Geekscape Recap: Almost Human “The Bends”

Almost Human continues its strong premiere season with its fourth installment, “The Bends.” The titular item is a new drug made from seaweed (and causes a weird green-y algae growth on its overdose victims) that would be wildly popular if it could be processed with a high enough level of purity (shades of Breaking Bad here, without the, you know, cancer and stuff).

Lom, Rudy Lom

The episode starts with our intrepid lab geek, Rudy Lom, in some sort of about-to-get-violent situation. It seems as if Rudy is undercover and his cover his blown—he releases a steam vent (handy how those are always around, just at elbow height, in these situations) and runs. His pursuers shoot, one getting him in the arm.

We then get the ’24 Hours Earlier’ super-title (we understand the use of the flash-forward, and it wasn’t done badly here, but it seems to be getting a tad overused in television these days. Just our personal opinion.) and go to Kennex and Dorian, eating lunch (dinner?) at a sushi place. Well, Kennex is eating, Dorian is clearly in a hurry to get someplace (where is never established). After declaring he can’t leave until he has eaten everything on his plate, per Japanese culture, Dorian has the chef serve Kennex some sort of clear-ish, wriggling, still very much alive slug thing (having lived in Japan for two years, we can clearly state that that is NOT something usually served in a Japanese restaurant). Tricked by his own words, Kennex eats it.

Ah, male bonding.

Cut to someone we’ve never seen before, with a nifty phone-in-palm device (why doesn’t EVERYONE have these?? Is it new tech? Is it super expensive? He’s the only one we’ve seen with this!) talking to his wife, who clearly doesn’t know he’s in a obviously-where-crimes-happen alley. After lying through his teeth about where he is, Frank Cooper—we find out that’s his name—meets up clearly-not-good-guys. We quickly discover that he’s there to introduce a new cook to THE drug pin of this city, The Bishop. Apparently there’s 600 liters of raw product just waiting for the next Walter White (sorry, we got our shows mixed for a second); the next cook-extraordinaire to brew up the drug.

But things go wrong when the Bishop finds a subcutaneous wire (another piece of cool tech) on Cooper, and bam, bam, both Cooper and his cook buddy are dead.

Because All Dirty Cops Keep Incriminating Evidence In Their Trunks, Uh-Doy

The next morning, Kennex and Dorian are called to the crime scene—a dead cop (clearly Cooper), whose car’s trunk his full of illegal drugs, clearly making Cooper out to be a dead, dirty cop. But wait, no, Kennex was buddies with Cooper (of course he was!) and he knows in his gut Cooper wasn’t dirty. Also, Kennex points out, if Cooper was dirty, why wear a wire?

Of course, all those drugs in the trunk  and multiple dead bodies at what is clearly a drug deal gone wrong is enough for Detective Paul (whose sole purpose so far is to be the one guy who doesn’t like Kennex…), who declares Cooper guilty and then pretty much disappears for the next fifteen minutes of air time.

Oh, we also get some new info on the drug, the Bends. It’s highly toxic, and the Bishop is poised to take over the streets with it (a la The Wire; again, we’re not saying this show is breaking new ground, only that its execution is a lot of fun to watch). This is mostly info-dumped by Detective Stahl (Minka Kelly), who seems to be regulated to that quite a bit. Not that she doesn’t do it well, but we wish we’d see a few more women doing some kicking-ass and taking names.

The Case of the Dirty-Or-Just-Mildly-Dusty Cop

Kennex meets with the widow (was it just us or was there some ‘my-best-friend’s-wife-is-the-woman-I-loved subtext going on with Kennex? We never do find out why he and Cooper aren’t friends anymore…). Of course the widow proclaims her husband’s innocence.

Maldonado meets with Captain Barros, Cooper’s commanding officer, who doesn’t want to believe Cooper was dirty either, but admits that Cooper wasn’t assigned to any official undercover work; Barros does say that Cooper was the type of cop to work something on his own. Nonwithstanding, since Cooper’s financials show suspicious activities, Maldonado is going to have to investigate.

The widow tells Kennex that Cooper went up to their cabin the day he died, so that’s where Kennex and Dorian head. It’s already been torn apart, but thanks to the helpful clue from the widow that Cooper was working on the fireplace, Kennex finds the receiver for Cooper’s wire. Unfortunately it doesn’t prove anything in terms of Cooper’s innocence but it does prove that The Bishop was there, which apparently is a big deal since no one knows what Bishop looks like.

Cue the ‘let’s find a new cook and go undercover and get Bishop plan.’ Except they need a cook…and that’s when they bring in Rudy. Who apparently is a bio-tech, cybernetic, computer programming…chemist. Don’t think on that one too much. A geek is a geek, right? Clearly we all have expert levels of knowledge in all fields related to geekdom. There’s probably a Venn diagram somewhere.

Rudy jumps at the chance to go undercover (a great subtle touch, when Kennex is pitching the idea to Rudy, is when Rudy sees his reflection in a tux, a la James Bond, in the metal surface of his instruments). He even has a fedora ready and waiting.

Time for the “Live Your Cover” Speech

While Detective Paul (who is apparently the undercover expert) drills Rudy, Kennex and Dorian go find a bad guy that can set up a meet with The Bishop.

They find someone relatively easily (Patrick Gallagher of Glee), who agrees to set up the meet after a little kind-of-sort-of blackmail from Kennex.

Rudy holds up under Det. Paul’s grilling, though the fedora gets nixed (though we liked it, Mackenzie Crook can rock a fedora) and the operation is a go—except for one thing. Rudy drinks a nasty liquid (which makes him fart, ha ha bathroom humor) but also turns his whole body into a GPS-locater. It’s in beta, he says, and it’s top-secret.

So, off Rudy goes to his meet, followed by two cockroach-cameras (a lovely bit of tech), where he meets the Bishop and almost blows the whole thing; Dorian has to go in to provide support (but the cover is still intact). Bad guys convinced of Rudy’s nefarious-ness, they agree to take him to the ‘real lab’–but first he has to drink some gross-milky looking liquid—and when he does, his GPS signal cuts off.

The bad guys then take Rudy to the ‘real lab’ after revealing that guy we think is the The Bishop isn’t, in fact, The Bishop. It’s a solid reveal that played out well.

You Dirty Double Crossing Double-Crosser!

Back at the base, Kennex rolls out as soon as Rudy’s signal disappears—but even though no one exited the building, Rudy’s is nowhere to be found; because bad guys, apparently, use sewers. The bad guys and Not-Bishop bring Rudy to a lab and demand he cooks—and he does, creating a product that’s 94% pure.

Meanwhile, back with Kennex, they figure out that the only way the bad guys could have known to have Rudy drink the GPS-signal block juice was if one of the bad guys was a cop. Maldonado puts two and two together, and figures out that Barros is The Bishop.

Sure enough, Rudy (now in a super-secret lab) meets Barros, who asks Rudy how he cooked such a pure form of the drug.

Maldonado called Barros to ‘update’ him, and manages to track the phone to get a location. Kennex and Dorian speed to him.

While Rudy explains how the cooking process is more of an art than a science, the goons are alerted to something-not-right and now we’re back to where we were at the beginning of the episode. Rudy escapes, gets shot in the arm—

And Kennex and Dorian get there. Two henchman are instantly disposed of, then Kennex goes after Barros while Dorian goes at it with Barros’ android, which was a great fight that ends with the bad robot’s (see what we did there?) head getting ripped off his body, spine still attached. Awesome.

All Wells That Ends Up at a Cop Bar

Kennex gets Barros, clears Cooper’s name, and he, Dorian and Rudy go out to celebrate—to Kennex’s cop bar, much to his dismay.

Another really good episode. Seriously, if you’re not watching this, you should be. The ratings aren’t great (though the numbers went up this week) and Fox isn’t known for its generosity with freshman shows and middle-ish ratings. So watch it! Tell your friends to watch it! While not perfect (Dorian is supposed to be ‘troubled’ but he seems the saner of the two, for example) it’s still better than most of what’s on TV, and certainly the world and its characters are intriguing enough—and the episodes are doing an excellent job expanding and building the world—that this show could be one with a lot of mileage in it.

Almost Human airs on Fox on Mondays at 8 p.m.

You can catch up on all the episodes so far on Hulu or Fox.com.