ALPHAS Recap: Alpha Dogs

We get to see how some of the team starts their mornings.
Bill is taking pills by the handful in the bathroom at home. He doesn’t look like he feels all that well.

Gary’s Mom is setting out breakfast. Gary says he will be down in a minute and then you hear him screaming at the top of his lungs. His Mom looks understandably worried. Gary comes downstairs like nothing is wrong though and eats his breakfast. Dr. Rosen thinks it is just a coping mechanism. His Mom thinks it isn’t okay.

Rachel is venting to Dr. Rosen about her parents and how overprotective they are. He thinks maybe she should move out into her own place. They get to the office and Hicks is asleep at his desk. Rachel can smell someone wearing WAY too much cologne, it’s not Hicks though, it is the new head of the tactile unit. Rachel is trying to breathe without smelling. I’m just trying to breathe…he is nice to look at. We need to keep him around.
Rachel is telling him to cut down on the body spray when Dr. Rosen interrupts with their case of the day. An Alpha has been killed, a Building Seven escapee who could generate electricity with his bare hands. He looks like he was beaten to death.
Rachel says the marks on his face are burn marks from acid mixed with spit. Someone spit their acid saliva at him. There is a phone number on his hand. Bill calls it and it is a voice mail with an address. Rosen wants Bill to take point; he needs to keep looking for Stanton Parrish.

Bill, Hicks, Rachel and the new guy, John Bennett, get to the address from the voice mail. It’s in the warehouse district. Rachel can hear a lot of voices and shouting. Bill and Hicks go to check it out and leave Rachel with John until they can figure out what is going on.
What’s going on is an Alpha’s fighting ring.

Rachel is having trouble breathing in the car with John. She starts coughing and tells him he stinks, she can’t stay there and goes to enter the building. Outside of the car she can smell the acid. She walks towards it. She runs into a guy with an acid burn. He starts to get way too close to Rachel and John shows up- and tells him to back off.
They do get the name of the guy who spits acid though and she thanks John for not staying in the van.

Bill gets called into the next fight. He isn’t doing very well. While he is fighting Hicks is talking to a girl he calls short stack (it’s Erin Way) and compared to him she is pretty small. She says the reason Bill can’t get a hit in is because the fighter he is up against messes with your vision.

Meanwhile Gary and Rosen are talking about Stanton Parrish. Gary has been searching data feeds for him all day.
Rosen asks Gary about the screaming he does in the mornings. Rosen says he has every reason to be angry, he was kept in Building Seven and had a chip put in his head. Gary is upset because Anna was killed. She was his friend. Rosen looks a little surprised but says it is healthy to express yourself, maybe he can find a way to do it without terrifying his Mom.

Bill got his butt kicked. He asks the guy running the fights when the next one is. He says never for Bill but then Kat (Erin Way) steps in and says she will work with him, he has moves. The fight organizer says fine, if you say so. She gives Bill her number. She wants him to win so she can bet on him and win some cash.

Gary has his stuff packed at breakfast the next morning. He is moving out so he doesn’t terrify his Mother. Rosen comes to pick up Gary and his Mom is not happy. Gary says it was Dr. Rosen’s solution for Rachel so why isn’t it okay for him. Gary’s Mom doesn’t want him to leave at all.

The rest of the gang is tracking down the acid spitter, well all except Bill. He is on his way to Kat’s house. She is watching a fight tape. Bill gets there and finds out Kat’s skill is she is a quick study. She can learn new skills with little to no effort.

Back in the office John finds Rachel in her office. He has a bag of soap he bought from the store. He dumps them on her desk and then says that while they are on stake out at least she should get to choose how he smells. He thought about unscented, but that probably didn’t apply to her. She picks Tom’s of Maine and smiles at him after he leaves.

Kat is talking to Bill about his ability. She doesn’t want him to amp up, she does want him to relax and gain some control though. Next thing he knows the gym they were in is in shambles and Bill still looks very calm.

Rosen is at the hospital trying to track down the notes from the doctor who patched up Stanton Parrish back when he was a soldier in the civil war. The hospital still has them in the archives. There is a journal and we get to see a flashback of Stanton Parrish or Jacob Dunham at that time shot in the head and pronounced dead. Then Jacob Dunham comes back to life in front of the doctor. Two years later and the doctor is still seeing Jacob Dunham. He is testing things with him, like cutting his hand and seeing how fast it heals. It is healing faster than ever before.

Dr. Rosen, Gary and Gary’s Mother are sitting down talking. Gary’s Mom says he can’t live in his office. She says it isn’t safe. He says it is safe, it’s a secure building. Dr. Rosen supports Gary’s decision. Gary’s Mom admits that maybe she isn’t ready for Gary to move out.

Bill is buying Kat a hot dog. She is going to be at the fights tonight. Bill is talking to her about how she got involved in the fights. She says she can’t remember anything that happens more than a month ago. So in a month she won’t remember any of this. It’s the downside to her ability. They have a sweet little father/daughter type moment.

Dr. Rosen and Gary are in an archive at a college. Dr. Rosen is looking at old articles while Gary complains about how the archives are a mess. Dr. Rosen finds an article about a doctor who was murdered before a lecture. It is the doctor that treated Stanton Parrish back in the civil war days. In another flashback we see the doctor is going to tell the lecture attendees about Stanton’s ability to heal. Stanton slashes his throat before he can.

At the fights Bill and Hicks arrive. Bill offers to fight first. He still seems really calm and not stressed at all. He harnesses his adrenaline and after his opponent jumps around a little bit he takes a deep breath and knocks him out with one punch.
Rachel and John are in the van doing surveillance. She is asking about his family. She smells the acid spitter, he was in the SUV that pulls up although he isn’t there now.

Kat shows up to fight Bill, he seems surprised. She is doing the fight moves she was watching on the tape back at her place. She takes him down hard.

The fight organizer tells her there are some people there that have a job for her. She gets into their SUV that once had the acid spitter in it and the gang follows in their not so stealthy van.

They pull up to a warehouse where Rachel can smell the acid spitter. She can also sense a lot of heart beats, guns, heavy sounding boots and Kat screaming before being sedated. Bill says they can’t wait and he runs into the facility He is really protective of Kat. Hicks, Rachel and John are close behind. Bill uses a vending machine as a shield and goes after Kat. He enters a room with a bunch of people on gurneys. Kat is one of them. She is strapped down and as he is untying her a gunman shows up. Hicks takes a shot that counteracts the gunman’s shot, saving Bill’s life.
The team seems to be on their game this episode.
It was a facility experimenting on Alphas. Kat is being checked out by Dr. Rosen while she and Bill bicker about why she should just say thank you. It looks to me like they are going to have a great friendship.

Kat wants to know who they are, Dr. Rosen says they are consultants, she says she wants to be on their team.

Back at the office Rachel has a gift for John. It’s the perfect soap for him. She tells him she found it at a shop next to her favorite restaurant in The Village. When he doesn’t ask her out she asks him if he likes Italian. He says if they are going to work together they shouldn’t….she says forget about it and walks off.

Stanton Parrish enters a seedy dinner where Dr. Rosen is eating. He says hello and sits down. Dr. Rosen thanks him for providing Dr. Harrison’s research. Stanton, “Every man must control his own destiny.”
Stanton Parrish wants Dr. Rosen to understand his unique perspective.
“Every change brings bloodshed. We can stop that.” He wants Dr. Rosen to help him usher in a new era. Dr. Rosen isn’t having any of Stanton’s BS though.

Gary’s Mom comes by and says goodnight to him in his office. Gary says he will call her tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM after he screams but before breakfast.

Bill is back at the fights. He is there to fight again. Well that can’t be good.

Nice opening episode for Erin Way as Kat. Her character seems interesting and her relationship with Bill should be fun to watch.

ALPHAS airs Monday 10/9c on SyFy