Since I began recapping this wonderful show, I’ve struggled to figure out the best way to tackle each episode. Pardon the pun, but Zoo is so wild and a mere recap seemed so mundane. To that end, allow me to present a stream of consciousness experience to place you, like Jamie and Mitch in this episode, in my actual brain. Will I do this again next week? Who knows. What will Zoo do next week? That’s the real question.
• Remember how last week’s episode ended with Dariela and Abe’s son Isaac getting abducted? Messed up, right? We start immediately after, with Dariela dialing 911 about the abducted children, but to no avail, because this abduction is somehow legal. Luckily, Abe is in pursuit the goons who took his kid. GET ’EM ABE.
• Abe gets to a military checkpoint but the soldiers won’t let him past. “DON’T YOU HAVE CHILDREN?” Abe asks, begging for sympathy. “NO,” replies the soldier. “AND UNLESS SOMETHING CHANGES I NEVER WILL.” Look, I know this is all very serious but I’m trying hard not to laugh.
• In Portland, Jackson watches news coverage of the abduction that calls it A NEW VERSION OF THE MILITARY DRAFT. (This show, man.) Also: Remember Abigail Westbrook? Jackson’s mysterious evil sister? Well, she’s wanted.
• Oz and Logan talk about where Abigail might be, or how she’s connected to the hybrids. Tessa — whose name I had to look up a minute ago because she is so boring — asks who Abigail is. Oz says she’s just connected to the bombings. Way to be forthright, buddy. Something weird is going on in Oz’s head. Logan glares at him about not telling her the truth, but he says, “How can I tell her if I can’t make sense of it myself?” INTRIGUE.
• CLEM IS PREGNANT WHAT. She also rehearses the way she’s gonna tell her dad the news. Who does that? Even in a sterile world with superpowered bloodthirsty animals, that’s weird.
• Mitch catches up on the state of the Zoo Crew, which is that there is no Zoo Crew. Also, everyone’s sterile. Except for Clem, but for some reason she decides now isn’t the right time to tell him. CLEM, YOU SILLY GOOSE, IT’S THE PERFECT TIME.
• Mitch is mad that his dad raised Clem, even though he asked Jamie to take care of her. After finding this out, he asks them to put him back in the tank, sarcastically, and it that triggers a weird memory.
• Remember Jonah? I don’t because 8,000 things have happened on Zoo since the season premiere, but anyway he’s here again! Dariela is like, “Why are you here?” and he says he feels guilty because he sent Abe’s research to Raden, and that might be why they took the kids. Abe is furious at Jonah, and attacks him. YEAH, GET ’EM, ABE.
• … wait. He hates Jonah for sleeping with his wife. Get ’em, Abe?
• To make matters worse, Dariela tells Abe that she gave Abe’s research to Jonah, and that’s how it got to Raden. They’re both very sorry, and while I can’t quite say that this affair — a revelation I do not approve of, Zoo — directly led to the kids’ abduction, I do agree with Abe that this isn’t a great time to revisit it.
• On Zoo Force One, Mitch thinks he has pressure on the speech side of his brain, so they need to get in there pronto. Translation: THEY’RE GONNA DO BRAIN SURGERY WITH A POWER DRILL OMG.
• Jonah — must we cut back and forth so quickly? — says he can help Abe and Dariela get Isaac back with the people he knows inside Raden. Abe also has an idea about tracking down the stolen hybrid egg. But we’re not going to talk about it now.
• In Portland, Oz pulls out his secret phone for Abe. Abe asks if he can get another sample. Oz offers to come help, but Abe wants him to hunt down another new hybrid because its stem cells might solve the sterility problem. Oz wants to help Abe and sterility, so he is ON BOARD. Logan, however, doesn’t want to do anything that’s not related to Abigail. But it looks like he doesn’t have a say. Because he is Logan.
• Back on Zoo Force One, Mitch is talking Jamie through his own brain surgery. Also, Jamie gave Clem a beer when she was 14. This remains weirdly important to Mitch.
• I HATE THIS AFFAIR REVELATION. How could you do this to the best couple, Zoo? Jonah’s return and the news that she gave him his research makes the pain all fresh for Abe, and then he says something that is news to us: If I had not left to help Jackson that summer, you would not have turned to Jonah.
• First of all, look at Abe and look at Jonah and tell me that this is even a little bit plausible. Second of all, “that summer” will come up again, yeah?
• I can’t believe this surgery thing is happening. They find something in Mitch’s brain and he flashes back to a horrific surgery/torture scene he can’t quite remember. They can’t pull out whatever it is … because it has a live electrical current that might cause brain damage. Mitch wants Jamie to land the plane and grab him a car battery, lollipops, commercial grade velcro, and a pig. LOL, HANG TIGHT AND RUN TO THE STORE, THIS SURGERY CAN CHILL FOR A SEC.
• Abe, Dariela, and Jonah meet with Jonah’s inside guy and he brings back some random kid who is not Isaac, although his wristband says he is. Hrm.
• Jamie finds the stuff Mitch asked for and I’m really upset we don’t get to see her getting the pig. The lollipops are for Mitch, for afterward. Oh, also: The first beer Clem had was a keg party she wanted to throw and Jamie was like, “I’d rather you do it here.” And Logan helped raise her at one point, lol.
• Speaking of Logan, he’s with Oz and Tessa. (Yes, I had to look up her name again.) They’re on the hunt for a weird-ass new rhino. There’s an earthquake. SUDDENLY A BIG-ASS VULTURE MONSTER RISES FROM THE EARTH, AND TELLS THEM TO GO SEE SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, IN THEATERS NOW.
• We swing by Abe and Dariela once more so they can ask this kid about Isaac. The kid knows him, but not much else.
• Mitch has Jamie wire his brain to a pig to … ground him? This seems dodgy. Jamie recognizes what’s in Mitch’s brain as Shepherd tech, and goes to ask her pet Shepherd about it.
• Back in the Oregon Wildlands, Logan shoots the vulture monster, which seems like a bad idea. The vulture straight-up knocks their Jeep over and drags it over the edge of a cliff. The geography of this scene is HELLA SUSS, but props to you for going there, Zoo. Anyway, they make it out the truck. Yayyyy.
• Jamie tells her pet Shepard to reveal what the doodad (a.k.a. “bio-drive”) in Mitch’s head does and he’s like “gimme 12 minutes with that blonde.” GET ’EM, JAMIE. She threatens to zap him and he says he needs a computer to sync up with the bio-drive. I don’t believe him, but sure, let’s make this brain surgery scene crazier. I’m here for it.
• Logan, Tessa, and Oz are back at camp somehow? They tracked the hybrid’s flight path to Mexico, and it immediately leads them to satellite footage of Abigail. Since two new hybrids have shown up near her so far, Jackson thinks she’s behind something big.
• Jamie gets her pet Shepherd set up on a computer. Mitch asks about the beer again. Jamie is like, “SHE GREW UP IN A WORLD OF FEAR AND DARKNESS, A BEER IS NOT A BIG DEAL.” To be honest, Jamie doesn’t make the best decisions — remember when she called herself the Girl With the Genie Tattoo — but I’m kinda with her here.
• Anyway, the Shepherd doesn’t have much to say about the bio-drive. Mitch asks him about Blue Diaspora and the guy says it’s the project that created the hybrids. That’s a wrinkle! Did Mitch help create the hybrids?
• Abe and Dariela decide to return that kid to his parents — but a black-ops team is waiting for them. They raided the place because Raden bigwig Leanne Ducovny wants to talk with mad guns pointed at Abe and Dariela.
• In Portland, Oz finally confesses to Tara before they go to Mexico to find Abigail. He tells her his name Jackson Oz. “That’s not funny,” she says. She’s wrong, it’s very funny.
• Oz explains the photo of “Jackson Oz” in the news was swapped out via a computer virus. That he had to change his identity to get away from the Shepherds. He also tells her that Abigail Westbrook is his sister. She slaps him because everything was built on a lie. YEAH, GET ’EM, TESSA.
• Anyway, Tessa and Jackson aren’t dating anymore.
• Back on Air Force Zoo, Mitch is still getting this brain surgery and still trying to get over that beer Clem drank. Jamie comes back with the options for the bio-drive: Take it out and lose his memories, or leave it in and let it kill him … eventually? Immediately? UNCLEAR.
• At Abe’s home, Ducovny continues to menace them. She promises they can have Isaac back in exchange for Clementine. Uh oh!
• Mitch decides he’s going to render the bio-drive inert even though it’ll eventually kill him. He doesn’t want to forget. Makes sense, bro. Unlike your obsessing over that beer.
• Mitch also remembers that Clem wanted to say something and asks what it was. Clem basically says, “I just wanted to tell you that I love you and I’m really happy you’re back.” CLEM, YOU CAN ALSO TELL HIM YOU’RE PREGNANT. Mitch immediately blacks out, and then remembers where he was when they put the bio-drive in his head.
• Oz and Logan, the team-up nobody wanted, make it to Mexico and raid an empty cabin. They find Mitch waiting inside. This is where he had his bio-drive implanted, and it’s also where he, Jamie, and Clem all went. With a partial Zoo Crew reunion, they find a device with a disk in the cabin, just like the one Abigail has been planting everywhere. It’s like a really destructive party favor. She calls Jackson and to taunt him and the device starts up … calling all the vulture monsters right to them. SEE YOU NEXT WEEK.