BWW Recap: Birthday Liz Looks Ageless in 'The Longevity Initiative'

Not-Tom Keen was Number 7. This week's The Longevity Initiative is Number 79. Who is Number One? You are Number Six. And in New York, a Scientist and some Other Guy are fighting at a Secret Lab. "This is the third time this month. I wasn't brought in for this." Soon thereafter, a produce truck is pulled over by New York troopers. Those things under the sheets aren't bananas, but corpses. The driver, Other Guy, shoots a trooper and flees.

Cooper's wife wakes up to find Cooper out of the bedroom with his cane left behind. The clinical trial is working!

Not-Tom, still also known as Jacob, except when he's Christof, calls Liz to complain about Red. She says goodbye as he climbs into a Lincoln Town Car with old buddy Lance Henriksen in the back seat.

Red shows up at the Post Office to wish Liz a happy birthday with a bottle of wine made from grapes that Sam grew along the fence back in Nebraska. In case it isn't drinkable, there's a vintage wine from her birth year as well. Speaking of age, has she heard of The Longevity Initiative? It's funded by tech gazillionaire Roger Hobbs. And guess what? The corpses in the fruit truck were experimented upon by someone playing with genetics. It's part of Hobbs' Longevity Initiative, Red is sure.

Hobbs explains to Liz and Ressler that he funds unproven longevity tech that others won't touch, but he's sure those bodies can't be from one of his various decentralized experimental projects because none of them are at a human testing stage. The pathologist explains to Liz and Ressler that the corpses were indeed experiment victims of some sort with brain damage issues.

Our scientist bitches to Other Guy that dead police and found corpses are bad for his Science. Meanwhile he works on a woman who's strapped into a chair and covered with electrodes. He tries to make her remember and say her name, but she seizes. Sounds like Bad Science anyway.

Cooper's buddy, Tom-Tom, is irked because Liz and Ressler interviewed Our Friend Roger Who Holds Defense Contracts. But Tom-Tom is "not crossing lines. I'm giving background." However, Cooper must do what he thinks right, "and don't let anything I'm saying make you think otherwise." Sure. Right. Gotcha.

One of the experiment victims was a William who'd gone missing from a nursing home. LizandRessler investigates, and another patient keeps flagging a King of Diamonds from his solitaire game at Liz. Which means nothing, of course. Oh, wait, William disappeared when Lloyd Monroe, the pharm rep from Gold Crown Pharmaceuticals came to visit. Aram the Magnificent reveals that Lloyd has also just visited another nursing home where a patient has disappeared, and now Lloyd has bus tickets.

Speaking of tickets, Not-Tom's handler The Major tells him to pick up some plane tickets from a locker so he can get out of the country. Not-Tom blames Red for his problems, but The Major pulls a gun and says it's not all Red. Not-Tom offers to get the hell out of Dodge and stay out, but just as his handler's about to kill him, Not-Tom/Christof's German ex-buddies appear and shoot-out the Lincoln. Everyone wants a piece of Not-Tom to roast. Oh happy day!

LizandRessler has plucked Lloyd from the bus station. Oh look, Other Guy is Lloyd. All righty then. He blames everything on Mad Scientist Julian Powell. He doesn't know Hobbs, but he's willing to rat on Powell. The FBI raids Powell's Secret Lab, finding the woman who seized, full of cells from turritopsis dohrnii, the Immortal Jellyfish, a real jellyfish that can reverse its mature stem cells. The pathologist determines that Powell has been doing transgenic research with the jellyfish DNA in order to reverse brain damage.

Powell calls Hobbs to bitch about the FBI raid. Hobbs wants Powell back in, but Powell won't cooperate. Fortunately Hobbs is hanging with his close personal friend Red, and asks Red for a favor. Red thinks Hobbs' project is silly anyway, since "humans don't deserve to live forever," but says he'll oblige. Red sneaks out just as LizandRessler arrives again at Hobbs' door to ask questions, and just after managing to compare Hobbs to Josef Mengele. Look, Red's having moral scruples again! Don't hurt animals, children, or the environment, or experiment on people, or the Concierge of Crime will get you. Please restrict yourselves to theft, murder, torture, and bombing if you want to be his friend.

Speaking of Nazis, Not-Tom's German buddies are having a Fifty Shades party, and Not-Tom and The Major are playing the torture victims. Look, they found a business card for Liz in the shreds of Not-Tom's/Jacob's/Christof's clothing! Aw, commercial!

Cooper calls his doctor with the good news about his treatment. The doctor has bad news; the clinical trial may begin restricting ages of participants in the next phase. Is this the doing of Tom-Tom? Is there something secretly connected to Powell or Hobbs? Is it an actual fact about the clinical trial? Poor Cooper!

Not-Tom, apparently exhausted after only thirty-five shades of torture, begs his skinhead friends Not To Hurt Liz. Oh,Not-Tom, that will wind up being Stupid. Meanwhile he plays the "you need to let me go, I can help you" card. His buddies are dumb enough to buy this.

LizandRessler grills Hobbs, but he amazingly has no idea who this Dr. Powell is. Cooper drops in and, to Ressler's disgust, plays the "all suspects aren't created equal" card. A lot of cards are getting played in this episode. Cooper apparently thinks this card will appease Tom-Tom and keep him in his clinical trial.

Aram The King Of Geekdom has found a person in a nursing home that Powell has been observing for a long time, and it's concluded she will be his next victim. LizandRessler rushes to the nursing home, but Powell is there already, getting her in a wheelchair and packing her bags. As he wheels her out, Red awaits him and offers to take Powell for a ride on Hobbs' behalf. They depart as LizandRessler race out behind them, watching Red's Mercedes leave them in the dust.

Powell takes Red and Dembe to his fiancee's apartment, because that's who the woman in the chair is. He caused her brain damage in a car accident and he's spent years researching to reverse brain damage. All his work for Hobbs is bogus; he's only actually been working on the brain repair question because of his fiancee, and that isn't working either. He wanted to help his victims, who like his fiancée had no lives, but his work has failed. He grabs a gun and blows his brains out.

Hobbs congratulates Red on the great job making it look as if Powell killed himself. Red, who's unimpressed by Hobbs' quest for greatness, tells him that Hobbs didn't find eternal life with his project, but he's been spared life without parole.

Liz excoriates Red for using the FBI to flush Powell out for him. She tells him she doesn't trust a word he says. Red says he needed to get Hobbs in his debt. Liz is furious that they can't get Hobbs for the murders, but Red tells her that they're shortly going to need that favor from Hobbs.

Tom-Tom knows nothing, nothing, about the possibility of Cooper being pitched from his clinical trial. Truth? Not truth? What if it actually is true? What if it's secretly based on one of Hobbs' wild experimental projects?

Liz complains that she doesn't even know who she really is, or if it's even her actual birthday. Ressler tells her that she's doing better in her thirties than he is, because at least she has a dog. God, are these two losers or what? Ressler brings her take-out Chinese food; she opens Sam's wine for them. Talk about a hot birthday celebration. Red, elsewhere, thumbs through a collection of Liz's childhood birthday photos.

Not-Tom burns a pile of phony passports as The Major calls someone to eliminate the problem. Liz comes home to find Not-Tom waiting for her in the dark. Next week we're promised this season's Red/Tom showdown. Maybe Red will pull that trigger and finally put us out of our misery.

Will the Attorney General nominee fix Cooper's trial? Will Liz wise up? Will Red PLEASE kill Tom? And will someone buy Ressler a puppy, for crying out loud? The dude needs a friend! Share your thoughts on these (German shepherd? Labrador retriever? Teacup Maltese?) below, or tweet @MarakayBWW to let us know!

Photo Credit: NBC Universal

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