Ryan sleeps not just fully clothed, but in combat gear. This is because Ryan has impure thoughts when he shares a bed with Selene, and is spooks him.
Ebony (to Bray): If I have to be under a leader, I’d rather be under you than under any guy I know.
Amber’s death has turned Bray into a giant pussy and, um, well, Morrissey, I think. he’s too busy moping to do anything remotely useful.
Tyson keeps getting uglier. I wonder if they’re trying to incrementally replace her with another actress.
After rescuing Trudy from some ruffians who take advantage of her just wandering around randomly asking people if they’ve seen her baby, Selene has a heart-to-heart with Ellie, who makes her question whether her cozy relationship with Ryan is deficient.
Katy Perry has written a draft of their bill of rights, in the form of a piece of paper with the word “BILL OF RIGHTS” written on it, and she freaks out when Jack starts to worry about the possibility that “It was a deadly space comet” is actually not a very convincing explanation. He also fails to notice when Ellie walks in wearing what looks like a cheerleader uniform. Maybe that’s not a big deal in New Zealand.
Tyson’s obsession with making Bray get the formula right seems to be an attempt to cockblock Bray from getting it on with Kary Perry.
The Chosen reveal themselves to be called “The Chosen” and to worship Zoot, and have kidnapped Trudy’s baby, who they somehow know is Zoot’s son, when they rough up Dal.
Having decided that the Chosen have probably got Brady, Bray immediately wnats to go out to fight them, but everyone points out that as he now knows the secret of the antidote, he can’t be let out. He insists that he wouldn’t reveal the secret under torture, Ellie points out that he might talk if they threatened one of the other Mallrats, or Brady. Which I believe proves that only Lex and Ebony could be trusted with the formula. Huh.
Selene’s sexy negligee totally fails to attract Ryan, raising my suspicion that he’s actually an eunuch following a tragic incident as a child involving a mechanical rice-picker, and prompting Lex to tell Patsy and Chloe that Ryan’s a virgin.
Jack, rewatching the tape, finds that no one told the president (of wherever) that his mic was still on when, immediately afterward, he talks to someone unseen about how the whole press release was a lie. But, of course, the tape breaks before he can show anyone else.
Ebony hits KC upside the head with a baseball bat for no clear reason, then listens in during a recitication of The Chosen’s FAQ:
- Q. Who am I?
- A. You are the guardian of Zoot’s legacy.
- Q.Who are you?
- A. We are The Chosen
- Q. What will you inherit?
- A. Power and Chaos
- Q. Who is number one?
- A. You are number six
- Q. Who do you serve, and who do you trust?
Also, “The Guardian”‘s real name is “Jaffa”. Kree!
Ryan’s total inability to notice that Selene has done everything shy of stripping naked and spreading eagle has finally made Selene fall off the wagon.
Meanwhile Ebony, having found Brady, decides the best thing to do is lure Trudy to the Chosen instead of rescuing Brady.
Ryan makes the mistake of going to Lex Luthor for advise on sex. Lex tells her the same advice my roommate summer after sophomore year told me: “Be a total jackass. Women secretly love that.”
Later, the Chosen have named Trudy to be their holy mother, and tell her that while they won’t let her go, they otherwise kinda have to do as she says, starting with killing Ebony if she so chooses, which serves as an excuse for a whole-episode flashback to back when Zoot was Martin, Bray didn’t have a rattail, and Trudy was a shy girl with a red headscarf and a crush on Bray.
They seem to attend some sort of weird fascist school where everyone wears a barcode, a headscarf, and a purple triangle or yellow circle on their shirt. Except for Ebony, the new girl, who dresses slutty and no one seems to notice. I will point out that for all I know, that is now schools work in New Zealand.
All whored up for the school dance, Trudy looks kind of like someone, but I can’t recall who. Turns out that Trudy ended up with Pre-Zoot Martin (Who was a total loser) because Ebony convinced Bray that poor Martin might become suicidal if Trudy ended up with the older, cuter brother.
The flashback also gives us a chance to finally see that three second clip of news footage they show during the titles. It’s still pre-fall, and the collapse of civilization seems to be happening very slowly, despite all the claims of the virus happening “too fast”. We get to see Zoot found his movement, and, while we never actually saw what happened, it’s at this point that Martin’s eyes turned all creepy. I assume that with his mother dead, there was no one left to tell him not to look into the eyes of the sun (‘Coz momma, that’s where the fun is).
We get to see poor Bray angsting over his dying father. He’s got the original form of the virus, which causes festering sores instead of fake-old.
And now we have a definitive timeline for the virus. Bray and Martin lost their parents nine months before the beginning of the series, and there were still adults left at that point. The collapse of civilization took no more than, let’s say, six months. We may also conclude that Bray’s rattail nine months older than Brady.
Ebony gets sick of Trudy’s yammering at the same time as I do, so Trudy has Jaffa send her away to be placed in bondage.
Fun Fact: The flashback episode, Season 2, episode 14, is the only episode of The Tribe in which Lex does not appear.
Ryan and Selene, having decided that they do indeed love each other, but are not going to cave to the pressure of having sex until they’re both ready, decide that they’re both ready and should have sex. Except that this is when everyone notices that Trudy has disappeared.
Trudy decides to trust Ebony to go get the others and helps her escape. This is because Trudy, like everyone else in this show, is utterly unable to learn from the past.
Ellie confides her desire to be jumped by Jack to her sister, who suggests that Ellie just swallow her pride and jump Jack herself (By the way, in case you missed it, Jack is the kid I used to call “Kiwi Love Actually Kid”, but I’ve gotten tired of that). Then Alice snogs Jack just to make him uncomfortable.
At the final showdown, the Mall Rats corner the Chosen, and Trudy escapes by the simple expedient of shoving them a bit. But Lex, eager to start a fight, has gotten himself captured, and when they threaten to kill him, Trudy for some reason gives herself and her baby up to the crazy death cultists.
Five mintues into episode 17, Leah asks me who the slutty-looking young girl is. It turns out to be Patsy, who has by now whored herself up so much that Leah can’t recognize her any more.
Lex and Bray beat each other up. The next morning, Tyson cockblocks Katy Perry to give Bray some herbal tea for his bruises.
- Leah: (Tyson voice) Actually, you’re not supposed to drink it
- Ross: (For the 100th time this series) (Professor Farnsworth voice) It’s a suppository
Bray makes Ebony joint leader because she threatens to destroy civilization by releasing the antidote. The others go along with this, because they are about as good at voting in their own interests as the state of Kansas. This comes to a head in the form of Tyson and Ebony reciting platitudes at each other.
Ryan relates the story of why Lex is such a jackass, revealing that in the days before the adults died, big kids like himself were all conscripted and sent to boot camp. In this boot camp, everyone wears barcode armbands, all the drill sergeants are women, and the boys wear black headscarfs. Leah feels sympathy for Lex after his backstory, in which we see that lex was an asshole at boot camp, and was punished for it.
Jack tries to profess his love for Ellie in the form of a flash animation, but she misses it because she’s had to go to the farm with Dal to help a sheep give birth. When the legs are in the wrong position, though, we are treated to the worst analogy ever: “It’s like trying to pull a half-open umbrella through a drain pipe.” Dal successfully delivers the lamb, a scene which would have grossed me out a lot more if I hadn’t watched All Creatures Great and Small.
The stress of recent events sends Lex Luthor on a drunken bender. Meanwhile, Bray tries to set down a bill of rights for the tribes, but Ebony wants the death penalty, and Tyson doesn’t want rules, because they crimp everyone following their own destiny and doing whatever they feel is best.
Ebony pours some home-made bromo-seltzer into someone’s supply of Antidote as part of what is either a brilliant master plan, or, more likely, her just randomly acting evil just to be contrary.
After signing the bill of rights, everyone throws a rave, because that’s how things work in the new future. Did I mention how much the rave scene from The Matrix Reloaded pissed me off?
Lex’s drunken antics ruin the party, which prompts everyone to realize that, as fellow Mallrats, it’s their duty to help Lex get over his addiction. At this point, it occurs to me that the symbol Selene wears on her head these days is, if I’m recalling correctly, Metatron’s Circle.
- Leah: You know what this show teaches me? Being a leader is hard.
- Ross: Especially when you’re terrible at it.
Unfortunately, Tyson doesn’t feel that it’s her destiny to clean up after herself when she spills her poisoned antidote, which is sad because I do not like Tyson and would not mind if she died. Instead, Mr. Checkov fires his gun by having the dog who has developed a taste for antidote thanks to Panty and Chloe slipping him some on the DL, be nearby and willing to help.
Episode 20, therefore, begins with the funeral of Bob, including a Really Dead Montage to drive the point home, along with the power chord version of the theme song, because this show has no incidental music other than various arrangements of the theme song.
Tyson sorts out that Bob’s death was by poison meant for her, and Bray confronts Ebony about it. Her excuse is that she could not possibly have tried to kill Tyson, since she’s way better at murder than that, and had she wanted to kill her, she’d have been more direct, and not fucked it up. Bray believes this, because Bray has a radically inaccurate estimate of Ebony’s effectiveness as a villain.
Ebony keeps pausing to sound threatening in the middle of sentences. It makes her sound like Shatner. She finds the poison in Katy Perry’s room, and everyone thinks this is a fair cop, because they have fallen for this exact set-up before.