‘La Brea’ Recap: Season 5 Episodes 8, 9 — Murder Mystery

On the heels of being renewed for Season 3, NBC’s La Brea resumed its sophomore run on Tuesday night with back-to-back episodes that involved stampeding buffalo, a pretty random murder, a conspicuously sudden preponderance of red, star-shaped flowers, and the long-awaited revisiting of the Aaron storyline (!) we all came for.

After Eve, Gavin, Josh, Izzy, Caroline, Sam and Riley landed back in 10,000 B.C. (Josh was MIA for a bit due to a twisted ankle/plot point), Gavin and Izzy made tracks for the Lazarus tower, hoping to play the “We are family!” card long enough with James that Caroline could upload her virus from a remote workstation/phone booth. There was some drama with Sam trying to thwart the upload, so that he and Riley could use the portal to return home, but ultimately common sense prevailed.

Not that it mattered much, seeing as Gavin wound up using his handprint “key” to stop the upload from the Lazarus control center, after his father James convinced him that they are able to fix the portal to be 100-percent safe for nilly-willy time travel. Cementing Gavin’s decision was Izzy’s discovery (via the Lazarus greenhouse) that the red, star-shaped flowers her dad saw on “dead Eve” in his vision are indigenously exclusive to this time and place. As such, Gavin got it in his head that if he can get Eve out of 10,000 B.C., she won’t die.

But in the midst of all this back-and-forth at Lazarus, Lucas, Scott, Josh and the others back at the clearing had to deal with 1) a herd of stampeding CGI buffalo (which they aimed to avert with fire, but ultimately blaring car horns), and 2) a brief and pretty cool “rain” storm of fishes and buoys, when the Santa Monica Bay started to leak through a new aurora. Also, Ty shared with Ella (aka grown-up Lily) that he had proposed to Paara, so maybe she could craft him a ring? A game Ella ventured into some caves with Veronica to find an amethyst. There, the ladies found a tree with those red, star-shaped flowers. But to Veronica and Ella, the flowers match those that Aaron, the man who trafficked the girls at a young age, used to make them draw. (Or something.) So, they — and only they — have to wonder: How could the late Aaron have known of these rare flowers if he hadn’t been to 10,000 B.C. before? Yeah, random.

Elsewhere in the double-episode winter premiere, and in no particular order:

* Clearing resident Wyatt — who I think we only first met in tonight’s first episode, when the foreman clashed with scraggly ol’ Virgil over construction technique? — was found dead, stabbed by a 7-inch knife. People split into search parties, to follow the killer’s tracks, while Lucas and Scott played homicide detectives, grilling assorted suspects (including, hysterically, Gavin’s mom). The boys zeroed in on Virgil, who had a 7-inch knife missing from a roll he found, and who was hiding a conspicuous wound, but the discovery of the murder weapon — branded with the insignia of the Exiles, which Wyatt seemed to scrawl in the dirt before dying — instead pointed to Taamet as the killer. (Especially given what Scott revealed to Sam about the threat Paara’s ex made when he set him free.) But as the second episode came to a close, we saw that Virgil probably is the killer, and used the symbol to dupe everyone.

* Eve’s search party partner flaked out early on, after very lamely busting up his flip-flops (!) on the terrain, and as she went solo, an unseen figure broadsided her, knocking her into a deep hole/cave. From a supine Eve’s POV, it looked like a substantial plummet, but she was only dazed for a bit, though a rock had pinned down one leg. (Rough night for Harrises and ankles!) Worse, said cave belonged to a big grizzly. And when red, star-shaped flowers started to drift down onto Eve, she came to fear she’d be meeting her foreseen death. But when the growling bear found and matched toward Eve, she basically played “Fetch!” with it to make it scamper by and jar her leg free from the rock. Eve then grabbed the nearby bunny she had been talking to all the while and bolted out of the cave.

* Though Caroline scoffed upon hearing of James’ claims about the portal, she, Gavin, Josh and Riley went looking for Dr. Harold Moore, a scientist who James said knows how to fix the portal, but went AWOL. What they find at Harold’s favorite thinking spot is a pile of his bones… and a mysterious key. They then seek out the cave Harold had holed up at, suspecting the key opens something there. Caroline and Riley discovery a hidden cache of research notes that might fix the portal, but Caroline urges Riley to keep mum about the find, until they know for sure what the notes promise.

* After suffering multiple shoots of pain stemming from his tumor, Ty decided to seek possible help from the circa-2076 doctors at the Lazarus tower. After talking his way in as a “friend of Gavin,” Ty got an audience with James, who said that cancer was cured in the 2060s, so yes, his people can help Ty. The “catch”? James hears that Ty is a shrink, and he has things to talk out….

What did you think of La Brea‘s Season 2 winter premiere?