A guy is running down an alley, being chased by two guys in trench coats.  In a great visual, he hides out among a bunch of mannequins like ____(actor)____ in ______(TV Show)______ .

Sorry for the Mad Libs.  I wish I knew a reference to insert there, but TV has become unwatchable for just that reason.  Does every f***’in’ guy on TV have to be uniformly perfect mannequin?  They are indistinguishable with their perfect salon haircuts, 3 days perfect stubble, blinding teeth, perfectly flat stomach, 3% body fat, still somehow too-small jackets, and wooden personalities.  I have bailed on the last few series I attempted because the guys are indistinguishable.  Arrow: just creepy.  Hey Manifest, I tried; I could not keep the male characters straight even when they were literally different races.  Designated Survivor, ditto. ^[2]  Timeless, you’re trying my patience (although that guy does seem to have talent beyond his looks).

But I digress.  It is a fun shot of him hiding behind the bin of mannequins, with their smooth white limbs pointing in all directions.  Kudos to Lou Diamond Phillips who directed this episode.

Tom Cooper stumbles into a homeless shelter.  He is carrying a box that he says contains all his memories.  His credibility on that point is pretty iffy as he immediately has a flashback about escaping from a facility.  He opens the box and takes out a fabulously-designed injector.  He plunges it in into his neck which either leaves a scar or gives him impetigo; it’s a nasty mark.

Memories come flooding back to him, mostly from his childhood.  Social worker Hope Wilson drives him to his childhood home.  When gets there, the house is gone and there is a sign announcing 6 luxury condos being built, so that must have been some house.

Cooper forgets to zip up after taking a whiz, so he injects another vial of memory juice.  The first one hurt, but this one inflicts immense pain.  He screams in agony and Hope freaks out that she can’t help.  This is another great scene which, unfortunately, highlights how blah the rest of the episode is.  Two more guys in trench coats show up, so Cooper and Hope beat it back to her place and have the sex.

After the 3rd injection in the episode, 4th if you count the sex, Cooper remembers he is a doctor — Chist, there’ll be no living with him now.  And is, oh yeah, married.  The shelter calls ^[1] and tells Hope the trench coat guys came by and said Cooper was psychotic.  They trace the call and go to her house.

After a 4th injection, Hope and Cooper go to the facility he escaped from.  He realizes that he invented the memory-wiping procedure.  It started honorably enough as he was looking for a way to forget the rape and murder of his wife.  Then they started testing it on homeless people.

Cooper destroys the final vial so that he will not return in full to the asshole he was before all this.  Accepting himself at only 80% restored so that he will be a better man is pretty clever; however, the episode doesn’t end there.  It is arguable whether the final scene is necessary.  In mulling over which ending was better, I decided that adding the final twist gave the episode a darker, more ironic feel.  Not including it would have resulted in a 1980s Twilight Zone feel-good ending.  So that settled, as they say, that.

An OK episode elevated by great performances, fine direction and those very cool injectors.

Footnotes:

• [1] Technically, a guy from the shelter. It is the same dude who showed Mulder the bleeping dead alien.
• [2] Except Keifer Sutherland.  But even he insists on wearing a suit a size too small to show off his zero-fat bod.  He comes off looking more like Tobias when dressed in Maebe’s suit.
• Robbie Chong (Hope) is Rae Dawn Chong’s sister.  Why didn’t Outer Limits just cast Rae again?  That’s not a criticism of Robbie, who was very good here. I would also say to anyone who cast Meryl Streep in the 80s: “Hey you should have gotten Rae Dawn Chong!”
• Hope’s cute answering machine greeting:  “If you’re looking for Hope, you’re not alone.”