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Writer: Javier Grillo-Marxuach
Director: Adam Davidson
Air Date: 05/13/04 (UK)
Cast:
Christopher Gorham...Jake Foley
Keegan Connor Tracy...Diane Hughes
Philip Anthony-Rodriguez...Kyle Duarte
Judith Scott...Louise Beckett
Guest Stars:
Wes "Maestro" Williams...Caesar
Grace Park...Fran Yoshida
Miranda Frigon...Tech Agent Susan Carver
Kimani Ray Smith...Leo
David Fernandez...Glenn
Nigel Vonas...Frank
Norm Sherry...Drunk
John Prowse...Local Cop
Penny Cardas...Waitress
Paul Bittante...Head Police Officer
Derek Morrison...Head Guard
Steve Archer...Police Officer
Synopsis
It's been 10 days since Jake disappeared, and Kyle and Lou put out a phony rap-sheet, to try and get local law enforcement to increase man-power for the search. Diane is appalled that the APB includes "armed and dangerous", and Lou is worried that a local might kill Jake rather than trying to take him in alive, but Kyle stands firm that it's their best shot. While Diane looks on, Lou gives to order to send out the APB.
Meanwhile, somewhere outside Philadelphia, a scruffy and desolate Jake—still lacking his memory—is living off quarters stolen from parking meters. Wandering into a club called The Palace, he watches several bloodied men leaving a back room, counting wads of cash. Giving the bartender his entire bag of quarters as payment, Jake enters to find two grown men beating each other to a bloody pulp in a make-shift boxing ring while the screaming crowd cheers. The club owner, Caesar, is offering $500 for anyone who can last for 3 minutes against his champ, and Jake steps up. After initially taking a pounding, Jake uses the nanites to knock the champ out, and Caesar offers him the job of house fighter.
At the club, Jake seems to have taken quite well to his new job. Back at the NSA, Lou questions Diane about being able to locate Jake using the JMD. However, Diane insists that she can't get a signal. She insists that Jake isn't hiding from them deliberately—that's just not who Jake is. She's sure something's wrong with him, and tells Lou and Kyle that she thinks Jake might have been hit with an electro-magnetic surge. Kyle is sceptical, but Diane is insistent. Lou and Kyle leave, and as Fran comes over Diane whips out a second JMD, one which is tracking Jake's signal. They've almost found him.
At the Palace, Caesar is fiddling with the electronic cash register, which refuses to open. He's got six of them he can't move. Jake gives it a shot—and wirelessly interfaces with the register, opening it as much to his own surprise as Caesar's.
Jake picks up a laptop from a pawn shop, and uses it to access his personnel file from the NSA. He's shocked when he sees that he's been disavowed—and reads the rap sheet which includes assault and armed robbery, not realising it's fake. Unbeknowst—or so it seems—to Jake, Carver in Sat Ops is tracking him. Diane can't figure out why he'd be hacking his own personnel file. Kyle patches them through to local law enforcement, and to Diane's horror, she listens as police converge on Jake's location and she hears gunshots. There's a tense moment until the cops announce they've busted several Asian gangbangers—not Jake. Carver assumes Jake bounced the trace. Diane loses it completely, knocking over a chair and shouting that they should be trying to help Jake—and at this rate all they're going to do is get him killed. The entire room stares in shock at the usually mild-manner doctor, who seems taken aback by her own outburst.
In Lou's office, Diane apologises for her behaviour. Lou tells her she's on leave—effective immediately. Fran can keep working, and they'll recall her if they need her. On the verge of tears, Diane tells them she hopes its not to perform an autopsy. Kyle tries to tell her she's not the only one who cares about Jake, but Diane's having none of it. Diane stalks out of the office, then pulls out the JMD, wiping away her tears. She has a 100% location match. And now she has the freedom to go find Jake herself.
In the back room of the club that night, Diane looks on in abject horror as she sees Jake viciously beating a man nearly twice his size, and then walking past her without a flicker of recognition. She follows Jake to a coffee shop, where she tries to make small talk, but Jake is uncommunicative. This is not the Jake Foley she knows at all. He's withdrawn, almost stony, completely alone. At the NSA, Carver tells Lou and Kyle that they got a hit on the APB from a trucker who picked up a hitchhiker matching Jake's description. Kyle tells Lou he's on it, and Lou asks Carver to pull up Diane's itinerary. Carver says Diane's at a spa. Does Diane seem the spa type, Lou asks Carver, suspicious.
When it comes time to pay for her dinner, Diane hands the waitress her credit card, then panics when she realises the NSA could be tracking her movements through her credit account. However, she doesn't have enough cash to pay for her meal. Jake, still without even looking at her or saying a word, hands the waitress money and then tries to leave. Diane stops him by thanking him by name. Instantly wary, Jake asks how she knows him. Diane insists that she feels like she does because he looks the way she feels—lonely. Desperate to keep him there, she manages to charm him into buying them both pie a la mode, winning the first real smile from Jake.
Outside the diner, a man watches Jake from his car, reporting over his cellphone that Jake is meeting with a brunette in her late twenties, and that Jake seems to have just met her for the first time.
Now in a booth, plates of pie in front of them, Jake asks Diane why she's there. Diane tells him that she is kinda on the run. She had been working for a big evil HMO, and they disagreed over how to treat one of her patients—a cool young guy who really needs her help. Only now, her bosses think she tried to help him escape. Jake asks if she did, and she turns around and asks him how long he's been fighting people for money. As long as he can remember, he tells her. She jokes, asking if he gets dental coverage with that. He sees it as a temporary thing, while he's searching. She asks if he's found anything yet. Nothing encouraging, he says. Using the nanites, Jake overhears the man in the car, and abruptly tells Diane he has to leave. The walls have come slamming back down, leaving Diane frantic. She asks him if they can meet at the diner the next night, and Jake distractedly agrees. After he's gone, Diane removes the JMD from her purse, and glances at the readout screen. The brain scan is almost complete.
Jake punches through the car window, dragging the man out and demanding he tell him who he's working for. At the club, Jake dumps the unconscious snitch on the table, and demands to know why Caesar is having him followed. Caesar asks Jake to take a look at a logic puzzle on a laptop. Jake solves it, and Caesar tells him it's the algorithm to crack a safe that contains $10 million in bearer bonds. Does Jake want in on the heist? Jake refuses.
At Sat Ops, Kyle tells Lou that he has talked to the trucker—they have a lead on Jake. He's outside Philly. In turn, Lou voices her suspicions about Diane. In her hotel room, Diane tells Fran about the brain scans via her cellphone. Fran asks why Diane doesn't just tell Jake the truth—he trusts her. But Diane doesn't want to scare Jake off. As Fran hangs up, she is confronted by Lou and Kyle, who demand to know what's going on. Fran explains he's amnesiac, and they're working on how to fix him. She doesn't know where Diane is—just that Diane believes Jake will end up dead if the NSA gets to him before she can. A furious Lou tells Fran that she is going to bug every single phone Fran has so much as looked at, and the second Diane contacts her, she's to report to them.
In Philly, Jake is back in the ring. He stops dead when he sees Diane in the crowd, as if sickened that she's watching him beat another man senseless. Diane approaches him as he flees the ring, wanting to know why he stood her up at the diner. Withdrawn and angry, he tells her he had to work, and she asks if he had to? He angrily responds that wanted to and storms out. She follows, shouting that he doesn't belong there any more than she does. In an alley, Jake breaks down, admitting he doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know anything. She insists that she can help him, and he falls completely apart in her arms. In the heat of the moment, they kiss passionately.
Jake brings Diane back to his room, where they almost make love. However, Diane stops them, telling Jake that she can't. Confused and hurt by her rejection, Jake nonetheless listens as she tells him that from the first moment she met him, she'd always thought something might happen between them. Just not like this. He holds her, comforting her while she cries. The next morning, Diane wakes in Jake's bed to find him watching her. He slept for the first time in weeks, and wants to leave with her—take off, get away. Just so they can be together. Diane is moved, but tells him there are things he needs to know about her. Before she can explain, Caesar's man arrives, and tells Jake Caesar wants to see him.
Caesar asks Jake if he's reconsidered his offer about the heist. The pretty brunette Jake's seen the last two nights can't wash away a man's sins, Caesar says, producing Jake's rap sheet. He tells Jake that before he buys into whatever she's selling, he should examine her motives. The offer will stay open for an hour.
Back at her hotel Diane tells a nervous and distracted Fran that the brain scans are complete, and she thinks that she can restore Jake's memory with an injection. As soon as they have it synthesised, they can tell Lou and Kyle. However, Lou and Kyle are listening in, and Lou chews Diane out. Diane pleads with Lou for more time, to try and get through to Jake. Lou reluctantly agrees to 24 hours, and Fran gets to work on injection.
Jake calls Diane, telling her to meet him at the diner. As she rushes out of her hotel room, Jake watches her go before breaking into her room. When Diane comes back, it's to find a furious and betrayed Jake going through her files. He trusted her, and she lied to him. She wasn't just a doctor—she was his doctor. Did she come to bring him back or put him down? She explains that she didn't want to hurt him, she's only trying to help him get his memories back. He tells her he wouldn't believe them from her. She tries to tell him about Lou and Kyle, and Jake remembers Kyle from the bridge. She tells him Kyle trained him, and is only trying to protect him. She didn't want to scare him. However, Jake doesn't believe her. She tells him that if he wants to go, she won't stop him, but she really cares about him. He leaves, and goes back to Caesar. He's in.
Diane calls Lou and tells her to send the team. Kyle asks if she's all right, and she says no. She's not. She told Jake she could let him go, but she can't. And now she needs their help.
Caesar and his gang are on the job—everything goes as planned, until one of the security guards pulls off Caesar's mask. Jake realises that Caesar will kill the guards, and sets off the alarms, taking down Caesar and the other men. As the NSA converges on the location, they find Jake and the security guards leading the would-be thieves and murderers out at gunpoint. Jake sees Kyle, Lou, and Diane and stops. Kyle asks if Jake knows who he is. Remembering what Diane told him, Jake says "the man you trained," and hands over his weapon.
At the NSA, Jake looks over his files while Diane prepares the injection to restore his memory. He's worried that he can't live up to the Jake Foley she knew. She tells him he doesn't have to—he always has. He asks her if, when she said something could happen between them, if she was talking about him, or the Jake she knew. Shyly, Diane touches his chest above his heart, and tells him she loves him, Jake. He's her best friend. He allows her to inject him, and his memories come rushing back. Almost collapsing into Diane's arms, he smiles the no-holds barred Jake Foley megawatt smile. He knows who he is. He knows who she is. Relieved, Diane hugs him, thrilled to have him back.
Guest cast
Review
Where to begin?
Okay, let's start with the explosive culmination of 13 episode's worth of fantastic chemistry between Keegan Connor Tracy's Diane and Christopher Gorham's Jake. What's particularly satisfying is that—as hot as it is—the audience is right there with Diane in desperately wanting something yet knowing that she cannot have what she wants: namely, Jake himself. And it's not fair to her, Jake, or the audience to make love with an amnesiac stranger.
Jake's amnesia allows both characters to do things they cannot or are will not do otherwise—it's like having the chance to meet someone for the first time, and start over with nothing to lose, and everything to gain. But at the same time, Diane comforting a clearly terrified Jake, and Jake in turn comforting a heartbroken Diane is the sort of scene fans have been dying to see since Jake's admission in "Middleman" that Diane is the only person who can ever know the real Jake Foley. As sexy as the foreplay may be (and it is sexy in the extreme), it's the emotions and drama that are the meat-and-potatoes of the episode.
It's also intensely gratifying to know that Jake, with no baggage such as an 8 year unrequited crush on Sarah, had circumstances been different, would have fallen for Diane and seen immediately how beautiful she really is. And it's also nice to see Diane's ability to tease Jake out of a dark mood surfacing even with this changed and distant Jake. No matter who he is, Diane always has a connection with him. Which is precisely why Jake's pain at her apparent betrayal is so acute, and her utter despair when she realises she's messed up, she's in over her head, and she loves him too much to let him go, regardless of what she says to him to the contrary are so effective. The scenes in Diane's hotel room are exquisitely played by both Gorham and Tracy.
Christopher Gorham has range. Christopher Gorham has the kind of range that makes his portrayal of Jake Foley an honest to God delight to watch, week in and week out, and no matter what the final fate of the series, no doubt Jake fans will follow him wherever he goes from now on. Gorham is simply heartbreaking as a Jake who is lost, afraid, and so desperately lonely. It's particularly effective, given how open and boyish Jake usually is, to see Gorham so believably play a beaten down Jake. It's as shocking to the viewer as it is Diane. And by the time Jake regains his memories, his familiar smile is as welcome a sight to us as it is Diane.
The whole Fight Club device may be pulpy, slightly silly, and perhaps gratuitous (not that many of the female Jake 2.0 fans are likely complaining about copious shirtless and buff Jake. Not by a long shot. The boy has been working out, and unlike Sarah Carter, we can see it and are impressed.), but it does serve an excellent purpose. Throughout the series, Jake has always relied more on his mind, his wits, and the nanites interface capabilities than brute force. In any given fight, he almost always takes a number of hits before he's able to return them in kind. In short, Jake is not comfortable with his physical abilities when it comes to using them against another human being. Running, jumping, smashing through doors and walls? Not a problem. But he's never beaten anyone the way he does in "get Foley." Losing himself in mindless violence is an excellent way of showing the audience exactly how lost Jake has become.
This episode also is enormously satisfying when it comes to Lou—particularly Lou's relationship with Diane. Since "Last man Standing" it's been clear that Diane's loyalties are to Jake first and foremost, and the NSA second. As in "Last Man Standing" Diane is supported in her deception by co-worker Fran, because Diane feels that Lou doesn't always have Jake's safety and well-being as a top priority. And, in Lou's defence, it's unrealistic to expect her to. Lou has a difficult job—one which requires personal and emotional sacrifices, for the sake of the greater good. Someone has to think of National Security first, over the plight of a 26 year old rookie agent who accidentally became a walking experiment chock full of billions of dollars of experimental technology. Lou sees the big picture, and does her best to try and serve two masters—the NSA, and her team. Diane, however, is not yet able to distance herself from her friendship (and other feelings) for Jake. Which makes for compelling drama.
Also, the episode builds on the previous episodes in a believable and organic way. There is enough, form Lou's point of view, reasonable doubt to support the idea of Jake going rogue. It would be inexcusably remiss of her, as the Deputy Director of the NSA, to ignore the facts as she knows them (which, albeit, are not the facts which the audience is privy to) and prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. Just as Diane lies to Lou because she believes in her own personal interpretation of "the greater good", Lou takes a similar approach with Warner in "Blackout." It shows how alike these two women are, while at the same time, highlighting how dissimilar Lou and Warner are. Warner lacks Lou's core of decency and compassion, while Lou lack's Diane's blind devotion to the individual above the team.
Of the regulars, only Phillip Anthony Rodriguez stands out as getting short shrift this week—however, he got the fantastic bridge scene last week, so we can forgive the lack of significant Kyle. And as always, Kyle serves as an excellent buffer between Lou and the rest of the team, being able to show emotion and concern where Lou cannot—not because she doesn't feel, but because she needs to present an invincible front. Rapper Wes "Maestro" Williams is just the right amount of cartoon mixed with real menace as Caesar, and even though she plays much the same role here as in "Last Man Standing," Grace Park does get a chance to flesh Fran a bit more as an individual. The audience can't help but sympathise when Lou and Kyle confront Fran, placing her in an awkward position that could be seen as betraying her friend. However, the scene does showcase Lou's strengths—that she knows best, even when it doesn't seem that way. And that by not trusting her, Diane may have placed Jake in worse jeopardy. The local Philly police force's raid on what they thought was Jake's boarding house is a graphic example of what could have happened, had Jake not bounced the trace. And it would have been partly Diane's fault, for withholding important information.
Again, the same plot hole that plagues last week's episode surfaces here—namely, that it's difficult to believe that since they have Dr. Mark Benton, the NSA cannot learn from him that Jake has no memory. But it's not a gaping plot hole that destroys fans enjoyment of the two-parter; more a niggling after-thought, which can be easily dismissed by creative fans who want to believe it doesn't exist, and will no doubt explain it away in the back of their minds while re-winding and rewatching the end of act II and opening scenes of act III over and over again until their tapes wear out.
(Please. Let's not deny the truth, shall we?)
The heist itself is really a B-plot in a lot of ways, existing as a device upon which to hang the complex character drama which has won Jake 2.0 so many fans in such a short time. It may be a throw-back to the 1980s action/adventure drama, but the characters resonate thanks to excellent writing, direction, and performances.
© Tara O'Shea 2004
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