Season 1, Episode 5--"The Gnome"

In today's episode, we learn it's a short walk from the Boy Scouts to terrorism . . .

 SYNOPSIS

 Inside a military stockade, Carlton Hauser is up for his six-month review, and the fact that he looks all psycho AND has his own leitmotif means that he is serious business, as he proves when he steals a paper clip, unchains himself, kills his analyst, and escapes, because Hauser will have Plot-Assisted Superpowers for the duration of this episode. That established, he digs up Scandal's grave and shoots it full of holes, leaving a black star in the casket (also, the caretaker REALLY wants to tell Dallas and Danielle about his problems with necrophiliacs, in a subplot that is mercifully not followed up on.) which means Something Else Is Going On.

 This causes Scandal (who was due to go to Hawaii for some vacation) to go into Bitter Loner Mode and he starts looking up members of his old outfit (both of them) because there's no better way to hide from people who might be trying to kill you than immediately revisiting rather contentious events in your past, especially after you had surgery to change your face and get a new identity. Dallas and Danielle try to reach Scandal, but Scandal's not having it. He shoots up Dallas's SUV because damn it, there are some things A Man Has To Do Alone and goes off for some stock b-roll of him driving the car and thinking Really Deep Thoughts while ruminating on some Dad Wisdom so the episode's title will make some sense:

  "My dad used to say there was an ugly little gnome locked inside of everyone, using us to give into our worst impulses. I had seen the gnome's footprints in the minefields and seen his work on the bodies of starving victims. But I had never seen the gnome face to face until one day I stared at my friend Carlton Hauser's eyes . . .and the gnome glared back."

 Thus established, this metaphor will never be brought up again, because metaphorical throughlines are for other shows.  With that "clear," Hauser kills Pyke, one of the members of their old outfit and stuffs him in a refrigerator, so Scandal can discover it and get even more grimly determined to get even. As Scandal tries to find the next potential victim, Dallas and Danielle show up for tea and exposition--Hauser and Jackson were Wilderness Scouts (which . . .I'm not SAYING they were the Boy Scouts . . .but they were totally the Boy Scouts) and the two of them attended Annapolis, went through the SEALs. Then Black Star happened and Hauser's been on the murder train ever since. 

 Next Scandal goes to visit Mel Cooley (no, really!) and gets him shot through the chest, because Scandal is not really very good at this at all. Ultimately, everyone gets on the same page and we drop more end-of-Act 2 exposition, and the moment you've been waiting for, the moment when Cobra adds one egg to many to the plot--Hauser went native during Desert Storm, took and Iraqi wife and name, and went traitor. Scandal kills his wife (in what is quickly dashed off as a "clear-cut case of self-defense," lest we think Our Hero shot a woman unjustifiably) and led Black Star, an attempt to recapture Hauser, which turned into a massacre because Scandal let things get too personal and Hauser was an expert in terror tactics. Hauser apparently killed 16 men but was eventually captured, but Dallas builds him up as Totally Dangerous and a Tough Bastid.

 Hauser engineers a distraction and breaks into Cobra headquarters (again) and kidnaps Danielle (also, again) and takes her into the woods, setting the stage for a final showdown with Scandal that will end with Danielle being blasted with a shotgun as payback for Hauser's wife getting killed. Dallas and Scandal get to the site of the final battle (where they earned their merit badges in Wilderness Scouts, because of symbolism) and they saunter through woods full of booby traps and Dallas gets shot, which gives him time to figure out how to beat Hauser's shotgun trap. Hauser, for his part, gets speared by one of his own bobby traps, because his Plot-Assissted Superpowers pick that moment to fade.

 For our epilogue, Scandal buttons the episode, having finally made it to "Hawaii," by saying "Yeah, it's sucks hard when you lose friends, but you can always make new ones!" and goes off to chase one of the bikini-clad hotties walking past him, because the surest cure for PTSD-related angst is T & A. I must remember to try that some day.

 ANALYSIS
 
 For all its problems, this is actually a really solid episode full of some real tension. While Hauser isn't quite the opposite number to Scandal that the episode desperately wants us to believe he is (one need really buys he and Scandal were longtime friends), he's a different type of bad guy than episodes previous to this have been, and because he's presented as pretty competent and ruthless, he actually sustains the tension through the whole episode and prevents all the act 2 complications that get introduced ("his adopted Iraqi name?" REALLY?) from sucking the episode down a rather barque drain. 

 There's also quite a lot for Dallas to do, and Tolkan milks every moment for all he can get, which you'd expect given he's the strongest actor in the main cast. His subplot (Danielle hates the smell of his cigars) actually plays out and pays off in the episode, which may or may not be the first time we've actually had something like a B-plot in one of these.

 Sadly, the episode is not without its problems--Danielle has nothing to do except fret over Scandal and get captured, as she did in "Push It" and "Honeymoon Hideaway" respectively. Also, despite the fact that Hauser typically comes across really well and credibly for most of the episode his death scene is . . .pretty damn goofy, as apparently getting a sharpened sapling through your chest going fifty or so miles an hour is more mildly annoying than the ghastly fatal injury you'd imagine it would be. 

 Further on in the gaffe department, in a scene that made the intro despite this, Dudikoff commits the cardinal sin of all action heroes by blinking while he's firing his automatic weapon. Scandal's doing his edgy "get off my back" stuff from the pilot and "Push It," and while he can't really do the emotions this episode requires to fully work, he does the best with what he's got on hand.

 In all, it's pretty decent, and easily the strongest episode so far in the run.
 

 DAD WISDOM (aka THE QUOTABLE COBRA)

 "Nice tie . . Bozo had a yard sale?"

 "Save your psychobabble for the needy, huh?"

 "What happened? Plastic surgeon catch you in bed with his wife?"

 "The trouble with stickin' your hand in a hornet's nest . . .in all probability, you're gonna get stung."

"Some friends you never lose track of, some turn their back on you, and some . . .become enemies. Truth is, the end of friendship really isn't funny after all."

 "THIS BLACK STAR'S TURNING BLOOD RED, SIR!"

 "If anything happens, there's something you should know--that's the worst tie you've ever worn."

 "You all right?" 
 "Hell NO I'm not--I've just been shot!"

 
 NEXT WEEK

 Scandal gets parachuted into a Rockford Files episode in time for his birthday and tries and fails to make a metaphor about dogs peeing on him sound like homespun wisdom (no, really!) it's "Mr. Chapman, I Presume," in seven!