Terra Nova, 12/19/11

In 2149, Lucas chats with … some guy; they plan their Terra Nova invasion. Some Guy asks Lucas something I’ve been wondering: how’d he get those scars on the back of his neck. Nikoraptor attack, Lucas explains. HA. Commander Taylor lived alone and unprotected in the jungle for months; he doesn’t have any scars. Taylor is clearly made of infinitely more win than his son. In Terra Nova, the soldiers head to the portal to oversee … whew! It’s just the 11th Pilgrimage peeps arriving. A young family … Josh’s girlfriend Cara … oh wait, then a dude with bombs strapped to himself. BOOM! Jim is knocked unconscious. He wakes in the hospital disoriented, stumbles outside into a ravaged and ruined Terra Nova. Elizabeth explains the explosion was three days ago, it destroyed the portal, and before Taylor et al. could get back, Lucas et al. opened another fracture closer to TN and took it over, forcing Wash to surrender by killing civilians. Twenty six people are dead, Taylor’s missing, and the evil bad guys are in control.

(One of the deceased is Cara. Skye is so off somewhere googling “How long should you let a guy mourn before putting the moves on him?”)

Wash and Jim put their heads together and start planning how to get things unFUBARed. Jim visits Malcolm, who’s busy repairing a new portal, which he was forced to do when his assistant was killed when he originally refused. Ugh. Can you imagine dying just because your boss decided to take a stand? I’d be the world’s most pissed-off ghost. Lucas, Mira, and Some Guy drop by looking for Jim to interrogate him about Taylor’s whereabouts; Jim and Malcolm pretend Jim is deafened, hobbled, and mentally impaired because of the explosion. The next day, Some Guy tells Mira that “our employers” (Oh, just say their names already!) want her to take a trip to an area called The Badlands. Meanwhile, Lucas has Skye brought to see him and tells her he knows she warned Taylor about him; she better not betray him again. ::eye roll:: Lucas, please stop talking like you’re Jesus. Thank you.

Elizabeth removes some bullets from a bad soldier who got shot in a skirmish with some good soldiers, notices somebody etched a bunch of numbers into them. She shows Jim; he realizes that they’re map coordinates to a rendezvous point. A message from Taylor. YAY! (And gosh, how clever. I’d’ve been trying something wack, like flashlight signals.) Malcolm and wheelchair dude Casey arrange a diversion so that Jim can stow away on a convoy manned by Lucas and Some Guy, who’s complaining about some big ugly bug that bit him. OTG, Lucas and Some Guy-whose-name-is-Weaver discuss how much money they’re going to make strip mining TN for ore; a bad soldier mentions that the only problem is the wildlife. Weaver grabs a gun and kills … a brachiosaurus. (We’re meant to contrast that with how Taylor and the good soldiers took care to tranq, not kill, any dinos if they could help it.) Nope, not a nikoraptor or a T Rex, but a big, slow-moving, plant-eating, sort-of-cute brachiosaurus. Weaver: not just evil but stupid. (Lucas, who’s evil but is still a scientist, tells Weaver that the dinosaur he killed was harmless.) Jim listens to Weaver and Lucas’s plan to detonate pyrosonic charges to clear out the vegetation and wildlife, then sneaks off to meet Taylor and the good soldiers (Yay! Hot Mark is alive!) and tell them the plan. They get to the charge, deactivate it, steal it. A furious Lucas grabs a rocket thingy and shoots a missile thingy, but misses. “SON OF A BITCH!” he screams. (And lol, he screamed it the way you really scream it when you’re super-mad, so it sounds like “SON OF A BETCH!”)

With Jim and Wash’s help, Taylor and the good soldiers wage war. They steal supplies from the bad soldiers’ rover convoys, interrupt their little forays into the forest, etc. (Which, lol, is exactly what the Sixers used to do them.) It’s driving Lucas ape-crap crazy, so he goes to the bar for a drink, and orders Skye to join him. He gets a little handsy; valiant Josh, mad about Cara, comes to her defense, and Lucas has the soldiers beat him up. Skye runs to get Jim, who comes and beats up several soldiers, thus revealing that he is, in point of fact, not deafened, hobbled, or mentally impaired. Lucas has him searched, and they find the transponder he’s been using to communicate with Taylor. (Really? It didn’t occur to him to leave that with somebody else before he went looking for trouble?) Lucas has Jim and Josh sent to the brig.

Lucas releases Josh, thanks to Skye’s begging; after he leaves, Lucas whips out an electric zapper cattle prod thingy. (*SHUDDER* Torture? I wouldn’t last 17 seconds before I’d give up Taylor’s whereabouts, reveal who really shot JFK, and admit to masterminding every bank heist in the last quarter century if you’ll, please, for the love of God, just make the pain stop.) In the hospital, Weaver gets a shot for a hella bad rash that he’s developed from that bug bite. Then Elizabeth sweetly tells him that that wasn’t medicine. Nope, it was a very nasty disease, which she’ll give him the cure for only if he gets Jim released. HAAAAAAAA! Elizabeth is so boss. But we should expect no less; she already broke Jim out of prison once. As Lucas repeatedly zaps Jim with the cattle prod, we FINALLY get to the bottom of Lucas’s hatred for Taylor. So, back in Somalia, rebels overran the camp and made Taylor choose if his wife or his son would get to live; Taylor (probably with his wife’s blessing, wouldn’t you think?) chose his son. The rebels “took their time with her.” :( And ever since that day, Lucas has felt that Taylor hated him and blamed him for his mother’s death. I’m slightly less mad at Lucas now. Not because Taylor did anything wrong, but because having to go through that at age 14 and carry around that memory for the rest of your life would screw anybody up.

Weaver bursts in just then claiming that Taylor’s camp has been found; Lucas leaves; the Shannon fam sneaks in and gets Jim; Elizabeth knocks Weaver out with a sedative. “Mom? That was cool,” Josh says. I second that emotion. Wash gives Jim a message for Taylor, then blows something up and gets arrested to distract the bad soldiers so the Shannons can escape. She won’t tell Lucas where they went, so he kills her. :( Childhood trauma notwithstanding, I am soooooo going to enjoy when he dies. Mira returns from her trip to The Badlands with … something that we’re not shown. Weaver promises her that as soon as the portal’s fixed, she’s free to go back to 2149 to her daughter. The Shannons take up residence in the good soldier’s camp. Taylor’s staring morosely into the fire, sad about Wash; little Zoe comes and gives him a hug. Awwww. Taylor interprets Wash’s message: they need to destroy not only the portal but also Hope Plaza so Lucas and Weaver can’t bring hordes more soldiers through and raze Terra Nova. Doing so would mean permanently cutting themselves off from 2149, but it’s the only way. Jim agrees. Me too.

Lucas and Weaver toast to the portal being repaired. Weaver heads out to ready the first shipment of ore for transport. Skye stops in to tell Lucas she’s had a change of heart and wants to be all cool with him now. This is obviously a trick and Skye’s up to something, but Lucas totally falls for it. On the way, Skye tells him she knows how to contact his father. He stops the truck—and Hot Mark and another soldier swoop in, tie Lucas up, switch the truck for one with Jim hiding in the cargo hold, and carry on to the portal. Stowaway Jim is sent through to 2149. Lucas realizes Taylor wants to obliterate Hope Plaza, gets free, knocks Skye unconscious, and tries to radio the bad soldiers at the portal, but there’s too much interference; he heads off on foot. (I’m glad he didn’t kill Skye, but he left her unconscious and alone. She could have been eaten by a passing nikoraptor! Jerk.)

In 2149, Weaver explains to a couple employers how much money they’re all going to make mining ore: “Gentlemen. Today, you’re rich. Tomorrow? Well, it’s just going to be stupid.” Ha hahahaha ha ha ha ha ha ha! High five to the writer responsible for that line. The employers ask Weaver if he looked into that other matter, in The Badlands. He says yep and opens the cargo container Jim’s hiding in … but not before Jim gives the sedated carnotaur inside a shot to wake it up. The container opens, the carnotaur bursts out and eats an employer, and Jim sneaks off. (Wait—so what was it that Mira brought back from the badlands that had everyone so fascinated? They better explain that. That was like the breakfast scene in Pulp Fiction when Vincent opened the suitcase and stared transfixed at the glowing contents.) Weaver sends the other employer running straight to the carnotaur; as he’s eaten, devious Weaver run in the opposite direction to get help. Jim sets the stolen pyrosonic charge.

Skye radios Taylor that Lucas got away. Taylor finds him running through the forest and beats the living hell out him (as I cheer). But then Taylor falls for the I’m-so-upset-please-hold-me-daddy ruse, and Lucas stabs him. NOOOOOOOOO! Then just as he’s about to slit Taylor’s throat, BAM! Skye shoots him. He tries again to kill Taylor; Skye shoots him dead. YAY SKYE. Back in 2149, Weaver is about to kill Jim when the carnotaur kills him. YAY CARNOTAUR. (Somewhere, the murdered brachiosaurus is laughing.) Jim takes off running for the portal and makes it through just as Hope Plaza is blown to bits. In the forest, Jim finds Elizabeth; Skye and Taylor realize that Lucas is gone. As in, not dead. DAMMIT. One of the bad soldiers tells Mira that they’re stuck on Terra Nova forever; she looks (understandably) furious. Bartender Tom radios Taylor to tell him that the bad soldiers have all left Terra Nova, inexplicably heading north. So come home.

Taylor, Malcolm, Shannon, and the good soldiers arrive back at TN to hugs and applause from all the colonists. Rebuilding of their ravaged home begins immediately. Hot Mark tells Taylor and Jim that the bad soldiers have been spotted headed toward The Badlands. Jim remembers the switched cargo container; they open it to find … the prow of an ancient ship. Huh? How it got to The Badlands or why the bad soldiers are headed there, no one knows. Taylor says to keep the whole prow thing hush hush. The episode ends with the Shannons safe and sound at home, watching a meteor shower. RIP, everybody who died. Especially Wash. :( Hope they name the school or the hospital after you.

Sooooooo many mysteries to delve into in season two! Wtf is going on in The Badlands? Are they really cut off forever from the future? Once he’s able, what complicated revenge scheme will Lucas come up with?