Logan and Max get a tip-off from White's wife about her son, who she wants rescued. But in trying to track the kid down, Max finds herself a prisoner of White's cult and Logan in trouble with the law.

This is actually a very clever episode, seeming to move the White/cult/Manticore plot along but in actual fact just going over things we already know. We're aware of White being part of some strange underground faction. We know Max's DNA is that bit different from her fellow transgenics, it's as if we're being brought up to speed as the series heads towards its season finale. The only new element here is really the cult itself, who we see and get to wonder about. But thanks to some X-Files standard double talk, we're not really any the wiser about what they do or why than we were at the start of the episode. Okay, so there's 'The Coming', but isn't there always one of those in cults?

My other problems with the story are with White and his son. Last time we saw Ray, he was happy to leave his mother and head off with his father for parts unknown. Here he's less bothered when Max rescues him from the cult; before you got the impression he was just as anti-transgenics as his dad was. White, likewise, should be better than this. We know he's genetically enhanced, yet once again he relies mainly on his gun when going after Max. With her powers, if he really wants his son, he could surely find a way to get him. Although the way Logan drives a car at him is pretty cool.

On the positive side, there's finally news of the back-up cast. Normal gets to show just how caring an employer he is once again, and Sketchy gets something to do for the first time this season, not to mention a real name: Calvin Theodore. After backing away from Normal and Sketchy going after mutants earlier in the year, now this plotline is starting to follow through a little, with Sketchy landing a photographer's job and seeing a mutant face to face, helped by his suspicions of a government cover-up. Hopefully there'll be more to this than just a sub-plot, as he's going to end up playing a dangerous game, caught between the mutants and White's group.

Overall then, while there's not a lot of progress in evidence here, at least it proves that the writers haven't forgotten everything they set up at the start of the season and we can still get some pay-off over the next few episodes.

***

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