Killjoys “Kiss Kiss, Bye Bye” 

I can’t really assign a joint Moment of Goodness and Moment of Sadness, and honestly, there were highs and lows in this one that merit attention so I’m just going to break down all of it. Settle in.

“Kiss Kiss, Bye Bye” picks up from last week with John trying to get a handle on Khylen’s tracker. He decides that implanting it in his own neck is the way to go. That would be a no, John. While he’s tampering with himself, D’avin takes Dutch outside to shoot at shit when she’s reticent to shoot the shit and talk about what’s bugging her. She eventually shares that there’s a piece of her life missing that’s tied up in Khlyen and she wants that resolved. D’avin is all over that because he’s in the same boat.

When they’re called back to the ship because John is writhing in pain on the ground, they end up at Pawter’s and she gets the device out but has to break it. Then she and D’avin have a fully awkward conversation where she tells him she was arrested and he acknowledges he skipped her calls because he thought they were personal, not calls for help (dude, don’t admit that). He also clarifies for her that they weren’t actually dating and when she gets testy about the semantics, he reminds her she was nailing a patient. Seeing his point, she dials it down and shares what she discovered–that there’s another patient of Jaegar’s who might be helpful if they can talk to him.

The team breaks into a mental hospital and breaks out Grayson Hicks (Mark O’Brien), the ex-patient. He takes them to an underground “anything goes” sex/drug/tech club, complete with saucy costumes and tricked-out hair. John saunters off to get help with fixing the tracker, and D’avin decides to take the edge off with a sample of an elixir, which leads to him getting smoochy with Dutch. She goes along with it, since he’s basically stoned.

Then they go talk to the doctor, who they expect to be Jaegar, but instead discover she was a protege who took Jaegar’s research to the next level. John absconds with her research and they go home so he can sort it out. That turns out to be unnecessary when Dutch is arrested for the mental hospital break out and Delle Seyah Kendry (Mayko Nguyen) comes calling and offers her a deal–she’ll get her out and expunge her record in exchange for one favor, TBD. Dutch says fine, if, she can get 24 hours with Jaegar.

That works, so off they go. When they meet Jaegar (Amanda Tapping), she remembers D’avin but tells him that he asked her to wipe his memories after he killed his team. He wants to know why he killed them and she says it was a mental break. He’s not buying it and he asks her to put the memories back. They leave her to gather up his memory files (which she totally doesn’t) and regroup on the ship, where John and Dutch express their discomfort with the idea of tampering with his brain. Then John leaves after getting word from the club gal that his tracker is fixed.

D’avin and Dutch have a heart-to-heart about being killers and she trumps him when she says she made her first kill at eight.

“I’m not judging you right now because I don’t have any right to. So whatever you’ve done, I promise you I have done worse. If you can’t be forgiven, then what chance is there for me?”

He apologizes for his presumptions and pulls her into a hug that quickly escalates into kissing and taking each other’s clothes off. John comes home to find clothes in the hall and realizes what’s happening so he leaves. Afterward, D’avin tries to high-five Dutch that they’re great at sex (no, son) and she laughs it off.

Dutch asks D’avin which one of them will say that this won’t change anything. He laughs and asks her if that’s an order or a decree. He asks her about being a warrior princess and she tells him she was by marriage (now widowed). When she gets up to get dressed, he thinks he overstepped and she clarifies that she’s just worried about John coming in on them. Then the penny drops that he’d forgotten all about his brother–and his promise. He says John will tell them they can’t handle it.

“We can though, right?”

“Tap my heart.”

She leaves his room, wearing his shirt and her boots (which is odd but prescient) and finds the drinks John came in with to celebrate fixing the tracker. Back in his room, D’avin grabs his head in pain and his eyes go black. When Dutch comes back in to tell him he doesn’t need to get dressed because John knows, he slams her down. It takes a moment until she realizes what’s happened to him, and then it’s terrifyingly on. She gives as good as she gets in a brutal hand-to-had scene that goes on for a while, where all he keeps repeating is that he’s a good soldier, until she finally knocks him out and collapses, bruised and bleeding.

John is licking his wounds at the bar and Pree misreads it as jealousy until John explains it’s not that–it’s like his brother and sister are having sex with each other. Enough said. He gets back to the ship and finds Dutch in a state and she tells him D’avin attacked her, and that it was Jaegar’s doing. He doesn’t quite believe her until she shows him the other side of her bruised face, and then he’s seething. She tells him to watch D’avin and be careful. She’s going to see Jaegar.

“She’s going to fix this or I’m going to break her a piece at a time.”

John goes to talk to D’avin and realizes his brother’s not there anymore, but he punches him anyway. Then D’avin gets the upper hand and stabs him. John collapses, leaving Lucy to put out a distress call.

Dutch confronts Jaegar, who’s reset her security, but she gets in by activating a shooting range drone ball and levels a gun at Jaegar as D’avin arrives outside. She demands that he be fixed, and the truth–which is that D’avin was a weapon. Jaegar reverses it and D’avin’s consciousness returns. Dutch tells the doctor she can take the gun or have her memory wiped. Jaegar chooses the gun, so Dutch has her wiped.

Pawter arrives to help John and he’s saved (of course), after she lies over a comm link and demands a medical transport.

“If you ignore my call, I will have you staked in the rain!”

Afterward, Dutch, Pawter, and Pree keep vigil in a scene with no dialogue (underneath Dear Frederic’s “Stare Into the Light“) as a devastated D’avin stands in the corridor, apart from them. When John comes to, he tells Dutch to tell D’avin that they know it wasn’t his fault.

Back on the ship, D’avin cleans up his brother’s blood and weeps about what he did. Dutch comes to talk to him, and says John is OK. He says he’ll let him rest, see him tomorrow.

She starts to tell him that she destroyed Jaegar’s research and he cuts her off that he doesn’t care about that right now. She realizes he’s crying and kneels in front of him where he sits. He puts his hands gently on her face as they talk. There’s a moment of hesitation but it passes. She puts her own hands on his and brushes her lips across them.

“How are you even looking at me?

“Do you remember much of it?”

“Dutch, I remember everything. Please tell me you know that I would never do anything to hurt you or John. Please tell me you know that wasn’t really me.”

“Of course I do. Of course. But it was me. I can’t be OK with that.”

She leaves him alone and walks away.

Full disclosure–if I didn’t like this cast so much, I probably would’ve checked out as soon D’avin activated because I hate brawls that follow sex scenes. They’re gross. They prey on fears about intimacy and violence between partners, and that’s not what I’m watching this show for. So there was that going on, but I was also few pieces ahead on the board in my head that the turnaround afterward when D’avin would eventually come back and feel the full weight of what he did would be epic. And it was.

It was also a proving ground for Dutch, who had to flip her own switch from vulnerable to romantic to trained killer, and she prevailed because she could do that, but at the end of it, that innate ability tore at her heart. Luke Macfarlane and Hannah John-Kamen killed those scenes. I’ve no doubt next week, when D’avin finally has to talk to John, and beg forgiveness, it will be equally fantastic with Aaron Ashmore.

As for Dutch and D’avin having sex, that’s sort of the least important factor in the entire equation now because of all that followed (and yes, I am very grateful that switch didn’t flip while they were in bed together). Maybe that was a very specific plot angle that TPTB wanted to play out. The sex was rendered irrelevant by the assault. I haven’t decided how I feel about that. On the face of it, to pull the trigger on a sexual relationship that’s not a straight FWB situation between two of your three leads and then violently invert it through no direct fault of either party is risky. We’ll see what they do.

I’ve had an inkling all along that D’avin was a sort of Jason Bourne but I didn’t want to impose that idea on anybody prematurely. Now I feel like I’m onto something there. And surely there are more out there for them to bump into. We also learned in the episode that it was Jaegar who put the kill warrant on him, and that his demonstration, during which he killed his team, was intended to be a test run, and it ended her career.

I loved that Dutch gave her the choice of an out and then went opposite to give her the punishment/fate that would sting the most. That she flat-out declared, “You hurt my friend. He hurt me. And now, I’m going to hurt you, so that you can’t do this to him or anyone else again.”

We’ll see all of that collide next week as she has to navigate the new terrain with her both her friends. A lot of damage has been done, and there’s a lot to resolve. I’m totally on board with following that through.

Let’s get to renewing Killjoys, shall we?

Killjoys airs Fridays at 9/8c. You can rewatch “Kiss Kiss, Bye Bye” tonight at midnight/11c.