Zoo: Blame it on Leo Recap

Synopsis for 1×05: Half the team searches for Leo Butler, who knows something about Reiden Global and their part in the animal attacks, while the other half follows bats to Rio.

Rating: ★★★★☆

This week their team began their second mission, but not before wrapping up their first. Mitch managed to get into a school’s science lab while Jamie was the lookout. He was able to discover the bacteria that had been making the wolves go crazy, and also found a chemical signature. It meant that the bacteria was man made, and if they could figure out who the signature belonged to they might be able to figure out who is behind the animal attacks.

Chloe got word that there were bats swarming in Rio and claimed that they needed to go there immediately. Jackson was quick to refuse. He’d been leafing through Hartley’s Bible and the same name had kept coming up: Leo Butler. Paired with the picture of Hartley and Jackson’s dad, Jackson believed they needed to pursue that line of the investigation and he didn’t want to go to Rio. Compromising, Chloe agreed, after Mitch was able to make the connection between the signature and the bacteria to Leo Butler, to allow Jackson and Jamie to stay and pursue the case while the rest went to Rio.

Mr. FBI, also known as Agent Schafer, showed back up on the scene and told Jackson and Chloe that he would be accompanying them. After all, Leo Butler had been revealed to be blackmailing Reiden Global. He’d once worked for them, but after finding out some secret, he quit and ran off and had been taking their money and putting it into charities in cities that had been decimated by Reiden’s impact. He was wanted by the FBI as much as Jackson and Jamie wanted to question him, so they weren’t going to shake their FBI friend.

As it has been with previous episodes, aside from the two main story lines following the teams, a third thread was added into the mix. In Boston, viewers were introduced to a little girl and her service dog who could sense seizures moments before they happened.

While Jackson, Jamie, and Schafer all go after Leo Butler, the rest of the team touched down in Rio and spoke with Chloe’s contact there. They found out that the Brazillian government hadn’t made a decision quite yet as to what they were going to do, but odds were the next morning they planned to drop poison on the bats. Unfortunately for everyone in the city, the poison would also probably harm the people there. After receiving the grim news, the team followed the bats to a poor part of Rio where they seemed to be congregating.

Not only did they congregate, like they had done in Antarctica, but they seemed intent on destroying the only power source to that part of the city. A hoard of bats dropped down onto a poorly rigged power source and promptly ripped up the electronics in it, darkening the town. As the team watched, they were accosted by gangsters. A very not-field-savvy Chloe immediately pulled her gun, and the situation seemed dire until Abraham stepped in and greased the leader’s palm with a little green to buy their safety. They returned to the hotel to regroup, but not before Mitch was able to pick up one of the bats to take with him.

Jackson and Jamie found Leo Butler, who at first claimed to know nothing. Not long after, however, with Jamie coming alongside him, he explained what he had found. Reiden Global had a vector, a special cell that put them at the top of the market. It was called “the mother cell,” and by the time Reiden Global realized the negative impact it had on anything that ingested it, it was already too late. The mother cell had been worked into so many products across the world that there was no way to stop it. He revealed that he just so happened to have the mother cell, and Jamie convinced him to take her to it.

Back in Boston, the little girl’s dog got out of the yard and was hit by a car. Thankfully, her stepdad got the dog to the vet, but there were going to be issues paying for the vet bills. Apparently her family had fallen on hard times, and the only reason they’d even been able to get the dog for her was because of her biological father. The stepfather suggested that they contact him, tell him what happened, and ask him to help. Her mother refused, clearly there was bad blood between them, so they decided they’d just pay the bills and make it work.

The bat Mitch had brought back to the hotel room had been alive still, even after he’d begun to examine it. While Chloe was on the phone with Jackson it attacked her, forcing the phone from her hands as it tried to attack the phone and destroy it. When she asked Mitch if it was possible the bat was attracted to her cell phone, he had a scary theory. He explained the food chain, and said that humans were actually pretty far down it. The only two things that made humans behave as apex predators were their ability to reason, and their technology. Perhaps the animals had figured that out, and now aimed to rid them of their technology.

Back in Boston, the little girl began piling up stuff to sell. Her mother told her she didn’t need to do that, and went to start putting the things back when she found a picture of the child’s father. They discussed it for a moment, but were distracted when the little girl’s dog was brought back to her safe and sound. She took him to feed him, and her mother left the picture of her father on the nightstand. It was a picture of Mitch, connecting the call from a previous episode to this new bit of information. However, that wasn’t all the audience saw because the mother had left the dog’s meds next to it. On them? Reiden Global’s logo.

The crew in Rio decided they had to cut the power, so they went back to where they’d originally met the gangsters and were once again confronted by them. It didn’t end well.

Finally, Jamie and Leo ended up where he had stashed the mother cell. He left her in the car while he went to fetch it, and when he brought it back he offered it to her and explained that it was almost a relief. However, as he looked at his phone, he realized his GPS was on and that they’d been tracked. He claimed she’d tricked him, and as he drove distracted they were smashed into. In the last moments of the episode, Jamie watched as Hartley approached the car, sought out the mother cell, and left her there presumably for dead.