Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 2: "Assassins Inc"

Before I begin the next write up, I should elaborate on the purpose of these blog posts. Bugs was a show I greatly enjoyed in my youth, even when the writing was sub-par. However, with hindsight, there was a lot of silliness including but not limited to plot holes, gross misinterpretation and mis-use of technology and downright ridiculous moments. Having said that, I still enjoy rewatching the series and developed a new appreciation for the type of 90s cheesiness the show provides. Some of the predictions, despite the poor execution, turn out to be scarily prescient. And as mentioned in the first episode write up, shows after Bugs take a bit of inspiration from it with the way tech is featured heavily along with the gritty but fanciful storylines.

Nonetheless, there is a lot to ridicule in the series, so my write-ups will be full of snide remarks, amusing observations and dry (and not so dry) sarcasm. If you are looking for a straight write up, this is not the place to look for it. I would direct you to the official Bugs website, but that sadly went offline many years ago. There are some archived pages on Archive.org which is what I'm using to help write these blog posts.

Anyway, on with the show!

Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 2 "Assassins Inc"

We open with a shot of the River Thames looking out towards Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast, which in this universe is the HQ of "Marine Command", a "brand x" knock-off of the Royal Navy or possibly a knock-off Royal Navy department. Some important military types are receiving a foreign exiled dignitary from some unspecified nation. Some dodgy looking folks on the other side of the river bank spy on the ship and drip liquid on some fish/insect looking brooch. Said brooch is loaded into some gun and launched. We are treated to a nauseating fish eye view of the brooch flying through the ship before it somehow attacks the dignitary who is giving some speech about the arms trade. One of the few times I see a crowd react appropriately to something bad happening as the "Reagent" Fortunately, Ros is here, attending the reception with some old university friend called Roland Blatty. Unfortunately, she isn't able to save the dignitary and the evidence she found suggesting what may have killed our VIP. And as if on cue, someone steps on the evidence and destroys it, much to her annoyance.

Meanwhile, the boys in the Bugs team are having their own adventure. Ed and Beckett have taken on the job of deleting some game concept files on the instructions of their client, Irene Campbell, which she sold to a company that has gone bust. Ed wonders why she doesn't just declare ownership of said assets but Beckett shuts him down, giving a "tl;dr" version of the pain of trying to reclaim stuff from companies that go bankrupt. After stealing ideas from Mission Impossible and Speed, our gruesome twosome trick what is basically the 90s version of Google Assistant/Siri into unlocking and deleting the files. They almost get away with it were it not for the fact their attempts to mask the CCTV feed have a glaring error that causes literally all the security (Read: all three guards and a dog) to run around trying to stop Ed and Beckett. Beckett runs away and waits for Ed in the car while Ed gets bit by the guard dog, though we don't see anything really embarrassing, which makes his later comments of showing his bum a bit odd. Guess we need to keep things PG rated.

Beckett and Ed meet Irene, who gives her thanks. Despite Beckett claiming this is strictly business, it is obvious to us and Ed that he is smitten. Beckett doesn't get to have a long lie in from the caper last night as Ros annoys him with an early start. Apparently the Government agency that Ros' friend, Roland, works for needs help in recovering some files from the company that is responsible for making the fish/insect flying brooch robot things that killed the dignitary from earlier. To the boy's horror, it was the same building they were in last night. Ed tries to tease Beckett on this but only managed to piss him off. There is further salt to the wound when they realise that the file Roland needs, the so-called "Assassin's" file, is the supposed game assets they deleted last night. Before Beckett can confess to his cock up, Irene appears with her assistant, Peter Morasco, who seems to be a hybrid of every smug politician and newspaper editor ever, with the behavioural patterns of an aggressive defence lawyer sprinkled in for good measure, hence I shall refer to him as "Smug Angry Minion", or "SAM" for short. SAM advises Irene doesn't need to say anything and Irene makes generic corporate threats about seeking damages for lost profits. Frankly I'm surprised Roland didn't just use threats of having the company declared as terrorists under some BS Government special regulation, which is more likely to happen now, but I digress. In a side room, Beckett finally gets to admit guilt, much Ros' displeasure. They plot on a way to nail the murder of the miscellaneous East Asian Regent guy on her.

At what seems to be a distinctly Buddhist funeral ceremony (At a place with what appears to be Chinese/Japanese writing!), Ed and Beckett spy on the proceedings and notices an angry Admiral who he knows from previous service in the Navy (Sorry, Marine Command). Admiral Lansdale was apparently the unofficial liaison to said Regent and is highly peeved to see some consular official, the unnamed nation's security attaché, amongst the mourners. Ed tails the attaché who disappears off while Beckett tries to meet up with the Admiral outside of the funeral. Ed finds Mr. Attaché meeting with Irene over plans to buy some new weaponry for some as of yet unspecified, nefarious purpose. Meanwhile Beckett catches up with the Admiral only to be rebuffed and mocked over his previous service record (Apparently Beckett was not teacher's pet in his naval days), right before the Admiral disappears in a fireball, which the guards at the "Marine Command" do nothing about, not even call an ambulance. At Bugs HQ, Beckett gets really upset and angsty over "Admiral Backstory's" death. Ed's attempt at tasteless humour is not taken well. Beckett is now motivated to take down Irene whatever it takes.

Ros meets up with Roland who has made some discoveries. Turns out Irene's company is responsible for making some toys that will certainly not be safe for general sale. Mainly flying miniature robots and voice activated bombs. When asked how he managed to get this insider knowledge, Batty lets on he managed to speak to an ex-employee of Irene's, Ralph Bloch. Ralph apparently was committed to a Mental Hospital due to finding out about the work he was actually doing for Irene, although I suspect the general working environment of the technology sector in this universe may have had a bigger role in his malaise. Ralph apparently spends his time tuning and playing pianos and is enticed out of it by having pills shook in a bottle like treats to a dog. Not a particularly sensitive portrayal of someone with severe mental health issues, in my very humble opinion!

Determined to get something incriminating on Irene, the team tail her to a health spa, where they try go bug her handbag and somehow even her breakfast cereal. However the sight of Ed at the swimming pools gives the game away and at her office, Irene gets all paranoid, warns her staff to not say anything that might be recorded and used in evidence against them and to find out where she might have been bugged. They quickly figure out our trio's subterfuge and jam the bugs signal, leaving Beckett and his cohorts empty handed and disappointed. To make matters worse, "SAM" (As I have now nicked Irene's PA/underling Peter, as he is a "Smug Angry Minion") suggests they get rid of our heroes using the extreme methods they already sell. SAM scopes out where Ros lives before setting up one of those voice recognition scarab bombs, which is a miracle as years after this TV show, I cannot get most voice recognition systems a decade ago to recognise my voice! SAM wires it up to the telephone and calls Ros in the hopes of killing her off. Unfortunately for SAM, Ros decides to go for a shower and while there tries to answer the phone from the bathroom extension line. This triggers the bomb and wrecks her living room along with her chance to get her deposit back, but at least she is unscathed. It also treats us to yet another gratuitous explosion. You can tell the production didn't have enough money in the budget for something more spectacular as the explosion is extremely localised to Ros' living room. Anyway, SAM reinforces the "S" in his abbreviation nickname by looking smug as he hangs up. He loses points for not doing what most movie/TV villains do which is to go inside Ros' flat to check she is actually dead and finish the job.

Meanwhile, Beckett, pissed off that Irene seems to be running rings around him and his friends, seems to be taking a power nap at home. SAM takes this opportunity to send another voice activated scarab bomb up into a wall cavity of his flat. Beckett is woken up by his phone ringing and goes to answer it, still seemingly pissed off. Or just tired. Obviously didn't catch up on the lost sleep after being foiled by Irene again! SAM tries to call Beckett's phone line but to his confusion, the line is engaged. And here, we are introduced to some quaint mid-90s technology made obsolete by progress, the fax machine (Look it up for details but it's basically a way of sending pictures and text down a phone line, before Internet messenger services like WhatsApp and even humble email were common). Ros smartly sends a message with the lines in reverse order so that Beckett can see the first line immediately as soon as the message drops out the fax machine, telling him to "shut up and get the hell out of Dodge". Ros arrives with a small box and telescopic antenna and starts waving it around Beckett's humble abode, occasionally telling him to keep mum or else. Beckett just follows looking confused. Eventually she tracks down the errant explosive insect and jams it. The phone rings again. SAM is pleased to hear an explosion on the other end of the line. Sadly, for him, it's just Beckett pulling his leg. Again SAM fails for not following up on the explosion and checking if Beckett is dead. Ros meanwhile, also makes Beckett lose his deposit by making a hole in the wall to remove Mr. voice activated bomb and Beckett sticks it into a pot. Guess they are eating plastic explosives casserole for dinner then!

We return to Irene's offices where she and SAM are plotting their next move. Surprised Roland has not appeared with police to have them interrogated as prime suspects in the attempted murder of two people, but oh well. In a lab full of food colourings being shaken about, SAM suggests testing their targetted killer virus on the last "survivor" of the Bugs team, using a scrap of trousers that the guard dog tore off Ed a few nights ago (Or was it last night? There is a poor sense of how much time has passed here. I refuse to believe that several explosions can happen in London in one day without the authorities noticing. Maybe I'm overestimating their abilities?). It would prove to the Attaché their lethal product is lethal. Mr. Attaché apparently doesn't trust it will do the job unless they test it and show him the results. Anyway, Irene sardonically remarks that they better separate canine DNA from the sample, lest that end up accidentally killing all the dogs in the area rather than Ed. Speaking of Ed, he is at the Secure Hospital Ralph is contained in. I'm surprising that there aren't more orderlies watching their every move. Ralph talks about how crunch also affects the development of deadly bio-chem weaponry, not just video games. Ros and Beckett arrive and basically tell Ed that Irene is no longer fooling around and they need to Golf-Tango-Foxtrot-Oscar. Unluckily for them, SAM is in the hospital carrying a dodgy paper bag, itself these days grounds for every security guard to demand what he is doing and call the police. But that doesn't happen in the world of Bugs because NO ONE CARES WHEN RANDOM LOCALISED EXPLOSIONS GO OFF IN CENTRAL LONDON! SAM prepares another robotic fish/insect brooch bot and launches it. Somehow Ralph recognises it because he designed the eyes for it and he can seemingly see the glint of said eyes from miles away. We are treated to more nauseating fish eye views as the group panic and hide in a storage cupboard, attempting and failing to close all the gaps into the room. The deduce either Ralph or Ed are the targets due to Beckett and Ros officially being dead. More panic as the mini-drone manages to fit through a keyhole. A lot of spraying of air freshener, Ed running away, confused and terrified hospital staff being shouted at and more motion sickness video later and Ed managed to trap the bug in an extractor fan and kill it. Except according to Ralph he is as good as dead due to the vapour being released from the bug when it is destroyed.

Ed gets put into a quarantine ward as he claims to be fine. Ros, from the other side of the window, lies through an intercom that it is a precautionary measure. She calls Beckett over to look at a sample of Ed's blood under a microscope. I'm sure there are biologists there who will tell me what they show here isn't a virus attacking cells or at least not the way Ros describes it. Probably some other really tiny organism. Nonetheless, Ros tells Beckett that although everyone else is safe, Ed is a dead man walking due to the hyper targeted virus and they have no idea how to save him. At least we know we can burn the virus to a crisp to avoid it going anywhere else if it deployed against anyone else. Don't viruses mutate anyway? The medical equipment attached to Ed suddenly slow down their beeping and he collapses over. This presses the issue and our remaining technically dead duo decide to try to extract a cure from Irene and stop the Attaché getting up to no good. Beckett spies on the virus weapon handover and follows our Corrupt Consular official, almost causing a traffic accident in the process. Ros marches into Irene's office with Roland in tow. Before SAM can do the legal eagle thing again, Ros bluffs them into cooperation with the voice activated explosive beetle from earlier. It's been reprogrammed to respond to Irene's voice. Ros also manages to reconstruct the deleted secret files from earlier by using some recovered hard drives and what is basically "root" access on 90s Siri. Her first attempt to reconstruct the files from CCTV footage didn't work due to too low a frame rate to enhance apparently (Which doesn't make sense since multiple times, Ros can just enhance pictures and sound from really poor quality sources anyway). SAM is no longer "Smug Angry Minion" and more "Scared Alone Minion" because not only can Irene not give any instructions, but his boss will technically kill them all due to her recorded voice being part of the Assassins file that Ros just recovered. SAM loses his nerve and gives away the cure for the virus. Apparently a very high dose of x-rays will do the job. Surely x-rays would've been done earlier a matter of routine in the hospital in trying to find out what was wrong with Ed? Ros and Roland walk out of the office, Irene gets pissed off at her underling for falling for Ros' poker face tactics when they both are seemingly killed by the bomb being triggered. Although given how easy it is to fake death in Bugs, I wouldn't be surprised if Irene and SAM escaped. Also, good job Ros! You just murdered someone and endangered other via compromising the structural integrity of an office building!

Beckett finds Mr. Attaché boarding the world's most illegal looking ship at the dockyards, complete with crew who look like extras out of a crime drama. He manages to distract everyone by making JCB's move on their own. They gawk in confusion as Beckett makes his way to the bridge and steals the case containing the virus. Mr. Attaché gives chase and ultimately tries to release the virus by shooting randomly at Beckett and the case. If he really wanted the virus back he should've just blasted Beckett in the face but instead our Amoral Ambassador decides to just empty rounds at a seemingly indestructible case in the hopes that it will release the virus and everyone in the area will be a asymptomatic carrier until it infects the remaining family of the unnamed Regent of the unnamed East Asian country and kills them all. Surely there would be enough time to figure out some sort of vaccine or other cure? Given Ros just forced the cure out of Irene and company, waiting a few years in the hopes the virus would take hold is a bit of an optimistic gamble for Mr. Attaché. Anyway, Attaché runs out of ammunition. Beckett takes the chance to destroy the case using the "flamethrower" he has to incinerate the virus container. Except, he doesn't. His flamethrower looks like a very big gun and it acts like one when he throws the virus case overboard and blasts it, causing it to explode and the quality of the picture to degrade by several magnitudes. I have many questions here, including but not limited to "Why the hell did Beckett not use it against the crew when he was boarding the ship?". It's not like anyone cares if you kill people in the Bugs universe! Also, "Where the hell did Beckett get this flamethrower?". "Why is is flamethrower not actually acting like a flamethrower and instead just shoots really big explosive rounds?". "Why does the Attaché want to help a despotic regime that will probably kill him once the Regents blood line is gone and his usefulness has come to an end?". The mind boggles. I know mine did when I first watched this episode. I was extremely puzzled and just thought that Beckett just released the virus at the time. Perhaps he did? Perhaps he wanted to steal Mr. Attaché's thunder. Regardless, I suspect that the Attaché is a future "Persona non grata".

Mission over, Ed is shown to be recovering in the hospital after the x-ray "cure" has been administered. He flirts with some of the female nurses in a show of his typical (and dated) 90s chauvinistic tendencies. Beckett and Ros are unimpressed at him trying to squeeze a few more days of sick leave and bring in a specialist to help speed up his recover, cue one scary looking male nurse that frightens Ed into a miraculous recovery. Roll credits.

Verdict/Retrospective Comments

A bit of a slower start this time. And admittedly a bit boring as well. I still don't get how the weapon Beckett used to destroy the virus can be classed as a "flamethrower", not to mention his lack of using it. It's not like the Bugs team shy away from killing baddies anyway, especially in later episodes. The idea of small flying robots as weapons is not new, but they weren't as small as the miniature ones seen in this episode. The idea what we would now call "drones", small enough to go unnoticed until it is too late is becoming a scary reality, however, so the show is a bit ahead of the times in that regard. Also scarily plausible is the idea of killer viruses. In real life, viruses can mutate, as seen with the Flu virus with it's Avian and Swine types mutating to infect us. Though I haven't heard of anyone dying due to a man made targeted virus, man made biological and chemical weapons are a definite thing and as seen in recent unfortunate events have been used to kill specific targets (And sadly unintended targets like bystanders as well). Who knows what dark secrets the various military laboratories of the world are working on right now with regards to man made targeted viruses. There is also something to be said about voice activated user interfaces, with things like Siri, Google Assistant and to a lesser extent Cortana. Irene's main computer having voice recognition do a lot of things was an interesting concept that has come to fruition as of the time of the writing of this blog post. Still an interesting story, showing the international reach of the Bugs team and their ability to get involved with political intrigue on a global scale.