Bionic Woman - Faceoff (Episode 104)

Thank you, thank you... I'll be here all night!

We open on Jaime using those bionics to the fullest.  She belts at top speed down an alley, zooming in on a car in the distance with her cool scanner vision.  Our heroine vaults over a fence topped with barbed wire, landing hard on the other side.  Is she after Al Quaida?  Chasing down the Russian Mafia?  Or is she just a big fan of Run Lola Run?  We're about to find out.  Jaime yanks open the car door and finds a horrific surprise within.  Not so much Osama Bin Laden as one (fifteen year old) sister, who is currently making out with a random teenaged guy.  Jaime drags Becca out of the car and yells at her for smooching with a guy with such a terrible haircut about lying, before grabbing her by the ear and dragging her away.  Later at Berkut, Jaime gets her toe examined; she damaged it upon busting up her sister's backseat romp.  Jaime's still upset about the lying, even though the techie who's fixing her points out that she's not exactly Truthy McHonest herself.  The techie performs some conveniently offscreen zappy therapy and Jaime is healed.  Dammit - the morbid side of me really wanted to see that mangled bionic toe.

Nothing adds drama to a scene like Evanescence playing in the background!  Sarah plays poker with a bunch of guys.  She's her usual badass self, but then suddenly Jae shows up with a gun-toting posse.  It's a setup!  Sarah gets a fab soliloquy all about how she and Jae are lovahs.  At the end of the day, she says with that awesome, crazed twinkle in her eye, the most important thing in the world is love.  She offers her wrists passively to Jae, who apologizes as he takes her into custody.  Um... show of hands?  Anybody else who thought that was just way too easy?  Yeah, me too. 

Meanwhile, back at Berkut, crankypants Jonas informs Jaime that she owes $27,000 for the busted toe.  When she doesn't pull out her purse and pay up, he and Antonio tell her about Mark Stevens, an American doctor who is being held hostage by a terrorist group in Paraguay.  The baddies claim that he's CIA, and are about to go all Revolutionary France and chop off his head.  Stevens has sensitive information in his possession, but the Military can't go in and get him because Paraguay is a haven for terrorists.  Berkut, on the other hand can get a couple of undercover agents - namely Jaime and Antonio - in.  A 24 hour surveillance team will babysit watch Becca, so Jaime reluctantly agrees to go.  It's up to her to come up with a plausible story for where she's going.

Jaime is not a cook.  This becomes evident the next morning when she burns every item that she is trying to prepare for breakfast, including eggs, toast and also the palm of her bionic hand.  Dude! If a toe costs $27k, that hand probably costs more than the whole damned space program put together!  It is not a pot holder!  Pay attention, girl!  Fortunately, the hand magically and rapidly heals itself, thanks to the Anthrocytes.  Becca gets up just in time to miss the Jesus-like feat, and apologizes for lying the previous night.  An obviously guilt-riddled Jaime then lies right back about taking a trip to Napa with her friend Carly.  Pot... Kettle.

Antonio and Jaime prepare for their trip.  Just then Sarah gets literally wheeled by.  She's strapped tight to a hand truck by shiny silver bonds, and a couple of orderlies are pushing her.  But since she is Katee Sackhoff and she effin' rules, she's still got that witty repartee going strong.  As though she's randomly happened upon Jaime in a boutique somewhere during a day of carefree shopping, Sarah conversationally comments that Jaime looks great.  How's Becca?  Later, a doctor whom we have never seen before (and whom therefore might as well be wearing a red shirt) affixes electrodes to Sarah's forehead.  They've strapped Sarah firmly to a table, but someone has made the v.v. poor decision to leave her hands free.  Sarah helps herself to the opportunity and grabs Red Shirt Doctor's hand in a bionic grip.  With a grin on her face, she cheerfully crushes the crap out of it.  Jonas comes in and with the air of a master speaking to a naughty puppy, scolds her to drop it!  Drop it!  Good bionic woman!  The wounded Red Shirt Doctor scuttles off to the infirmary as Jonas tells Sarah that he can fix her crazy-makin' symptoms.  All he wants in return is the location of Anthony Anthros.  Wait a tick.  Will's father is named Anthony?  Why did I think it was William Senior?  So let's take stock here:  We've got Anthony Anthros, Antonio, and Anthrocytes.  Um... Bionic Woman writers?  Get a freakin' baby name dictionary.  Other names exist.  You may have to make an effort to find them... but they're there.  Anyhoo,  Sarah tells Jonas she thinks he's full of crap, and has no system to fix her.  He's a liar playing God.  As Jonas struts out, she jerks angrily against the restraints, which hold.  For now. 

On the plane to Paraguay, Jaime's all twitchy because there's a big fat lightning-filled turbulency storm going on outside.  After one particularly nasty jolt, she grabs Antonio's hand and admits that she's afraid of flying.  Not so superhero-y, there, Jaime.  Time for a change of subject to distract you!  Jaime wants to talk about Becca; she's still upset about having to lie.  Antonio spins it and says that Jaime's protecting her sister, because knowledge of what's really going on could put her in danger.  Jaime thinks that excuse is just a little bit too convenient, and that with lies there can be no trust.  But Antonio ponders that trust doesn't necessarily mean full disclosure.  After all, he hasn't told her everything, and she can trust him.  Riiiiight?  The plane shudders à la Flight 815 and Jaime nearly pulls a Sarah Corvus by squeezing Antonio's hand with her bionic one.  Antonio's all, "Um crushing blinding pain so dial it back a notch!"

You can tell that we've arrived in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, because there's Latin music playing in the background.  Cha cha cha!  A contact of Antonio's provides directions and warns the gringos to be careful.  The police won't help them if they get in trouble; it's practically a suicide mission.  Jaime and Antonio scoff scoffingly at the danger and make their way into a factory-type building through a ventilation shaft.  At the end of the shaft there's a giant, scary, quickly rotating fan blocking their way.  Antonio's all, "Well?"  And Jaime steps up.  She takes a moment to calibrate, using her bionic ear and eye, then grabs one of the fan's blades mid-rotation.  Damn, that was a pretty sweet trick.  The engine sparks and smokes as it's forced to halt, and Jaime bends the blade back so they can pass.  But what's this!  Bond-esque green lasers crisscrossing their path?!  Jaime's all, "what now?"  I wait for Antonio to bust out some sweet gymnastic type moves, somersaulting and cartwheeling through the beams.  But... well... instead he just walks his ass right into them, setting off all kinds of blarey alarms.  Antonio, you need to work on your spy technique, my friend.  As Jaime's all, "OMG you crazy douche!"  Antonio calmly gets down on his knees with his hands behind his head, and suggests that she do the same.  Men with guns arrive promptly to take them prisoner. 

Jae spies on his beloved via monitors that they have set up to survey her restrained body.  Kinky.  He tells Jonas that Sarah needs help, and Jonas admits that Will had developed a cure for her ailment.  He has madd planzz to blackmail Sarah into giving up Anthony Anthros, offering her the cure in return.  He wants Jae to help Sarah her help herself.  Give up Anthros, win the cure!  Later, Jae tries to convince Sarah that it's in her best interest to cooperate.  But Sarah thinks Jonas is a big fat dirty liar who's playing them both.  She wants proof that she can be fixed - then she might give up Anthros.  Oh, hell yeah.  Sarah so let herself get caught, and she's only staying in this room as long as it suits her.  I get the distinct feeling that she could leave any damned time she wants.  At this point, for whatever reason, it's convenient for her to be right here.

Jaime and Antonio are led with bags over their heads by Spanish-speaking, gun-toting thugs.  Antonio's grand plan is that their captors will lead them directly to Stevens himself.  He wants Jaime to lose her fear and go all bionic apeshit on these guys.  Part A of the plan seems to work out pretty well; they're led right into Stevens' holding cell.  Almost immediately, the thugs threaten Jaime with a big ol' machete.  It's curtains to the chica if he Stevens doesn't decode this here flash drive!  A panicked Stevens, who is cute in a multiple facial lacerations kind of way, does what they ask.  But the machete-wielding thug looks chop-happy all the same.  He swings the knife, and Jaime leaps up just in time.  She kicks him in the gut - kapowee!  And all hell breaks loose in the small room.  Jaime fights using just her legs, since her arms are tied behind her back - and she's winning.  Kick them terrorist guts and knees and skulls!  Antonio gets into the game too, and soon the thugs are all crumpled on the floor like discarded pairs of underpants. 

Antonio instructs Jaime to truss up the lead terrorist like a Thanksgiving turkey and take him down to the fan room as a hostage.  And what about Stevens?  Well, it turns out that he was stalling when the terrorists asked him about the flash drive - Antonio saw that he'd only decoded it, but read it, too.  The drive contains confidential information about Jaime and her bionics.  Stevens' assurances that he won't share said info just aren't good enough.  At about this time, Jaime cottons onto the fact that Jonas is about to take Stevens out like the proverbial trash.  She grabs the gun from Antonio, and tells Stevens to run to the fan room.  Like a good boy, he does as he's told while Antonio warns Jaime that she's making a mistake.  Jaime's clearly got her own ideas about how to handle this situation, thankyouverymuch.  She races after Stevens, leaving Antonio behind... apparently to take the fall?  I'd think so, because just then, a big old 'nother bunch of gun-toting anonymous thugs arrive on the scene.  Now where the hell did this baddie backup come from?  No time to think about it, because they all shoot at Jaime.  She busts out the bionics, taking cool long leaps over pipes and girders.  But suddenly, Jaime's hit!  She scrabbles at a pipe but falls.  Fortunately it's practically into kinda-dreamy Stevens' arms.  They hurry through the fan, and Jaime bends the rotor back to get it going again, blocking the terrorists' path.  At this point, the tiny TV devil on my shoulder that continuously spouts snark screams in a tinny voice, "Isn't that the same fan that was sparking and smoking before?  And it really started up again, just like that?"  The TV angel on my other shoulder, of course, yells back, "Plot device plot device plot device we need it PLOT DEVICE!!"

Jaime and Stevens gimp down a city street, looking for a place to hide and tend to Jaime's conveniently non-serious shoulder wound.  Jaime Schwartzeneggers a padlock and they take shelter in a convenience store, whose alarm starts to blare.  Jaime uses that handy bionic eye to scan for fingerprints on the keypad, thereby figuring out the code.  As he tends to her shoulder, they talk about Stevens' mission.  He is given assignments by a mystery CIA voice on the phone, and this time someone tipped off terrorists about the flash drive.  His Peter Parker job is being a selfless third world doctor.  Somehow this makes him a lot more hot in my eyes.  Stevens examines Jaime's shoulder and lets her know that her Anthrocytes keep her from rejecting the bionics, which are foreign objects.  The same Anthrocytes will drag the bullet deeper into her body, where it may damage other systems.  The bullet needs to be removed... now.  For emphasis, We get a gratuitous shot of blood coursing from the wound.  Thanks, special effects department! 

Antonio has somehow escaped the men with guns.  How?  I really can't say.  There were about 4585632 of them, and Jaime restarted the fan so he couldn't have gotten out that way.  Maybe he waltzed out the front door while they were all distracted by shooting at her?  We will never know.  Now, Antonio's busy fighting with Jonas over the phone.  Jonas is pissed that both Jaime and the flash drive are MIA. Antonio's on the case, though, on the way to get them both back.  Becca, in the meantime, is chilling at home on her own.  She's gotten into the ice cream and beer for good measure.  There's a knock on the door, and it just happens to be... Jaime's friend Carly, who is clearly not in Napa with big sis.  Ooh, Jaime, you're so busted!  Meanwhile, Jae's researching the upgrades Jonas claimes Will invented.  But Jonas' credibility gets flushed down the loo as he finds that there are no such files in Berkut's system.  Jonas is all, "I didn't lie I just stretched the truth a little!"  There is a fix, but the files were all downloaded onto the flash drive which somehow ended up in Stevens' hot little hands.  Perhaps they didn't know little William Anthros as well as they thought.  Or perhaps there's something still rotten at Berkut...

The CGI special effects Anthrocytes do their thing as Stevens pantingly tries to remove the bullet.  To distract herself from the fact that some dude's jamming what appears to be a fork into her shoulder, Jaime's pontificating about making peace with telling lies.  Stevens thinks sometimes you can't make peace with it - just cope.  Some of his decoding lead to bombing deaths.  Now he only does CIA projects he feels he can live with.  Just then, Jaime's hand trembles.  Why?  Turns out its her bionic interface failing and being reset.  It happens all the time.  Stevens says that her Anthrocytes become fatigued from working all the time keeping her body from rejecting the bionics.  They have a 5-year shelf life.  Jaime's all, "what'll happen then? They'll be replaced, right?  Right?"  Nope.  "You're going to die," Stevens says grimly.  Dun dun dunnn!!

To kill some time take our minds off of this revelation, Ruth is trying to psychologically best Sarah by giving her common sayings to analyze.  Dude!  Lose this crap and tell me how Antonio got away from those baddies!  Meanwhile, Jaime and Stevens finish up with her shoulder.  Suddenly, Jaime hears footsteps approaching, and knows it's Antonio.  Now how in the world did he find them?? If I didn't know better, I would say that we have a Bionic Man in our midst. Jaime stashes Stevens and  the flash drive in an elevator and goes to face Antonio.  Time for a showdown!

Jae admits to Sarah that there's no cure anywhere in Berkut's files.  "Tell me you love me," he says softly.  Whereupon Sarah decides that she's had enough of hanging around this popsicle stand and it's time to go.  She snaps one of her arm restraints, grabs Jae's throat, and lifts him bodily off the ground in a chokehold.  To her credit, though, she does look kinda tortured about it.  "I love you," she says.  Sirens blare as Sarah uses Jae as a hostage and human shield to make her escape.  She rocks that awesome evil smile, eventually releasing Jae and making a run for it.  Soldiers follow but you know they're not about to catch her. Jae and Jonas talk shop.  With Will's work gone, Sarah will likely die.  But she's making the most of her time left by drinking and flirting with hotties in a bar.  See it, want it, take it.  That's her philosophy!  Life's too short!

Back to Jaime and Antonio's standoff.  Antonio's still all about hooking Stevens up with some cement boots, but Jaime's pissed that he lied to her, and says killing an innocent person isn't the answer.  Her life isn't worth more than his, and she won't let him die to save her.  Jaime's all, "you'll have to go through me to get to him, beeyotch." Antonio proves that this is just fine with him by throwing a sucker punch, but Jaime's waiting for it.  She fights back, and it's rumble time, with the two of them generally kicking the crap out of each other while spouting one liners such as "You don't want to do this, you know what I'm capable of" and "Even machines can be beaten!"  Eventually, the bionics win out and Jaime bops Antonio a good one, knocking him into some shelves, where he slumps down unconscious.  Jaime runs back to where she hid Stevens, but he's gone.  Gone like Britney's career.

Back at Berkut (I think that Jaime and Antonio probably took separate planes this time) Jaime's upset about her limited life expectancy, and is sick of Jonas' excuse that he's lying to protect her.  It's her life, and she's entitled to know what's going on.  Dammit!  Will she really die in five years?  In a touching scene, Jonas assures her that he'll fix her.  That is, of course, if he doesn't turn out to be a backstabbing baddie.  At this point, I think anything is possible - anyone could have downloaded that info onto the flash drive.  Time will tell!  Back at her apartment, Becca calls Jaime on the dirty rotten lie.  She wants to know what's really going on.  Even after all the torturous dialogue about lying and trust and two-way streets that I have had to sit through in this episode, Jaime still can't bring herself to tell her sister what's up.  All she'll say is that the new job is "complicated."  Jaime promises Becca she'll never leave her, and in closing they share a sisterly hug.  Careful, Jaime - squeeze your sis too hard, and she'll end up with a couple of cracked ribs.