If you worried The Event was losing its touch after last week's benignly confusing "For the Good of Our Country," fret not! Last night's "Your World to Take" sets the show right back in the migraine-inducing territory where it belongs. Grab your cold compresses and click through for the rundown!
1. Sophia rents out some huge ballroom with Thomas's carefully built fortune, probably under the guise of a Citizens Against the Buffy Reboot rally. Isabel, the voice of the naturalized aliens, tells her that the aliens don't want to go home anymore. What they want to do, Isabel reveals in a top secret meeting with Thomas, is mutiny and swear in Thomas as their new leader. Thomas calls Isabel on a weird sort of Lady Macbeth moment ("Stop trying to manipulate me. This is about what I think's best for our people") before affirming his plans to kill Sophia.
Convolution level: ELEVATED. Perhaps in addition to the Arbitrary Flashback of the Week (sadly absent from this episode) there should be a New-But-Inexplicably-and-Suddenly-Essential Character of the Week. This week it's Isabel, who is only essential in the way she seems to dictate Thomas's desire to kill his mother and not leave Earth. Hasn't Thomas been pioneering nuclear technology for the last 70 years to facilitate his people's return home?
2. Before Sophia talks Thomas out of killing her, reducing him to a bawling, gutless, Oedipus-like mess, they head to an anonymous elevator in an anonymous building where there's a vault with some kind of, uh, module? "It's still viable!" Sophia breathes before Thomas draws his gun.
Convolution level: SEVERE. Is this underground vault somewhere under the umbrella of Thomas's vast financial empire? If it's not, where, pray tell, is it? And if it is, why does he need Sophia to get through security, considering she's been hanging out with the other detainees at Inostranka for the last 70 years?
3. Leila and Sean meet with an aged 8-year-old who has escaped Dempsey's capture. As she sports what is likely some of the most awkward-looking makeup ever applied to a child actor, she tells Leila that Samantha, Leila's sister, was at the facility, where there was also a water tower and triangular symbols. One of Dempsey's goons chases everyone through a dying cornfield until Sean bashes him in the head with a stone and finds that he's carrying a picture of Leila.
Convolution level: HIGH. If you can keep up with who Dempsey wants to abduct from week to week, you are a better person than me. (Can I point out that Dempsey had abducted Leila for a while, but apparently only needed her as bait for Sean, who he seems to have lost interest in?)
Final analysis: SEVERE. The mystery vault of indeterminate importance clinched it.
I wonder if next week will see the balance of power shift from Sophia to Thomas or if Sophia cemented her dominance by forcing Isabel to shoot her own kneecap. (I have to admit, I sort of yelped when that happened. Probably the least artificially tense moment of the series.)