First Wave
"The Heist"

Airdate: June 18, 2000

Cade and Harley go all soft porn.

Cade Foster (Sebastian Spence), the twice blessed man, is lured back to his old profession by a Nostradamus quatrain hinting at a new alien weapon and a group of thieves who will steal it. Hooking up with his old crew, consisting of his ex, Harley Daniels (Monika Schnarre), and the guy whose testimony sent him both to jail and on the straight and narrow, Ritchie Black (Christian Bocher), Cade sets out to perform a heist in Silicon Valley under the direction of the new "boss", Dex (Robert Duncan).

Initially, everything seems to be going smoothly. Perhaps too smoothly. Unfortunately, Foster's suspicious nature is right on track and soon every room, while easy to get into, presents a problem of its own. Early on Dex gets... er... staked... er... poled... and twin Eddies (Rob Labelle) take the place of Harley and Ritchie. Then there's the giggling room and the angry room... ad infinitum. As if that weren't enough, Ritchie and Cade start contemplating ending it all, and only one walks out of that room alive. (Cue spooky music.) There is even a room that makes Harley and Cade go all soft porn, only by then they've figured out that the weapon they were sent to steal is all around them. They're trapped and have to figure out a way to overcome its ability to read their minds and tap into strong emotions.

The phrase "jumbled mess" does not even begin to describe this episode. While it does fit in with the second season's continuing arc of having Cade build up a force of allies in his fight against the Gua, the details of ... well, everything else ... is muddled. In the end there were more questions than answers.

Who really ordered the heist? Were Harley and Ritchie picked specifically for their ties to Foster or was it merely chance that he got involved? Was that the only weapon of its kind or are there more out there? Isn't a weapon of mass delusion simply overkill in light of the first season episode "Second Wave", which proved that it doesn't take much to make humans turn on one another? Are there such things as Gua porkbarrel projects? Will Harley and Cade ever NC-17 again or was that image of Crazy Eddie speaking with Harley's voice like a shot of anti-Viagra for our hero?

But perhaps the biggest question brought up by this episode was... Was the evil clown really necessary?

-- Linda M. Najera

First Wave airs at 7pm EST, Sundays on The Sci Fi Channel.

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