Monarch releases Cate, Kentaro, and May so they can continue looking for Hiroshi.
This Episode Contains the Following Tropes:
- Air Quotes: Duvall makes air quotes when describing Kentaro's occupation as "an artist".
- Armies Are Evil: Downplayed. The U.S. Army forces guarding the Red Zone of San Francisco are uncompromisingly arresting looters and any other trespassers they catch in the zone on a daily basis, and they're the primary obstacle and threat to the Randa half-siblings and May on their trek to Hiroshi's old office. Although not shown onscreen, Caroline mentions that some of the looters they catch are getting shot.
- Armor-Piercing Question: When May says she has a normal life to go back to, Kentaro snarkily reminds her that she said he destroyed her life in Tokyo. May is caught completely off-guard and stumbles over her own words trying to form a retort.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Tim, outside of being a goofball, has been as nice as he can possibly afford to be to the main cast, but when they're profoundly rude to him one time too many after Monarch has let them go free, Tim explodes; tearing into them for almost getting themselves killed because they didn't know when to quit while messing with things they didn't understand. Then it's humorously revealed that Tim rehearsed his entire explosion with Duvall in advance.
- Big Damn Hug: Caroline shares one with Cate just before the latter heads into the Red Zone with her friends, and when Cate makes it back out of the Red Zone in time to be picked up.
- Big "WHAT?!": Caroline's reaction when Cate breaks the news to her that Hiroshi at the very least didn't die in Alaska and is probably still alive.
- Blue Is Heroic: Downplayed. Verdugo, the deputy director of Monarch, wears a blue jacket in this episode, and although she means well, she's implied to be a flawed and vain official. Tim is likewise wearing a dark-blue coat, and Cate a much lighter-blue jacket, at the Alaskan airport.
- Calling the Old Woman Out: Cate is angry when her mother admits that she suspected Hiroshi of having an affair at his Tokyo apartment when she sent Cate over there at the series' start. Cate accuses her mother of having let her find out the ugly truth because she was too afraid to face it herself. Caroline states that this isn't the only reason — she was hoping that sending Cate instead would shock Cate out of her severe post-G-Day depression as a last resort — but she does admit later on that Cate has a point in that she shouldn't have let Cate suffer having an absent father before G-Day just because Caroline was comfortable in not verifying her suspicions.
- Concealing Canvas: Subverted. Kentaro reasons that Hiroshi's San Francisco office will have the same setup as his home office in Japan, but obviously remodeling a corporate office is out of the question and the constellation map has nothing behind it. Instead, Cate recognizes that the supposed "satellite" patterns don't match orbital patterns, eventually leading to them connecting the map to one in Randa's files and deducing it marks the path he traveled.
- Conspiracy Theorist: A lot of the would-be disaster tourists who tried to get into San Francisco after G-Day were apparently trying to prove that the events of and leading up to G-Day were all a government conspiracy.
- Convenient Decoy Cat: Invoked. Cats have taken over the quarantined area of San Francisco. When troops are bearing down on the group, Kentaro throws out a chip bag to attract a group of cats so the troops think the noise they heard was just the cats.
- Cue the Sun: In a closed-circle way, the sun rising both forebodes and causes a good omen. As dawn is breaking when Kentaro, May and Cate have reached Hiroshi's office, Kentaro gets the idea to shine the sunlight through holes that he's punched in a sheet of paper relative to a world map of Monarch-relevant locations, casting dots of light on the hidden map which reveal that the map's line indicates the global route Hiroshi has planned out from San Francisco.
- Defiant Captive: Kentaro paces around his cell, pounds on the door and throws the cell's chair around, demanding to see Shaw or someone who's in charge. Even May, who's still physically recovering from the events of the previous episode, manages to snark at Duvall. Shaw spends his own confinement verbally tearing Verdugo and Monarch to shreds.
- Didn't Think This Through: Lee is extremely critical of Dr. Serizawa's iconic "Let them fight" from the 2014 movie, noting that humanity would have been screwed if that gambit hadn't paid off and Godzilla lost to the MUTOs.
- Disaster Scavengers:
- Post-Godzilla (2014), the abandoned and cordoned-off ruins of San Francisco are plagued with trespassing looters, to the point where the military is making daily arrests in the area a year after the disaster.
- On the other side, Cate's mother Caroline and her Office Romance partner James are legal FEMA scavengers, collecting people's lost belongings from the ruins.
- Kentaro himself grabs a bag of potato chips from a derelict shop in the ruins for a snack.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Cate, Kentaro and May see a commercial for a luxury underground "Titan-proof" Straata living quarters, drawing to mind the nuclear fallout home basement shelter hype of the Cold War era when imminent nuclear war was feared.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Seeing the apocalyptic ruins of San Francisco with his own eyes, Kentaro lampshades how utterly insane it is that conspiracy theorists like the one Cate encountered in the season premiere can deny that a disaster like this ever happened.
- Forbidden Zone: The now-derelict ruins of San Francisco where Godzilla and the MUTOs wrecked the city are a "red zone" which the military has cordoned off. Trespassers that are caught by the military patrols are arrested, and some are even shot. And it's where Hiroshi's old San Fran office which Cate, Kentaro and May have to get to is located.
- Given Name Reveal: Downplayed. It's revealed that May's name is a false identity, and her real last name gets revealed in this episode: Mateo.
- Hannibal Lecture: Lee spends his cell visit by Verdugo snarking at Verdugo and at Monarch's questionable conduct in regards to the Titans in recent years. It culminates in him being the one to get under Verdugo's skin instead of the other way around.
- Happy Flashback: Cate has several flashbacks to the days before the San Francisco disaster, when she was in a relationship with a co-worker, her schoolkids were still alive, and she seemed a lot happier than the woman she is in the present is. Although the flashbacks take a bitterer note when it's revealed at the flashbacks' turn into her Troubled Backstory Flashback that she was cheating on her partner even during the happier times.
- Held Gaze: Cate and her partner in the flashbacks to before G-Day share two Romantic gazes with each-other. First is in the latter character's introductory scene where she meets up with Cate outside a coffeehouse, the second is when they last see each-other just before the doomed schoolbus Cate is on departs for the Golden Gate Bridge.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Cate comments that she thinks she's unworthy of May helping her through her PTSD episode, and people in general helping her, since she feels all she ever does for them is let them down, like she did with her girlfriend who she cheated on and broke up with.
- Holding Hands: The episode isn't at all subtle about trying to visually emphasize that Cate and her colleague in the flashbacks are girlfriends even after they unambiguously kiss.
- Hollywood Darkness: The uninhabited Forbidden Zone of San Francisco is covered in dim blue lighting and mist at night.
- Hypocrite: When Tim expresses indignance that Monarch are locking up and interrogating the Randa descendants like they're criminals, Verdugo snarkily reminds Tim that he quite literally tried to abduct one of them in a black car like a stereotypical predator beforehand. Tim concedes that "mistakes were made".
- I Know You're Watching Me: Shaw glares quite ominously at the overhead camera monitoring him.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: After being held captive by Monarch and getting an Armor-Piercing Question from Kentaro, May asks to be pointed to the nearest bar.
- Infodump: We're introduced to the FEMA housing park on the outskirts of the San Francisco ruins, and the history of trespassers who the military have been keeping out of the ruins, when James and Cate exposit about them in detail to Kentaro and May.
- Internal Reveal: Cate breaks the truth about Hiroshi's Secret Other Family to Caroline. Later in the episode, Cate tells Caroline about her discoveries that Hiroshi didn't die in Alaska and that he was working for a shady government organization that was interested in Godzilla.
- Involuntary Group Split: Shaw is forcibly separated by Monarch from the rest of the 2015 main cast.
- I've Never Seen Anything Like This Before: Duvall comments that the team Monarch has in place to monitor the Frost Vark have said they've never seen anything like it.
- Map All Along: Hiroshi's wavelength-like, mathematical-looking canvas is actually a world map with the continents hidden. By casting the Titan and Monarch locations on a clear world map in the Randa files onto the canvas, the trio piece together that the squirly line on the canvas indicates the path Hiroshi took around the world from San Francisco to Alaska, to Africa.
- Meaningful Look: Shaw gives Keiko a telling look and a smile in the film of her and his younger self before Bill has entered the frame, foreshadowing the series' later reveal about their relationship.
- The Mole: Duvall talks May into keeping tabs on the group for Monarch in exchange for helping her return home.
- My Card: Duvall silently leaves her card on a table for May.
- Never Split the Party: Cate insists that May needs to stick with her and Kentaro because they need May's intellect and because the backup files currently in May's possession could get any of them who's caught with them killed.
- Nice to the Waiter: Inverted. A grumpy May is nothing but rude to the Nome airport desk clerk (minutes after Tim lost his temper at May for the same), to a point which approaches dog-kicking; threatening to leave a two-star review on the area, then a one-star review when she finds out the bar isn't open yet.
- Office Romance: It's all but stated throughout the episode, and confirmed at the end, that Caroline's relationship with her FEMA co-worker James is romantic.
- Oh, Crap!: James and Caroline share an anxious look when the military checkpoint guard who they usually meet (who implicitly wouldn't have bothered to check the inside of their truck) is off-duty and a stranger is filling in with him, because they know that the guard currently on-shift is liable to check the inside of their truck and they're currently trying to illegally smuggle Cate, Kentaro and May into the Forbidden Zone.
- Ominous Multiple Screens: The Monarch command post in Alaska has a bank of monitors which the holding cells' surveillance cameras feed into, and which are used by Tim, Duvall and Verdugo to watch over the imprisoned main cast and then to watch over Shaw's interrogation after they pursued the group to plug their data leak.
- Race Against the Clock: May and the Randa half-siblings are on a countdown to get to Hiroshi's office, get what they need and get back out of the Forbidden Zone before 8:15 AM the following morning — if they miss that deadline, they'll be trapped inside the zone without pickup until the military finds and arrests them.
- Rage Breaking Point: Tim seemingly hits his with Cate, Kentaro and May after they act rude and call him an asshole to his face just after they've been bailed out of Monarch custody; snapping at them and calling them out that they have no idea what kinds of stuff they've been messing with and that they would've died without them. Except that he was at least partly acting, and he was taking pointers from Duvall as part of the act.
- The Reveal: We learn more of Cate prior to G-Day, namely that she was in a relationship with another woman before that crashed and burned due to her cheating on her.
- Spotting the Thread:
- Duvall notices that from the way in which May swept her apartment, she knows how to disappear, cluing her in that May isn't who she says she is and that she's disappeared herself before.
- Cate works out that the hidden data in Hiroshi's office isn't hidden behind a concealing canvas, but rather is the canvas this time, since she saw him working on the squirly patterns before.
- Tautological Templar: Tim disparages Cate, Kentaro and May for thinking they were "on some righteous crusade to uncover the truth", telling them in no uncertain terms that they stuck their noses in things they didn't understand and almost got killed for it.
- This Is Gonna Suck: When asked how high up the high-rise building Hiroshi's office is, Cate replies, "Dad loved a view."
- Trauma Button: Seeing a discarded bike at the abandoned school where she used to work causes Cate to briefly flash back to the G-Day evacuation when the bike fell. On a darker note, being in an abandoned subway almost sends her into a panic attack.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Cate is curled up in the corner of her Monarch holding cell, trying to conceal her distress and terror with quiet snark.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Tim seemingly loses his temper at Cate, Kentaro and May for being nothing but rude to him after he's (supposedly) gotten them out of trouble with Monarch and escorted them to the airport in Nome.
- What the Hell, Hero?: May snarks to Duvall about how Monarch are prioritizing chasing four non-hostile people to plug a minor data leak over doing anything about the hostile, human-killing Titan that's right next to their Alaskan command post.
- Wicked Stepfather: Played With. Caroline's not-so-secret paramour James tries to be nice, but Cate is very unhappy to have him picking them up, and he is a little bossy with her in this meeting. It's implied the latter has a lot to do with James recognizing how inconsolable and averse to self-help Cate was at home with her mother after G-Day. Cate seems to warm up a little to his relationship with her mother at the end.
- Wrong Assumption: Kentaro assumes that the MacGuffin will be hidden behind a concealing canvas on the wall in Hiroshi's San Francisco office, just like the one in his Tokyo office was, and he's unpleasantly surprised to find that's not the case here.
- You Remind Me of X: Downplayed. When Kentaro attempts to assure Cate in Japanese during a PTSD episode, he accidentally triggers her memory of the last time she saw Hiroshi when he said the exact same words to her before abandoning her, causing Cate to snap at Kentaro like he's their father.
