In a somewhat interesting development, this week’s episode of ‘Alphas’ is the first in which the team doesn’t try to track down an Alpha villain – but rather just some regular, garden-variety criminals. Hey, I said “somewhat” interesting…
Unfortunately, the title ‘Bill and Gary’s Excellent Adventure’ implies something a lot more fun than what we wind up getting. It’s not a terrible episode, but I had all these images in my head of some Alpha with the power to manipulate time travel – and that’s just not at all where this one is going.
For the most part, this episode is a side story for Bill and Gary. Not even on official D.O.D. business, they stumble upon a police investigation regarding the kidnapping of a wealthy man’s daughter. Bill thinks that cracking a high profile case like this will be just what he needs to get back in good graces with the FBI, so he bribes Gary (with the promise of finally letting him drive, which Gary’s been begging to do all season) into helping him with this little mission off-the-books.
The police and FBI believe that the girl’s been kidnapped by a Mexican gang. However, Gary uses his power to trace cell phones and whatnot, and we learn that the real kidnappers were former American military. I kept waiting for some sort of plot twist revelation about their real agenda and who they’re really working for, but none ever comes.
Long story short, Bill screws up the case pretty badly at first, but the two of them eventually rescue the girl. By this point, Bill has an epiphany that he doesn’t really want to go back to the FBI after all, so he lets one of the other agents (the one he assaulted, which resulted in him being suspended in the first place) take the collar.
Completely unrelated to this, Nina is being harassed by a cop about her old boyfriend. She thinks she can just stall him indefinitely by “pushing” him to go home every time he comes around. When Cameron catches wind us this, he pressures her to spill the beans about what’s going on. We learn that, back before she quite understood or could control her power, Nina got in a fight with her jerk boyfriend and suggested that he should go kill himself. So, of course, he did. Nina assumes that the police are investigating the death and plan to arrest her. In a rather convenient contrivance, it turns out at the end that they were really just investigating some petty crime that the boyfriend was involved in, and that she knew nothing about anyway. She was worried over nothing and is apparently totally off the hook for the man’s death.
Cameron and Nina get hot-and-heavy for a little bit and very nearly sleep together, until Rachel walks in and spoils the mood. They decide that it was probably a bad idea anyway.
This is just sort of an OK episode. It feel like filler. Gary is of course the most interesting character on the show, and it’s nice to have him featured so prominently. I also appreciate getting a little backstory on Nina, even if it does end on a cop-out. But the case isn’t really all that compelling. Nor does it tie into the ongoing storylines. A viewer could skip this episode entirely and not miss anything important.
