Zoo Recap: Baby-Daddy Drama

Zoo

Wham, Bam, Thank You Sam

Season 3 Episode 7

Editor’s Rating 3 stars ***

Photo: Shane Harvey/CBS

Let’s talk a little bit about that episode title, shall we? “Wham, Bam, Thank You Sam” is a pun that plays on a well-known phrase in two very different ways, in two very different contexts. The first involves paternity: Clem, unfortunately, is in a crisis. A fight with Abigail Westbrook, who snuck onboard the Zoo Crew’s plane to free Abendegos from the vehicle bay, led to a blood complication where her blood and the baby’s blood have mingled, and now her body is making antibodies to attack her baby’s blood, which is decidedly Not Awesome. According to Abe, the best way to resolve this problem is by a blood transfusion from the baby’s father. Who is that? A guy named Sam Parker, whom Clem hasn’t seen in months.

GET IT? Wham, bam, thank you, Sam? As in, thanks for the baby! And thanks for the answer to the fertility crisis! Although it’s highly unlikely Mr. Parker set out to help solve mankind’s sterility problem, if you ask me.

Clem’s predicament is the one major drawback to an operation that otherwise goes off without a hitch: saving the children from the compound where Abigail Westbrook & Co. are holding them. Apparently, they were a trial run to see whether Novaltox-B can get humans to communicate on the same frequency as the hybrids. Turns out, it can — although to what end, it’s not clear. With the findings confirmed, Westbrook has no further use for the kids, so after freeing Abendegos, she evacuates with her people. She also leaves some important stuff behind, like the stasis tank that was used to help her recover from that gunshot wound. Full of data and medical information on Abigail, Jackson successfully lobbies the feds to let him have it following their arrival on the scene, and the world’s least sexy jacuzzi is the latest addition to Zoo Force One.

However, the high-tech jacuzz comes at a bit of a cost: Logan is recruited by an IADG agent named Grissom (played by Michael Hogan of Battlestar Galactica fame, who is looking increasingly like John McCain these days). Logan isn’t interested at first, but Grissom knows about the Zoo Crew’s mission to find the new hybrids, and tells him where the gang can find the next one (Peru) while luring him with a potential hybrid mystery in Germany, where no hybrid should even exist. Logan takes the job and everyone pretends to be sad about it, but honestly, their fancy sous-vide machine for people has more personality.

The gang heads off to Peru, with Mitch and Jamie going on the hunt for the hybrid, while Jackson and Clem work on the stasis tank and Abe and Dariela talk to their son about his time in captivity.

In Peru, Mitch and Jamie are attacked by a VERY LARGE wolf that just suddenly teleports away? And like, okay. Teleporting Wolves are not the best superpowered animal this show has come up with, but it ain’t bad. And then Mitch and Jamie are attacked again by someone with a tranquilizer rifle, knocking Mitch out. Surprise! Dr. Max Morgan is back, baby.

Turns out the elder Morgan is looking for a rumored 60-foot snake — perhaps the same hybrid that Mitch and Jamie are hunting. Which means that maybe they didn’t encounter a teleporting wolf earlier, but an invisible giant snake that ate a rather normal but also quite large wolf. I don’t know about you, but that is my kind of twist.

With a lot of bickering, the Morgans and Jamie track down the hybrid snake to its den (an abandoned carnival haunted house, of course) and are able to take it out when it eats Jamie whole and she cuts her way out. As you do. With the spinal fluid acquired, the Morgans and Jamie return to Zoo Force One. But Clem’s situation is looking dire: She’s got three days to get her baby a transfusion, and they might not find the right Sam Parker in time to get a transfusion. Clem does the only thing she can to buy the gang more time, and volunteers to wait it out in the stasis tank.

Now that everyone is back together (sans Logan, and honestly, who is that guy anyway?), Zoo takes on two of the most fraught dynamics in its core cast: Abe and Dariela’s fractured relationship, and last week’s revelation that Mitch is in fact Abigail Westbrook’s cohort, Mr. Duncan. The former is resolved pretty tidily: After a brief period where Dariela considers leaving with Isaac, she and Abe kiss and make up, and I am now less concerned about the fate of my favorite couple. For now.

Jamie, however, pieces together that Mitch is Mr. Duncan. She doesn’t really blame him for anything — Abigail Westbrook did, after all, put a bio-drive in his head — but she says she’s got to tell the rest of the Zoo Crew. That isn’t something Mitch is cool with, unfortunately, and he tranqs her on the spot in front of his dad … who also seems to have the hybrid fetus from earlier this season? These Morgans are shifty folk.

Finally, Jackson goes on a mission to Pittsburgh to tell a man named Sam Parker that he is a daddy. Unfortunately, Jackson embarrasses himself by getting the wrong Sam altogether. The mixup works out peachy for Abigail Westbrook, though: She’s finally ready to confront her brother, and the episode ends with her killing Sam out of nowhere and holding Jackson at gunpoint.

Wham, bam, thank you, Sam.