LOST GIRL Recap: Season 3, Episode 8 “Fae-ge Against the Machine”

Bo (Anna Silk) is on to her next phase of training – with Stella (guest star Deborah Odell) right there beside her – in preparation for the Dawning, as evidenced by her waking around the Dal, while blindfolded – mind you, searching for – of all things – a cricket. But this is no ordinary cricket – we are talking about the Fae world, after all! This cricket will provide her with good fortune; and by searching for it blindfolded, Bo has to uses her senses to find the little creature. Her search, unfortunately, turns up empty-handed as the cricket has been following behind her the entire time; and she reaches for what turns out to be dead-air.

Feeling really down about not passing the test, Bo is worried that she will never be ready and tells Trick (Rick Howland) that she really wishes Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) could be there with her. But, sadly, it would seem that humans taint this part of the process so Bo’s best gal pal cannot be there for moral support. Being the every devoted grandfather that he is, Trick tries to reassure Bo and she answer him back that “the Dawning is something that we all go through and some of it is difficult but it is manageable”; to which Trick is pleased to hear that she was listening to his preaching.

After berating Bo for not being able to capture the good fortune cricket, Stella soon offers an apology to Bo, letting her know that she now has to wait for her invitation to arrive to enter the temple, giving Bo a “day off”. As Bo gets ready to leave the Dal, she gets a phone call from Lauren. During that phone call, Bo plays around with a dial on an odd looking machine that is sitting in the Dal; and as she walks away, parts of the machine begin to move and some smoke begins to spew out. At that precise moment, a young girl, who is hooked up to some other kind of weird machine, is glimpsed.

Back at the Dal Lauren (Zoie Palmer) shows up all excited about a letter she received; and as Bo reads the missive, Lauren’s excitement level seems to increase. As it turns out, the letter states that Lauren is being honored by being the recipient of the Moses Gomberg Distinguished Award for her outstanding contributions in the field of free radicals. It seems that Lauren wasn’t the first choice – that would go to Michael Schnod (who Lauren obviously does not like) – but he was proven to be a complete fraud – allowing Lauren to be the new recipient of the award. And, given that Bo has been given a day off, they can get all dressed to attend the ceremony. While Lauren rushes off home to get ready – not to mention prepare an acceptance speech – Bo is surprised to see Tamsin (Rachel Skarsten) at the Dal, who insists she is there to take Bo out for lunch because everyone has been lying to her – all together now, what the hell?!

At a Dark Fae bar, Tamsin and Bo talk about her impending Dawning with the former telling Bo that everyone has been shitting with her all week, trying to cover for the fact that she is not going to get through the Dawning because this new phase in her life will be “the most brutal thing she will go through times infinity”. That’s not exactly something Bo needs to hear after failing to capture the good fortune cricket.

Back at the Dal, Trick is getting ready for his first “date” with Stella; and when she shows up they discover the machine for which Bo had been playing with earlier. Trick seems to think it must be something that belongs to Hale (K.C. Collins), but Stella says it is actually Bo’s invitation to the temple. But, since Bo is on her “day off” Trick – being her closest blood relative – will have to stand in for her; but each move he makes with the machine will affect Bo no matter where she is.

And that means that her trial with the invitation begins at the Dark Fae bar where Bo is seemingly hit on by a guy named Pike (guest star Toby Proctor), who – along with several of his “buddies” actually give Bo a hard time about being in the Dark Fae when she is clearly a Light Fae, despite her claiming to be unaligned. Not wanting to deal with the guys, Tamsin punches Pike and they make a run for it out of the bar, thanks in part to a guy who had been watching them both from the back part of the bar.

That guy – Balzac (guest star Ryan Belleville) – helps them get out of the bar safely, and Bo states to him that she owes him. And, that is her first mistake, as it turns out Balzac is a Spriggin (basically a Dark Pixie) and once you make a deal with a spriggin you have to honor it. So this inadvertent deal sets Bo, Balzac and Tamsin on a crazy adventure – that is also affected by each move that Trick makes with the knobs and containers on the machine back at the Dal. First, the trio head to a sub-basement at a big warehouse looking for Fang (guest star Adrian Nguyen) – the Tong boss who is seriously bad news according to Tamsin – who has a “cookie” for which Balzac has to retrieve. The problem is Fang is more than he seems – he looks like a “teenager hipster” (so says Bo) – but thanks to Tamsin upsetting him, he pulls a gun on them. Meanwhile, one of the moves that Trick makes with the machine messes with Bo’s speech, making it nearly impossible for Bo to use her power against Fang to get the cookie. But she succeeds and they are on to the next phase of Bo’s IOU to Balzac, which is a long trek to Brazenwood, a place that Tamsin is none too happy to hear about. It seems Brazenwood is a “dark and lawless territory where only the fringes of society go, where the lost, soulless and the criminally insane go to live and die”.

They are headed there to rescue a young girl named Hannah, as Balzac claims he is actually a bounty hunter for the Demeritus School for Higher Learning, a school that specializes in giving rare and special Dark Fae a home and an education. But first they have to get a prescription from Jane (guest star Lauren Ash), basically the landlady of Brazenwood. But before they can be given entry to Brazenwood, Bo has to pick a Tarot card from those dealt before her by Jane. The card she chooses is the Wanderer – which unsettles Tamsin and Jane greatly, as the latter says “no one ever picks him”. That statement spurs Bo to look at all of the cards on the table and they all read the Wanderer, which unsettles Tamsin and Jane even more. Jane, in turn, gives them the prescription, allowing them entry into Brazenwood, but Balzac is injured by a blow dart thrown at him by Whitman (guest star Brian Frank), the man who owns Hannah. Bo and Tamsin are able to trap him inside Jane’s trailer – along with the landlady’s dangerously sounding guard dogs – giving the duo time to get to the gate of Brazenwood, which definitely has a really bad Deliverance-vibe.

As the women work their way through Brazenwood, they start looking for the pharmacist (guest star John Tench), who is also the Sheriff; but first Bo is affected by another of Trick’s maneuvers on the machine at the Dal. This time she gets drunk off her least favorite drink, which causes its own set of problems when Lauren calls to find out if Bo is going to make it back to attend the awards ceremony with her (she’s not, as it turns out – but more on that in a minute).

Once they find the pharmacist, they discover the young girl glimpsed from the beginning of the episode hooked up to some kind of weird machine. This young girl is none other than Hannah, who is a kind of Fae whose tears are sold in the Dark Fae trade, but according to Tamsin they rarely live to be the age for which Hannah (guest star Allie MacDonald) is (which is roughly late teens). After some convincing – because Dark Fae like Hannah cannot be forced to do anything or they will literally turn to tears – Bo and Tamsin are able to get Hannah to leave the cabin where she was being held and they race to get out of Brazenwood.

That is short-lived, of course, as not only the Sheriff but also Whitman are there to stop them; and much like an old high noon shoot out in the wild west, Bo has to stand up to Whitman – who can seemingly duplicate himself. But thanks to her training with Stella in trying to capture the cricket, Bo uses what she learned from that phase of her training to get the better of Whitman, as he was really standing behind her the entire time. She takes him down with a knife she swiped from the cabin where Hannah was being held; and the three of them (Hannah, Bo and Tamsin) are able to escape while Trick is able to win over the machine in Bo’s stead.

Meanwhile, back at Lauren’s apartment, she receives a visit from Dr. Isaac Taft (guest star Shawn Doyle), who comes bearing her award since she missed the ceremony. He claims to be a big fan of her work – and vice versa – and he asks her out for a drink.

Back at the Dal, the final step on the machine is a choice between happiness and unhappiness; and that is when Balzac shows up, who has healed from his run-in with the blow dart followed quickly by Bo and Tamsin with Hannah in tow. And with Hannah there, they are able to offer up her tears to the machine and Bo receives her invitation to the temple from Balzac as well as the machine which plays a crazy little circus ditty and spits out confetti in celebration of Bo passing the test; at which time, Bo remembers about Lauren.

The final scene is Bo and Tamsin at Lauren’s empty apartment, having a celebratory drink for Bo’s success; and then Bo asks Tamsin why she stuck around. She gives a vague answer and Bo says that she pegged Tamsin all wrong, that she is really “one of the good ones”, but Tamsin disagrees saying that Bo “sucks at reading people”. As Tamsin leaves and walks to her car, she discovers a Wanderer card on the ground and as she stands up the air is filled with Wanderer cards that seemingly falling from the sky. As the screen goes dark, Tamsin yells, “please tell me she’s not the one?” What is that all about?!

“Fae-ge Against the Machine” was written by Alexandra Zarowny and was directed by Andy Mikita. It should be noted that, once again, Hale was not featured in this episode nor were Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) or Kenzi.

Make sure to tune into Syfy on Monday, March 18 at 10 PM for the next episode of Lost Girl called “The Ceremony”.