Welcome back folks! Gus, Tommy Jeppard, and Bear have found their way to Essex City and getting all the closer to finding Birdie! This episode is a tough pill for Gus to swallow, as well as the backstory of Pubba and Birdie. So let’s just jump right into and see what their love story may have looked like!
1. Birdie’s Home
In the current time, we find our heroes a mile away from the last known address of Birdie. To everyone’s surprise, not only is the home inhabited, but the woman living there lets them inside. It’s not Gus’s mom, but it is a woman who used to work with her and tells them how Birdie took care at the beginning of the sick but then left in search of Gus. It’s disappointing for not only Gus but the audience as well, our hero had come so close to the end of his journey only to end up in nearly the same place he was before, with no parents. The far stranger encounter is with the woman, Judy, who doesn’t seem to have a gun or any known weapons, which could lead to her cooperation with the Last Men to keep her home in good standing. Jeppard and Bear are far more cautious, but still concerned with Gus.
2. One Night After Work
Pubba is drawing in his usual spot in the bar when he sees a scientist, Birdie, who was visibly upset at work. After an awkward exchange between the two, they take a couple of shots and loosen up. The scene speeds through the night as the two continue to drink and have a good time, but it’s pretty noticeable that it’s a slight relief for the both of them. Birdie, a scientist buried in her work, and Pubba, a man just going daily in his everyday routine, were two people who needed this night and perhaps each other. There’s an essential small conversation they have about her work in the labs, and she explains that she was working with a mysterious microbe that could really help the world or potentially unleash hell. It becomes the latter, but it’s very curious in what potential good the microbe could have done. It wasn’t enough to say that they fell in love in one night of hanging out, but it was enough to have the audience see the potential for what could have been.
3. The Military
The night between Birdie and Pubba gets cut short right when it seemed to be going in all the right direction. Birdie receives a call that the military is at the labs and will seize everything she and her team have been working on for the past year. Luckily for her, Pubba is there, and with his janitorial keys, he has access to get back into the building. It’s never explained explicitly why the military was involved, so it feels confusing for the audience. A Men In Black type of situation where people in suits seizing the equipment makes sense, but the fact that there are soldiers and military vehicles seems like overkill. The show should explain this unspoken sense of urgency to the audience because other than dramatic effect, and it seems confusing. Birdie also gets separated by a gate when she attempts to go back to gather more of her research which also brings up the thought of how she escaped from these people, seeming to take everything that they can. At some point, she must have been held into custody by these military soldiers; it’s curious how she may have escaped.
4. G.U.S.
The truth is much more complicated to swallow for Gus than Bear or Jeppard could have imagined. Going through the Birdie’s boxes in the home’s attic, they find a file that contains lab notes and photos of Gus in the lab she used to work in. On the very front of it says, “G.U.S.,” which stands for Genetic Unit Series 1—indicating that Birdie is not his mom and more of the lead scientist created him, which also meant that Pubba wasn’t his biological father either. Like any child finding out the truth of where they came from, Gus does not handle it very well. His entire world was a lie, and nothing makes any more sense. Bear tries to calm him down by saying she was adopted too, but he doesn’t understand, and his mind is going a million miles a minute. Throughout the series, it has been noted that he was older than any of the known hybrids, but this was something I didn’t see coming. Birdie dying in childbirth or even just not wanting a hybrid-child would have been easy guesses but made in a lab. It’s a good twist for the audience but jarring for poor Gus.
5. Richard Becomes Pubba
In the episode’s final minutes, we see what the series started with: Pubba driving to the national park and starting his adventure with Gus. Now its context has a much deeper meaning. Richard Fox begins his journey into becoming Pubba and the man who would raise Gus as his own. He had no experience being a father and barely talked to Birdie for more than a night, but he knew that something terrible would happen to Gus if he didn’t. There’s something powerful about a person taking responsibility for something they could have easily just left behind and continued forward. Richard has his own life, but was willing to abandon it and venture out into the wild with this strange child to start a new dream of being a dad and being the illustrator he wanted to be. He became the artist he wanted to be by re-telling old stories and became a dad by giving a child a bright future and great morals. Although Gus is still reeling from the truth, hopefully he will realize how lucky he had it with Pubba staying by his side to raise him.
