Ties of Blood, Flights of Fancy
"Blah Blah Woof Woof" Plot Summary:
As Lydecker has Max's face put on wanted posters for Vogelsang's murder, Logan suffers from painful back spasms. Normal sends Max to deliver a package in the South Market area, then catches Sketchy looking at one of the posters and leaves Sketchy in charge so he can go to the police. Meanwhile, Max has no trouble entering the Market checkpoint, but when she tries to leave, she is forced to abandon her bike and run from converging police. Logan doesn't answer her calls because he is at the hospital, where he learns that unless the doctors remove a bullet fragment lodged near his spine, he could become quadriplegic.
Hearing of a confirmed suspect sighting, Lydecker orders a perimeter established around South Market. Max hides near an air vent in the attic of a building, stealing a phone to call Cindy. Zack, who has gone to the Jam Pony looking for Max, takes the call and enlists Logan's help in rescuing her. Before they leave, Logan calls his detective friend Sung, who promises to try to cover for Max with the police. Then Logan takes Zack into the Market area with a crossbow and wire. Though Max is exposed and shot at when she races towards Logan's van, she uses the wire to zip away from the cops and gets away with her friends.
Zack wants to cross the border to Canada after spending the night in Logan's secluded family cabin. Max worries that Logan looks ill, and chokes up at the idea of never seeing him again, asking him to go on the run with her. He's afraid he would slow her down. They kiss passionately before saying goodbye. At home, Logan tells Bling that he knows letting her go was the right thing to do. Meanwhile, Normal tells Sung he thinks Max is the murderer on the wanted posters. Sung tells Normal that if he knows her, his life is in danger. The detective keeps Normal locked up, supposedly for his own protection.
At Logan's cabin, Zack tells Max that part of him wants the same things she does -- friends, a home, someone to care about. She is shocked when he strokes her hair. In the morning she calls Logan before leaving the cabin and learns from his assistant that Logan was rushed into surgery. Though Zack tries to restrain her physically to keep her safe, Max hitches a ride back to the city and heads to the hospital. Logan needs a transfusion of AB negative blood, but there's none in the city blood banks. When she gets a moment alone with the dying man, Max hooks herself up to his IV, explaining that she's a universal donor courtesy Manticore which thought the ability to swap blood would be useful for its altered children.
While they are sharing blood, Max and Logan have a vision. She asks him to dance, even though he can't walk. "Whose dream is this anyway, yours or mine?" Logan asks, but she can't answer. As a waltz plays, they dance; she gets dizzy but doesn't want to stop as long as he promises not to let go. In the real world, Max is on the verge of passing out when a policeman holds a gun to her head. As she is taken away, she learns that Logan's blood pressure is in the normal range.
Max is thrown in a jail cell with lots of women who look something like her. Meanwhile, the sergeant tells Lydecker that the murderer -- a man -- turned himself in, confessing details of the crime only the perpetrator could know. As she is freed, Max sees Zack being taken to a helicopter to take him back to Manticore. Lydecker believes Max has already fled Seattle.
At the hospital, Logan tells Max he feels pretty good, but they both become embarrassed when they realize she is humming the waltz from the dream, and agree that the kiss at the cabin was an overly emotional reaction that won't happen again. The wanted posters of Max are covered by announcements of a rave. Sketchy is delighted to have Normal back at work, since running the Jam Pony has not been any fun. Normal isn't happy to see Max, but she threatens to snap and murder someone else if he busts her chops. On the news, she hears that the helicopter carrying Zack crashed before it got to Manticore. Max believes he survived, and says she will stay in Seattle so he'll know where to find her.
Analysis:
The title of this episode is a reference to Max's comment to Logan about his do-good attitude, which he uses as an excuse to refuse to go out with her in the opening sequence. "Isn't it against the superhero code to use your powers against mere mortals?" he asks when she beats him five games in a row at chess, poking gentle fun at her genetically modified talents, but she becomes bitingly sarcastic about his martyr complex, not realizing he's in pain. Pain's not very familiar to Max, as long as her powerful body is getting its tryptophan; she doesn't cope with it well when it hits, especially not the emotional kind.
But she's still one up on Zack, who likes to believe he's beyond all feeling. He's even more sarcastic to Logan even while begging the other man's help in saving Max, ignoring Logan's friendly requests for status reports and barely being civil, even though Zack's murder of Vogelsang is the reason Max is in such trouble. Yet he reaches out to Max, calling it a moment of weakness. When Max fights him the next morning so she can return to Seattle, she calls it her moment of weakness. When Lydecker ponders why Zack turned himself in to save Max, he laments that he didn't teach Zack to be stronger. Obviously Zack has learned from Max and Logan what really matters.
Now Zack is presumed dead, meaning he might not show up for many months, or he might be back for February sweeps. Ditto Lydecker, who presumably will search for Max elsewhere since he doesn't think she stayed in Seattle. Given what he knows about her, that's odd -- one would think he'd expect her to keep in contact with her friends, and make a more concerted effort to find out who they are, as Zack did. Does Max realize how quickly Normal would have turned her in? It's not even clear that she knows he tried, though Logan surely does, since Sung would have kept him informed.
The soft-focus, retro dress dream sequence puts everything into a strange new perspective. Are we to believe that there's something in Max's blood -- nanobots, migratory nerve cells -- that actually allows her to share thoughts with people during transmission? Or are we just supposed to think Max and Logan are completely in sync, meant for each other like a romantic cliché? It's a beautifully filmed scene, with nice parallels to the real world as Max becomes dizzy and Logan gets stronger. But I'm not sure it means anything, other than what we already know and they already know -- they're falling in love. Blonde superhero hunk Zack doesn't stand a chance. Neither do the legion of pouty-lipped Max look-alikes.
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