Alphas: Sorry, No Time Travel in This Excellent Adventure

In a lot of ways, “Bill and Gary’s Excellent Adventure” makes up for everything that I found lacking in last week’s episode of Alphas. It zeroed in on its main storyline and never once pushed it to the sidelines in order to deal with this week’s bad guy(s). And for the first time ever, there were no new Alphas to be hunted; instead the villains are just regular humans.

The action opens up in the middle of an operation, with the team in pursuit of an unknown guy who has some files. The details are light; we are simply told they needed whatever information this guy had on his iPad. But in the rush to catch him, Gary is left without any supervision. He naturally causes trouble, although he hardly means to, and is arrested. Now if I may say, as much as this was necessary to the plot, how could the arresting officer not realize Gary had some kind of handicap? Yes, he is a high functioning autistic man, but he hardly blends in. It’s probable that he wouldn’t be aware of DCIS, but any person with half a brain could tell Gary wasn’t any trouble worth arresting. As I said though, it was necessary to the plot, and we can chalk this up to shoddy police work.

Bill plays a heavy role in this episode, as he should. Gary acts as Bill’s partner, an idea Gary is all too thrilled with. It’s no secret that Bill hasn’t been the easiest to get along with, out of the Alpha team members. What we know of him up until this point is that he used to be an FBI agent, but had lost his badge for some unknown reason. His work with Dr. Rosen was simply a means to an end while he waited to be reinstated. That explains his attitude towards the other Alphas; he believes he is better than them and should be back with the FBI, not babysitting a guy with autism. What we learn in this episode is the circumstances surrounding Bill’s termination. In an act of anger, he shoved a fellow agent using his ability and seriously injured him. This evidences sheds new light on Bill’s behavior. No wonder he seems irritated all the time. Being on a team surrounded by those with abilities like him is a constant reminder that his power cost him his job. I’d be a little less than kind if I had to constantly live through that.

Of course, this is an episode of growing. As Bill and Gary hunt down a group of kidnappers, Bill inadvertently bonds with Gary a bit. More importantly, he realizes how invaluable his teammates are. If it weren’t for them, he wouldn’t have been able to find the kidnappers and save a girl’s life. At the end he turns down an offer to rejoin the FBI and declares himself to be happy with his place in life.

As I mentioned before, the baddies this week are regular folk like you and me. No powers whatsoever. I’m really glad Alphas went this direction this week. It changes things up just enough, keeping the show feeling fresh. It allowed the episode more breathing room to focus on Bill rather than having to introduce a new Alpha and his ability. Time was still taken to try and make real people out of these bad dudes, and it actually kind of succeeded. For just being your baddies of the week, they had a lot of character to them.

The B-story this week surrounded Nina and Hicks. It was pretty run of the mill stuff, mostly serving as a way to get the two of them to make out. It felt more like a set-up than an actual full on story, so expect to see it coming up in later episodes. Overall, this is was a great episode of Alphas. It changed the formula enough to make me forget how much last week irked me.