But the last couple of scenes with Chad in this episode played out much more ambiguously.
When he woke from his surgery and seemed so thankful to Anna and eager to help her find the Fifth Column, I was really annoyed, because the last few episodes have shown he clearly has his own suspicions about what the Vs are up to – hell, just last week, he basically called Anna out on using a world crisis to garner sympathy, and I loved how he made his medical issues into a big news story, to help protect himself. I'm a bit confused by what Chad is up to, but for now at least, it's an intriguing sort of confusion. But instead, it turned out she really was trying to keep him off the ship and away from Anna, as we see more of her own slow but sure rebellion occurring against her oh-so-dangerous mama. When Tyler reacted in his typically abrasive manner and told Erica he was definitely going to join the live aboard program, I wondered if Lisa had used a bit of complex manipulation on him – knowing that she could set him off like that by first speaking to Erica and then telling him she didn't want him to live on the ship. While Tyler himself remains amazingly hateable (who else wanted Erica to smack him, when he hissed, "What did you say to her?!" after Lisa spoke to Erica), at least Lisa is getting some good material related to his story. The reveal on the meaning of this episode's title was pretty cool, I must say, as it turned out to be a crude but effective torture device Hobbes had – who is turning into an increasingly compelling character. Erica deciding to let Hobbes torture him (and Jack not supporting it, but not stopping it either) obviously showed this group is deciding to go to extreme measures at this point.
Hell, she didn't even bring it up with their human prisoner, when he asked the same question! What is her issue in articulating the actual evil things she's seen the Vs do? That prisoner though led to some better and more interesting moments through the episode, including a bit of a moral crossroads, once it became clear he was lying about who he was and what he knew.
When he asked her to name one thing they'd done since they arrived, I nearly shouted out, "Killed a warehouse full of people!" But of course Erica didn't say that. It's still maddening that Erica hasn't told Tyler the truth about the Vs, after all this time. Considering that sucker survived multiple gun shots and an axe wound, the threat the Soldiers pose if they attack in a group was very apparent and a nicely done way of upping the danger our heroes are in. One clever touch was seeing how it had a radar-like ability to sense the heartbeats coming through the ceiling above it, as it searched for Valerie. Silent, deadly and apparently extremely difficult to kill, the Soldier we met here was basically the V version of a Terminator. We got a lot more of an idea on what Anna's "Soldiers" are in this episode and it turned out it's not just a career path for a Visitor, but really a different type of V all together. If you were Valerie, wouldn't you be asking what that meant? It's an alien, so there could have been many, many possible answers (including something about how removing it would definitely kill Valerie too) that would have sufficed, but it seemed like they wanted Valerie to bring up the option without really dealing with the reasons she wouldn't do it. You're too far along," with no further elaboration.
Abortion remains a touchy subject for any TV series to deal with, but still, it was a bit frustrating when Valerie told Leah she wanted the baby out of her and was told, "That's not an option. With that lizard out of the bag, momentum built as Ryan and Valerie (accompanied by Lexa Doig's Leah) were forced to go on the run, while we saw that Anna and the other Visitors did indeed know about the baby's existence and wanted it killed. You knew they'd decided to pick up the pace when the episode began with Ryan just flat out telling Valerie he was a Visitor, without any more prolonged build up. This was a busy, entertaining episode that found almost every character in the midst of pretty notable occurrences.