The opening of episode five is hectic. We kick off with Everick and Slade delicately needling a jelly-like substance in a Petri dish to activate some cells that then rapidly begin to replicate. The sight gets Slade all exhilarated, and then he’s sitting calmly in the waiting room of the Ilithyia fertility clinic with his wife Charlotte. Everick appears and informs Charlotte that the clinic has successfully harvested and fertilised some very impressive embryos with which to inseminate her.
Charlotte then introduces Slade to Everick and the two of them pretend they don’t already know each other. But in a flash, Everick and Slade have Charlotte up in the stirrups and a reptilian looking Slade is getting all weepy with joy, but it’s a voracious, maniacal weepy joy.
Next, the Slades are entertaining Waruu and NeridaWest at their seaside home. Waruu is stirring them about the rising ocean and the future of coastal real estate prices. He’s being a smart-arse, so Nerida changes the topic and brings her husband down a notch announcing that, unlike Slade, who enjoys the alchemy of cooking (I know, right?), Waruu struggles even to boil an egg (big-man Crow seriously can’t seem to take a trick in this series).
When Charlotte dashes off to the bathroom to hurl (confirming she’s finally pregnant), Nerida follows and in an unguarded moment the good news is revealed – three months “premature”, which doesn’t augur well. On the patio, Slade offers Waruu $30m to fortify the Zone into a biblical-style citadel all simply in exchange for delivering half-brother Koen. The money could set Waruu up as a true leader and we can tell Waruu is seriously tempted.
Across town, Koen, Kora and Blair are staking out the bar. After the events of last week they know something’s rotten, because there’s a distinct absence of cops around the place. They follow an emotional Blair inside and discover Ash’s remains (now literally ash). Whatever that glow was we saw creeping over her torso last week, it didn’t bring her back. The boys scoop her into an empty whiskey box and Blair begins to pine for his lost lover. Upstairs Kora breaks her silence and tries to tell Koen something, but he can’t understand her ancient language. He takes up the nullanulla and grabs her hand and this time receives a flash-vision that includes the dead Hairy-girl Jirra, a bleeding eye, a fig tree and a neck wound.
Back downstairs in the bar, Blair is drinking the whiskey and staring at Ash piled into the open box. The love triangle has dawned on him and he’s now cross and confused. So am I, because I genuinely thought we were all OK with this three-way already. He fills us in on his backstory with Koen and we learn they once shared a sleeping bag under a bridge one cold night. Which doesn’t help my confusion at all, but it’s enough to prompt Kora to call Koen an “arse”.
Elsewhere, CA operative McIntyre survived the shooting. He’s already back at work and presently trying to stall a frothy Mathews from just lighting up the entire Zone with an airstrike. He succeeds in talking the minister down by ’fessing up to his own grisly role in the murder of the guard during the breakout. Mathews is still a tad peeved, but McIntyre points out that butchering the guard didn’t hurt anybody’s approval ratings.
Inside the Zone, the kids are getting cheeky and it’s riling up the CA forces who overreact. Uncle Max defuses the situation, but drinks a can of OC-spray with his eyes for the trouble. It’s probably fair to say that the weapon deployment wasn’t in line with operational procedure as set out in the CA manual, and that’s what angers Charlotte enough to march out of the clinic and give the guards at the checkpoint a mouthful. It doesn’t help matters, though, and she ends up wearing an egg like Waruu last week.
Over at the brothel, Araluen has got her hands on Rowena’s misplaced smartphone. Frankie is summoned and Araluen remains adamant that she doesn’t know where it is and wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. Then Frankie cattleprods Rowena for being stoned on the job. Later, while hosting Mathews in a commodious suite, Araluen is privy to his and Slade’s differing plans for clearing out the Zone. Faced with being installed at the top of a tower as the minister’s captive sex-doll, we can assume that she’ll figure out the whole phone thing by next episode.
Back inside the Zone, Koen, Kora and Blair are holing up at Aunty Linda’s. Linda understands Kora and we learn that Kora is essentially “old spiritual stuff”. She wants to return to her own dimension but Koen’s shirking of his Cleverman responsibilities is constraining her to the earthly realm. Aunty Linda instructs Koen to take Kora to the old fig tree that he and Waruu often visited with Uncle Jimmy as boys. Next door, Nerida learns Slade’s $30m is already in their joint bank account. She demands to know what Waruu must provide in return, but he’s elusive about it. When he hears that Koen is next door he agrees to help with Kora, but not before they take out the Namorrodor.
Down on the beach, it doesn’t go to plan for either of them. Despite all the chanting there’s no sign of the Nomorrodor and their simmering feud finally erupts into a full barney. With his healing powers, Koen does best, leaving Waruu busted-up in the sand. He packs up his magic waddy and heads home to Aunty Linda’s, but Djukara spots him and then bails him up in the yard outside the commission flats. After a tense exchange, Koen is shot point-blank in the throat. Djukara bolts, shocked at his own actions, but Koen just heals and trots upstairs to finish yarning with Aunty.
A bloody Waruu returns home to find out that Nerida has watched the footage of him murdering the CA guard and it’s the final straw as far as she’s concerned. She doesn’t even recognise him anymore. Tell your story walking, Waruu.
While re-upping at the clinic Aunty Linda recognises the symptoms of a sick Hairy child and sends for Koen. It’s an ailment Charlotte can’t fix (but not entirely dissimilar to her own predicament), as the Hairy child is possessed by another spirit. The reluctant Cleverman and his Aunty need to sing it out and cleanse the child with eucalypt smoke. But which child are we talking about here?
Well, manchild Koen finds spiritual redemption as he releases the spirit of the dead Hairy girl Jirra from the afflicted Hairy boy (another triangle). And for once we see a reasonable representation of Aboriginal spirituality as Jirrra passes from this dimension to the next, instead of television’s usual gauche treatment of such things.
Best bits
Slade predicting he’ll parent “like a monster” eight-and-a-half weeks into the preganancy; Mathews, post coitus, piously declaring that “the Zone will be cleansed!”; Koen calling Blair a “Budu!”
