Synopsis 1×03: Ben must assist an Inazagi professional as she defects to SPIGA, earning him the support of Elizabeth Strauss and Julian. Laura attempts to aid a sick girl from the Red Zone. Ben continues in his search for Elena, providing flashbacks to their life together.
The episode opens with a truly creepy take on child entertainment: a cartoon canine named Officer Bucky encouraging a small child to narc on her mother when she overhead something bad about the company. From this a rousing chant of “If you hear something yucky, tell Officer Bucky” is heard as the camera pans over enthusiastic children, before stopping on the face of Diana Walters (Krista Bridges), who seems concerned about the proceedings.
At SPIGA, teams from both organizations meet to arrange an agreement for territory, with Diana indicating through the use of Robert Frost that she desires to defect. SPIGA must decide how best to remove her, using various holograms to hide their talks with her. Ultimately, they decide on Ben’s plan, which is to fake her death and replace her body with a decoy.
Ben has an ulterior motive in this plan, which is that he wants to ensure a woman who recently died is not Elena.
Through flashbacks we see Ben as he is reunited with Elena in the Red Zone. He follows her to school only to discover that they use various drugs and enhancers to improve learning ability.
Within the Green Zone, Laura and Ben’s cook is caught stealing food from their house. Laura stops her arrest by offering bacon to the police (food has become a highly valued commodity). As she discovers, her cook was taking the food for an insurance policy within her housing unit as one of her neighbors’ daughter has been ill.
Laura encourages the cook to bring the girl next time as she is a doctor and hopes to help. This plan goes unfortunately awry as others hear of the plan and attempt to break into the Green Zone hoping that the doctor can heal them.
In the Red Zone, one of Ben’s competitors has found his tech. As the device is locked, he enters the Red Zone seeking someone to unlock it. He is put through a series of disgusting trials that ultimately end in him eating a rat. The hacker provides him with the needed intel to hack the device, but informs him that the entire situation was recorded and if he ever returned or spoke of this, that video would be released.
At SPIGA, the body switch works and the Inazagi team leaves with what they believe is Diana’s body. Ben is handed the unknown woman’s belongings (the body that was switched with Diana’s), where he finds the ring of Elena.
He leaves for the Red Zone to meet Elena’s brother, Theo, only to discover through a message within the ring that she had given it to a friend who was attempting to escape. From here we see Julian as he personally takes the belongings of the women to her parents, apologizing profusely for their loss. Perhaps he is not as heartless as we were led to believe.
This show, although not terribly complex, is still an interesting look at corporations and just how much control they can have over us and our planet.
English