While Sunday's pilot episode for Human Target left a bad, though explosive, taste in my mouth, this week's episode cleansed my palate. The insanely over-the-top plot aspect was still present, but it somehow seemed logically concrete in comparison. Things like dialogue and scene particulars were still kind of clunky, but I don't suppose this show is watched for wit alone. This episode featured a plot presented out of order, as scenes from the past and present were juxtaposed for suspenseful effect. It seems a little early for Human Target to start playing around with structure, but it worked well and was still more intelligible than the pilot.
The episode begins immediately with Christopher Chance diddling around with buttons on an airline cockpit control panel. The music lets us know we're already in the shit. Next to him is flight attendant Laura (Courtney Ford), frazzled and questioning Chance's actions. The episode then zips back six hours earlier, where we find out there's a hacker who has a virtual skeleton key to the internet that could compromise security all over the place. Wait, I meant the skeleton key, because obviously one single person with one single "key" can do this sort of thing. Anyway, this hacker is going to be on a plane, and that means Chance has to protect that person, but first he has to figure out who it even is. This two-tiered job allows Winston to accompany Chance on the plane, and much to Guerrero's delight, it's under the guise of a male flight attendant. Chance himself is an insurance salesman, though that doesn't matter. It's around here that the time switches back, and now we see Chance is the middle of some fisticuffs. I'm glad the show has better choreographers than it does writers. I think I'll avoid the time-shifts and just go by the numbers now.
Chance surveys the cabin passengers, gets an Air Marshall pointed out to him, and spends a few minutes suspiciously talking with a percocet-influenced red herring. Winston uses context clues and cunning to figure out that mad hacker Casper is actually a perky blonde with an attitude. (I don't believe that the lone person who can completely thwart the internet would be someone that I could envision myself having sex with.) Winston alerts her of the threat on her life, and assures her she's protected. Only, whoops, Chance got himself into a scrape with the assassin (as per the earlier fight sequence), and is thus cuffed by the Marshall, and then uncuffed by Winston. Because it turns out that the gunshots fired in the previous tussle went through the floor and ruptured a fuel tank, igniting a fire in the undercarriage. I can't remember if one of these shots hits the pilot too, but he's out of the picture.
Chance attempts to take over the situation, but the Marshall raises his hands in dispute. After a brief spat, flight attendant Laura swipes the Marshall's gun and holds it on him, freeing Chance to enter the cockpit, which Laura follows him into. And then he lands the plane and everyone lives happily ever after. No wait, that's not it. The fires in the plane are burning in such a way that, with the wheel hatches open, the plane has to be flown upside-down (!!!) Yeah, that's what happened. I don't even want to go into how ridiculous this explanation went, and how silly a huge plane looked loop-de-looing like that, but it was pretty exciting nonetheless. Because as tense as flying upside-down temporarily is, it gets upped ten times when you add into it that the plane cannot even spin itself back right side up, because the computer is blown. So a hero is born in Casper, who offers her laptop and computer snazzery. But she can't do it alone, because it has to be input manually into the fail-safe flight computer, which is at the bottom of the plane. (Kind of like having your only restroom in the observatory.)
Laura and Chance go down/up and find the specific area where the laptop needs to be connected. I will say here that the set design for everything being downside up was pretty cool. It's a visual I dig. Anyway, the plane is set to right itself, but wait! It turns out Laura is one of the bad guys. Unfortunately for her, Chance wisely anticipated this, and relieved her of her weapon. And as the plane spins around, Laura gets the upper hand, and Chance is left hanging Skywalker-style out of the wheel hatch. He then injects Laura with the ketomine; she gets all woozy, but still manages to dramatically ask his real name before deciding to drop herself out of the plane altogether. (I think she would have been seeing unicorns and things personally.) It was kind of a weak ending, feeling more formulaic than organic. As well, I'm pretty sure "getting to one side of the plane" would not save all the passengers from severely injuring themselves as the plane flipped each time.
Guerrero was largely left out of the plot, except to get a greedy hacker to help identify those threatening Casper's life. Winston had more room to shine here, but seriously, he's given some dreadfully corny things to say most of the time. Action-wise, he got to tag somebody's chin with a killer uppercut. And in his own fight, Chance used a spork as a weapon. Both of these are commendable things. This show is good enough to compete with stale by-the-numbers dramas, but it isn't all that funny, except in a broad sense. And the enormous plots so early leave it with little to top itself, unless multi-threaded storylines and longer arcs are infused. I hope it chooses this route. Until then, I don't think we have to worry about Chance saving a runaway paddleboat, or fighting bombers riding uphill on Segways.
