“Carrier”

“Carrier” has some of the main problems that many 4400 episodes have. The main story all too often becomes a subplot to the 4400er of the week. The 4400er of the week SHOULD be the subplot. This week’s 4400er is a precursor to Maia on Heroes. She is the carrier of a plague that even biohazard suits can’t stop, much to NTAC’s suffering. However it is only when she becomes emotional that the plague comes out to play.

We begin with the ramifications of last episode’s eight year imaginary world that Tom Baldwin and Alana were married in. Kyle specifically is having a difficult time as in Tom’s perfect world he was graduating from Stanford Medical School. Kyle is bitter having missed so much time in his coma and worse that he is disappointing his father. Tom protests, but it’s not altogether false.

Alana tries to help him and offers to be a good friend to him. It’s good to see some ramifications from previous episodes hold over as all too often there is little connection between the episodes.

Meanwhile, NTAC continues to pursue Diana over Maia’s diary and vents to Marco about it. But as Marco says, what NTAC wants NTAC gets.

We then meet Karen in a fairly intriguing way. She is alone surrounded by the dead bodies for an entire town. Freaking, she turns to run away.

We are also introduced to someone who appears to be someone to reckon with. Matthew Ross makes his way up to Shawn’s office. He claims that Jordan set him up as a back up measure. Should Collier ever die, Ross was to come and make sure that Shawn did his best to continue their work.

Back at NTAC, Nina announces that the FBI is heading up the Collier case, although NTAC is remaining in the game. Nina continues by telling Tom and Diana that they are being assigned to a case in Oregon regarding a 4400er and a plague of som sorts.

In an extremely unoriginal subplot, we get to see Maia and April interact. Of course bad girl April uses Maia’s ability to predict the future for the oh so awful and evil act of winning money via gambling. You can guess where this is going. Maia gets upset that April is using her, Maia makes a false prediction costing April a lot of money and April learns a valuable lesson. The more you know…doo doo doooooo.

The carrier, one Jean DeLynn Baker, has begun to hitch a ride to make it to the 4400 center. She gets a ride with a very religious person who tries to get her to not go to the center and give herself over to Jesus Christ. While she definitely believes in Armageddon, she knows that only the 4400 center has a chance of saving her.

Tom and Diana are on the trail, and they learn that the hazmat suits are ineffective against Jean’s virus.

At the center, Shawn asserts his authority by telling Matthew that he needs a vacation from everyone needing help and expecting him to be the pope that they all rally around. Matthew threatens to replace him, but Shawn doesn’t buckle. Matthew knows he has to take another route.

That route is Lilly. In subtle fashion, Matthew hires Lilly to their human resources decision and uses her innocence and innate goodness to convince Shawn to help found a new foundation away from the 4400 Center that could be used to help heal some of the people that continuously write in looking for salvation from their loved ones.

Jean finally contacts the 4400 Center looking for a cure, and Ross calls in NTAC immediately suggesting that there will be more of a partnership between the two agencies.

After more NTAC dies in trying to apprehend Jean, she calls Tom directly, telling him she knows what she has to do — purify humanity.

They track her down and unfortunately can’t talk her down, so as she begins to go nova, Diana is forced to shoot her, destroying her virus forever. There is no redemption for the character so the viewer is left wondering why we even cared about her or her story in the first place. It seems to be filler to the main storylines.

Lilly confesses to Matthew that she is not a super believer in the whole 4400 Center project. Matthew surprises the viewer by saying that neither is he. Matthew is definitely an interesting and mysterious character.

Meanwhile Marco shows his unrequited love for Diana hasn’t abated as he has made a fake diary of Maia’s so Diana can give it to NTAC without compromising her integrity. Diana says it’s one of the nicest thing anyone’s done for her.

By the end of the episode, Kyle is a bit more accepting of his fate in this world and ready to move on, until his memory is suddenly restored…and he knows what he did.

At the same time, a janitor who saw Kyle on the roof from which he killed Collier, helps the police do a sketch and soonafter a drawing of Kyle is disseminated.

The episode is an average one with too many things getting in the way of each other as they advance all the storylines slightly, which almost feels as if nothing has changed. It’s not bad, but nothing stellar either.

C+

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