- Title: XIII – Berzerk
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super-human murderous nutjobs?”
After XIII (Stuart Townsend), Betty (Roxane Mesquida), and Amos (Greg Bryk) escape The Pit, Victor Gong seals off the district using local law enforcement and dusts the entire area with a chemical weapon known as “Bezerk” designed to increase paranoia, abnormal strength, and agitation in order to cause violence and riots among the targeted population. Trapped in the middle of an entire district out of control, the three try to hold it together long enough to get the antidote and then reach an extraction point.
Finding only enough antidote for himself, Betty, and two locales (Yee Jee Tso, Hubert Tran), XIII ties up the still infected Amos and drags him with them through the city filled with murderous mobs. From Victor’s discussions with Winslow Wong (Jack Yang) we also learn the reason the crowd seems to be focused on killing the small group, rather than simple mindless mayhem, is that XIII’s doppelganger discovered HARPE technology could be used to manipulate the Bezerk-crazed masses, control them, and aim them at specific targets and goals.
President-Elect Traymore (Ingrid Kavelaars) and the Armed Forces under her command force their way into the bunker under the White House making Carrington (Stephen McHattie) and his staff seek shelter in “The Nest,” the inner-most core of the bunker made to survive even a nuclear strike. In his last moments of freedom Carrington makes a final appearance on-camera to expose the existence of the HARPE project and Traymore’s complicity in helping the Chinese develop the technology used to attack San Francisco.
After a couple of disastrously bad episodes, XIII does what it can to right the ship going into next week’s finale. The episode includes an odd use of a comic book of the characters adventures. Although it’s a nice nod to the original work the series is based on the (impossible) existence of the comic is never explained and is more distracting than anything else. The mindless masses make for an interesting obstacle for XIII and his friends to navigate through, and Victor’s limited control of them offers an easy out to stop the threat once the episode is ready to move forward. Although XIII and Betty don’t make it out of China with Amos, they are left a care package from Carrington and a new assignment – find Victor Gong and stop HARPE before it is used to start WWIII. It’s been a very up-and-down season, but here’s hoping the series finds a way to go out with a bang.