Zoo: Sleuths Recap

Synopsis for 1×07: Mitch becomes a Judas, while the team tries to track down some disappearing bears.

Rating: ★★★★☆

If you felt a little confused by the way Zoo started this week, you weren’t alone. The episode started toward the end, with the team creeping through some sort of underground tunnel in search of bears. Shortly after they heard the bears’ steadily breathing nearby, the episode flashed back to forty-two hours earlier in order to explain how they’d reached that point.

After Jamie came clean to the team about what had happened with the FBI agent, they rushed to start covering it up. Though the event hadn’t made the news, they were quick to get her set up with a new passport and a new identity. Jamie became Nancy Armstrong, even though she seemed less than thrilled about it. She was insistent that it might be better for her to just turn herself in, but the rest of the team disagreed. She did what she had to do, it had been self defense, and they weren’t even sure if the man who’d been following them around was really even with the FBI.

The team’s next quest was going to take them to Paris, where a sleuth of bears had disappeared and the scientists tracking them had been unable to find them. One of those bears ended up in the house of the woman we’d been introduced to last week, who had holed up in her pantry to try and keep away from the beast that was intent on destroying her kitchen. Before they could head out, Mitch excused himself from the group and was later seen making a call to Reiden Global. He told them he had access to the mother cell and would return it to them if they were willing to meet his demands. Et tu, Brute? Why Mitch, why?

They arrived in France and touched based with the scientists who had lost the bears. Chloe invited everyone to stay at her home, and in the process her long lost fiancé was dredged up. The audience got a chance to meet him through the team’s eyes, as he was involved in the case of the missing bears, and later Chloe rediscovered her wedding dress and had a moment.

While all that transpired, Jamie second guessed her new identity. She and Abraham had a good talk about it, and he shared a sad piece of his history with her. He’d had another name, but when he was young he was taken in by rebels who had killed his parents and made him choose which of his younger brothers he’d killed. Instead of choosing, he refused to make a choice and both of his brothers were shot right in front of him. He later was able to escape and run away, and changed his name to Abraham. All of that was shared so he could point out that Jamie, and the rest of the team, were his new family and he would protect them at all costs.

It was exactly what poor Jamie needed to hear after the number of traumatic incidences she’d experienced in such a short time.

For the first time since he was introduced, the man behind the team appeared again and had to get on Chloe’s case about the death of the FBI agent. He insisted that she needed to turn whoever it was in to the authorities, because harboring a fugitive could lead to the mission being compromised. Even though she’s come to care about all of the people in her team, he told her that it isn’t about the individuals anymore. They are replaceable, she is not, and she needed to re-prioritize.

Of course, she wasn’t happy about that order and when she returned to the team they were already planning a way to help Jamie out of her situation. The first step? Proving the agent was on Reiden Global’s payroll and that he was dirty (if he was an agent at all). What did they need to do to get it done? Oh, you know, just break into Reiden Global’s Paris office and hack their books. No biggie.

While the majority of the team focused on that task, Mitch tested the blood of the bear that had been in the French woman’s house. It appeared to be hibernating, but not in the typical ‘winter’ hibernation. Instead, Mitch proposed that it was in a hibernation similar to what caterpillars go into as they’re changing into butterflies. The bear was changing, and the DNA anomalies soon proved it. The bear’s DNA itself was shifting from what it used to be, and as the bear woke up, Mitch found that part of it made the bear’s skin tough like armor so that they weren’t able to tranquilize it again. In a last ditch effort he was able to inject an RFID chip into it before the bear broke out of the facility.

The team, consisting of Abraham, Jackson, Chloe, and Chloe’s fiancé followed the bear to the other bears of the sleuth. Cue returning to the initial scene of the episode. Stuck in the tunnels, they found the bears sleeping, yet after they’d located all three they started to head back out and found that the once sleeping bears were now gone. The bears charged them, and even though Chloe’s fiancé took a hit, the team managed to subdue the creatures and got out of there without too much harm done.

Mitch, after looking at the DNA, proposed his theory of what had occurred after the team was safe. Something about the mother cell was speeding up evolution. DNA changes were normal. Mutations were normal. However, whatever was contained in Reiden’s mother cell seemed to be helping evolution along at a frighteningly rapid rate. Animals were taking on new, adaptive traits that would have naturally occurred. That’s what was causing the shift in behavior. Something in Reiden’s mother cell was influencing the animals, and what Jamie had said all along was proven to be true. Mitch pointed out that if the mother cell could do this to the animals, then perhaps it could be used to reverse the effects too.

Chloe, with this information under her belt, stood up to the man behind the curtain and insisted they weren’t going to give Jamie up. Good girl.

Finally, Mitch’s betrayal came full circle as he met with the Reiden Global representative. His motivations were revealed as he explained that Reiden had a cure for his daughter, and he wanted access to it. Three months worth of pills would get them the mother cell back. The representative seemed less than thrilled by the prospect, especially considering how difficult it would be to get pills, but Mitch made his offer and walked away.