The 4400 Season 4 Episode 3

Audrey Parker's Come and Gone was a really superb episode of The 4400. I enjoyed watching this episode because it had a unique story with an interesting woman who took the promicin shot. There was a lot of character development in this episode for Kyle who is dealing with his new ability, Cassie, who leads him to a book with prophecy regarding Jordan Collier, Shawn, and himself. I found this a fascinating turn. I enjoyed Audrey's writing, and her personality as she confronted a con man dating some one she cared about. Shawn tries to reopen The 4400 center with some trouble, and ends up helping Director Doyle of NTAC. Diana comes home one night and finds a big surprise waiting for her. I enjoyed the end of the episode where Cassie leads Kyle to the suburbs for some unknown reason, and what he discovers is shocking. I look forward to the next episode of The 4400!!!!!!!

This episode starts with an unusual voice over. This comes from Audrey Parker, an old librarian with arthritis in her hands. She takes morphine shots to relieve the strong pain she feels. She also has taken a promicin shot which gives her the ability to leave her body by astral projection and see other people while they can't see her. She writes a blog in which she tells how much promicin is doing good for her. But her blog is being tracked by NTAC and Diana and Tom must find who is the blogger. It brings them to Audrey.





While she's on one of her flights she's killed. So, she tries to tell NTAC about her murderer. The only way is by interfering electronic equipments, radios, and following Diana.





Very creative and unusual episode.

This episode was the 4400 equivalent of a ghost story, not a scary ghost story but a bittersweet ghost story with resonance for Diana in particular.





The main storyline is coming along, Kyle is getting to grips with accepting his ability, a woman named Cassie who advises him and knows things. She tell him to be at a certain place and a certain time and a car transporting a prisoner is involved in an accident in fron of his eyes. The prisoner is Isabelle Tyler.





Ben and Maia return from Spain but Diana is not making any progress in the search for April.





Shawn and Heather reopen the Healing Foundation and the new head of NTAC asks Shawn to heal her dad.

It's nice to see a vignette away from the main story, although it's a sad one. Audrey Parker is an elderly librarian with arthritis and in a lot of pain. But after taking the shot of promician she finds she can leave her body via astral projection and view others without being seen. You find through the story that she had quite a life, but never married or had kids of her own. She clearly feels she has missed out on some things and longs to be young again. On one of her flights she sees a young artist who is hooked up with a scam artist. Back in her body, she confronts the boyfriend and threatens him with exposure if he doesn't leave the relationship. While on another flight, she is murdered and she tries to communicate with INTAC officers, who has tracked a web blog back to her. As a ghost, she is able to communicate with Diana by creating a noise over radio waves (which conveniently gets translated to English by the INTAC nerds.) Audrey *thinks* she knows who killed her, but does she? It's sad that Audrey was a single episode, she makes a very interesting study in life and living it to the fullest.

Audrey Parker's Come And Gone : I really enjoyed this episode, it was sort of a departure from all of the chaos of the first two episodes. A delicious dessert after a sumptuous meal. Even though we do get glimpses of Kyle's descent into uncovering the Messiah for the world, and of course Shawn's internal struggle over using his powers or not, it's still focusing mainly on Audrey Parker and her murder. I think the cast and the writer's have done an excellent job making the show a more believable take on your ghost coming back to seek vengence for their own murder. It was really well done. Like I've said, it wasn't a pivotal episode, nor was it the most dramatic, yet it was a solid and interesting episode. Nearly like a palette cleansing from the first two courses served. (Hmmm why do I have food analogies on the brain today?)

Well, this episode was good! Audrey Parker was a great woman ... even though she was to close to make a mistake, when she acussed the wrong guy for murdering her! Luckly she went to say good bye to her nurse when she saw the awful truth! Poor woman.





I'm glad that Shaw wasn't busted. He was luckly too, because of his NTAC uncle! :D The thing is that he re-opened the 4400 center, which I don't know if it's a good idea, mostly because of Jordan Collier, I hope he won't show up there for messing things up, cause that's wouldn't be too good! Even though, the center does need some of the 4400, cause Shawn needs a little help. Things I didn't understood:


-When Kyle went to meet Cassie, it was a little unclear. I didn't understood ... I mean, was the accident in the present? Cause too me it looked like it was in the past! -So, if it was in the present, that means that Cassie can see into the feature!


-When Cassie told Kyle that if he doesn't show up at 2:00 a clock, she said that he would never see her again!!!! Well, what kind of ability is this? I mean, how can an ability do that? It's Kyle ability and she can't dissapear like that, when she want!

This episode reminded me of the EARLY episodes from season one where every episode followed the 'X-files' formula... a new interesting case/crime that had to be solved, it even had the 4400 version of the Lone Gunmen.





In this episode Diana and Tom are asked to find out who is posting a BLOG that tells their story about taking Promicin shots and how she's happy that she did. The amazing powers that she developed and the good that she's doing with it.





When she ends up dead, she begins 'haunting' Diana, following her around and disrupting electronics and leaving behind messages... I really enjoyed this 'trip down memory lane' in the format of the show...

Once again, we have an effective mix of the “original recipe” 4400 subplots with an exploration of the new world order through the eyes of one of the promicin-powered “extra crispies”. The previous episode was full of subplots, almost to the deficit of the story itself, but this version is a bit more focused on specific advances in the overall arc. The results are more or less the same: a reminder of why this is one of the best summer TV shows on the air.





The newly-powered Audrey Parker is the center of the “A” plot. Audrey is an old woman with severe arthritic pain in her hands, requiring morphine shots on a regular basis. To escape the pain, Audrey took the promicin shot, and it gave her the ability to “astral project” as a much younger (and gorgeous) version of herself. She recounts this positive turn in her life on the internet, which becomes a problem for NTAC, since the message is coming from such a persuasive source.





This puts Diana in an interesting state of mind, because she wonders if someone with such a positive ability should be arrested. She admires Audrey on a number of levels, and that drives her character throughout the plot thread. Audrey is killed while using her ability, and Audrey figures out how to interact with Diana, who becomes her voice, pushing Tom and her allies to solve the murder before Audrey runs out of time and energy to communicate.





I liked that aspect of the episode, because some of the interaction between Audrey and the “real world” fit within the theories of paranormal research very well. The idea of Audrey interfering with electronic equipment is fairly standard, but this also had a clever use of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP). The treatment didn’t quite much the known phenomena, but it was fairly close.





NTAC’s treatment of Audrey Parker meshed well with Shawn’s decision to re-open the 4400 Center and resume his healing services. Meghan Doyle, as the head of NTAC in Seattle, has personal reasons to support Shawn’s initiative, given her father’s health (as revealed in the previous installment). Just like that, by the end of the episode, Meghan is in the same difficult conflict of interests that has plagued Tom and Diana. She has to enforce the ban over use of abilities professionally while benefiting from them personally.





Shawn once again places himself in the path of Jordan’s revolution, something that was building nicely in the third season. Shawn is trying to make headway against the government ban on use of abilities through positive change, and for now, it’s working. But Jordan’s revolution may not allow for that kind of soft approach, and as Kyle’s subplot demonstrates, that revolution is coming very soon.





Kyle’s plot thread manages to show how quickly “mundane” laws can fall to the wayside. Shawn’s way is civil disobedience; he’s breaking the letter of the law to influence the spirit of the law, but there’s no negative impact. Kyle goes from stealing the White Light book to (presumably) helping a federal prisoner escape when the circumstances allow. If that’s where Kyle’s hot spirit guide is taking him, then it’s reasonable to assume that Kyle’s future advice to Jordan will continue to cross the legal line.





As with the first two episodes, the exploration of the new world order (and the plight of the newly-powered) is giving the subplots for the original 4400 more time to develop. This will give those subplots greater impact when the time comes, and for that reason alone, I enjoy these episodes. More than that, this is the best way to communicate the new world order to the audience, since it’s always better to show the impact than simply describe it in exposition. Whatever the case, another solid entry for the season.

An woman takes promicin, develops the ability to astrally project herself. A conman that she tried to stop was fingered as the killer but it turns out it was some kid who did it accidentally. The woman manages to communicate with Tom and Diana thru vaious electronic devices like answering machines. Each time she made contact she began fading away and eventually she was gone completely, but held on long enough to see justice served. When Tom and Diana were seeking information from a public library, allusions were made comparing current terrorism investigations to ones against the 4400+. Of course public libraries being supported by the government, people shouldnt expect 100% privacy. In fact when transmitting anything electronically no one should expect that no one else is intercepting it; whether the monitoring is being done legally or not. Though it does point out the fuzzy line between security and privacy. Interesting but not terribly exciting - sort of like a CSI episode. Shawn resumed healing outside the 4400 center that had been shut down by the government; unauthorized use of 4400 powers is also illegal. The new NTAC head ok's the healings and doesnt care she is risking her job. Cant imagine why a power like healing wouldnt be made an exception. I can understand people with mindreading, mind control or other potentially harmful abilities being restricted, but not healing. In any case, its clear that society and the government has an increasing sense of unease about what the 4400s and the new people with powers might do; not unreasonable considering what happened in the previous 2 episodes.





The best part was where Cassie led Kyle to a specific spot where a car/van accident occurs due to joyriding kids and out of a wrecked prison transport van pops.... Isabelle. I was NOT expecting that.. Cassie also tells Kyle he needs to study the book of Prophesy regarding Collier, himself and the 4400's as there are secrets in it yet to be revealed.





Overall it was a strong episode with a very strong finish. Now with Isabelle on the loose, things should start to get really interesting.

This was what could be called a “transition episode”. We have the governments continued crusade against Promicin and the 4400s (both regular and the “extra crispys”) I did see a connection between the “war on Promicin” and the “war on terror”. We also saw Kyle and his shadow, Cassie, continue their odd “relationship”. The main story line in this episode had little to do with the ongoing conflict. It involved an elderly woman named Audrey Parker, who took the Promicin shot and got the ability to “astral project”. She was able to leave her body and be young again. She had many regrets about how she lived her life and was unhappy about being alone. This was a case where the ECOTW had a benign ability and it was easy to see why she took the shot ( I think most people would have). She was a likable and sympathetic person. As for Sean, he is now trying to resurrect his "healing center" and eventually the 4400 center. It was nice to see how even in NTAC, there are different views on Promicin. After this episode, they are pushing toward the pro-side (or at least the “only go after real threats” side) However, it did not end well,. Someone killed her while she was out of her body, and Audrey desperately tried to communicate with NTAC Tom and Diane before her time ran out