First Wave
"Rubicon"

Airdate: August 13, 2000

Cade and his pseudo-shrink.

After getting caught in a nasty car bomb explosion, Cade wakes up to find that everything he's worked for has finally come to pass. The government has taken up the fight and he can now enjoy the accolades and rest, for he's done more than should be asked of one person. It's Miller Time, ladies and gents.

And pigs can fly.

You know that old Garbage tune, "I'm Only Happy When It Rains"? Well, consider that Foster's theme song. Having survived, sometimes on sheer force of will alone, encounter after deadly encounter with the Gua, Cade simply can't accept the idea that he no longer has to fight, even when everything and everyone around him says otherwise. Showered with praise, protected, pampered, coddled and even reunited with his uncle Harry, the twice blessed man can't shake the feeling that something is wrong. His paranoia has kept him alive thus far and for reasons that even he can't properly explain, he can't seem to turn it off.

Time and again we've been told that the Gua lack the will that human beings possess. Well, some of us anyway. And so this week's experiment has them testing Cade's ability to resist the temptation of gaining personal peace once and for all. Only they make it too easy, which is, of course, their downfall. While the ideas of that the pseudo-psychiatrist puts before Cade are valid, the circumstances surrounding the resolution and closure she offers are simply too good to be true.

And, as the old Earth adage goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it is.

Lately, I've been giving Sebastian Spence a hard time, which probably isn't entirely fair. The powers that be had written a nearly impenetrable box and stuck Cade Foster in it, with little to no chance of him escaping. Foster was morose, maudlin, and had less of a sense of humor than first season Millennium's Frank Black. I realize that Cade had gone through hell, but he seemed completely without hope. Which, when you think about it, is very wrong for the savior of humanity, much less the hero of a series.

Cade and Eddie, being attacked by killer polka dots.

In the past few episodes though, Foster had been given a few humorous lines to exchange with buddy Crazy Eddie and a couple of supporting characters. They usually fell flat. That is, until "Rubicon". In the Rorschach Test scene, Spence delivered his "alien with a hat" line with just the right amount of smart ass sensibility one would expect from a former street-punk, which is, after all, what Foster is supposed to be.

But it can't all be good. In terms of the situation, not the acting. Spence managed to find a balance between the humor Foster used as a self-defense mechanism and the tremulous desperation he exhibited whenever things seemed to be going too well. The man definitely needed a teddy bear. Eddie, for all his strangeness, is part of Cade's normal life, what he understands and his relief at seeing his friend, even in his nightmares, was palpable.

But as good as Sebastian Spence was in this episode, they effectively stole his thunder by showing Joshua being turned upon by his own people and put under arrest.

Bad kitties. But, just to make sure, the next episode will be on Sunday at 7pm EST, right?

-- Linda M. Najera

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

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