We keep hoping this show will get better. Alfonso Cuaron seems like such a nice man, and everybody’s working so hard, but … [Insert long annoying scream here]...
Bo and Tate, still Public Enemies and Amber Alerts #1 respectively, arrive at their new safe, which is neither: it’s actually an apartment, and it just happens to be right next door to the home of Ben Wooten, a ‘blogger’ (which is C21 talk for “investigative reporter,” apparently) who is fed information by a faceless “leak” about “Project Orchestra,” the government name for the Skouras-run project that found and imprisoned Bo, and is still looking for her, however ineptly.
At some level, the writers of Believe are aware that each episode’s “B” story turns on this sort of coincidence every week: Bo latches onto someone she meets on the street, or who answer a random door-knock. And when it’s based entirely on Bo’s ill-defined ability to “sense” things (and only when it’s convenient to the plot, since she still hasn’t ‘sense’ that Tate is her father) it’s sort-of acceptable, in a Touched by an Angel/Route 66 kind of way. In this case though,Winter found this place for them, not Bo. So it is coincidence, and not Bo-magic that just happens to put them right next door to the blogger. And exactly why this guy believes a little snippet of Levitating Bo and a PDF of a document stamped CLASSIFIED is so indisputably real (I guess there’s no such thing as Photoshop in Bo’s universe) that he’s willing to risk his life is equally unclear: he just says, “there’s research,” and “I just feel it,” and that’s enough. And even though the names of Snowden and Assange are invoked early in this set-up, not on, not even his secretly pregnant wife, seems terribly concerned, simply saying, “Don’t do anything stupid.” Like disseminating classified documents over the internet could lead to any trouble in this day and age.
Anyway: Bo meets Taryn, the Secretly Pregnant Wife who easily accepts that a total stranger can tell she’s pregnant a day after her test because “she has a glow.” She gushes over Bo’s drawings: “you really have a gift.” (Sorry, but after recruiting a number of non-psychic ten-year-olds and examining their equally colorful and poorly composed pastels: no. She doesn’t.)
Meanwhile Joshua, another of Skouras’ subjects has ‘unexpectedly developed the ability to destroy memory cells.’ Let’s just skip the science part, since there really aren’t any such things as ‘memory cells,’ and point out: with a captive and cooperative superman like this, who needs the troublesome littler girl and her telekinesis?
Winter discovers that Ben the Blogger and Bo are in the same place, and says ominously “it’s not a coincidence,” which we already knew. He says pick her up, get her out like now, before Skouras visits, and take her to the next safe house (which will be more secure than this one, supposedly chosen in the same way, because…why? Anyone? Beuller?) But before they can go, Skouras thugs show up at Ben and Taryn’s and terrorize them before the commercial.
After the commercial, Channing kicks butt (yay!) on the thugs, then Tate joins in (as poor a fighter as ever), and eventually they escape in Winter’s Mystery Machine with Taryn and Rob in tow. They meet Taryn in a deserted church under renovation, where after much much talk, Ben refuses to give up his source. In fact, as we already know, he doesn’t know his source and he doesn’t have any proof of his claims; he just has a rendezvous point for both, which he believes giving up to the guy that just saved his life would somehow prevent him from releasing the information. Nobody said that, but he believes it because, you know, conflict. And there’s a commercial coming, so don’t make things too easy, okay?
He abandons his wife, leaving her with dangerous strangers, and runs off to this rendezvous (with Tate following), and on the way calls…um, somebody, some kind of editor or something, who says she’s “on deadline,” and gives him the hard-bitten Perry White bit. But…he’s a blogger, right? He doesn’t work for a newspaper, right? So who…what…? He does look a little bit like the werewolf cop on Lost Girl, though.
As the much-anticipated bottom-of-the-hour commercial commences: We’ve said this before, but clearly the writers’ last defense in this poorly plotted show is to point out the weaknesses themselves before you do, which is somehow supposed to forgive them. This time around: a character tells us that they know the coincidence is not coincidence, so that’s okay…and we learn taht Winter’s previously all-important “no guns” policy doesn’t mean that Channing can’t carry a nasty-looking firearm and put it to people’s heads because, you know, she didn’t fire it. As if pointing out the inconsistencies makes them less inconsistent. Just sayin’: Not buyin’ it.
Amazing. Back from commercial, two main characters do wildly inappropriate things. Skouras sends Mind-wipin’ Joshua into the field, even though – as it’s pointed out by his feisty assistant – Joshua could easily destroy Bo’s mind, even by accident. Skouras says he knows that, but he’s doing it anyway: risking the girl he prizes most for…what? If it’s the basic “If I can’t have her nobody can,” thing, this would have been the place to say it, but no: all we get is silence and hurt, significant looks. Meanwhile, Tate – our hero, mind you – tells the abandoned Taryn that the best thing to do is run away from both groups, out on her own, because neither can be trusted. He even shows her his GPS anklet as proof that “he’s a prisoner, too,” and that he’d abandoned that annoying little girl in an instant if he could. This from the guy who’s willingly protected the littlest victim for weeks now, and who seemed to be going the other way. But don’t worry: before you know it, this hugely wanted man is hot-wiring a jeep in plain sight on a busy street, and though he’s about to escape with Taryn when Bo convinces him to go back to the compromised “safe” house and get her stuffed animal. (And no, it’s never explained why she needs that damn turtle so bad. Becusae, you know: Bo.) Even though he said he doesn’t care about her and was leaving to show it, he turns around and does it.
Is this making sense to anyone?
Gotta love it. Winter and Channing, seeing that he’s going back to the compromised “safe” house, and knowing it’s being watched, not only follow Tate and Taryn there, they take Bo with them. Good idea: take her even closer to the danger zone! (And oh, Ben’s mystery editor is with the New York Times, which was, to be fair, mentioned earlier…so the guy isn’t just a blogger he’s also a renegade investigative reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper. Like so many others these days. Hey, gotta cover all your bases. Apparently the writers here watched Three Days of the Condor once too often.)
It’s okay, pile it on. We’re dizzy with illogicalities now. Taryn and Tate pause at the compromised “safe” house for a nice, long exposition about how special Bo is (she can find keys and detect pregnancy, after all! She’s a world beater!), about how Tate really feels and about how running off is really bad. Note to would-be writers: do what these guys do, okay? ALWAYS talk about stuff rather than just doing it. Telling is ALWAYS better than SHOWING. Especially when the Skouras’ bad guys are nice enough to wait outside until you’re finished with your conversation and let you leave rather than coming in and interrupting. Oh, and one more thing: the tidbit of information that only Ron knew about his source? The rendezvous location? Taryn knew it all along. She just didn’t say anything until now because … um … Bo?
So everybody convenes at yet another train station.( Boy, this series loves public transportation.) You’ve got Ben the Blogger and his leaker, Mind-wiper Joshua and his keeper, Skouras’ thugs, Bo with Winter and Channing (who seem to be the only two left on Team Bo at this point), and of course Tate and Taryn. There’s some nonsense about how good a train station is for rendezvouses like this, because of all the “white noise,” and “hiding in plain sight,” (a term they’ve used before in this show, which they understand about as well as “safe house,”) but to hell with that, they all go into a conveniently deserted corner of the station where Winter tells Rob everything: Bo is the story. But don’t tell it yet, please. And Bo tells him there’s even a bigger story to tell, after his baby is born. But before Rob can agree to anything, Joshua zones in on him and starts to burn his brain from a distance. Poor guy looks like he’s having a stroke. They try to escape, and … commercial!
Two things here. First: if Skouras is trying to find the source, why are they wiping Rob’s memory BEFORE he’s met said source? They’ve got them all on camera now: just let the leak reveal him/herself, then kill ‘em all – they’ve got the thugs to do it right there!
Second: You gotta love how this “leak” is portrayed: no face in the shot, but we can see s/he’s wearing a black trench coat, thick gloves, and carrying a steel briefcase on a relatively warm spring day where nobody else has gloves or a trench coat. COMPLETELY indetectible.
Okay, big finish! Bo confronts Joshua, and blows out a big stained glass window behind him to make him stop stroking out Rob. Joshua’s blown forward in a hail of glass fragments, everybody runs back to their original positions. And then we’re subjected to a bunch of quick erase-erase-erase scenes in the final three minutes. One: the leak is (wow, huge surprise!) Skouras’ feisty assistant. But Skouras doesn’t get it, and poor Kyle McLachlan is forced to mouth the single worst line of dialogue on TV this week: “When I find the traitor, I will force them [sic] to beg for mercy, but I will not grant it.” (Okay, I can’t hold it in any longer: I miss Twin Peaks.) Two: Taryn and Rob are safe now, and can go about their life, waiting for Bo to grow up, because Winter “has contacts,” and can make this “look like a dead end.” Which makes no sense in at least two different ways: everything Rob had is true, and as far as they know he still as all that information. Why doesn’t Skouras or the government – who was completely absent during this investigation of an egregious case of breached security–capture the guy and kill him now? Just in case? And if Winter had the ability to shut this down somehow and make it go away, why didn’t he do it days before, when the breach occurred? Why all the running around for no reason? Three: Joshua is touch-and-go, though Winter doesn’t know (or care) if he’s alive or dead. He just knows Bo doesn’t kill, even though she blew that window out right behind the guy. Might as well has lobbed a grenade. But we know how that goes: Bo doesn’t kill people. Flying glass from a window that Bo exploded kills people. Completely different. And…Four: Tate confesses to Bo that he was really, really gonna leave, but she says no he wasn’t, not really, but she magically busts off his GPS anklet anyway, so he can leave if he wants. Which leads us all the way ‘round to the central truth and silliness in this episode and this show: anything is possible because Bo. People always believe you and you never have to pay bus fare because Bo. Winter says you can tell the story but not now because Bo. Ultimately, any coincidence, any plot hole, any character inconsistency is okay because Bo.
And that excuse is starting to wear real, real thin.
