If Charlie Jade shows us anything, it’s that bad guys know how to party.

We start with 01 Boxer in a club. He’s in the midst of his usual debauchery. CJ is waiting outside in his car. He sees a man in a grey suit looking right at him. Man In Gray Suit (MIGS) eludes CJ when he tries to go after him. 01 takes his skank du jour into an alley and right as things are getting interesting, he pours a bottle of water over his head and disappears.

Charlie hocks an Alphaverse designed ring (wedding ring?) for money for a car. (Of note, money in South Africa is the rand. For a while I was thinking Charlie was associating money with his Alphaverse credits. Sue me for not knowing that.) CJ and Lubinsky have a conversation at Paula’s diner about 01 disappearing. We shift from Paula to Jasmine who sits in an empty house and recap the state agents telling her to get out.

Horace Ipstack (who I’m guessing is the Vex-Cor head in Gammaverse) is touring a beach with some well dressed folks and tells them an island out in a bay would be a good place to make a prison for terrorists. A member of the group breaks off and talks to 01 Boxer saying there hasn’t been a war in 40 years. 01 says, in a rather poingnant and benevolent demeanor, that it wasn’t all supposed to be like this.

Reena is being tortured, remember last time she was scooped up into a van, and there are many scenes with her in an abandoned building with (J)UNCTION painted on the side. They put electrodes to her head and make her listen to, as the CC put it, “50’s musak.” I didn’t think they made that type of musak, but it’s apparently bad enough to cause bleeding. Also, I think they knocked one of her eyes sleepy. She looked bad.

Thus begins the big part of the story. Charlie goes back into the desert to talk to blue stone girl Jody and her mom Darlene. Jody says she’s seen invisible people and recognizes the picture of 01 Boxer that Charlie shows her. Darlene starts talking about the contaminated water nearby and Charlie goes to investigate an empty basin of sand with bits of houses and boats buried beneath. He also finds another blue stone. There’s a dripping pipe nearby. He decides to visit a man convicted of dumping pharmacuetical waste into that area, sees MIGS but loses him again. The pharma man, Mr. Bridger, is dead, but his wife - a fourflush psychic named Andrea - at first gives Charlie the “you’ll have to leave now” line but later talks to him when he seems to understand what’s going on.

More Reena. She has a flashback of her with her mother.

Quick jump into Alphaverse as Essa Rompkin is asking 01 about all the security problems in all three Verses.

An interesting bit happens when CJ is in Paula’s diner. He’s focused on a car across the street and Paula is trying to be nice to him. He declines an offer to go out for a drink but notices that some water drips down onto the counter from out of no where. Paula says she thought she just wiped the counter down. CJ sneaks into MIGS car and begins trying to threaten some questions out of him (with a butter knife, awesome.) MIGS’s wallet is empty and he’s dodgy about who he is. He does say that they’ve been watching him for a long time, but when CJ asks who a car pulls up and MIGS is let go. As he leaves he says, “Be careful.”

01 gives Gulius Galt a slate to take back to Essa. CJ runs some prints for MIGS and Reena is tortured some more by a guy named Malachi. He keeps asking who she is and if she thinks those she killed will mourn her. Later he puts a gun to her head and she says, “Do it.” But he doesn’t, leaving her an her Sammy Davis Jr. eye to wallow in guilt and pain.

A quick note about 01 giving these slates to Gulius. I don’t know what it is. 01 can go between Verses. Gulius is in Beta, Essa is in Alpha. 01 was sent by Essa to gather information to bring back to Alpha because at first they lost their link to the other Verses. What I don’t get is he said this time around that the “slate” he gave Gulius was funny because the messanger was giving the messages. So is Gulius taking things back to Essa? If so, how is 01’s usefulness still viable? This has me a bit lost.

Back in Alpha, Jasmine receives a package with photos and a small device. She’s in an empty house, obviously moving soon. We see later that the device is a projector and it beams Charlie’s last if-you-get-this-I-must-be-dead message. He tells her to go on with her life, call Arno. (Alphaverse names, so silly.)

01 sees Gulius giving a press conference, something 01 doesn’t like. He’s getting a tattoo but storms off and disappears in the shower.

Andrea Bridger and CJ walk around the desert basin and she describes visions she’s had. (Which is odd. She said the psychic thing was a dodge, but then she talks about visions. I think there was a tie in to the idea that she saw things but that they weren’t useful to anyone. The writers missed that.) She explains that a man came to see her and asked a bunch of questions. They also put a chip in her wrist. CJ helps her get the chip out, but then has to send her to a part of Beta that doesn’t exist in Alpha; Patagonia. This man shows up at her place later when her chip apparently sets off an alarm. Charlie jumps him and tries to ask him some questions puegalist style and the two fight for a pretty long time. Charlie ends up putting a piece of porceline into the guy’s ear/jaw/skull. The guy is either dead or is going to have a major hangover.

Charlie goes back to a leaky tap in the desert basin. He fills up a water bottle and you realize that he’s put a few things together. The water, 01 Boxer vanishing, Jody’s invisible people, Andrea’s visions of Alphaverse, Vex-Cor covering something with false water contamination charges. He pours the water over his head…

…and nothing happens.

I’m glad nothing happened. It would have been easy to get Charlie back to Alpha so quickly. I liked that given no other explanations, he did what he thought was necessary to return home, with crushing results.

All things considered, this was a decent episode. I wasn’t floored, but I wasn’t bored. The show is sticking to its guns with the style and that’s good for consistency, but bad for viewership. I’d like to see more pathos, more emotion from the characters really soon. The show seems devoid of feeling and there’s no amount of artistic choices that can save that. Lubinsky and Charlie and 01 are all decent, but not wonderful. There’s nothing so far the likes of Jack and Locke’s angry speeches. There’s no Starbuck getting drunk and laughing defensively. There’s no Doctor screaming “Allons-y!” It all feels beat down and dirty and barely getting by.

01 Boxer’s character is the only one showing any life, but the same life Stephen Dorff gave to his Frost character in blade. It’s there, but it’s aloof and apathetic.

But that’s the show overall. This episode was decent. I hate to grade the show against other episodes of itself, but I don’t know how else to grade it. And since Charlie found another one, I’ll be kind and give it three out of five shiny blue, mysterious stones. The ending really nailed it this time and I hope they avoid clichés like that in the future.