Things in the verses are starting to shake up.

16 hours before the premiere of Eureka, Charlie Jade brings one of its best episodes. There was some serious emotion this time around counteracting the sheer darkness (and I mean lighting) of the episode. I was seriously frustrated at the blinds causing a glare on the TV screen, but I think even in a pitch black room this would have been a dark episode.

Let’s get rolling.

Charlie is in the Glass Door ordering a drink and is approached by 01. This is the first time they’ve meet face to face, at least in the show. 01 asks if he’s seen Charlie before and Charlie says he hasn’t. Charlie then leaves 01 with a flier for a missing girl. 01 seems to react with remorse towards it. Charlie talks to the parents of the missing girl, a Muslim couple. They accuse Charlie of wanting more money like the others and Charlie figures out that there’s a ransom note. We then quickly see Julius Galt and his #1 – Ren (or Renn, stupid closed captioning) – discussing killing 01 to get him out of the way.

Back in Alphaverse, Essa meets with 01 and says his father would really like to see him, 01 says fine but he has to come to 01.

Mr. Aswan (dad of the missing girl) works with Charlie to make a money drop. A scooter comes by to pick up the money. Charlie drives in front of the scooter, the rider falls off, Charlie puts him in the trunk of his car. His name is Trent and under some severe Nerf ball interrogation he tells Karl and Charlie that Aliah wasn’t kidnapped. She broke up with him and ran away to be with some guy named Keyes. He faked the ransom to get back at her. Karl tells Charlie that Keyes Mancuso is a motivational speaker.

We get a flashback to Charlie’s past – eight years ago.  Charlie is part of a squad taking a house. They draw out the armed men in the house and shoot them dead. The holograms of the dead men disappear and the exercise is over. A man named Mr. Sope comes out and says that this part of the Vex-Cor Security Services Training Program is complete. Charlie was part of Vex-Cor Security. Back in Beta and present time, Charlie’s got his telephoto lens on Aliah at Keyes’ house.

Moving now to Reena, again this will be a nutshell wrap up of her scenes. She’s still with the lady whose car she fell on escaping Malachi. The lady’s name is Rosalie and she has AIDS. After some odd quality time with this stranger, they seem to be on the path to friendship, but Rosalie is very sick and has no family. Reena asks why she hasn’t taken her own life yet, Rosalie says she was raised believing it was a sin. Reena gives a bit of a circle of life speech but when Rosalie asks for her to help her die, Reena says she’s seen too much death. However, later she agrees and Rosalie calls her an angel as Reena injects her with a lethal dose of whatever.

The only time we see Jasmine is as she’s working in a factory, falling behind in her work, saying she doesn’t sleep well, but she’ll work harder. Her line supervisor says to be careful.

Back in Beta, Charlie tells the Aswans that their daughter has not been kidnapped. She ran away and is living with this Keyes guy. She went voluntarily. The dad says he has no daughter now and when Karl argues he says in Allah’s eyes she’s no longer part of the family. The mom, however shows them a picture of her daughter as she was before and asks them to keep trying. So Charlie goes to one of Keyes speaking gigs and the two play fun with words and banter until Charlie shows Keyes a picture of Aliah.

We have another flashback into Charlie Bravo Squad as they hit apparently the same house. This time they flush out the same guys, but after they’re done shooting them down, some people come in and drag the bodies away. No holograms this time. Back in the present, Charlie swoops up to Aliah on the street and helps her with her fallen shopping bags. He tries to talk to her about her parents and she gets defensive then rides off in her chauffeured car. Charlie wants to let it go and Karl is upset about it. He then relays the story that Keyes Mancuso is a former British Intelligence Behavioral Specialist who later became a consultant for Vex-Cor.  Now even Charlie is hooked.

Back at Paula’s diner, a game of chess is not being played and when Charlie doesn’t make a move on the board, Paula makes a move on him. (Ah, ancient board game humor.) However she refuses his offer for him to walk her home. I think in chess they call that a feint.

In the most interesting part of the episode, 01 is in a room with his dad, Brion Boxer. The two are hooked up to a machine and while it’s not obvious what’s going on, it’s apparent that 01 is donating blood to his dad. The surprise though is that Brion’s recovery is quite extraordinary. Where before he was ancient, he now appears middle aged, and a bit short. Walking and wearing a suit, he brings 01 a sealed bag. 01 says, “If we keep this up, I’ll own more of her than you do.” Brion says he regrets 01 ever being born (cloned? hatched?) and would take it back cell by cell if he could. He also says 01 would disgust “her.” I’m assuming the “her” is a mother figure. Later we see 01 with the bag. Inside is a make up box. He pulls out some lipstick and smears it all over his face and then proceeds to hear the voice of a woman calling his name as he scrapes his head feverishly with the ornate hair brush. It’s a very touching – just a touch creepy – scene for 01, and it also gives him a bit of a motive to want to bring down daddy. Something bad happened to mommy. In the Alpha Vex-Cor control room, Brion asks Essa how everything got so bad. They’re still cut off from Beta and Gamma, and now someone is investigating them.

Charlie is back at the Mancuso Manision with his camera and apparently he’s got a spy bug flying around. Keyes sees the bug, pulls out a non-Beta technology sphere and does an area zap and kills the bug. Charlie approaches Aliah and tries to tell her about Keyes and why he’s bad, when a heat packing Keyes interrupts. Keyes sends Aliah inside and wraps up his banter with Charlie by saying that women like Aliah are like horses and must be broken first. “Like you were broken and reborn.” Ooo, so this guy knows Charlie from the Flashback Days.

Speaking of, let’s go back and check on that. Charlie goes into a room where a fellow security agent is hovering over a torture victim who is bound, blindfolded and very dead. Fellow agent said the “soldier” wouldn’t talk. Soldier was an interesting turn of phrase and could mean Vex-Cor could be fighting the Alpha’s version of a military or some kind of rebellion.

In the final scene, Galt officially tells Ren to kill 01. He sets it up by calling 01 and saying he has an emergency slate for Rompkin. At the Glass Door, 01 is snorting coke and “interviewing” a new bartender. He goes off to get something when the hit man shows up. The goon caps the girl and then shoots at 01, missing a few times but winging him as 01 reaches his escape shower and disappears. The last thing we see is a prostate 01 on a beach in Gamma.

Fun!

This episode really played into the strengths of the show. There was a smattering of Charlie narration, a good amount of skeptical but knowledgeable Karl and a big turn around for Reena’s character in terms of emotion. In fact, Reena was nearly enjoyable in her General Foods International Coffee role, although she was still the Angel of Death. This time it was the Lifetime Channel version.

Gone were the Tool video dramatics and the swiss cheese writing and robotic human interaction. Facts about the verses and the characters became more concrete and at the same time you began to realize that everyone is not what they first seemed. Charlie wasn’t always a rugged PI, he was actually part of the machine that is Vex-Cor. 01 isn’t just a crazy bastard child of a global business baron, he may be some kind of genetic experiment. And Reena may not be as innocent as we first believed. We’re also seeing more and more Alpha technology in Beta. Last week it was the diamond fabricators, this week the Wide Area Bug Zapper. As we get further down the rabbit hole, it’s becoming apparent the Vex-Cor roots are indeed deep.

My only complaint this week was that the story couldn’t decide whether to focus on Aliah or not. Had this been Law & Order, she’d have been found and Keyes identity would have been figured in the first 10 minutes, leaving the rest of the time to find out why Keyes is here and what exactly 01 is. Still, because no one seemed to have any this time around, I’ll throw a few in and give “Devotion” four and a half shiney blue stones.