Okay, so remember when we said there'd be a bunch of possible explanations for why Sam's become stuck in 1973? When this episode begins, he's writing them all down on a chalkboard. From what we can see, they are: coma, drug trip, time travel, different planet, extraterrestrials, mind experiment, heaven/hell/purgatory, insanity, brain tumor, virtual reality and multidimensional travel. We're guessing that in his own time, he was a really big Lost fan. There's also a question mark, which represents "the unknown." But coma and time travel, or some combination of the two, still seem like the best bets here. When all your ideas seem crazy, it's a good rule to go with the simplest ones.
Annie comes along and erases the blackboard, before the other cops can see it. And Sam decides that until he can find a way back, he may as well spend his time "catching bad guys."
Which is what we see him doing next, as the squad chases down Kim Trent, a suspected armed robber who's running away from a public swimming pool wearing nothing but a Speedo. When they catch him, Hunt tosses him into the Central Park Pond and starts interrogating him, despite his pleas that he can't swim. When he sinks below the surface, Sam dives in and fishes him out. As Sam wrestles Trent to the bank, he gets slugged in the head for his trouble -- which the other detectives find hilarious.
At the stationhouse, we learn that three check-cashing stores have been robbed, and three employees shot. But despite some slaps, nose-pinching and evidence-planting in the interrogation room, Trent still won't say who he was meeting at the pool. While Hunt wants to fill Trent's pockets with LSD and send him off to jail, Sam convinces him to try the futuristic method of letting the suspect go and following him.
(Oh, hey, and look -- here's Heather Matarazzo as June, a smart but unappreciated police secretary, and Lee Tergesen as Crocker, an assistant district attorney. Way to keep employing good actors, show!)
In Sam's apartment hallway the next morning, a naked hippie-chick named "Windy" introduces herself as his neighbor and gives him an impromptu palm reading. She tells him his fate line is bisected. "It's like a record skipping... you get bumped, and you're grooved into a whole new tune." Maybe he should write that on his chalkboard.
Sam and Hunt drive to Trent's apartment, but Chris and Ray, who are supposed to be keeping an eye on the place, aren't there. A call comes on the radio about another disturbance at a check-cashing store. They speed off, Starsky & Hutch-style, only to have Trent start shooting at them when they get there. Gene shoots Trent dead, but not before Trent shoots June, who apparently showed up after hearing the radio call.
June's hurt but alive. Hunt tells Sam to clean up the crime scene, despite the fact that it's brimming with evidence, because June is "family." Sam has another mini-meltdown about the "cosmic joke" that all this represents. (Unfortunately, this kind of scene really doesn't fit big, lunky Jason O'Mara -- it kind of makes us miss John Simm from the British version of the show.)
That night, Sam returns to the scene and notices an old woman (Silvia Miles) whose apartment window provides a perfect view of the street. She says that uniformed police officers had regularly escorted the suspect to the check-cashing store.
Sam finds Hunt in June's hospital room. Hunt greets Sam with a punch in the nose -- exactly what he's mad about at this point, it's hard to say -- and the two get into a big fistfight, to a backing track of Gilbert O'Sullivan. Afterward, sitting at the foot of June's bed, Hunt admits that she'd make a good cop, if only she wasn't a woman. He and Sam have another discussion about their differing policing styles, and Sam angers Hunt yet again by suggesting there may be dirty cops on the force.
Sam goes back to the stationhouse, where he learns that Ray is one of the cops who moonlights as security for the check-cashing chain. Ray denies being involved in any wrongdoing, and suggests Sam talk to Crocker. He meets with Crocker in a park and tells him what he's found out. When he's alone again, he sees a sort of robotic lunar module on the ground. It shines a light in his eyes, and he suddenly flashes on scenes of himself with Maya in his own time. It's freaky, but doesn't seem to mean anything in particular.
Later, it turns out Ray has screwed him over, knowing that Crocker would call Hunt about Sam's investigation into other cops -- and now all the cops in the stationhouse are aware of it, too. But that's not as interesting to him as the fact that when he looks into Hunt's glass office door, he sees a reflection of the modern stationhouse from his own time -- and Maya's standing there. This "unreal" scene is what it takes for him to realize that the cops at the check-cashing place were actually just impersonating police. (Um, shouldn't he have known that was a possibility from the get-go?)
June's awake, and when Hunt tells her he killed the guy who shot her, she gets a little bit hinky. Sam notices, and asks if she knew Trent, much to Hunt's disgust. But she admits that Trent was her boyfriend, and that she provided him with information and spare police uniforms. Sam bonds with her using some frankly lame dialogue about how lonely they both are, and she gives up the names of the other guys involved.
There's another action scene as they all go after the bad guys. Sam ends up chasing one who's wearing a stolen police uniform, and when backup comes, they mistake Sam for the robber and beat the crap out of him. Luckily, Hunt shows up to straighten things out. Then they learn what the money was for when they find some giant crates of heroin. Also in one of the crates: a toy version of that lunar module.
Sam confronts Ray, who's mad because Sam's transfer took him out of the running for a promotion, and Crocker, who just says that his dealings with Hunt are "complicated" -- and who, by the way, is taking Annie out to see Grease. Annie tells Sam that he's done good work, and that's something "real." Back at his apartment, Sam looks at the stars and hears Maya's voice, and then hippie-chick Windy comes and gets him so they can dance to Simon and Garfunkel.
And we decide that we still like this show, but we're starting to see a big question mark about it on our mental chalkboard.
Image: ABC
Previously:
Life on Mars: Out Here in the Fields