Taylor and Rick are off fishing and, judging by the huge hunks of meat they’re using as bait, it ain’t for catfish. Back at TN, Elizabeth gets Maddy all super-nerd excited about the chance to meet Ken Horton, famed author and geologist, returning from a six-month expedition today. Horton’s convoy rolls into the opened gates with much fanfare and applause. Chief Science Officer Malcolm warmly welcomes him back; Horton calls him the wrong name then asks him to get the bags.
I guess that title doesn’t carry as much weight as Malcolm thinks it does, heh. (Random: wow, did the character-creating department have a field day with this guy. He has longish, shaggy hair; walks with a limp and a cane; has a pronounced accent; and wears a skinny scarf looped and knotted around his neck and jodhpur pants tucked into knee-high boots. I think I know what I’m going to be next Halloween.)Tom the Mole informs Josh that it’s time to do that favor for Mira. An illness has swept through the Sixers’ camp, Tom the Mole says, and they need a medicine: Azameth Schedule II Isomorph. (That’s a mouthful. What happened to simple names like Aspirin and Aleve?) The azameth is kept under tight security; Josh is going to have to steal Elizabeth’s key card to get it. Skye later tries to convince Josh not to do it and reminds him he doesn’t even really know if they can bring his girlfriend to TN. Strange that she should make that prudent point, when she’s the one who told Josh that Tom could do it in the first place. Anyway, Josh tells Tom that before he’ll get the meds, he wants proof that Cara’s coming. That night he’s sneaked into the Sixers’ camp (where I see not one sick person, mind you!), and Mira lets him talk to Cara via hologram/video phone-thingy for a few seconds. I’m imagining all kinds of ways that could’ve been faked, but it’s proof enough for Josh, and he agrees to get the azameth.
(Random: I want to know what “Maddy” is short for. Madeline? Margaret? Madison?) Maddy gushes to Horton about how awesome his book is; he asks her if she’d like to be his intern. She jumps at the chance and then starts the UH OHness. Firstly, she makes a dorky geologist joke, and Horton laughs like he’s never heard it, although it’s in his book. Secondly, she asks if he ever [did some sciencey thing], and he says no, despite the fact that in a response to fan mail she sent him years ago, he’d said he could wait to. Thirdly, upon examining that letter he sent her, Maddy realizes the signature on it doesn’t match the autograph he just signed on her book. Maddy’s troubled by all this, but Elizabeth brushes it off reminding her that Horton has had a stroke; maybe that explains the discrepancies.
Rick and Taylor are hiking back to their rover when they come across an abandoned campsite. The Sixers wouldn’t leave such an obvious camp, so Taylor assumes it’s Currin, the soldier he recently banished from TN. Taylor tells Rick to head on back to camp; he (Taylor) is staying OTG one more day. (That’s “outside the gate.” Learn your TN acronyms already!)
As Horton limps and Maddy walks around an apple orchard ruined by black mold, she gives him the letter, which he’d asked to see, then asks him about an expedition he went on. It was apparently a big deal, but he remembers nothing, blaming it on old age. He then tries to wow her by letting her release a colony of flying beetles that will eat the mold and save the apples (very cool special effect right there), but Maddy’s suspicions are not eased, especially when she later asks for the letter back and Horton claims to have misplaced it. Since Elizabeth didn’t take her seriously, Maddy runs her suspicions by Zoe. Who, as an adorable six-year-old, can’t really help, but does provide an excuse for us to get to hear Maddy explaining her hunches out loud all episode long.
Maddy waits til Horton leaves the lab, then sneaks in to look for her letter. Just as she finds its burned remains in the trash; he comes back. She scoots under a table and watches as he stops using his cane and walks perfectly fine, then starts limping as he leaves. Old age and stroke can’t explain that away! Maddy suspects he’s an impostor. She tests the DNA from an envelope the real Horton licked against the DNA from a cup the might-be-fake Horton just drank from, sharing her theory with CSO Malcolm. Alas, the test results are a match. Alas again, the might-be-fake Horton was eavesdropping on the entire conversation.
Josh steals Elizabeth’s key card and takes it to Tom, who makes an unidentifiable copy and gives Josh a stun gun to use on the lowest setting in case anyone interrupts him. Josh breaks into the hospital and tries the key card, but it doesn’t work — Gee, thanks, Tom. — so Josh cranks the gun all the way up and shoots the locked cabinet doors. The blast throws him backward, but he staggers to his feet and does the job. Rick gets back to TN just in time to investigate to robbery.
Taylor finds Currin, who has a festering leg wound. Like the rest of us, Currin wonders if Taylor's there to kill him, but Taylor gives him something for the infection, puts maggots on the wound
(They’ll eat the dead flesh, you see.), and scares off the bloody huge komodo dragon that bit Currin and is hanging around waiting for him to die. (Let's just call it, right here and right now: Taylor is the bad assiest bad ass ever to bad assify. The End.) Why's Taylor being so nice? It ain't cuz he's just feeling friendly. When Currin’s better, Taylor instructs him to go to the Sixers’ camp and become Taylor’s mole. If he does, Taylor might let him back into TN; if he doesn’t, Taylor might kill him. Currin chooses option A.Refusing to let this go — I’m loving how Nancy Drew she is this episode — Maddy visits The Eye and finds out that the real Horton’s research assistant, who could well have licked closed and mailed that envelope, is now missing, and that just before Horton was scheduled to come to TN, an unidentified male’s body was found. Fake Horton enters The Eye just then, but before he can do anything to her, someone wanders in and Maddy takes off running. To go tell her mom? To go sound the alarm? No. To pick Zoe up from school. WTF? Anyway, she’s too late; Fake Horton has kidnapped Zoe to lure Maddy to the apple orchard. Maddy sends Zoe give Rick a coded message; he finds her just as Fake Horton is trying to induce death by spider bite. Whew!
Rick and Elizabeth chide Maddy (gently, cuz she was just almost murdered) about trying to handle this herself. Yeah! She could’ve at least told her hot boyfriend! During this conversation, Josh does that thing that only happens in movies/on television: wracked with guilt, he suddenly decides to come clean about the whole thing: trying to illegally get Cara on the next Pilgrimage, stealing the azameth, giving it to the Sixers, Tom being the mole. Tom is arrested (though I seriously doubt that the Sixers have only one mole in TN, so do your job, Currin.), during which Rick roughs him up cuz Rick's mad that Tom got Josh involved with the Sixers — in which case, it should really be Skye that Rick is slamming into walls.
When Taylor hears the Sixers can communicate with 2149 w/o the portal being open, he realizes his son Lucas is in cahoots with them. :( He looks so sad.
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