Jo faces another set of problems as the FBI arrive in town in the wake of Kindred’s death. Alex spends some time getting closer to Piper. Emily continues to scheme.

There’s a lot going on in this week’s episode and it’s not helped by the fact that the recap shows a scene we never actually saw happen last time out – Piper, under the influence of Emily, using her power to shove Benny and smash a load of stuff in the house (presumably this happens just before we saw Alex confront them in the street outside). At any rate, this is the episode where things start to feel a little like they’re unravelling.

For Jo, the arrival of an FBI agent who is quite obviously far too nice to be genuine is causing her issues but for all the wrong reasons. She and Chris are hellbent on not revealing too much to the guy but that’s not the thing I’d expect this intuitive, very clever chief of police to be homing in on. Agent Brooke has ‘wrong’ baked through him, but she seems oblivious, even at one point where it seemed blindingly clear to me and should have to her as well.

Meanwhile, Benny is keeping Wilker company, but Wilker has suddenly been made odd by the writers, and in ways that are incidental but also don’t make any real sense. It’s like they’re almost trying to re-run the ‘kooky’ routine that Emily was playing at before, only I can’t be totally sure whether we’re supposed to suspect it’s a ruse this time (because they don’t) or just accept that this super genius who faked his own death and stayed off the radar for years is also super-flakey. Odd.

And speaking of Emily, it doesn’t really seem clear what she’s after either. Last time out Piper would appear to have overcome Emily’s attempts at reprogramming her, re-writing her own code to do so. That certainly lends weight to Wilker’s assertion that she could be dangerous, but doesn’t explain why Emily still seems obsessed with her, nor what she’s trying to do.

It’s nice to see Alex and Piper get some time together, in which Alex obviously begins to see what it is about the little girl which has bred such fierce maternal instinct in his ex-wife, and it’s also nice to see Jo and Alex being more civil to one another again, though it’s a little odd that Alex is suddenly fine with a bunch of young teenage girls being around Piper for Mia’s birthday party, given last week he was terrified of even Mia herself being anywhere near Piper.

It all just feels a little disjointed after a good run of episodes to date, and then when it starts throwing in at least two other plotlines on top of all the ones we already had, it starts to feel a little like the writers have taken the kitchen sink approach of throwing everything at the script at once. I’ll be interested to see where it goes next.

Verdict: Bafflingly scattershot all of a sudden – still good character stuff here but why so many angles suddenly being thrown at the viewer? Here’s hoping it’s an aberration. 6/10

Greg D. Smith