Utopia – Not Slow Not Bad

By: Gladys Luna

Jessica Hyde (Sasha Lane) and Ian (Dan Byrd) dig a grave to bury Artemis (Camryn Manheim). They return to the others and Ian lets them know that Jessica killed her friend with a scarf. The woman defends herself saying that if “The Harvest” would have found her they would have inflected a bigger pain on her. Jessica begins to spit in her hands in order to clean herself and Becky (Ashleigh LaThrop) suggests to go and use some water instead. Jessica leaves and then hears a noise. Grant (Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton) shows up and then Becky confesses that they have finally found him. Jessica tries to go closer to him, but the kid looks like he can run at any minute. Grant tries to stop the woman from going any further and she sees that he has a starburst like hers drawn in his hand. She sees the opportunity and offers to show him the real thing she has on her arm . While he sees it she tries to steal the manuscript from him, but the kid is quick to escape into the bathroom and throws the manuscript out the window. Jessica follows him and tries to stop him, but he slips from her hand. She escapes by the window as well and sees the whole manuscript scattered all over the grass. They both start to pick up as many pages as they can.

Dr. Christie (John Cusack) and Thomas (Cory Michael Smith) discuss how Dr. Stearns (Rainn Wilson) went from being an easy target to becoming the most dangerous man for them at the moment and make a plan to take him out of the game as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Dr. Stearns gets some breakfast while speaking to his wife and letting her know the difficulties he has been faced with since he arrived at St. Louis. Suddenly he sees a bunch of protestors discussing their next move and he decides to introduce himself. They let him join them. Thomas arrives at a meeting with the team that Cara (Fiona Dourif) and Arby (Christopher Denham) are part of. He goes through the main tasks in order to get “Utopia” and shows them a picture of Jessica and Grant. He then encourages them to go big and do something to get all of the attention on Grant so an entire nation would be looking for him. He suggests for them to go on a killing spree in a public park, but Cara does not agree with it. They confront each other about the man’s ruthless plans. He also lets them know that Dr. Stearns has turned into a problem and they need to fix it now. Since Cara realizes that she has zero chance to win the argument against Thomas, she decides to pretend that she agrees with his plans and remains in silence.

Jessica and Grant sit face to face and she lets him know that given the current situation she has realized that he has no one to look after him and that if he continues acting in the way he is doing then he would end up like her, always running. So, she asks for his help. She explains that she has a lot of questions and he has all the answers to it. They kid agrees to help her and let everyone see the manuscript. They divide the pages to see if they could find something meaningful that would lead them to “Home.” In “Utopia” Ian watches a clock hanging on the wall and sees the pattern of numbers that Jessica found under Artemis fingernails.

At first it seems the numbers refer to the population of the world, but then Wilson (Desmin Borges) manages to find that it actually is a Chicago phone number. So, Jessica calls in and the phone is answered by a woman who identifies herself as Katherine Milner (Sonja Sohn) from the Homeland Security Department. Jessica explains how she found her number and the woman declines to know who Artemis is and hangs up on them. A few seconds later the phone rings and the same Katherine tells them that as soon as they hung up the “Harvest” started moving towards them so they need to run away. She gives them an address to meet with her. They burn the place but leave Sam’s (Jessica Rothe) body somewhere else.

Cara meets with Dr. Christie and complains about Thomas’s plan. He thanks her for being open and honest with him and promises he will fix it. While the group is on their way to meet with Katherine, Jessica asks Ian to stop the car and tells them that since she doesn’t know if it’s safe to meet the woman she will stay there. He asks them to be careful. Becky asks Grant to stay with her and Wilson decides that he will do the same since he doesn’t feel he is ready to be tortured again. Ian and Becky arrive to an empty toy store where Katherine is already waiting for them. As she sees that Jessica is not there and they won’t provide her what she needs, she decides to leave. However, Becky stops her saying that they have seen “Utopia.” Katherine explains to them that after the events of 9/11 the government gathered a group of scientists to create biological weapons but there were not meant to start a biological war. Unfortunately, some of the scientists were corrupt and they escaped with the weapons. One of them was the so called “Dr. Rabbit” who made a deal with China who planned to release a virus on their country, but at the very last minute they backed out and “Dr. Rabbit” wasn’t pleased by it. Therefore, he traveled to China and released the virus that killed a lot of people there, a virus that Becky identifies as SARS. After a while the Chinese government trapped him, tortured him and tattooed the Chinese symbol for rabbit in his torso. His identity was revealed and when “Dr. Rabbit” escaped, he killed everyone who knew who he was – 63 people across all the continents. He then went underground and Katherine believes that Jessica has something that might be of danger to him and that is why he wants her. Katherine walks her way to the exit, but before she does she opens a door that is on a cooking toy revealing a recorder. Becky asks her “where’s home” and the other woman replies “where the heart is.”

A Teacher (Cortney McKenna) is talking about the lesson of the day to her students when Arby arrives and asks for her support. He is looking for a certain kind of a kid and chooses one called Adam (Brady Dustin Harris). Later on, he meets with Dr. Christie to discuss about their plan and tells him that he has the kid ready for his mission. Ian and Becky are driving back to meet with the others when they are suddenly hit by rocks that were thrown by Jessica, Wilson and Grant playing a joke on them. The pair updates Jessica on what they found out from Katherine and she asks Ian to drive to City Mouse. While on the way Jessica tells them that she used to live in her own house during the time she was held captive. She says she was around six or seven years old and her house was yellow. She recalls that a lot of gifts arrived regularly, but she was never allowed to open them and that there was a man that would feed her cookies every Tuesday.

Everything she says seems to be drawn in the manuscript and that is how Wilson sees a drawing of “Dr. Rabbit” giving her cookies. He assumes that the reason why he wants to capture her is because she is the only one alive that can recognize him, but the girl says that she does not remember him. They believe that his identity might also be hidden in “Utopia”.

Thomas arrives to the Quarantine Response Center. Dr. Stearns tries to reach out to him, but with no success at all. Minutes later he is finally allowed into the place and brings with him Dale Warwick (Tim Hopper), a man he has just met and who is the father of a girl that has been held in the quarantine center. Once inside the father sees his daughter Charlotte (Hadley Robinson) and he begs Dr. Stearns to save her. Back to the gang, Becky discovers a drawing that Sam repeatedly made – a winged Mr. Rabbit wearing a straitjacket while sitting on a pink and white striped deer. They believe that it might refer to the page of the manuscript she saw, but they could not find it. Wilson suggests that maybe that is because they don’t have it all. We then see Alice reading a note that Grant left saying: “I’ll be back for this, keep it safe.” She takes the other half of the manuscript from under the bed where it can be seen the same image that Sam drew.

On the other hand, Arby arrives with Adam to a certain house. He dresses the boy exactly like Grant and gives him a couple of gloves with his fingerprints as well as a gun. The kid enters the house followed by Arby. Then, the man kills someone in the kitchen and goes to the dining room where Cara is having lunch with her family. She is petrified when seeing Arby. Then, he shoots everyone there. When he is about to leave, he hears a toilet being flushed and a kid coming out of the bathroom while eating the same candies that Dr. Christie has. He seems to think for a while  and then shots him and screams.