Colony recap: 'Good Intentions'

How many times are we going to see something absolutely jaw dropping this season? First there was the epic wall built, then the eerie NASA contact moment, the redhand attack on the recruitment center, the massive wall-climb fiasco, all those drones in hibernation, and, last week, the explosion of one of the hosts’ transport ships. So many explosive visuals have informed this season of Colony, and it’s all the more exciting for it.

This week, we get another big kaboom, and just like the rest of ’em, it’s completely chilling. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to see so much devastation afoot at every turn, knowing what we now do about that final countdown, but when Bram and Snyder are sped away from that labor camp as the place erupts into a ball of concrete punishment, it’s still a gasp-worthy event indeed.

Here’s what happened on tonight’s new episode of Colony.

The episode begins with Helena playing clean-up with her team of town proxies. One of them is a sheep to the Greatest Day and thinks the exploded space ship story can be spun in their direction with a little marketing savvy, but Helena’s not sold. She wants people to respect the civilian authority, so saying it was simply an act by the aliens takes control out of their hands on the local level. The proxy doesn’t care when she says no to his idea and puts his face in front of a new Greatest Day PSA anyway, but she’s got bigger fish to fry right now because she gets a call, and while we don’t get to hear the news on the other end, it’s obviously not good.

Meanwhile, Will and Katie’s newfound understanding of mutuality is rippling into their bedroom lives. Now that they’ve come to an agreement as to how to proceed with what they know about the future of the Los Angeles Bloc, they’re starting to reconnect on a physical level as well.

He gets a call at an inopportune time to come into work and gets an earful from his boss about the one that got away from Frankie Bloom’s safe house last time. Burke doesn’t have proof that Will let the guy go, but he obviously has some suspicions. Their boss decides to finally give Burke his way and split up this partnership, sending Will to search the safe house for missing pieces and Burke to roast the town in search of his man. We know how good he is at finding people, now don’t we?

Trouble is, if Burke gets to the kid first, the boy might sing about who let him go from the safe house in the first place, which means Will’s neck is on the line here.

Will is surprised to find that there’s a woman in the taped-up safe house, and she claims to be Frankie’s mom, who’s just looking for her long-lost daughter and wants some answers. Burke might see right through her quivering lip bit, but Will is convinced she’s innocent and simply worried about her daughter, and this hits him in the parental feelspot. Not only does he let her go, but he admits that Frankie fought back and died right there in his arms. Whether or not his last catch-and-release decision is still a gauntlet swinging over his head, he obviously hasn’t learned his lesson yet.

Speaking of gauntlets, Broussard has decided to turn their kidnapped alien device over to Hennessy, who helped him get a read on the soundbite from before. Simon’s not a fan of this plan, but then he’s not charge, now is he? Morgan’s enthusiasm for their mission seems to be wavering, too, as she’s “putting together the most depressing TED Talk ever: ‘So, You’re Going Extinct.'” But Broussard insists their new intel will drum up even more Resistance and that handing the gauntlet over to Hennessy is the best plan of action right now. Simon… does not agree.

After seeing those Missing Person posters of his mother, Simon called in and found out that the Authority did abduct his poor mom out of England and that they’re holding her captive. He wants to get on their good side by handing over Broussard, and Morgan half-heartedly agrees. Turns out, these two used to be an item, and his words that they need to look out for themselves above all else seem to resonate with her. Or do they?

Over at the labor camp, Snyder quickly figures out that he’s been played by Bram after the bodies of Jenkins and that… person who was in the little rocket tube Mya hijacked are found in the storage room. He tells Bram that he’s “signed [his] own death warrant and every other soul in this camp” by helping the rebels pull off their explosion, but he can fix it if he hands over the names of everyone else who was involved.

But Snyder’s no longer playing Mr. Nice Guy here. He lines up all Bram’s pals and has them executed one by one, Burke-on-the-lawn style, until he’s left with just Bram, who insists no one else was involved. He lets Bram live out the day on the condition that he agree to never speak of their involvement with the explosion, or Snyder’s failure to thwart it, ever again. That effort, we’ll later learn, is all in vain…

NEXT: A bleak promise fulfilled…

Broussard introduces Katie to Hennessy as he hands off the gauntlet and the intel on the doomsday clock he was given by Hennessy’s audiovisual guru. Broussard asks Hennessy for any information they might have on the safe house escapee, whose name is Emmett, because he could easily rat Katie and Will out to the Authority if he’s captured. It’s not Hennessy’s problem exactly, but then it is a good idea to keep his contact inside Homeland intact, so he hands over the address of the new safe house where he’s stowed away the boy.

Katie and Broussard make it to the place quickly enough, but Burke’s surveillance squad has also managed to track down his location. Katie’s just lucky Burke’s gaggle of redhats find Emmett first, because her hiding skills leave something to be desired, as she tucks herself away in that closet.

Fortunately for the Bowmans, the boy doesn’t give them up first thing, even though he promises to sing like a canary just to assure his safety from the redhands, who’d undoubtedly kill him just for being in proximity of the Authority. Instead, he claims to have survived the safe house raid by hiding in the crawlspace and shifts the conversation to his recruitment by Frankie — who, apparently, was quite the Casanova when it comes to seducing young men into this calling. This leads to the revelation that, uh oh, it was actually Frankie’s mom who was behind the whole thing. Which means that Will just let another key player in this possibly futile little game go. He doesn’t seem too beat up about it, honestly, and maybe that’s because his heart’s just not in this detective thing right now anyway.

Lindsay, however, is still a total sucker for the Greatest Day prophecies. She takes Gracie and Charlie to a sermon, where Charlie’s incessant ball-bouncing yet again proves to be a problem for her concentration. This time, though, she doesn’t fall back on her sickly sweet smile and suggestions that he cut it out; she straight-up threatens him into submission by informing him that she could easily peg him for a bad seed and have the Authority cart him off forevermore just like *snaps* that. Who knew she had it in her?

Charlie keeps his distance from Lindsay and Gracie after that, but when he hears something he doesn’t like outside of their house, he risks interrupting her studies once more by dragging Gracie away from her lesson. We have to remember that while Charlie might look like your average little boy, he spent a year on the mean streets and knows danger when he hears it.

Ultimately, his instincts are right, as a group of armed intruders blast their way in and take Lindsay down before prowling the house for more victims. They ID themselves as part of the redhand brigade by smacking the wall with their signature emblem, but Katie and Will arrive home just in time to methodically execute the stragglers before they can kill their children. Charlie’s smart enough to have hidden on the roof outside his room — he’s got one up on his own mom in the way of self-concealment skills, that’s for sure — so they’re found unharmed after the intruders are eliminated.

Really, this new development might help Will at the Department, since it increases his “one of them” status, in a way, but it also means they’ve just downgraded their living accommodations to a shabby apartment that Katie promises they’ll make homey eventually. But it doesn’t matter where they live, exactly, so long as they’re together… which makes this last little twist all the more compelling.

Back at the labor yard, Helena rolls in at breakneck speed and forcibly whisks Snyder away. He resists at first, thinking he’s being grabbed to take the fall for what happened to the host’s ship, but Helena insists she’s only there to save his life. Snyder, suddenly realizing what’s happening, manages to get the okay to snag Bram as well because if there’s one thing Snyder is good for, it’s keeping his word to anyone with the last name Bowman.

As they make off, ignoring stop signs and speed limits on their exit route, the entire encampment explodes in the backdrop. This was the news Helena got, and Snyder was wise to have sucked up to her before to get on her good side, apparently.

Bram’s happy to be alive and all, but he’s definitely not delighting in the fact that everyone he knew at the camp is now dead. His one sense of comfort, upon being dropped off at his parents’ new digs, is the fact that he finally, finally gets his long-awaited reunion with his little brother. Now that Lindsay’s out of the picture and won’t be filling Gracie’s head with nonsense anymore, the Bowmans can finally be a unit again and start working on that ultimate escape plan.

Emmett being in custody means there’s still a threat at bay, though. He didn’t talk during the first round, but Will’s seen what lengths the Authority will go to when they want intel.

Oh, and Morgan? She might’ve played the part when it came to Simon’s subterfuge against Broussard, but she managed to strip his gun of bullets before he could surprise Broussard with a pistol to the face. Broussard “owes” her now, and what she wants in exchange is the opportunity to be in his revolutionary tutelage. Someone just earned herself a promotion, that’s for sure.