November 10, 2006: "The New World"
At last, the horrific truth can be told: the
Vanished Sara Collins has been deprived of adequate food, water and foundation garments. What's more, her abductors are shooting her up, Dr. Bones McCoy-style, with drugs that disorient her, make her susceptible to inane Brainwashing 101 suggestions, and have her talking as if she is wearing orthodontic headgear. Speaking of Sara's captors, this week's episode put a new face on the mysterious-in-a-TV-serial-kind-of-way group, in the form of a rather Anglo preppie. What is their next tactic, to threaten to make Sara shop last season's Lacoste styles? The inhumanity.
Speaking of Chad/Biff-the-Masonic-kidnapper, the casting is so obvious in its "Let's go against the grain" thinking that it's distracting and thus rendered ineffective. Hmm, do we go with an older, perhaps scarred, furled-brow gent of non-descript foreign origins? Nah, let's shake things up with a J. Crew model! If I was Sara, I'd be all, "Listen, your threats didn't work with Delta House, they won't work with me."
Elsewhere, "on the outside," we learned in derivative
CSI effect that Gray-Haired Guy had an RFID transmitter implanted in his palm, to access areas which Agent Lucas almost instantly tracked down, thanks to super-speedy exposition. Although I didn't need to see that lady doc slice it out of the corpse's hand, the idea seems cool. I was about to ask
TV Guide's building security to do the same with my card key, but I then realized that the downstairs Au Bon Pain probably wouldn't invest in the electronic readers, thus locking me out of my 10 percent employee discount.
As for Marcy, I give her credit for having some spunk, for threatening to reveal that she is carrying (non-surprise alert!) Judge Rainer's baby, and
not Heath Ledger Jr.'s. Now that the Judge has called her bluff, I have to wonder how Marcy gets out of this without wearing a toe tag. I don't see our antagonists letting a morally casual coed ruin the Supreme Court nom they have been so desperate to secure.
My only other comment on this week: What was
up with the prolonged glances and uncomfortable pauses when Lucas found Kelton's ex cleaning out his office? Some adulterous history there that will never have a chance to be revisited in subsequent seasons? I half expected her to turn around, look back at Lucas and tell him, "My daughter.... Graham... he isn't the father.... Judge Rainer is. Hey, the guy is surprisingly fertile for a fiftysomething Republican."
