Jharrel and Keisha try to earn the trust of the 4400. Hayden, Andre and LaDonna come up with a plan to rescue Mildred and Noah. Isaiah reaches out to Shanice for help with his own plans.

I’ve been greatly enjoying 4400 so far – it’s been a nice exercise in character study, mostly getting contemporary issues in there without it feeling forced or artificial, and it’s been excellently paced. This week though, it starts to feel like it’s jumping forwards in places, and having characters behave inexplicably in others.

The main character focus this week is on Hayden, who is determined to rescue Mildred from IpsyMed and won’t rest until he’s found a way. We get flashbacks to his childhood which indicate that he has some sort of neurodivergence (this was hinted at before now but never made clear) and that his mother was kindly and tolerant while others of his family were not. This somewhat informs the determination he has to rescue Mildred, who has been kind and encouraging to him in a way he missed once his mother was no longer around. The issue is that the arc the episode takes ends up almost bending back on itself by the conclusion. It’s weird, to have this entire episode so focused, and seem to be heading one way, only for it to flip.

Odder still is the way in which, once the brave trio ingeniously work their way into the hospital, the show suddenly becomes some sort of X-Men type affair, with various previously unseen members of the 4400 exhibiting exotic powers and appearances, and then the nature and tone of the actual Mildred rescue.

And on the subject of Mildred, well, I don’t really know where to begin. Certainly she’s been an interesting character all this time. But here, I couldn’t help but start getting vibes of a character from a previous (cancelled) genre show which jus reinforced the X-Men vibe. Add in the fact there’s an explicit X-Men reference to a particular well-known character and it starts to feel like this is all deliberate.

On the slightly more familiar side of the show, Shanice is approached by Isaiah to see if there is anything legal that he can do to protect members of the 4400 who don’t want to leave the hotel. He makes a powerful argument, and Shanice gives him the key he needs, but there’s an odd feeling that he may still need watching very carefully.

And as for characters who make no sense – Logan. I won’t go into detail that relates to specific plot points here but suffice to say that there’s a scene at the end where I honestly just wanted him to make his damned mind up.

It feels like the most rushed episode so far, with at least one major development just ‘happening’ out of nowhere and several scenes that feel like they’re missing connective tissue. This, coupled with the odd change in tone to a sort of X-Men vibe was jarring. I’ve loved this show so far, so I can only hope that this episode proves to be an outlier.

Verdict: A little messier than the show has been so far, and it suffers for it. 6/10

Greg D. Smith