Travelers - Jenny/U235 - Double Episode Review
27 Nov 2017
JD Reviews TravelersHello again, friends! Remember when I had hopes of never falling behind again? That was a good dream, right? So sad that it didn't come true. Never fear, though, because though they may come out late, the reviews will always come! What might not come is replies to your comments because I usually end up reading them at a time I can't respond to them and I end up forgetting, but rest assured, I do read your comments, and I appreciate all of your thoughts, comments, and theories. Please don't let my horrible communication skills dissuade you from commenting! Now, onto our latest two episodes before tonight's new one airs.
Jenny
We start this episode with Phillip under heavy influence from the eye drops as he is told by Jenny to mind dump the formulas he just got from Chloe on the wall. When he's done, another Traveler friend of ours, Derek, shows up. Not that I'd necessarily call Jenny a friend, but Derek is definitely a friend. He thanks Phillip for his work, and starts looking at the formula. Phillip then wakes up at the base with Jenny, having no recollection of what has just happened. After telling him he'd been hitting the drop pretty hard, Jenny tells Phillip that they have to end because she got a new mission, and she leaves him with several bottles of drops and zero explanations. While Phillip and Trevor pick up some vaccines from a Traveler couple, Marcy and Carly spend their morning having a chat after Marcy does a quick check-up on Carly's baby. Marcy wonders aloud if we are more than our consciousness, which leads Carly to discuss the night Marcy was reset. Marcy learns about how she was debating if she even wanted to be reset, and that the reset may have happened against her will, but she doesn't understand what she would have had to think about. On a more positive note, Grant and Kathryn learn that their baby is going to be just fine, so we're continuing forward with shattering protocol 4.
The team comes together for their next mission, which is to inject themselves with an anti-viral that protects them from an upcoming historic flu outbreak, and to also inject a few other key players in the original spread. We then watch as our team, and a few others, inject their targets with the anti-viral, and all seems to be well. Of course, that couldn't be farther from the truth, but we'll get to that. As the team resume their lives, Grace confronts Trevor in the school cafeteria to see if they've been given anything from the director. She's been getting quite bored recently and is longing for something to do, she even tries to have Trevor get her into his team, but that simply isn't possible. Carly, meanwhile, starts arguing with Jeff for getting ready to go in to work without telling her she'll have to look after the baby. They talk through it though and we don't have to spend too long dealing with it. We then jump to Phillip letting Officer Boyd and a sick member of her team into ops. He contacts Marcy (who is in the middle of leaving David a voicemail saying she wants to meet up!) and brings her in to help. After determining that the virus is unknown in any time period and somehow related to the antiviral mission, Trevor and Grant are called in as well to gather blood samples. Boyd's partner dies, and Marcy discovers that she and Grant are the only two on the team immune to the virus, noting that anyone the others have come into contact with are also likely infected. She advises everyone to tell their loved ones to stay inside, and David picks this moment to listen to Marcy's voicemail. He calls her back to say he'd love to meet, but when Marcy tells him about the virus, he decides he needs to go and check on his clients despite Marcy's warnings. Trevor and Carly return to the trailer Trevor and Phillip got the antiviral from, only to discover that the couple has been murdered and there are no more antivirals around. Grant, meanwhile, shows up at the hospital to get some supplies for Marcy and runs into David who is desperately trying to find a way to help his clients. He asks Grant to have Marcy swing by the shelter later, and leaves Grant to continue with his business. While attempting to leave with Marcy's supplies, Grant is spotted by Jeff (who is definitely sick) and Jeff decides it's a good time to try to argue about Grant's past with Carly. Grant shuts it down though and tells Jeff to go be with his child. Back at ops, Derek comes by to go over the formula he got from Phillip, but Phillip has no recollection of writing it down. They quickly connect the dots to Jenny, and Phillip finds her passed out on her bathroom floor next to a bottle of pills. While David spends the rest of the episode caring for people at the shelter, and Jeff tries to figure out how to care for baby Jeffrey, our team focuses on keeping Boyd alive and figuring out more about the pandemic. When they are able to get Jenny conscious again, she reveals that this was the mission all along, and that the director has been offline for a while now, meaning the Faction has been sending back people for their own agenda, and all of the new travelers at the FBI are members of The Faction; everything our team has done this season has been by command of The Faction. This latest mission actually had teams spreading the virus to start a pandemic that was programmed to wipe out 30% of the world's population to help with population control in the future. The episode ends with a group of military men surrounding a new quantum frame, just as it is firing up to take over their bodies.
U235
Picking up directly after the last episode, "U235" opens with our team questioning Jenny about the new quantum frame. When she is unhelpful, Grant promises her that they will stop the pandemic, and then they'll hunt down and kill every member of The Faction. According to her, however, this will be difficult since the director is dead and most of the team will be dead within two weeks. I have to admit, she has a point about the whole difficult thing. While they try to decide what to do about the situation, Grace comes up with a "simple" solution: turn The Director back on. She tells them about a team who has been refining Uranium as an extra fuel source for The Director in the future, and that they just need to grab some of the Uranium and take it to The Director's future location to get it back online. This won't be as easy as it sounds, though, as Walt shows up with a team to kill the two men at the refinery and move the Uranium to another location. While Jeff and Kathryn are both suffering in their homes from the disease, Jenny tries to make Phillip see her point of view. She even suggests that the two of them run away and die together. Phillip is pretty done with her, though, and definitely doesn't agree to it. Grant, Carly, and Trevor arrive at the refinery, only to discover that The Faction is now controlling it, and the Uranium has already been stolen. Carly and Grant punch out the two guys inside, and they leave to come up with a new plan. Derek decides to leave our team and return to his, but leaves Marcy some nanites to help slow Boyd's death if she goes into organ failure. With Grant and the others back, they decide on a new course of action to get fuel: plutonium from a nearby naval base. Despite figuring that The Faction will have already thought of this, they decide it is their only chance, and Jenny is looking rather suspicious at this point. Before making the trip, Grant stops by to check on Kathryn and drop off some groceries for her. After Trevor and Phillip have been working all night on the power device for the director, our team, minus Marcy, heads out on their mission. After Grace and Marcy get into a bit of a fight, Grace sneaks away to the bathroom with a tablet and starts writing a program for the nanites left by Derek. When Marcy is out of the area, Grace injects the nanites into Jenny in an attempt to cure the virus. Over at the Navy base, Grant and the team have a meeting with the Captain, during which she reluctantly agrees to have the warhead they need loaded into their vehicle. Grant thanks her and assures her that the base will be among the first places to be given the cure. As the team walks to their destination with the munitions, they comment on how different the terrain is compared to the way it will be in the future. Meanwhile, Jenny is suffering from Grace's attempt at help as The Faction had accounted for the use of nanites and built a countermeasure into the virus. This prompts another argument between Grace and Marcy as Grace shuts down the nanites. Grace blames Marcy for not trusting her, and Marcy wonders why she should since Grace left some things out regarding Marcy's life-saving reset. When our team makes it into the mine they were heading to, Trevor breaks off to plant the device for The Director, while the rest of the team continues when the warhead. Unsurprisingly, the faction shows up to confiscate the warhead, but there was a little something unaccounted for. Phillip made an intentional typo in an email he sent regarding the warhead, suggesting they were bringing in a nuclear bomb. In actuality, they brought an anti-sub warhead which Carly detonated once it was a reasonable distance away from them. There is a brief shootout, followed by Grant chasing Walt outside to a cliff. While they have a standoff, the device is activated, and The Director returns to power, sending new travelers into Walt and Jenny, and Marcy receives instructions for creating a cure to the virus. As the cure begins being produced for worldwide distribution, Marcy checks in on David who has spent his day at the shelter watching his clients suffer. She determines that he is not infected, and gives him a dose of the cure to give to a man he saw collapse earlier in the day. On her way out, she promises to come back later. Yay! Back at ops, Marcy speaks to a recovering Boyd when there is a knock on the door. There is a small child waiting to speak to them, no doubt with a message from the future.
Mission Review
These two episodes had significant ramifications on our story. We are now able to see the future results of the travelers' actions in the present. An entire, powerful faction was formed from the changes made in the present, and also our team was able to have an immediate effect on The Director based on their current actions, resulting in it coming back online. If there was every any doubt that they could actually make a difference, that doubt should be gone now. I'm very happy to see Marcy 2.0 starting to show a little more of Marcy 1.0, especially in terms of her relationship with David, which just really needs to get back on track now so I can be happy. Don't they know their only job is to make me happy? Jeez! Anyways, it's been kind of nice to see Kathryn and Grant rekindling their relationship. I know she's not a very popular character, but I definitely want Grant with her over Carly. Speaking of Carly, her relationship with Jeff may improve a bit as well. Yes, he's very out of it because of the virus at the moment, but it does seem like this experience may have changed him a bit. Hopefully. I suppose we'll see. I'm also pretty happy that we have a new Jenny now, cause old Jenny was just the worst! Glad to be done with her. Now, as for this child that surely has a message for our team, I really hope it's a big thank you from The Director and things are about to get a lot easier for them, but there's just no way that can happen. I really hope it's nothing too terrible, but we'll know in a few hours now (or days depending on your watching schedule).
How did you feel about The Faction being in charge of all these missions? What do you think the message will be about? Are any of you finding Carly to be any more interesting yet? Cause I'm not. Sound off in the comments below!
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