Show Me the Mummy
Updated 2008-08-31 23:09:27
Hey, we get previouslies this episode! Last week, Carter's sister came to town and Stark left the space-time continuum. Suck.
Carter's sister is already proving herself to be much less cool than Stark as she wakes the entire bunker house up with her terrible yoga music. "Oh, sorry, is the music too loud?" Lexi laughs, knowing full well that it's too loud. What a rude guest she is! Carter's not much more polite, though, as he questions whether or not what Lexi is listening to counts as music. She says she composed it herself in India, and it's supposed to be good at relieving stress. Carter relieves some stress right away by turning the music off. Lexi tells him to give the music a chance and calls her compositions "art." Someone thinks a lot of her music composing abilities. She promises to make a copy for Carter to listen to in his car. He appears to hope the CD winds up in one of his cars that ends up exploding. Soon.
Lexi resumes her yoga, and Carter worries that yoga isn't good for the baby, which isn't even showing yet. This gives them the chance to exposit that the father of the baby is treating cholera halfway around the world, and Lexi doesn't think he needs to know he's going to have a child soon, which is really nice of her. With that, Carter turns around and trips over some weird sculpture thing that Lexi stuck in the middle of the floor because the feng shui was good there. Can't we have one New Agey person who isn't into feng shui? Then again... my New Agey aunt is about to marry a guy who specializes in feng shui decorating. So maybe it's not possible. S.A.R.A.H. likes Lexi's changes, saying they really "open up [her] flow." That's just because S.A.R.A.H. likes to screw with Carter. So does Zoe, as she serves him some coffee with surprise soy milk in it. Lexi thinks Carter should be more open to change. He says he is, but in this case, Lexi's trying to fix something that isn't broken. Lexi doubts that everything in Carter's life is perfect. Well, yeah, there's the fact that his sort-of-friend Stark just died. Carter probably isn't too thrilled about that. Way to be sensitive, Lexi. Needless to say, Carter is pleased as punch to get paged to Global Dynamics.
And over at GD, Henry is somehow in charge of carving out the newly-named Dr. Nathan Stark Memorial hallway. Unfortunately, he has to deal with Fargo, who wants the lettering to be even bigger than it already is. No lettering is too small for Stark, Fargo says. Carter walks up and checks out the scene. Fargo says he'd hoped to get everything done and ready before Allison returned to work, but she came back early. I think it kind of sucks that Stark just gets a hallway. Surely they could have named an entire wing after him. I know he only saved the universe, but still. Fargo takes Carter to Eva and to get some color swatches, telling Henry not to do anything until he returns. Henry is being very patient with Fargo, probably because of the circumstances.
Carter finds Eva in a room with an Egyptian tomb. A GD scientist named Wilding has chained himself to the door, refusing to let Eva and her friend, "Dr. Sebastian Marx, Archaeologist," pass through it to open the tomb. Marx is very impressed with himself, saying he's sure Carter knows him through his documentaries. Wilding, GD's "resident Egyptologist," is apparently familiar with Marx, hissing that he's a disgrace to archaeology. Sigh. I miss Stark. Carter impresses no one by thinking that the tomb of Queen Niota is native to the Northwest Pacific. Eva patiently explains that they brought the entire tomb, intact, to GD from Egypt. Zane speaks up, and we're all happy to see him again after a two-episode absence. I will always like and respect Allison and Stark for not inviting him to their wedding. Anyway, Zane, Marx, and Eva are thrilled because they'll be opening the tomb in "perfect environmental conditions" for the first time ever. By the way, perfect environmental conditions consist of some metasomatic ray that will keep the tomb's rock walls from crumbling. I don't understand how Egypt isn't already the perfect environmental conditions, but if they opened the tomb there we wouldn't have an episode, so there you go. Eva's gearing up for an interactive 3-D world tour that she hopes will put King Tut to shame. That's what Geraldo said about opening Al Capone's vault live on the air. Also, I think Eva is grossly overestimating how lucrative history can be. Carter tries to reason with Wilding, who says the tomb door has symbols of danger and death on it and should not be opened. I'm all for respecting the dead, but Wilding's a bit of a hypocrite here. As an Egyptologist, much of his knowledge comes from what people have found in tombs. As for Marx, the 21-year-old archeologist is thrilled about the prospect of a curse, and launches into a lame speech about Queen Niota threatening to rise again that Fargo pays way too much attention to. Carter kindly tells Wilding that if he doesn't unchain himself from the door willingly, Carter will have to remove him by force. Wilding unchains himself and makes a dignified exit.
Carter finds Allison in her office. He asks her if she needs more than a couple weeks off, but she says staying busy will help her. I can see that, but keeping busy at the place where you used to work by your dead ex-husband-to-be's side might not be the best idea. Perhaps if she kept busy spending time with her son? Oh, who am I kidding? We're never seeing that kid again. Carter gives Allison the logic diamond necklace from Stark. She thanks him and waits for Carter to leave the room before opening the box. I hope she never finds out that Stark got that thing for free. Allison makes sad faces and puts the necklace on. I see that in her time of grief, she's managed to apply her makeup perfectly.
High-tech thingamabobs open the tomb. Marx and his one camerawoman head inside to see it for the first time in 3,000 years. Marx plays things up for the camera, putting on a fake sophisticated British accent and everything. He flubs the first take and has to go again, which doesn't do much to impress Zane. That's because the only thing that impresses Zane is Zane. The second take goes fine, and Marx somehow lifts off the cover of the sarcophagus on his own even though those things usually weigh hundreds of pounds. The camera tilts down and zooms in on Queen Niota, who has probably looked better. Meanwhile, I'm looking around that tomb and it is nowhere near King Tut's. Eva doesn't seem too disappointed, though.
Later that night, Fargo is looking for the perfect spot to hang Stark's portrait. They've put it in some cheap-looking IKEA frame. You'd think a place like GD would have some kind of future frame with a laser light show around it, but clearly many expenses have been spared when it comes to the Dr. Nathan Stark Memorial Hallway. Something is coming towards Fargo, who thinks it's a good idea to put the frame at crotch-level. And then a gross, mummy-looking hand reaches out and touches Fargo's shoulder. Like anyone else would, Fargo screams, drops the picture, and runs away. A mummy-looking shadow hovers over Stark's broken picture frame and gives me hope that maybe it's Stark and he's going to come back from the dead.
After the break, Fargo has summoned Carter, who doesn't look thrilled to be at GD at that time of night but probably figures it's better than being stuck at home with his sister. Fargo insists that he was almost strangled by the Mummy Queen, which Carter's have a hard time buying for some reason. They make their way to the tomb, where Carter puns, "Any mummy home?" Hee hee. Oh, and there's Ed Quinn's name in the credits! Does that mean he's going to be in this episode? That he's not really dead? IhopeIhopeIhopeIhope! Fargo further endears himself to me by calling out to the mummy to go after Zane instead of him. They don't find a Mummy Queen, but they do find Marx passed out behind some boxes. Carter checks to make sure he's alive while Fargo points at an empty sarcophagus. Now Carter's starting to look alarmed.
Allison is wrapping up a long day of working through her sadness. She turns the lights out and Stark appears. Hooray! He's back! But he's all mysterious and standing in the shadows. The sad music plays. "Allie. I will always love you," Stark says. Instead of responding, she just turns the lights on. When she looks back up, Stark of course is gone, although that ugly wall art remains. Pity.
Marx wakes up in the GD medical bay to find Eva hovering over him, which can't be fun. Eva needs to learn to respect personal space. Carter and Fargo are there, too, although they made sure to stay a reasonable distance away from the patient. Eva tells Marx that he was probably dehydrated after spending two weeks in Egypt and playing around the tomb with perfect environmental conditions all day. Fargo just wants to know if Marx saw the Mummy Queen before he went out. Marx remembers that he went to get dinner, and when he came back to get more footage Queen Niota was gone. He immediately blames Wilding. Fargo blames the curse, and Carter has to explain to Eva and Marx that Fargo thinks the mummy put her hand on Fargo's shoulder the other night. They don't seem to believe him, either. Fargo is determined to prove himself. Since when was he all into the supernatural?
Carter calls Wilding into the station and tells him about Marx's accusation. Wilding takes great exception at even the thought of disturbing the mummy's remains, saying he has way too much respect for the ancient Egyptians to do that. Jo appears next to a file cabinet to piss Wilding off further, by reminding him that the ancient Egyptians are dead and thus don't deserve anyone's consideration, apparently. Shut up, Jo. Wilding informs Carter that Marx is a total fraud. His real name is actually Paco Lopez, which is the most Hispanic-sounding name those writers could think of. I think Paco Lopez was a character in my high school Spanish textbook. He was always le gusta ing baloncesto and béisbol . And, in the food chapter, bistec con arroz . He gusta ed that mucho . Jo glides over with Marx's file, which has various charges of smuggling and tomb-raiding on it. And god knows what's on his juvenile record, which was sealed just last year when he turned eighteen. Basically, Marx is one of those archaeologists who doesn't play by the rules and will do anything to get ahead. Wilding says Marx sold out long ago. "Long ago?" How long ago could it have been? Marx just hit puberty. Carter wonders if Marx kidnapped his own mummy to drum up interest in his documentary, but Jo thinks mummy hoaxes are played out. She thinks Fargo was just being his usual scared self, made all the worse by Stark's recent death. Carter has more respect for Fargo than that, and decides to talk to Marx again.
Marx has set up shop in Café Diem, where he's having a huge book signing (yes, the book is called Show Me the Mummy ) for the small population of Eurekans, most of whom should be smart enough not to buy into the hype and to know that Marx is totally full of it. And yet, it seems to have attracted quite a bit of interest, especially from Vince, who's really getting into it by dressing up and speaking in that regal Britishy accent that people seem to think Egyptians had. Incidentally, they didn't. Complimenting Vince's pharaoh robes is his Egyptian-style make-up, and methinks Vince was just waiting for an opportunity to let out his inner pharaoh. As for Zoe, she's rocking the make-up, but that's it. Which means the Egyptian dress was not mandatory and Vince is dressed this way because that's how he wants it. The more you know. Marx is late for his own event, so Carter waits for him with some coffee. Unfortunately for Carter, it's special Egyptian coffee with pomegranate creamer in it. "It's pharaohlicious," Zoe says with a mischievous twinkle in her eye because she knows it's actually pharaohgross.
Fargo enters with some herring blood on a petri dish and a thirst for Carter's glass of water. Carter and Jo are none too pleased with having science equipment where they're trying to eat, but Fargo continues undeterred, saying the herring blood is from a 1,000-year-old fossil in the paleontology lab. A geology experiment using metasomatic rays brought the blood cells back to life and caused them to regenerate. Those are the same light rays that Zane used to open the tomb, therefore , Fargo concludes, the Mummy was brought back to life. Jo and Carter are unimpressed, and Carter says the smell of fish blood is making him sick. Then Lexi walks in with her boombox blasting her bad music that no one wants to hear and Carter feels even worse. Lexi starts handing out CDs of her soul-soothing music. Are we supposed to like Lexi? Because if someone walked into a restaurant where I was trying to enjoy a cup of coffee blasting crap music at me, I would not like that person, free CDs or no. Carter kills two annoying birds with one stone by telling Lexi to go soothe Fargo while he and Jo look for Marx. Of course, Carter can't leave without getting a CD of his own that I'm sure will come in handy later. It's like that computer game, King's Quest . You pick up a feather with no idea how it can possibly help you but you know it must since if it didn't, the game wouldn't let you pick it up. And then later in the game, lo and behold, you find that the troll guarding the bridge you need to cross takes feathers as payment of the toll.
Wow, I totally thought Eva was coming out of a bathroom, because she walked out from behind a corner and it sounded like there was a toilet flushing. But the noise is actually Henry carving Stark's name into the memorial hallway. I still can't believe that after all Stark did for GD, they couldn't at least give him an actual room. Eva and Henry exchange fake friendly greetings before Eva hands Henry a photo of something called a Cryptex Security Box and asks if he knows anything about it. Henry says it's a combination lock, but he's not familiar with any of the symbols on it. "Do you think you could open it?" Eva asks in her most innocent voice. Henry wants to know where she found it. Eva sticks with her hotel lie, saying it was in the "alternate location" for her hotel. Henry can't fake stupid any longer, so he asks her why she keeps trying to put hotels on top of mysterious boxes and radiation. "The details are classified," Eva says. Henry refuses to help. Eva says she'll just have to find "another way." On her way out, she uncharacteristically expresses frustration by smacking the file against a wall.
Carter and Jo knock on the door of Marx's guest room. There's no answer, so they enter, only to find the floor flooded from the bathroom, where the shower is running. Carter walks in with Jo behind him. It's very steamy. Jo remarks that it's like a sauna. "More like a tomb," Carter says, looking at the dried-out corpse in the bathtub. Jo thinks it's the missing mummy, but Carter sees Marx's glasses and clothes on the floor by the bathtub and says it's Marx. I see he's doing his best mummy impression. It's really good, but he can only do it once.
Eva finds Allison and Carter outside the B&B and asks if Marx is really dead. She's more upset about Marx's death than Stark's. Speaking of Stark, Allison is clutching the necklace he gave her. And then I thought I was watching MST3K when two shadowed heads appeared at the bottom of the screen, but it's just an advertisement for another Sci-Fi Channel show. That's really distracting. Anyway, Henry gets the pleasure of performing the autopsy on Marx, and they've quarantined the area, thinking that the rapid deterioration of Marx's remains is from a flesh-eating bacteria. Yeah, I'd think twice before trusting Henry with a possible flesh-eating bacteria. He doesn't have a very good personal history with them. And it's a ridiculous diagnosis anyway, since no flesh-eating bacteria works that fast. Eva thinks Marx got something from Egypt, while Carter points out that there could have been something in the tomb, and that maybe it would have been a good idea to follow Wilding's (and the danger signs') advice.
Henry exits the quarantined area and removes his biosuit to tell the group his findings. Marx's body is drained of all fluids, although there are several reasons why this could happen. One of them is poison, which Eva latches onto because she can throw accusations at Wilding. Carter dismisses this immediately, and Henry says they're looking at something that spreads through direct contact. Eva says Marx's camerawoman was in the tomb, too, but no one's seen her since last night. Oh really? That might be important. Carter says he and Jo will look for her, but Eva would prefer that they look for the mummy. Carter accuses her of caring more about mummies than people, but Eva says she's worried about all the lives at risk if a potentially infectious mummy is traveling all over town. "We've already lost one great scientist today. I don't want to lose another!" she says. And with that, Allison realizes that no one is paying attention to her, so she loudly and obviously excuses herself.
She sobs in her car, and yet, I see no tears. Which is good, because they would ruin her perfect eyeliner. I'm sorry, she just doesn't look at all like a grieving ex-widow/almost-widow. But how can she when she keeps seeing Stark? This time he's hanging out in the back seat. She sees him in her rear view mirror. "I will never leave you again," he says. And yet, as soon as Allison turns around, he's left her. Again. He's replaced by Eva, who's now knocking on the driver's side window. "Allison, are you all right?" she asks awkwardly. I think robots have expressed more emotion than Eva. Allison sniffles that she's fine, and Eva says she lost her husband, too, so she knows what Allison is going through. "There will always be reminders," she says. "You can get past it, but you'll never get over it, even if you have all the time in the world." Wow, thanks, Eva. That feels much better. "You're not alone," Eva concludes. I'll bet Allison wishes she had invited her to the wedding now.
Zane looks up Marx's camerawoman's file. Zane hasn't seen her since she left early yesterday, saying she didn't feel well. Carter says she never made it back to the hotel. She never logged out of GD, either. Uh-oh. Carter hopes they won't find her shriveled in a corner somewhere, but Zane couldn't care less, since he has some research to show off. He took a look at the hieroglyphics on the walls of Queen Niota's tomb and thinks they're describing a plague. Um... why is Zane doing this when GD has a dedicated Egyptologist who can probably do it better? I mean, I'm just guessing here, but there's probably not a whole lot for Wilding to do at GD. Then he has his one chance to shine and translate some hieroglyphics, and Zane takes it away from him. Fortunately, Carter has the bright idea to call Wilding in on this. He's going to find the camerawoman. Zane smirks that if she was alive, someone probably would have seen her by now. Yeah, it's not like GD is this infinitely huge building with thousands of hiding places or anything. But that gives Carter the chance to say that he thinks someone did see the camerawoman.
And that someone is Fargo. Carter brings him down to the Stark Memorial Hallway and they start looking around. Carter explains that Marx was probably killed by a dehydration sickness, so he's thinking that the camerawoman suffered the same fate. Which would mean that she looked very mummy-like when she tapped Fargo on the shoulder. With this, Carter realizes they're standing next to the future site of the Stark Memorial Koi pond. That's all well and good, but who's going to clean the excrement out of there now that the excrement guy has been fired? Carter takes a look under the tarp and sees something vaguely humanoid lying on the bottom. "This looks bad," he says. Fargo hilariously thinks Carter is talking about the memorial pond itself and tries to defend it, saying Carter needs to see it when it's full of koi and lilies. Carter ignores him and pokes at the body with the end of a broom. It turns over, and sure enough, there's the camerawoman looking all shriveled up and gross. We know it's her because she's still wearing her cute vest ensemble. It looks slightly less cute now.
She's zipped into a bodybag and taken away. Carter says she must have dove into the fountain after Fargo ran away and promptly died, just like Marx. Fargo thinks the curse got her. Also, he's wiping sweat off his forehead because he clearly has whatever Marx and the camerawoman had. He runs away and Allison says she's going to test every single GD employee to make sure none of them are infected, either. Except that they don't know that they were infected with anything at all. It could be something else entirely that's turning them into mummies. Stark would've handled this much better. Carter tries to placate Allison, but she just keeps busting his balls. When she asks him what symptoms he thinks they should look out for, he suggests "being really, really thirsty." Which is actually not a bad idea and has also worked to diagnose diabetes, but Allison just yells at him for not taking this seriously. Meanwhile, Fargo has disassembled the water fountain so as to drink more water faster. "Oh no," Carter and Allison say. Ha! Carter was right.
After the break, Fargo's locked in the GD medical bay with a huge glass of water and an even huger attitude problem. Behind a thick glass wall, Allison tells Fargo that they'll figure out what's wrong with him and make him better. Carter agrees. Fargo has his doubts. It's called thinking positively, Fargo. Inner sunshine can cure a myriad of maladies. Allison, Eva, and Carter walk away so Fargo can suffer alone. Carter says they've got Zane and Wilding on translating the hieroglyphics (um ... why Zane, exactly? Just let Wilding do his thing. Zane can't do much to help him besides shilling for a deodorant company). Allison says Henry is doing the camerawoman's autopsy. Eva hopes it'll give them some answers, because they'll be in trouble if it doesn't.
Oops! Henry unzips the bodybag, only to find a nasty pile of hair and dust inside. Also, eeeeww.
Henry tells Allison, Eva, and Carter that the camerawoman disintegrated in the absence of a pool of water. He says that didn't happen to Marx, in whose stomach Henry found hundreds of small growths he's never seen before. Eeewww again. Henry's going to keep testing to try to find out what they are.
Carter and Eva head into Wilding and Zane's translation lab, where Wilding tries to make us believe that Zane's been helping by filling in spots where the symbols have faded. "I've always been a puzzle guy," Zane brags. "Well done," Eva says. Wow, she sure looooves Zane. Maybe they can go off and elope and never come back. Wilding hasn't finished translating yet, but he can tell Carter that Queen Niota didn't die from the plague, but was killed by her high priests in order to prevent her from getting the plague. Well, that's just silly. Zane shows them a symbol that they haven't been able to decipher, saying it's all over the tomb. Carter says it looks like clouds, which it definitely does not. Eva just wants to know where her damn mummy is. Zane says he checked the video and didn't see anyone taking the mummy away. "It's like she vanished into thin air," he says. That gives Carter an idea.
Sure enough, there's a suspicious pile of dust at the bottom of the queen's coffin which Zane, in a biosuit that I hope has a hole or two in it, scans and finds full of human elements. The Queen turned to dust, just like the camerawoman. Wilding thinks this is a good time to rub it in by saying they should have heeded his warning. Eva looks on the bright side, saying that at least the infection should be contained now. Carter points out that they'll still lose Fargo.
Carter visits Fargo. Since no one is allowed into Fargo's room, they have to communicate via TV screen. Fargo doesn't look good, and Carter doesn't try to lie to him that he does. Allison stops by, and Carter leaves Fargo to ask her why giving Fargo fluids isn't helping him. Allison says the more fluids they give him, the weaker he seems to get. But if they stop giving him fluids altogether, he'll die from dehydration. What about Sunny D? It's better than soda and purple stuff, and has the vitamins and minerals kids need! Allison shows Carter a 3D image of the microbes in Fargo's blood. They're multiplying at an incredible rate, she says, unlike anything she's ever encountered. Carter wonders if they're dealing with an insect plague instead of a disease one. Maybe there's some ancient microscopic bug that was re-activated by Zane's laser, just like that old fish blood. Allison says insects can enter a state of suspended animation "under certain conditions," then be re-activated by water. "Like sea monkeys?" Carter asks. Well, yes. Which is why Fargo is getting worse when he drinks water -- it makes the insects multiply faster. Carter asks what sticking someone full of those bugs in a bathtub could do. Nothing good, Allison says. It would apparently speed up metamorphosis.
Meanwhile, Henry's putting the finishing touches on a Petri dish with a big chunk of red stuff on it when Carter runs up outside the isolation screen and asks to speak to him. Henry puts the Petri dish down and leaves, and we see that the red chunk is pulsating. So is something in Marx's chest. Ew. This is like the grossest episode of this show I've ever seen.
Outside the tent, Carter asks Henry how good the quarantine tent is at keeping things inside it. Henry reassures him that even the tiniest of microbes would be trapped inside the tent. But Carter's not worried about the little things. He wants to know about "something bigger." "How much bigger?" Henry asks.
Marx's chest has the answer. Something bursts open and all kinds of bugs fly out. It's the stuff of nightmares. Worse yet, the isolation tent isn't very good at keeping swarms of insects inside its confines. The swarm explodes through the tent walls and heads for town.
After the break, Carter gets off the phone with Jo, telling her to keep everyone inside their homes. If their homes are anything like my apartment, they will do little good keeping bugs out. Henry emerges from the quarantine tent and says there's "nothing left" of Marx. Ewww.
Henry and Carter head to GD, where Zane says he's figured out that the symbol Carter thought was a bunch of clouds is actually a swarm of bugs. That's not helpful now, Zane. Wilding says that the hieroglyphics say the bugs will be looking for new host bodies. This news also comes too late. It makes you wonder why GD even needs a dedicated Egyptologist. Eva asks how the Egyptians dealt with the bug plague, hoping for some tips. Zane says they killed the infected and burned the city to the ground. Carter makes that Plan B. And then he saves the day by asking why the larvae lived and thrived inside Marx but the camerawoman turned to dust after being taken out of the water. Henry fills in the blanks -- there could be something in the fountain water that killed the larvae that wasn't in the bathtub. He heads off to test the water.
Zoe calls Carter to report that bugs are swarming outside Café Diem. Ever helpful, Jo yells at the diners to stay away from the windows, as if that makes much of a difference. At that point, the lights go out as the bugs have entered the circuit breaker. Lexi's boombox runs on battery power, however, so it's still going strong until Carter orders her to turn it off because he's having trouble hearing. When she does, the bugs leave, too. Carter tells Lexi to turn the music back on. Thinking she's finally converted her brother to her bad music, Lexi does so. Sure enough, the bugs come back. I guess Carter wants the host-body-hungry bugs as close as possible to his daughter and sister, because he tells them to keep the music on.
Carter finds Henry and Allison outside Fargo's room. Fargo is not looking good, by the way. Carter reports that the bugs have bad taste in music. They're not sure how that can help them yet, and Allison says she's out of ideas except dousing the town in pesticides. That sounds like a good idea to me, actually. Henry says the bugs may be immune to those pesticides, so they won't even bother trying. Henry also reports that he couldn't find anything different between Marx's bathwater and the fountain water. Carter can: the bathtub water was hot. The fountain is ice cold. Maybe the bugs can't take the cold? They'll test that hypothesis on Fargo.
They do this by sticking Fargo in a cryogenic freezing chamber. He's not thrilled about this, but they knock him out before he can protest too much. Poor Fargo -- always getting stuck in cryogenic freezing chambers involuntarily. Carter asks Allison and Henry if Fargo will be okay. Henry says he will if the bugs freeze to death before he does. Soon enough, the parasites start dying off, according to the live ultrasound of the "parasite mass." Allison is able to immediately detect when every single microscopic bug stops moving. Henry starts to defrost Fargo while Carter and Allison wait nervously. Allison rubs her necklace nervously. Henry takes his time finding a pulse, but eventually, he gets it back. Fargo's okay and the parasites are still dead. Allison and Carter giggle in relief.
And then Allison sees Stark hanging out in the hallway. He says he'll always love her again. Allison thinks she's lost her mind, but Carter and Henry see Stark, too. Hooray! He's alive! He's back! Or not. Henry figures out what's up: it's the logic diamond. Stark programmed it to emit a hologram of himself when hit with a certain kind of light. Carter says he didn't know. Neither did Fargo. He's waking up and sees Stark standing over him. "I'm in heaven?" he wonders. Yeah... I don't know if that's where Stark would end up. Although he did save the universe, so that must count for a lot. I'm just bitter because I was hoping against hope that Stark wasn't dead and would somehow come back, and now it looks like he won't. He's gone! Awww.
With Fargo semi-conscious and his vitals back to normal, Carter says they can start freezing the swarm outside. Allison says it won't be quite so simple to freeze the entire town. Carter says it will if they play the right music.
Carter outfits his jeep with some serious stereo equipment and blasts it out the trunk as he drives. The swarm follows him. Back at GD, Zane and Eva track the swarm's progress on their swarm-o-vision cam. Carter pulls up outside Café Diem, stops the car, and runs inside, grabbing Lexi's boombox and jacking up the volume. The bugs can't resist the hot jams, and they smash through the windows to get to them. Hmmm ... this is starting to look like a bad idea. At the very least, Carter should have, like, called ahead before doing this. No one in Café Diem seems to know what's going on. Carter screams at Vince to open the freezer. Carter throws the boombox inside. The bugs follow. When they're all inside the freezer (hopefully. I mean, Jo didn't exactly check thoroughly before reporting that every single bug was in the freezer), Vince and Carter shut the freezer door and Vince programs the freezer to be really, really cold and blesses his fusion reactor for making zero degrees Kelvin possible. The bugs don't like this at all, and make their objections known by flying into the thick steel door so hard they leave dents. Apparently they found Vince's supply of steroids in there. The rest of the town gathers around to stare at the freezer door like morons. I'd be out of there so fast. What if the bugs got through the door? I don't want to be a host body. But pretty soon, the bugs stop flying into the door. They're dead. On one hand, the town is saved from being host bodies to nasty parasites. But on the other, the one restaurant in town where everyone eats all meals now has a freezer full of dead bugs.
Carter and Vince emerge to the applause of all the diners. Lexi graciously tells her brother he did a good job and asks if he likes her music now. "I appreciate it on some level," he says. Zoe hands them both brooms to sweep out the freezer. I don't think it's fair that Carter has to clean out the freezer after saving the entire town from turning into dried out corpses. Neither does Carter. He quickly tosses the broom to Jo and leaves. Good.
A much healthier-looking Fargo wakes up. Henry, Carter, and Allison are standing over him. Fargo says he saw Stark and tells Allison that he's okay, so she shouldn't worry. Aww, Fargo. Allison just touches her necklace. Watch it with that thing, Allison. You wouldn't want to make Stark reappear by accident and confuse poor Fargo. He's been through enough today.
Eva finds Zane in the tomb room. He tells her they just finished sterilizing the sarcophagus, so it'll be all ready to tour the world and hopefully not give any of its visitor mummy disease. Eva's moved onto more important things now, however. And she needs Zane's help. She hands him the cryptex security lock file that Henry wisely didn't want anything to do with. Eva asks Zane if he can crack it. Zane's ego says he sure can.
Allison is rolling the necklace around in her hands. Carter asks if she's sure she wants to hear the message Stark left for her. Apparently, it's more than just the "I will always love you" we keep seeing. Allison says she does. Alone. Carter leaves.
Allison activates the necklace by sticking it into a slot in the jewelry box. Stark appears and says he imprinted himself on the diamond the way Allison imprinted herself on him. Now, no matter where she is or where he is, he'll always be with her. And he promises that the second time around he won't make the same mistakes he did before and that this time, they'll be together forever. Oops. "I will never, ever leave you again," he says. He disappears before he can add, "...except for this one time." Allison cries without tears and says good-bye. I miss Stark. And to protest his absence, I'm going to Spain for a few weeks. See you in mid-September!
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You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me , which she occasionally updates when she isn't busy at work. Or you can try your luck emailing her at saramorrison@gmail.com with news that some Nigerian king died and she stands to gain ten percent of his fortune if she hands over her bank account info.