Persons Unknown - Episode 1.03 - The Way Through - Recap

"The Way Through" begins with yet another foiled escape plan. The seven hostages have spent a week digging an underground tunnel away from town, but as they reach the twenty foot mark they run into a metal wall blocking their path. To make matters worse, an alarm then sounds and gas is released into the underground passageway. The hostages struggle to escape, and Joe and Graham help an unconscious Janet back up to the surface. Joe prepares to give her CPR, but she regains consciousness before he can.

We then see how the failed escapes are affecting the hostages, as tempers rise inside the Chinese restaurant over whether or not it is possible to escape. They then come up with the idea of creating a big signal fire in hopes of being rescued. The hostages gather what they can in the center of town, but again their kidnappers are a step ahead of them, as everything has been doused in flame retardant. At that moment, a helicopter appears in the sky, but instead of landing to rescue the hostages it hovers over the town and drops a package. The package contains 7 smaller boxes, 3 of which (held by Graham, Charlie, and Tori) have gas masks inside.

Back inside the hotel, Graham offers his gas mask to Moira, which leads Janet to try to steal Charlie's while she pleads her case about her daughter being all alone if anything happened to her. Charlie isn't having it though, reminding Janet of his sick wife back home. The hostages then decide to search the town for things to protect those without gas masks. Back in San Francisco, Mark returns home to find an armed man in his living room, who tells him not to write the story about Janet and leaves with Mark's laptop.

Bill goes up to Charlie's room, and tells him about a dream he had of Charlie trying to smother him with a pillow. He is only trying to get a reaction out of Charlie, however, as Bill had seen a video of Charlie doing this earlier in the day. We then see flashbacks of Charlie suffocating his wife, exactly as it was shown in the video Bill saw. As the hostages search the town, Janet enters a grocery store as she believes someone is inside. She reaches the back room and finds Charlie, who has found a drink he remembers from his childhood. Suddenly, the door shuts and locks them in as the alarm sounds again. Charlie puts his gas mask on, as gas rushes into the room. They try to escape, and as Janet begins to pass out the door unlocks and Charlie helps her into the street, where they realize the gas was only released in the small room they were trapped in.

In San Fransisco, Mark sneaks into the office of the man who stole his laptop (Samuel Edick, Private Investigations), and begins looking through files on the man's computer. In a file containing Janet's emails, Mark sees that both Janet and her mother are looking for Janet's husband. He then sees an email about a deposit of $10,000 into an offshore account. He calls the number in the email, but hears only strange noises. When he hangs up, his cell phone rings, and when he answers he hears the same strange noises.

Later that night, Charlie meets up with Bill and begins to talk about his sick wife, when Bill tells him that he saw Charlie kill her on the TV in the TV repair store. Janet and Joe meet up in an ice cream shop, and while Janet looks around she realizes that the pictures painted on the wall are actually her mother and her daughter. She runs to the hotel and threatens Moira to give her a gas mask, but Joe calms her down before she can do anything. The next morning the seven hostages meet in the hotel lobby, and just as Graham explains that "things are only going to get worse," the alarm sounds again and Charlie, Tori and Moira put on the gas masks as gas is released into the room. As they try to escape, Bill attacks Charlie and steals his gas mask. However, the others realize that the gas being released into the room is not toxic, instead there is toxic gas being released inside the gas masks. Janet grabs a knife and releases the toxic gas from the gas masks.

In the aftermath, Bill and Charlie meet up in the street where Bill apologizes for attacking Charlie. After Bill tells Charlie he doesn't believe the story about his wife, Charlie questions if Bill really is a car salesman, which he admits he is not. Joe and Janet meet in the lobby of the hotel, where he says "maybe the way out is the way through... we ride it out until the end." The night manager then delivers them a bowl of fortune cookies from the Shanghai Palace, which Janet promptly throws away. Back in San Francisco, Edick meets up with a detective at the police station and tells him that he can solve Janet Cooper's disappearnce, claiming that he located the prime suspect, Janet's ex-husband, and that his name is not Cooper. When the detective opens the envelope that Edick leaves, there is a picture of Janet and Mark Renbe.

I thought this was another good episode, although it seems that the hostages are in exactly the same spot they were after last weeks episode, with another failed escape attempt. They may actually be worse off now, as their kidnappers are trying to pit them against one another while also trying to kill them with toxic gas. I wasn't a big fan of the San Francisco scenes, but they have certainly been made more intriguing with that last scene. The photo of Mark and Janet had to be doctored, right? I think it's more likely that Edick is trying to set Mark up than it is that Mark is actually Janet's ex-husband, but then again it would be pretty easy for the detective to figure out if that was true or not, so why would Edick go to the trouble of doing that if it was a lie? I hope we start to get some more background information on these characters as well, as tonight we learned that Charlie suffocated his wife (was she really sick?) and that Bill is not really a car salesman (who is he?). While we know that Graham was in the military and Moira was in a mental hospital, I feel like we don't really know a whole lot about these characters. At this point I want Janet to get home to her daughter, and I would like to see Graham make it too as he has been selfless and seems like a good guy, but I'm not really too invested in anyone else at this point. As a side note, this is my first post on SpoilerTV, so I'd like to say thank you if you made it through this entire recap. I will try to keep them shorter in the coming weeks, but I hope you enjoyed this one and I look forward to writing more recaps in the future.

Mike