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JOHN DOE

Episode 1.09 "Manifest Destiny"
Written by Timothy J. Lea
Directed by Leslie Libman
Guest Stars: Gabrielle Anwar (Dr. Rachel Pembrooke), Gildart Jackson (Inspector Garrison), Michael P. Northey (Louis Garber)
Air Date: 12/06/02

Welcome back boys and girls to the fantabulous and craptacular world of John Doe. We meet back up with John just after the events in "Idaho". John, it seems, is suffering from a bit of burnout, and he wants to take a vacation. He isn't sure where he wants to go, so he decides on London for no apparent reason. Karen, in her only scene thank the Great Merciful Sky Fairy, worries that John's claustrophobia will put a glitch in his airline travel plans.

We go right to exactly that. John gets on the plane and immediately starts reciting factoids about commercial airliners to relax himself. He's not alone, either, as a portly aircraft engineer named Garber admits to getting airsick. "I engineer these things for a living, and I can't seem to stop imagining them going down in a ball of flames." That made me laugh, which only happens once or twice in this episode. While trying to calm his pasty ass in First Class, John chats up a lovely British neurologist. It doesn't take long for things to go sour, however, when a preacher renowned everywhere for being an absolute saint lurches forward and dies. It looks like a stroke, but John calls murder right away.

A snotty investigator with Scotland Yard immediately makes me hate him. Not because he's such an asshole, mind you, but because he's played by such a shitty actor. I mean, come on, where do they find these people? Canada has to have better actors than this. They have Kristin Kreuk and Rachel Skarsten... Oh right, never mind. This guy was pretty good by Canadian standards I guess. John and his lovely doctor friend find a very small injection mark on the preacher's leg, leading John to figure some sort of remote device was used. He finds said device and just happens to be dumb enough to get stabbed by it in the process. Fortunately for him, and FOX executives I guess, there was very little poison left and they managed to bleed him a bit for good measure.

For an episode that took place entirely on a plane, this wasn't so bad. After the killer claims his second victim, the plane starts to experience electrical problems from water damage. John solves the electrical problems by tying some wires together in a scene very reminiscent of that moment with Ed Harris in Abyss. You know the one, where he can't tell which wire to cut because the light makes the two wires look exactly the same. John bemoans his ocular shortcomings some more, but the day is saved. There was absolutely no tension during the "dramatic" aerial save John performed. We all know he can do whatever he knows, and since he knows everything, flying a commercial airliner probably ain't too difficult for him. It would be nice to see him fail at something because of overwhelming pressure. They have implied that his mind does lock up if it goes into overload. Seeing that happen from time to time outside of his kitchen would make things like this a bit more dramatic.

The killer's motivation was alright, but I honestly didn't give a damn. It turns out that John's neurologist friend was the intended victim all along. The preacher just had the great misfortune of getting her seat after she transferred to First Class. To be honest, there was a moment where I thought she was the killer, but I was still eyeing the engineer throughout. Three years prior, Garber's mother was rejected from a program Dr. Pembrooke was heading up. She died shortly thereafter and Garber has been blaming her ever since. He's been waiting for years for the moment when she'd get on a plane, which he charmingly refers to as "his world". You're telling me she didn't fly at all for three years? They did establish that her parents were dead, so she wouldn't have had family to visit over the holidays, but come on, not even an overseas vacation?

When John tried to warn Pembrooke, some "helpful" passengers pegged him as the killer and locked him in a lavatory. They have the killer and no one thinks to tell the policeman investigating? Right. A very poorly dubbed voice screamed that John was the killer, so I guess that was Garber. It was a really poor spot in the show. I'm going to start calling out the Bullshit Moment of the Episode, or the BME. There are lots of them with this program, so it's going to have to be the MOST Bullshit Moment of the Episode just to be sure.

In the end, the day is saved and John gets himself some British arse. Not too bad for Seattle's Greatest Detective. Now if only his show didn't suck so much from time to time. I give "Manifest Destiny":

Episode Rating: 6 out of 10

- Steven Dougherty likes his women British, just like his coffee.

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