SGRoA: Forever Knight S03 E13: Fever

Snowflakes! I went to Denver Comic Con! IT WAS AWESOME! But I was sad not to see any of you there! Next time, you'll have to come out and say HI, so I can bitch about Forever Knight to you in person.

Let's get recapping!

We open in a doctor's office. Some guy's T-cell count is holding, and he calls his doctor a lifesaver. She says she'll see him Thursday, and then goes off to her lab, where a creepy-looking guy is pulling rats out of their cages. She asks why he's there, and then he drops a rat and grabs her files and runs off. She gives chase, asking why he's stealing her work, and he throws her down a flight of stairs (by accident), but of course she's dead and the rat's gone.

Enter Screed! Who isn't saying anything, so I can understand him. He's lurking outside the lab, and sees Creepy Dude leaving in a hurry. He then, of course, catches the rat and eats it. Because Screed.

At the crime scene, Tracy tries out her new stand-up bit about the smell of labs on Nick. He doesn't laugh. They find the rat, and Tracy says a cat must have gotten it. Nick picks it up WITH HIS BARE DAMN HANDS and puts it in an evidence bag.

CreepyDude is still around, and Nick interviews him. He doesn't know anything, blah blah blah, and wonders where he got the rat. Linda, our vic, was working on a virus to attack HIV. CreepyDude goes off somewhere, but never fear, Tracy's doing some actual work! She found Linda's appointment book, and the last appointment of the day was with some guy named Calvin whom Nat knew in med school. She said he was on his way to being Chief of Surgery at some nearby hospital - why was he seeing Dr. Linda?

So they get him in the interview room - though Nat even said that the death could have been an accident. What is it with these people? Barely investigate actual murders; double-down on things that are probably accidents.

Anyway. Cal has HIV, and was part of Dr. Linda's first round of human trials. Nat's all, "Dude, you're a doctor! Why would you help another doctor out and advance science when THERE ARE RISKS?!" And Cal is all, "Um, back it up, bitch. I'm dying. You'd try crazy shit, too, if you were dying."

And that makes it Flashback Time! Oh, the Plague. Of course. Because rats and sick people. Nick and Lacroix are feasting on plague victims, and Lacroix says they should move on from London. It's the 1600s, I think? 1500s? They've closed the theatres, Lacroix says. Nick starts following someone, and I vaguely remember that this guy's a doctor? Anyway, he wanders over to a street preacher, who's grabbing people out of the crowd and saying that the plague marks - buboes, maybe? - are marks of the devil.

Maybe-A-Doctor guy gets all pissed and stands up for the girl the preacher dragged out of the crowd. "Is this Christian charity?" he asks, rightly pointing out that everybody's sick, and maybe it's not from the devil, eh?

Back in the future, Nick's trying to keep this case going, despite there seeming to be zero motive. Also, he and Tracy are wearing matching mock turtlenecks and blazers, and it's adorably terrible. He suggests industrial espionage and says he's sorry for Nat's friend. Nat, meanwhile, is putting said friend down by calling Dr. Linda's research a "magic crystal."

Seriously. What is up Natalie's butt today? Dude's dying. He's probably progressed to AIDS, not merely HIV positivity, and in 1995? That was a HUGE DEAL. Anyone who was working on drugs to mitigate the effects of HIV/AIDS should be praised, not treated like some weird woo-woo charlatan. Human trials have to happen to get drugs to market, to get them to the people who need them with the fewest side-effects and the most impact against a disease. If people who have the disease don't volunteer for trials, YOU DON'T GET NEW MEDICINES.

I'm beginning to think Nat's medical license came out of a Cracker Jack box.

Tracy goes to Vachon to get help finding Screed, and they're wandering around the sewers looking for him because of that rat at the crime scene. Screed is not looking well. He's all sweaty and he almost attacks Tracy, saying that he's so thirsty, it's like his first feeding. Vachon explains carouches to Tracy - that whatever a vampire first feeds on, he'll eat for life - and then offers Screed his blood when Screed bites his own wrist. Screed's starving.

Tracy's totes grossed out by this. (But was fine with the matching turtlenecks.)

What is in the water this week? Nat forgets how to doctor, Tracy forgets that vampires occasionally have to vampire...Like, is Nick going to start following correct police procedure?

Tracy's all, "Is he sick?" and Vachon - who's a total germaphobe in the books - is all, "Psh, we can't get sick. But yeah, you're right", and then Screed passes out.

Vachon goes to see Nick. He wants Nat to see Screed, since he's sick from the rat. Nick's all, "That's impossible," and then it's Flashback Time again.

Yup, dude's a doctor. Lacroix's dressed like a fancy pilgrim. I like it. Anyway, Doc's seen them all over the city, and they're not sick, so he asks them to share with him whatever "physick" they have so that he can stay healthy and continue his work. They decline, but Doc presses them, and Nick bites him IN THE MIDDLE OF A TAVERN.

Nick goes to see Nat and tells her that Screed's been infected by Dr. Linda's rat. They go to see Screed, and Nat says that he's bleeding out, essentially, because his cell walls are falling apart. He's dying, and she doesn't really know what to do, but she takes a blood sample back to the lab to see if she can find anything.

At the precinct, Tracy's cosplaying Annie Hall, and she's found that Calvin was getting a placebo instead of a real drug, so maybe he killed her if he found out?

Calvin's pissed, but he didn't know until now. He apparently has never heard of the placebo effect, and he's all, "I went against all my good sense and all the advice I would have given anyone else, and all I got were these lousy saline injections!"

Like, for reals? This is how Canadian scientists think? No wonder Australians discovered h. pylori - and proved it caused ulcers BY DRINKING IT. Jeez, Canada. Get some balls, maybe you'll discover important medical shit, too!

Nick and Tracy head back to the precinct. They both believe Calvin, but just will. not. let this case go. As they get out of the car, Nick doubles over in pain - and focuses on Tracy's juicy, juicy jugular. He gets over himself, though, and Tracy natters on about how this must be a murder.

Look, I know we know it's a murder. Sort of. It was mostly an accident. But why are the police devoting all these resources to something that looks, walks, and talks like a duck? Especially when they can't be arsed to do any real investigative work on actual murders?

Screed dies.

Nick goes to see Lacroix, and Lacroix just brushes it all off as an impossibility. He's pretty pissed about it, and then we're back in the tavern. Another tavern? The priest is bothering Lacroix, because the Doc hasn't been discreet about killing, and the priest wants them to explain the marks on the necks of the victims.

Nick runs off to yell at the Doc, and of course he's all hopped up on bloody doofballs, saying that he'll never go back to medicine because what's the fucking point when you're immortal?

Nick's guilty, shockingly.

In the future, Vachon is sick, and he starts talking to Tracy about how her blood smells like fruit, and instead of running, Tracy's all like, Ooh, sexy! Luckily Vachon stops himself from chomping her and tells her to get the fuck out. She runs only after he vamps out and hisses at her.

Nat hasn't found anything worth stealing or killing for in Dr. Linda's samples. She says to Tracy that she should take some of Calvin's blood, and Tracy just blithely says, "Oh, bee tee dubs, he was in the control group" while she steals a bag of blood for Vachon. Nat doesn't notice, and then goes on a rant about how maybe she should be in research, and actually helping people, and I don't think that Cracker Jack medical degree will help with that, Natalie.

Nick stumbles in as Tracy goes out, complaining that he's hungry and he's hot. Nat checks him out, then prevents him from having any blood, because that'll help. Oh, wait, it will, because the virus Dr. Linda was working with binds to the vampire blood. The more a vampire feeds, the more virus will be in them, and the faster they'll die.

Nick, of course, has decided that Nature is exterminating them because they're "unnatural".

In the past, villagers with torches are coming for Doc. Nick wants to run, but Doc's all, "Psh, whatever. They're only human." But it turns out the priest is just there because Doc hasn't ever gotten sick, despite ministering to plague victims. Vampire, not a vampire - it doesn't matter, really, except that people are dying and the priest is looking for someone to blame. Too bad Doc tries to eat him, and he pulls a cross, and then someone sets him on fire. No more Doc.

Nat brings it all back around to a gay rights speech, which, you know, I don't disagree with her - sickness isn't a scourge for the wicked - but seriously, just let Nick wallow in it. You know he will, anyway.

Tracy brings Vachon the blood, but he refuses it. He's not hungry anymore; he's just lying in bed, waiting to die. Being snarky about it, of course, but still.

Nick goes to the precinct, where Reese tells him that Tracy's visiting a sick friend. Reese yells at him for not doing his job, which -

The Nightcrawler muses on death, and it's kind of boring until Lacroix starts coughing into the mic. Aw, guys, he's sad about vampires dying!

34 minutes into the episode, we finally have some motives. Calvin promised Creepy a job and a research grant if he stole the files. But since the drug doesn't work, there's no job. Creepy is decidedly put-out, and he starts fighting with Calvin. They knock over some beakers or something, and create, like, chlorine gas or some shit, I don't know. Clearly, Canadian medical labs have the same levels of professionalism as, say, Metro PD or the entirety of StarFleet.

Nick rolls up to the lab, still investigating that murder, and finds Creepy frozen to a...nitrogen tank, I guess? and Calvin coughing and telling Nick that Creepy killed Dr. Linda. Nick takes him back to the interview room so he can confess. Nat wants not to press charges, despite, you know, MURDER.

But what about the vampires? It's 37 minutes in, and there's no cure! And Nat seems a lot more upset about Calvin dying than Nick, yo. Nat is a shitty friend. She didn't even know Calvin was sick, and now she doesn't seem to care about Nick.

Lacroix goes to Calvin's house to kill him for killing all the vampires. His speech is so good, you guys. Like, really solid writing, for once.

He takes the body to the morgue, and he gives another great speech about Natalie's faith in medicine and technology being faith in a false god - she couldn't save Calvin, she can't save the vampires. But, hang on - Lacroix's not sick anymore. Because, duh, HIV overwhelms Dr. Linda's virus in the body. The vampires just have to chomp infected people, and the HIV will cure them.

Nick cures Vachon, in the best scene ever. Because Vachon, in all his snarky, good acting glory, will be with us till the end of the season.

In the coda, Nick plants a tree on...Calvin's (?) grave, and asks her why she saved the vampires. She said it's because she doesn't have the right to decide who lives and who dies. Well, thank goodness she's not, like, a doctor or anything.

And Vachon buries Screed, then almost pours one out, but drinks it instead.

Next week: Haunted houses! Flashbacks for everybody! And more gifs!