The Barnum Effect – As the third episode of The Irrational begins, Alec Martin (Jesse L. Martin) walks in on Kylie (Travina Springer) playing with tarot cards. She tells him that the Tower is the creepiest card in the deck. Alec tells her about the Barnum effect which is named after PT Barnum. Kylie says he is like the behavioral scientist who ruined Christmas. Alec has a meeting with Marisa. Kylie pulls the fool card before saying she sees romantic disaster in the future. Alec says the meeting is at the FBI about the logo on the getaway van he remembered. Once Alec arrives, he says hello to Jace Richards (Brian King) and thanks him for guest lecturing.
Then, Marisa (Maahra Hill) tells Alec that they matched a company that matches his logo. The FBI is officially reopening the case. While driving a customer, Rizwan (Arash DeMaxi) talks about Alec’s work. The passenger uses the app to ask him to be silent just before a plane crashes into a tower nearby. Marisa shows Alec a logo on a van owned by JoJo’s Dry Cleaners. It was located less than three miles from Methodist Church. After the bombing, the van turned left on 10th Avenue which is the same direction as the dry cleaners. After Alec confirms that is the logo, he learns that JoJo’s went out of business eight years ago. The owner passed and his daughter moved to Iowa.
Marisa has to leave in a hurry. Rizwan gets out of his vehicle to look at the crashed plane. Alec sees a news report about the plane crash. He calls Marisa who is at the crash site and learns the plane was downed deliberately. She says the pilot was highly experienced with a perfect flying record, but he didn’t follow any protocol after takeoff. His drug test was clean. Once Alec reaches the scene, he is introduced to Owen Kalagian (Josh Blacker) and Dale Newhouse with NTSB. Dale is leading the investigation and Emma Liu is running point. Everything passed inspection so there is no indication of mechanical failure. After takeoff, the pilot switched to manual and changed course to clip the bridge.
No one would make that kind of mistake. They’re looking for the black box so they’ll know what was said in the cockpit. It is a miracle that there are up to 25 survivors. If he wanted to kill himself and others, Alec doesn’t know why the pilot would crash the plane in a way that would leave half the passengers alive. Later, Alec tells Phoebe (Molly Kunz) that there have been zero commercial plane crashes in the United States in the last 10 years. Rizwan catches up with them and confirms he saw the crash. They go through the evidence with Alec explaining the NTSB is ignoring bad facts. If this was intentional, it was sloppy. Records show that the pilot was anything but sloppy. Alec gets in touch with Marisa so he can gain access to the pilot’s home.
Marisa admits to Jace that she hasn’t told him yet. She was going to until they got interrupted. Jace says there is no pressure because it is all new to him as well. He was reviewing possible targets. Every plane out of DC had prominent figures on it, but this one had 34 members of the World Women in Leadership Association. Alec, Phoebe, and Rizwan look through the pilot’s house. In private, Phoebe tells Alec that Rizwan gets freaked out every time she tries to talk to him about the crash. Alec tells her to do nothing and let him come to her when he is ready. They find fresh produce in the refrigerator so they suspect the pilot planned on coming home. They’re shocked to find a man in the bed with a woman. Alec soon learns he is Lucas’s brother.
Rory introduces himself and says his friend is Daisy. He tells them how crazy today has been. Alec tells him about bereavement sex before Rizwan explains it. Rory is confident that his brother didn’t commit suicide. As for his recent divorce, Caitlin (Hannah Drew) tried to make it work until she left him. Being a pilot is hard on relationships. Caitlin told him it was either flying or the marriage. Lucas picked flying. At the office, Jace tells Alec that Lucas signed up for a daylong seminar with Mastery Select two weeks ago. The group teaches classes on how to be attractive to women. Marisa says it is incels for divorcees. They’re targeting prominent women who are seen as destroying the patriarchy.
Flight 118 was carrying 34 members of the women’s global leadership conference. The group often says, “I took the black pill.” Someone says that on the flight recorder. Caitlin says she never felt threatened by Lucas although their entire marriage could’ve been a lie. Others are interviewed about him. One man doesn’t believe Lucas was a member of the Black Pill Group. Alec isn’t convinced Lucas committed mass murder. Marisa says it was his voice on the recorder though. Marisa breaks the news that she is seeing Jace. At home, Alec learns that Kylie broke into the Mastery Select’s database and found out that Lucas left after the second session before the Black Pill Group even spoke.
Lucas deleted all his emails because it was filled with spam from the Mastery Select, porn sites, and sex shops. He signed up for them the day after he attended the Mastery Select. On the Red Flag Forum, Lucas posted “These guys are a bunch of impotent losers.” They retaliated by doxing and spamming him which is why he deleted his emails. Alec tells Kylie about Marisa seeing Jace. Alec goes to the university to do an experiment with his students. One student has been working on her pilot license. She explains what ATMOS is and what she’d do if something went wrong with ATMOS. Alec goes back to the others to say it is an auditory illusion. When he didn’t give the students any context, only about 20% of them heard the words “back pill”.
Almost half of the class heard something like “ATMOS”. Dale says he just proved they can’t be sure what Lucas said. They’ve never had an issue with ATMOS before. Alec says there could be hundreds of lives at risk if he is right. Dale says okay before Marisa wants to know what they find. Emma Liu (Mika Bantog) gives Alec something discreetly before leaving. Rizwan is thinking about putting the pilot’s commands into a flight simulator. He tracked one down and they’re going to deliver it tonight. After he says they need a pilot, Phoebe suggests asking Rory. When she speaks to Rory, he admits he is worried about losing his job when flying is all he has. Alec tells Jace that Emma didn’t feel comfortable talking at the crash site. She gave him a card with an address so they could speak privately.
Someone broke a window to unlock the door and seemed to be looking for something specific. Emma’s phone is off and no one has seen her since she left the crash site. They visit Owen who agrees to answer their questions. He says they went back to the office and Emma left before he did. He admits he is going to San Pedro to check on Hollette’s factory. When Jace threatens to arrest him, Owen says he wants a lawyer. Jace joins Alec and Marisa to say he doesn’t think they’ll find Emma alive. Alec says he can speak to Jace if they cut him loose. Rory admits he finds it weird that he is about the retrace his brother’s final flight path. They begin going through the flight simulation.
They wonder why Lucas would’ve veered toward the river. They hit a vertical wind shear and lost altitude. That triggered ATMOS although Lucas shut it off. Then, he pitched the nose down again before leveling off over the bridge. They agree to run it again and follow protocol this time. Phoebe says the plane wouldn’t have crashed. Rory wants to run it again because he has a few ideas. Rizwan begins panicking and shuts off the simulator. Phoebe checks on him. She urges him to talk to someone even if it isn’t him. Rizwan doesn’t want the boss to know anything although Phoebe thinks she already does. Rory interrupts to say he thinks he found something. Alec speaks to Owen and says he wants to help.
Alec knows Owen is loyal to Hollette, but he wonders if the company is loyal to him. Marisa and Jace listen from elsewhere as Alec mentions Owen sponsored a membership for Emma to Hillvale Golf Club. Marisa tells Jace about the Barnum effect and how Alec will use it. Owen says it was a firmware update and they found it quickly. The engineer swore it would take less than a week to patch. Owen says grounding the planes would’ve cost hundreds of millions. When Dale came to them, he said he wouldn’t report it if they paid him off and fixed it. Emma didn’t know about that part. When Alec calls Phoebe, she says Rory found some irregularities in the sim and wanted to speak to someone at the NTSB.
He is meeting Dale at Gravely Point. Alec tells Marisa to get a team there or Rory will go missing too. Rory tells Dale that ATMOS was forcing the nose into the ground and that’s why Lucas switched to manual. Lucas was going to try a water landing. Rory says no one else knows about this. Alec gets in touch with Rory who tells him to stay at Gravely Point. Alec tells Dale that the FBI is coming. They know he didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. Hollette Aviation assured him they could fix the firmware so it wasn’t his fault. Rory realizes what happened before Dale is apprehended. Marisa says they found Emma. She was someone breaking into her house so she was hiding at a friend’s place. She is going to cooperate.
Marisa admits she is glad she called Alec on this one. Alec is glad she told him about Jace even though it is none of his business. Rizwan and Alec go out to eat and talk about the crash. Alec tells him about the shadow self. He insists what Rizwan is feeling is normal and he just needs to let himself feel it. Alec explains how he managed to remember the explosion without reliving it. Rizwan thinks this gave him a chance to expose an NTSB cover-up. Alec says there is a cost if he buries himself in this work. A news report says six senior executives at Hollette Aviation have been arrested. There is a vigil for everyone on board and Lucas is exonerated. Rory says he wants to honor his brother. Alec believes he already has.
The Irrational Review
The third episode of The Irrational was a surprisingly satisfying episode by the time the credits were running. The episode wasn’t perfect by any means, but it at least felt like there was a good payoff. Like the previous episodes, much of the psychological stuff just flies over and doesn’t really hit its target. Although it isn’t necessarily filler, those scenes aren’t that interesting either.
The episode succeeded a bit more because the side characters were more relatable and interesting. Plus, the vigil at the end pulled everything together. Up until that point, the episode was a roller coaster with some highs and some lows. The incel angle was cliché now that it has been done in countless other television shows.
Kylie’s abilities are too unrealistic, but it never really shows her do anything anyway. Instead, she just hacks stuff and passes the information to Alec. Again, the episode was better because the core story and the side characters were better. And, it barely touched on the explosion so it doesn’t need that to excel. The episode scores a 6 out of 10.
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