Zoo Recap: Mansdale vs. the Volcano

I’d like to apologize. For a brief moment of darkness last week, I called Zoo boring. Forgive me. I’ll never do it again. Because Zoo responded by throwing a man into a volcano.

Let me back up, because that’s precisely what Zoo does in this week’s episode: “Drop It Like It’s Hot” rewinds the clock to just a few moments before Jackson and Abe revealed their kooky scheme to recharge the drone leading the hybrid vultures away from New York and toward a volcano. In that time, Mitch called them and got them up to speed with Jamie’s assassination of Leanne Ducovny, and a brief power spike allowed Mansdale to escape Jamie’s plane prison.

Unable to procure a weapon or anything useful, Mansdale sneaks his way into what seems like a sensible hiding spot: the back of Jamie’s expensive sports car. Cut to the gang’s plan to recharge the drone via midair crossbow bolt attached to some jumper cables or something. They also need the drone to lead the hybrid vultures to their imminent destruction in an active volcano. But they can’t just have the drone drop its attached beacon into the volcano — they need to make sure it goes all the way down, lest a hybrid swoop in and grab it or something. So they need to attach something really heavy to it. Like that sports car Mansdale is hiding in.

I know a big part of Zoo’s draw is the unbelievable stuff that happens on it every week, but still, I cannot believe what happened in this episode’s first five minutes. I don’t know how they do it, man. Tommy Wiseau himself could show up in a damn episode of this thing and be like, “OH HAI JACKSON,” and it’d be totally cool.

It gets even better. Immediately after they unwittingly toss Mansdale into a volcano, they get a call from Mitch, who was just told by Jamie (as the police took her into custody) that they need Mansdale because he has information that will exonerate Jamie. Whoops!

Oh, and the best part of this whole “we accidentally dropped a man into a volcano” thing? Everyone who finds out takes it completely in stride. Abe, who learns what happened to Mansdale by reviewing security footage after realizing Mansdale went missing, pretty much just goes, “…my bad.” Mitch, when Abe and Jackson tell him they misplaced a man in a freaking volcano, is all like, “Hmm, yeah, that sounds about right.” And later, when the news finally makes it to Jamie, she’s like, “Oh, nice! I was wondering when we’d get around to dropping dudes in volcanos.”

Even that isn’t the actual best part about all this. Nothing beats the fact that the episode title is a pun about what they did. They dropped Mansdale like he was hot.

Okay, other things happen in this episode too. Big things! Clementine, held hostage by bounty hunters, finds out that Clem is pregnant and decide to sell her to a clandestine group called ‘The Gentlemen.’ Abe and Dariela have another falling-out after Dariela confesses to turning Clem over to the bounty hunters, but this time it looks like actually it’s over for them. They seem serious about divorcing once Isaac is safe. Meanwhile, Jackson tells everyone that Abigail is his sister, although I don’t think that’s the big news Jackson probably thinks it is. Jackson also reunites and makes up with his ex-girlfriend Tessa in Mexico, after the plane picks up a hybrid-related distress signal that they decide to investigate.

If I’m being honest, that part is actually kind of boring. I just don’t care about Tessa and Jackson making up. But it’s the welcome kind of boring, a nice chaser to level us out. Besides, everything gets nuts again real quick: Thanks to the help of a local “witch,” the two of them find someone named Abendegos, who isn’t a person but a walking, talking hybrid that knows Jackson’s name. Jackson wants to take Abendegos with him, but the “witch” and her associates aren’t having it, so Jackson summons lions with his mind to defend himself and Tessa.

Yeah, you read that right.

Back in Hudson, New York, a wounded Abigail — who escaped the city by killing a taxi driver and taking his car — also uses her mind to summon hybrid hyenas to take her home. There is no further development on this plot thread.

The other big thing in “Drop It Like It’s Hot” is Logan and Mitch, the World’s Most Reluctant Bros, and their efforts to exonerate Jamie. It is a hilariously and needlessly complex story line that plays fast and loose with the legal process — even by the standards of prime-time CBS — but ultimately, they discover that Jamie did not kill Leanne. She just confessed to it so that Mitch and Logan would work together to find a Reiden file that would exonerate her and find out what Ducovny was hiding. It’s a drug called Nelvatox-B.

No one knows a thing about this drug or what it does, but Reiden has a lot of it, and is giving it to every single child they’ve abducted, including Isaac.

Drop it like it’s hot. I love you, Zoo.