Zoocap 2.5
Say It Isn’t Zoo
Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared July 20, 2016 on a now-defunct website (no, not Grantland). It has been republished here for archival.
Join us each week as we attempt to unpack the latest cuckoobananas episode of The CBS Program Zoo, setting ablaze our hottest takes as a burnt offering to the animal gods. Previous episodes: 2.1/2.2, 2.3, 2.4. This week: Season 2, Episode 5, “The Moon and the Star.”
Welp.
There is no joy, no laughter, no comfort in The CBS Program Zoo. After a cruel and unnecessary several minutes when it seemed she was out of the woods — during which Jackson used enough pet names to make Mitch’s “we’re together now” signaling with Jamie look subtle — Chloe is gone.
“Jamie,” she wheezed with her third to last breath. “DID YOU FIND JAMIE?!” screamed Mitch. Of COURSE that was his main concern.
“Caraquet,” she managed in broken gasps. “Jamie’s in Caraquet?” Jackson repeated, easily recognizing the mumbled name of a town neither he nor anyone outside of New Brunswick has ever heard of.
“Cour… couri…” whispered Chloe as the life left her body. “Courier?” Jackson asked, not at all confused that she was saying an entirely new word which sounded almost exactly the same as the previous gasped word, even though it still wouldn’t be clear why this was important to the plot when they repeated “courier” later in the episode.
And then the light went out of the Zooniverse.
Au revoir, Chloe. Je t’aimerai toujours. :(
What the Hell Did I Just Watch
Aboard Zoo Force One
In the land of the living, some nonsensical babble about a secure channel leads to the plane being overtaken remotely and forced to land by an unknown party. Assuming it’s General Davies, The Gang readies for a fight. It is at this moment that Mitch enters dressed in only a bathrobe.
Glorious. God, what do you think it’s like to be Billy Burke on set? I bet he has a blast.
Guns at the ready, The Gang stares down the door as it opens to reveal… New Chloe???
Stranger: “Hello, Mitch.”
Mitch: “Allison.”
Abe: “You two know each other?”
Mitch: “She’s my” —
Here’s a list of words I might have expected to come next out of Mitch’s mouth.
- Sister
- Stepsister
- Twin sister
- Cousin
- Niece
- Ex
- Ex-wife
- Current wife
- Future wife
- Daughter?
- Former student
- Former business partner
- Former partner from my days in the Bureau
- Lawyer
- Accountant
- Hairdresser
- Next-door neighbor
- Psychic
Here is what Mitch actually said:
“She’s my stepmom.”
Meet Allison Shaw, the latest in a line of increasingly disposable female government officials vaguely associated for some reason with the Department of Defense. Turns out this is her plane, she’s been secretly working with Chloe, and she knows about the word “courier,” even though it still means nothing to us and will continue to go unexplained.
She and Mitch haven’t spoken in twelve years, and he interacts with her as though he hasn’t spoken to any human being in twelve years. What is their history? She’s for sure younger than him. Do you think they, like… you know?
Anyhow, New Chloe and The Gang head to an orchard where weird chunks of glass in the soil are poisoning the trees. It’s impossible to portray this as more boring than it is. And then, a snake crawls out of a dude’s mouth.
A SNAKE CRAWLS OUT OF A DUDE’S MOUTH.
They determine that the snake came through the toilet (which would seem to imply a particular method of entering its victim), and GUYS. WHAT DID I TELL YOU. I PREDICTED TOILET SNAKES:
Inherently creepy, readily available for cheesy TV work, and able to find their way into all kinds of unwelcome places… snakes are a CBS Program Zoo episode waiting to happen. Perhaps they find their way into the city water system? Please. Please let it be toilet snakes.
It turns out the snakes are shedding the poison glass, and they’re going to infect the water supply of the entire West Coast unless The Gang can stop them. Luckily, Mitch has concocted a poison that will explode the snakes’ Jacobson’s organs and leave humans alone. “How do we know that it won’t hurt humans?” asks a contentious Allison. In response, Mitch chugs the poison.
Sometimes, it is hard to get on board with Mitch as a character, because he sucks. But this was a definite high point for him.
At this point, the captured snake escapes. TIP FOR THE GANG: STOP LETTING THINGS ESCAPE ON ZOO FORCE ONE. THIS IS LIKE THE SIXTH TIME AND IT’S BAD POLICY. Jackson must subdue the snake using his mutant powers, and that’s when everyone finally knows his secret.
The Gang demand an explanation, naturally, so Mitch pulls up his handy diagram of Jackson’s mutated DNA. “A triple helix,” says Abe, as if that’s a thing anyone would say. And THEN — oh my god, the weird ideas that are portrayed as science on this show — Mitch explains that to find the cure, they only need to identify the seven animals with genomic fossils on the #TripleHelix, a super-size helping of nonsense that The Gang responds to with nonchalant expositional recapping:
Mitch: “If I can identify each one and its animal source, I should be able to come up with a cure and reverse the mutation.”
Abe: “We already know four, right?”
Allison: “So that leaves us three more animals to identify and capture.”
Mitch: “Once we’ve identified all seven genomic fossils, I should be able to eliminate that third strand.”
Dariela: “Sounds like you got your work cut out for you.”
And then Jackson says to Dariela, “It’d be good to have you with us on the team.” Honestly I had no idea her status as a member of The Gang was in question, but this is what passes for character development on TCBSPZ, so I guess just roll with it.
Whatever. Time to get the band back together. To Caraquet!
New Brunswick
“Why aren’t they saying anything about the leopard, or the cure?” asks Jamie McDeadweight, listening to the news radio and worrying about storylines that were abandoned three episodes ago. But that’s all quickly forgotten as their truck runs out of gas and Caraquet turns out to be (of course) on fire.
Jamie decides to go there anyway, and Logan follows along, because I guess. They are soon chased by something unseen that is both super scary and easily stopped by a weak fence. Behind the fence, they meet the survivors of Caraquet, who apparently set the fire to ward off animals. Chief among them are:
- Tough Guy Curtis, who asks Logan:
- And Budget Kirstie Alley:
The explain that Caraquet was supposed to be evacuated, but help never came. Everyone lives in the local school, which doubles as the town’s emergency relief center. “Lucky for us, it was stocked before the attacks,” comments Budget Kirstie Alley, apparently unaware that this kind of serendipitous convenience is how literally everything happens on The CBS Program Zoo.
Caraquet seems great for about the length of Jamie and Logan’s showers (not together, you perv… although, keep an eye on these two), but pretty soon every rando in the shelter starts giving off obvious vibes that the TCBSPZ writers have read The Lottery. Or at least watched The Hunger Games.
At dinner, some girl warns them not to eat the mashed potatoes (I wonder why), and then says this:
Tough Guy Curtis and Budget Kirstie did not like that, which bodes poorly for The Feeding. What’s The Feeding, you ask? No, you don’t ask, because you already figured out it’s a Lottery / Hunger Games ritual in which the Caraquetties choose two tributes to sacrifice to the animals, strongly influenced by the will of Curtis and Kirstie.
The townsfolk unanimously decide to sacrifice Jamie and… Random Girl? Not Logan? It sure seems like you’d want to condemn the newbies and keep around the person you’ve actually spent time with. Nevertheless, they drag the poor girls to the fence to be fed to the POLAR BEARS.
And that’s when — this is going to blow your friggin’ mind — JAMIE DOES SOMETHING RESOURCEFUL, slipping Logan a propane canister she stole from the kitchen and telling him to set off an explosion.
With the flimsy fence blown to bits, the polar bears set upon all of the creepy Caraquet people (but not Jamie, Logan, or Random Girl, of course), an event we are treated to partly in Polar-Bear-o-Vision, which is hilarious:
Our heroes take shelter on a school bus, and with the polar bears nearing, guess who comes pounding on the door, begging to be let in to safety?
That’s right. Budget Kirstie. “Let me in, Jamie. Please, please!” she begs. And Jamie, her eyes colder than the arctic waters where the polar bears make their home, says:
And then she tosses Budget Kirstie to the bears. Now, THAT’s character development!
But as Budget Kirstie bleeds out after literally being thrown under the bus, somebody shoots all the bears with tranq darts. Could it be?
Glossing over the further implication that Jamie’s plan has likely signed the death warrant of everyone else in Caraquet, we finally get our tearful reunion.
It’s not the same without Chloe.
Oof. Oh well.
ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Random Stranger of the Week
Bogglements of the Mind
Allison needs the team on her side. She rattles off the (alarming) list of their dead female leaders: Amelia, Eleanor… she doesn’t even know about Chloe yet! It all underscores their need to work together.
And then she says:
Um…
What does this have to do with… anything?
She knows Chloe died for this, right?
And then they go to save a rich stranger’s orchard. That is the main plotline of this episode.
Shipping Manifest
LogJam
Jamitch may have had their tearful reunion, but…
I’ll tell y’ns right now. I don’t care what 77% of respondents to my Twitter poll say. I’m #TeamLogan.
MarzHam
Uh, maybe this one’s off, guys.
RIP Chlackson
Zoolight of the Episode
In the REALEST scene of the night, Dariela confronts Jackson after he invites her to join The Gang (which, remember, she has for all intents and purposes already been a member of for like three-and-a-half episodes). She knows the real reason he kept her on… as a deadly insurance policy. She shut the doors on Chloe when it meant saving the rest of them from deadly gas. She put a bullet in the last mutant’s head when he killed her friends. And she won’t hesitate to do the same if Jackson’s mutation gets out of hand.
Or in other words:
Dari is definitely into Big Pun, right?
Zoonifying Theme
Shit happens. Sometimes you can fix it; sometimes you can’t. Sometimes the leader you admire confesses her love for you and dies minutes later, and that’s because the showrunner watched Lost and there’s nothing you can do about it. Sometimes you’re captured by a modern-day death cult that plans to feed you to the largest living land predator, and you manage to turn the tables on them.
We don’t control our circumstances, but we do control our response to them. Accept what you must; fight back when you can. Because whatever you do, there always has been and always will be war.
