your car and listen to late-night dedications with Sean Andre on The Quiet Storm. Old-school R & B can save you from your destiny!

But she doesn’t run back to the comfort of her car and some old-school jams. No, she stands outside the dreaded orange door and ruminates via voice-over. Again.

Vasco V.O.: Now here’s the question of the century: What’s a police training facility that looks exactly the Tosrano shoe factory doing way out here at the exact spot where my car broke down? And why is Andre’s SUV parked outside? OK, that’s two questions. But who’s counting when you’re about to come face to face with fate?
Everything old is new again — Inside the facility, we’re seeing a repeat of the events from the opening sequence of the episode. Andre, Heartbreaker Maureen and The Ugly One are scurrying about with weapons, and Ethan is taking aim at them with his sniper rifle. Yes, all is wrong with the world.

Outside, Jane has gone back to her car. But only momentarily, to fetch a little earpiece that will allow her to listen in on her team’s maneuvers. And while she’s at it, she grabs her night-vision goggles too.

I would die 4 U — Back inside the facility, Geek Squad members are dropping like flies. Ethan caps The Ugly One, then Andre. Heartbreaker Maureen runs to Andre’s side and begins to tend to his wounds. That’s when she discovers that it’s Jane, not Andre, filling out those fatigues. Jane tells her that she tranquilized both Andre and The Ugly One, hoping to “die” in their places and thus fake out Fate. Jane tells Maureen that Ethan only thought he saw three people die — but this was merely his interpretation. Then she tranquilizes Heartbreaker Maureen and heads off to find the bullet that was meant for her (lady) friend.

It doesn’t take long. She charges Ethan and shoots until she runs out of bullets, then he fires off a round that takes her down. Satisfied that he has finished the job, he exits the facility through the dreaded orange door — where Jane is waiting for him.

Ethan: Well, here we are. Jane: Yeah, here we are.
 

Jane draws her gun, but it is, naturally, her chipping gun. She chips him and says: “The chip will suppress your abilities. No more premonitions.” When Ethan protests that he saw his own death, Jane tells him, “You shouldn’t believe everything you see.”

The three undead squad members limp out to the front of the building, still wobbly from their tranquilizers. Ethan looks almost relieved to see them alive. “So it’s true, the things I see can be changed.” Jane lovingly puts her arm around him and leads him away from the building.

Then she steps on one of his trip wires and sets off an explosion that sends them both flying through the air. Unfortunately, only one of them has that whole unkillable thing working in their favor. And it ain’t Ethan.

Jane screams a loud, slow-motion “Nooooooooooooo.” But yes, it’s true. Ethan is dead, and she kinda killed him. Damn the Fates!

What lies beneath — Jane pulls herself together over the commercial break, and when we come back, she joins the rest of her crew as they explore the facility.

Down in the bowels of the building, they discover the secret room where Ethan lived. It has the standard creepy-guy décor — grisly newspaper clippings taped to the walls, dingy cot with ratty linens, survival supplies. Heartbreaker Maureen finds a nifty drawing Ethan did of Jane, with “Jane 113” written on it, but none of them know what to make of it. The Ugly One finds a treasure trove of meds and assumes that Ethan was a hypochondriac. But Andre knows better. He tells them that Ethan was preparing, and then he gestures to drawings on the wall of terrible things that haven’t even happened yet.

Vasco V.O.: Most of us would give anything for a peek into the future. Ethan had no choice but to see his own, and it tortured him till the very end. It’s second nature to curse our flaws, and we sure do convince ourselves that life would be easier without them. Ethan’s ability to see the future was his flaw, a vision he was compelled to share with me. Maybe it’s because I have my own issues with confiding, but I can’t help wondering: What didn’t he share?
Next time on Painkiller Jane: Jane and company investigate a former FBI safe house where visitors have terrible visions and nightmares about each other’s worst fears.

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