Church bells.  Charlie wakes up to chanting monks and some internal recaps.  He enters a church (through locked automatic ironbar gates?)  A priest asks he wants to make confession, Charlie says no thanks and after giving Christianity a few jabs, he leaves.  On his way out he dips his hand into some holy water and sees the ghost of a child saying “He can’t let you off the hook, about saving the world and all.”  Charlie responds, “Saving the world…I couldn’t even save you.”  Back at Karl’s place we see a baseball capped Reena leave a document under Karl’s door – a document marked “Vex-Cor: Confidential.”  Back at the church, the holy water in the basin turns green, dries up and vanishes.

At the Glass Door, 01 is pushing himself through an intense work out involving chair push ups and punching bags.  Princess asks what it’s like to be shot, 01 says it’s a rush then it sucks.  He goes to take a shower, at first he doesn’t let the water touch him, the slowly he passes his hands and face through and everything phases in and out, then he stops.  Karl tells Charlie the documents show Vex-Cor dumping toxic waste, it’s his proof.  Charlie wants to track down Norman Ord.  01 and Princess are filming something.  01 uses his Alpha software to transpose Essa’s face and voice onto Princess, which makes for an interesting scene when we see the Chair of Vex-Cor say she’s horny.  Also, it’s pronounced “Beeta.”

Charlie finds out Norman’s ID was erased but not very professionally.  Charlie calls Blues Paddock (yay!) and they flirt and banter.  She agrees to help him track down Norman Ord.  Cops are going to set up a sting, Charlie knows it, tries to get there early.  Quick look at Jasmine, she’s still in the cage with the dead guy.  A phone rings, she picks it up but it’s not the one ringing.  When she sees another phone on the floor, she bolts.  I don’t know whose phone was whose so this didn’t make much sense.

Blues and Will Archer are outside Norman’s house and he’s giving her crap about helping Charlie when they see Norman with a bag getting into his car like he’s running.  Also, no Charlie because he’s hidden away in Norman’s car.  Charlie surprises them about the wrist chips, seems to want to help them.  01 is in Julius Galt’s office where he starts playing with a knife and Galt’s head.  01 gives Galt a slate saying Essa’s upset and when Galt has a response to call him.  (There was a lot of clever movie lines and bits where Galt was seriously made uncomfortable by 01 that you’d have to watch to appreciate.)  Sew Sew and his men are on the the scene of Jasmine’s killed client.  Sew Sew picks up the device I thought was a phone and projects images on the ceiling.  One of them is a picture of Jasmine.  I still don’t know what’s going on there.

At Charlie’s place, Norman and his wife Maria fight for a bit over him screwing up and how they have no where to go, they can’t stay in Beta and they can’t go back to Alpha.  Norman talks about the bomb and the files and describes the woman who threatened him.  Charlie shows her a picture of Reena, he recognizes her.  Charlie says they’ll help if Norman tells him how to find this lady, and that they’ll need an operation first (to remove the chips.)  Charlie posts a lost dog notice (that’s how Reena said to find her.)  Karl and Charlie see the Ord’s off, they’ll be going to a friend of Karl’s in England who helped with apartheid refugees.  Karl buys Charlie a beer.

Head Ghost is back giving Charlie a hard time about his current plans.  He suddenly jumps up and points his gun at a man in a suit talking about lost dogs.  Charlie wants to know how he got in, the man never answers.  Charlie looks down at an Elliot Krogg memo and goes to hand it to the man, asking what he knows.  When he looks up, the man is gone and there’s a puddle and we flash back to when Charlie was tracking 01 and the trail dead ended at a pair of footprints in slowly soaking gravel.  Reena shows up in the park near the trash can where the lost dog sign in.  She doesn’t linger and we see Porter on the phone behind her.

Sew Sew finds Jasmine, asks why she’s been running.  Sew Sew tells her they called the killing a “heart attack” so there’s no record of what she did.  Then he takes her some place safe.  Charlie is sneaking around an abandoned building.  He’s watching Porter and his men tracking Reena.  Galt shows up at the Glass Door with the slate, saying it’s a fake, 01 wants to know why Galt bothered to come by.  Reena takes on Porter and his henchmen.  01 and Galt come to an agreement that Porter is becoming a problem and they toast.  Back to Reena who dispatches both Porter and his man.  And by dispatch I mean ninja style with broke necks and faces.  She runs, Charlie chases, convinces her not to run.  This is the first time they’ve talked since episode one and they acknowledge that.  Reena then describes her world to Charlie and has more lines in five minutes than she has the whole series thus far combined.  She still sounds ridiculously young and out of place, but it works the same way a classically trained dancer can be believable as a killer robot from the future.  She tells Charlie they were running a pipeline from her world to Alpha.  Charlie mentions Porter and Reena goes into a weird trance and attacks him then bolts.

In Alpha, Sew Sew takes Jasmine back to her old home.  It’s covered in police tape so it wouldn’t have been sold.  Sew Sew seems like a stand up guy, tells her there’s no crime and that he’ll get her some furniture.  He tells her Jobbo (her boss) was arrested.  He reassures her there won’t be any investigation, says he likes the apartment.  She starts kissing on him, he says she doesn’t owe him anything.  He makes a few chivalrous remarks and leaves.  (Small note:  Jasmine’s john, Jobbo, looks a lot like Sew Sew.  Enough that in the dark and green lighting of Alpha I know I’ve mistaken them during quick edits and high contrast flashbacks.  This is the first time I’ve seen Sew Sew’s character and I wish I’d seen more earlier.)

01 shows up at the abandoned building to find Porter’s body.  Makes a show of calling Porter’s cell phone and saying he can’t come to the phone because he’s dead.  I laughed.  Charlie tells Karl about Reena Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?  and how he’s seen it before in Vex-Cor security training but this was better, deadlier.  “The Girl From Ipanema” plays while Galt does a little dance (which was weird to watch) but he’s apparently happy about Porter’s death – Porter was one of the few pushing for The Link to be restored, he hated Beta and wanted to get back.

Last scene is of Reena back at her trailer.  She sees her bloodied hand and pauses.  Charlie goes back to the church confessional and asks for advice about a friend who’s lost but doesn’t know it.  The priest says he should help himself first before helping other people.  Charlie says, Pfft, whatever Padre and leaves while talking to his dredlocked little head ghost.  We go back to inside the church as the man in the suit who disappeared into a puddle earlier emerges from the the confessional.

Credits.

Meh.  I’d like to base my show watching experience, especially those in which I invest more than a few episodes, on whether or not something is revealed.  It doesn’t have to be what the Swan Station does or who the next Cylon will be or where the Master will show up next, but it at least has to be interesting enough so that I move with the story and WANT to move with the story.  You have to tantalize your viewers so they will come back.  This episode didn’t do that, it was a mushroom on a pizza or nipples on men – no real purpose and you probably wouldn’t miss them if they were gone.

Charlie and Reena’s “reunion” was anticlimactic and rushed.  Like people sick with lonliness, they nearly tripped over themselves in revealing information after being so closed off for so long.  Then she snapped and it was all over.  01 continues to be the most exciting character, but he’s giving Galt lap dances and quoting Bugs Bunny.  Him being so over the top really only accentuates how really drab the show was/is getting.  As Reena sad, “This place is so dirty.”  So Porter is dead, no one on this side wants The Link to be made and the main characters all now know of each other.  The only mystery is what is Reena’s programmed agenda and Lord help me they could have picked someone else to brainwash.

Meh.

I haven’t seen any in a while, so I’m only going to give this episode two and a half shiny blue stones.  They’ve got six episodes left to wow me so I don’t feel like I blew a whole summer championing a rerun.