Remember last episode?  Remember when there was apparently no where for the regular cast to go?  There was the idea that Simon became the lead character in the show, that his life was much more important and interesting than the rest of the cast.  He caused the blackout.  He and Lloyd worked together to create a small black hole that put the world to sleep for 2 minutes.  What do I care about an AA sponsor/electrician, an intern at a hospital or an FBI agent that’s having relationship problems?

It turns out, I care.  The show has come far enough to where I do actually care what happens to the rest of the cast despite the enormous weight this secondary character just assumed.  And is Simon being built up to be the Bad Wolf of this season?  Hard to tell.  He just killed the only person I’d call a villain thus far next to D. Gibbons, who in my mind is still just a name and barely someone tangible.

“Blowback’s” main focus is Aaron and Tracy.  We start off 15 years ago when Aaron is in prison for a bar fight gone wrong.  Tracy is a little girl and visiting her dad and it’s very touching but then a guard ruins it by saying lascivious things about Tracy and Aaron beats the snot out of him.  Back in the present, Aaron tries to talk her out of another drinking binge at a bar.  He wants to find the connection to her and this mission that almost killed her and Jericho.  Another flashback to two years ago when a couple of uniforms come to Aaron’s house to tell him Tracy is dead.  In the present again, they two talk about how Jericho’s head man and her CO were killed in a copter crash.  Aaron now has a name, James Erskin.  Later, Tracy’s buddy Mike shows up at Aaron’s work and tells him about someone calling him but not talking.  It was his birthday and he knew it had to be Tracy.  They’re both under the guise that the other thinks she’s dead, but Aaron blows that by saying she’s at his house.  Later, Aaron comes home to find she’s not there.  He suspects Mike and after tricking him into getting a bite to eat, he takes him to a junkyard and beats up him to get information.  Aaron then takes the fight to James Erskin, a wealthy and very alive man living in a posh neighborhood.  Aaron pretends to be there to fix the power (that he cut) and then confronts James about his daughter.  James pretends to not have any information but then makes another call later to another conspirator but it’s short lived as we see Mark’s stripped and beaten body hanging (alive) in their home.  Aaron calls Mark to say goodbye.  He has information that they’re taking Tracy to Kandahar.

Mark and Lloyd work through some of their differences as well.  Mark fesses up to being drunk in his flashforward and Lloyd completely recounts his flashforward.  The two compare notes on the phone call and after they get past the suspicion and jealousy of their locations and activities, they figure out that in that time, they are working together on the QED, which they find out must be THE QED and not a regular QED.  It might be a Quantum Experience Detector or something, but it references a formula Lloyd has written in lipstick on a mirror.  Even more revealing is that Lloyd knows D. Gibbons.  It’s apparently an alias for a man named Dyson Frost, a contemporary of Lloyd’s who stole all his ideas.  Later, Agent Vogel admits that Mark is very important and that the whole investigation is based on his vision and it all centers around Somalia.  So they’re going to go, but Mark stays behind, and Simon goes.

Zoey and Demitri are starting to come clean about what they saw.  In fact, this episode was one of those that had a lot of people actually admitting what they saw instead of hiding it.  I don’t know what the change was or when it happened, but it’s likely that after months of pent up emotions, it was just too much stress to be worried about it.  Plus, as we have seen, things can change.  Dem has even agreed to destroy the gun that was implicated in his death.  But things get worse for them when Zoey serves Director Wedeck papers under the freedom of information act.  She’s representing Alda Herzog (the blonde terrorist from the beggining) as a way to help keep Demetri alive.  It’s a stretch, really.  She must have information so Zoey is going Zealot and really pissing off Dem in the process.  They seem to come together in the end after Zoey breaks down saying she wants things to change so that she’s not going to his funeral but their wedding.  Dem goes down to evidence to retrieve his gun so it can be destroyed, but the gun is not there.

Soooomalia!  Since seeing the towers, the answers have all lived in that corrupt, impoverished African nation.  Despite Director Wedeck’s insistence that it’s nearly impossible to get there given the political climate, Agent Vogel is all set to take an away team to check out the apparent source of the black outs while the saucer section stays behind to work out the likelihood of another.

Honestly, the diverging story lines bugged me.  Normally I can appreciate an ensemble cast breaking apart and coming back together but it just didn’t work this time.  ”Revelation Zero” was such a step forward that this just felt like it might have been run out of sequence.  There was absolutely no mention from Simon or Janis about Flasso or Simon’s trip to Canada and to me that seemed fairly important.  I really hope we go back to more of that and soon.

Two and a half broken clocks.