Killjoys
Season 1, Episode 3: “The Harvest″
Air date: July 3, 2015
Grade: B
Don’t make promises you can’t keep Dutch! In this week’s episode of Killjoys, D’avin takes the RAC test, Dutch engages in some light torture, Johnny helps out a friend, and someone loses an ear.
Yep the team sure got busy starting with D’avin setting a new RAC tech exam record. During his final interview with agent Kira Dean, the former slave finds out that high scores aren’t enough. The RAC got a lot of ex-military who wash out because they can’t handle the independent thought required for the position. D’avin is striking out big time when he finally gets honest and says that he doesn’t fit in anywhere else. He’s not cut out to be a civilian but is done being a soldier and that convinces Dean to pass him, pending his psych evaluation. Uh oh, with D’avin’s PTSD that’s probably not going to go well. Johnny at first teases that he’ll be a great boss until they find out that big brother has been ranked at a level four. Awkward!
Meanwhile Dutch is at a seedy motel room with the man she’s supposed to assassinate. He seems completely clueless as to why he’s being targeted or who Khlyen even is. It’s quite fascinating though to see Dutch’s dark side come out as she’s beaten this poor dude and tied him up without a sip of water for days. But since he’s been refusing to tell why Khlyen wants him dead or how she can find her ex-mentor, Dutch doesn’t feel like she has any other choice. Still, it’s quite a change from not wanting to take any kill warrants in the first episode to willingly torturing a person. The senior rec agent decides to eventually let the mark go telling him to disappear for his own sake and then burns the room down. This doesn’t really solve her problem though and I’m sure Khlyen knows that she didn’t really kill the guy and will exact adequate punishment. Or if anything, another red box will pop up.
It’s also happens to be Harvest Week in The Quad! That means migrant workers all come back to Westerly on break or to make sure that they don’t violate the terms of their work visas. Johnny and D’avin find their local Old Town bar overrun with drunkards back for the holidays and the elder Jaqobi gets a little too violent in a bar fight. We then meet the beautiful Dr. Pawter Simms (Sarah Power) who has a mysterious past of her own. But before he can do any real damage, Dutch comes in with her gun and badge breaking up the kerfuffle. Johnny proceeds to take advantage of the Harvest special with N’oa (a lady of the night) while Dutch recommends that D’avin ask Pawter to do his psych eval.
Johnny seems more interested in talking about his brother issues than having sex so N’oa brings up her own problem regarding her husband Vincent. He’s a migrant worker who always comes back during Harvest time but he’s apparently disappeared without a trace. She’s put a warrant out with the RAC and wants Johnny to take it as a favor because if he fails to show up before his visa expires, the penalty transfers to her and she’ll have to go through ten years of hard labor.
Johnny persuades his partner/boss to take the warrant and help N’oa out and so the two of them head to Leith to find Vincent. They go undercover with Dutch posing as a fancy hoc (alcohol) buyer and the younger Jaqobi as a worker. Immediately we find out that all is not well on this farm. Johnny is forced to have a tracker injected into his ear that is set to explode if they go beyond the borders. A fancied up Dutch is a guest in the main house where she meets with Martell, the landowner. Both rec agents start to investigate to determine what shady business is going on in Leith.
Using her seductive and assassination skills, Dutch manages to get Martell hot and bothered but puts him to sleep before she has to really compromise her virtue. She then uses him to get access to the compound’s tracking system to locate Vincent. Johnny rendezvous with her at the spot where the missing husband is supposed to be but all they find is his ear (along with a few others). Gross. Either someone chopped it off or he did the deed himself. The junior rec agent believes there is definitely some other scheme at play here and thinks he can get information out of a fellow worker.
In the meantime D’avin is having his own adventure with the doctor who agrees to pass him if he gives her a lift to the market where she needs to restock her supplies. Pawter is a little crazy herself after she injects a seller with a disease forcing the other woman to trade her medicine for an antidote. D’avin is shocked by her underhandedness but she shrugs it off and says it was actually just water. The two get into an argument after D’avin realizes that she triggered his PTSD. She storms off and says she’ll find her own way back.
Good thing too because D’avin is needed to rescue the team after Dutch is attacked by Martell and his goons and Johnny finds out what actually happened to Vincent. After earning the female worker’s trust by cutting off his own ear with the tracker implant, she takes him to the forest. Johnny discovers that ol’ Vince has been running an illegal operation, which Martell had just reported to the authorities. The schmuck also had no intention of ever going back to N’oa, saying that his wife should have made better choices (you got that right though!). Dutch contacts D’avin just in time to come pick them up before the whole area is torched.
Once Vincent realizes that he’ll die if he stays in the forest, the coward turns from wannabe smuggler to whiney beggar, abandoning his comrades who want to fight for their work. Johnny tries to convince the woman befriended to come with them but she refuses, not wanting to give up her life there only to go back to Westerly. He leaves and she probably perishes.
When they eventually make it back to Westerly, Vince plays the doting husband elated that he’s reunited with N’oa. At first you think he’s gonna get away with it but thankfully the killjoys took the long way home and his visa expired two hours ago. N’oa smacks him and says good luck spending the next ten years doing hard labor. Hooray!
D’avin goes to see Pawter to apologize for the nasty things he said to her and she hands him his psych eval. He’s surprised to see that she’s passed him after their last conversation but she says that she keeps her promises. They come to a truce of sorts, but Pawter insists that D’avin get treatment because his PTSD isn’t going to go away by itself. He then asks her if she’s willing to be his doctor. Well now, was he looking for just any doctor or a specific person this whole time? Regardless, I am definitely digging a potential D’avin-Pawter romance here.
Best line of the episode:
“Stop being friends with everyone you sleep with, it’s weird.” – Dutch to Johnny
Killjoys airs Fridays on Syfy at 9/8 central.
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Images courtesy of Syfy.
