| Fun With Chemistry | |
| Season 1, Episode 07 | |
 | |
| Airdate: | April 17, 2011 |
| Writer(s): | Matt Olmstead, Nick Santora |
| Director: | Gloria Muzio |
| Previous: | Like Father, Like Son |
| Next: | Steaks |
Fun with Chemistryis the seventh episode of the first season of Breakout Kings, which aired April 17th, 2011. In this episode a modern-day "Bonnie and Clyde", Mars O`Connel with the assistance of Starla, escape from prison and go on a crime spree. After the pair murder a cop, the Breakout Kings race to catch them before they kill again-- and also before a dozen other law enforcement agencies catch them first. That would mean the Breakout Kings would not earn time off their sentences. In the midst of the chaos, Julianne tests the romantic waters with one of the "Kings".
Plot[]
It's weekend visiting day and inmates are sitting with their families and children. Wanda O'Connell, a serious woman beaten down by life, walks into the visiting yard where her son is sitting waiting for her. At a table nearby, a bubbly redhead, Starla, introduces herself to a big, eager, awkward-looking inmate, Barry.
Wanda finds her son, Marlon "Mars" O'Connell, sitting alone and twiddling his thumbs. He sees Wanda breaks into a big grin, standing to greet her with open arms, but she backs up a step, keeping him at bay. Finally seeing the hurt in her son's eyes, she takes a step forward and starts to put her arms around him. And he, in turn, spins her around and jams a shank against her throat. The C.O.s snap into action, breaking out their taser's and drawing their handguns. The alarm starts to sound and everybody in the visiting center hits the deck. Mars now has a new look in his eyes. He's serious. He tells the guards to open the gates, and when they don't, he apologizes to his mother then flicks the shank across his mother's throat, releasing a spray of blood.
Mars drops his mother to the ground, spins around and grabs the next closest person to him, Starla. He puts the blade to her throat before any of the C.O.s could get a clean shot. Afraid of what he might do next, the C.O.s open the gate, and Mars drags Starla out. Mars maneuvers Starla toward the cubbies where the visitors stow their personal belongings. He grabs her keys, pushes her into the car, and they take off.
The team is in the office, looking over Mars' mug shot and file. Mars was serving a one-year bid for trespassing and petty larceny, but never displayed violent tendencies until that morning. Lloyd seems shocked by the details -- how could he kill his own mother? Charlie tells the group that the police found Starla's car abandoned a half mile away, with no sign of either of them. He must have had outside help. Shea, who was whispering to Lloyd the entire time, looks up and shows Charlie the white "Seinfeld" sneakers that came with his civvies. Shea tells Charlie he wants his boots back, and Charlie, barely acknowledging Shea's request, tells him that if he's given shoe-boxes to wear on his feet, that's what he'll wear. Charlie addresses the team again and tells them that Starla was visiting the inmate Barry, who she met online. Julianne, at her desk, is already pulling up files on Starla and her family, who live in Montrose. She tries calling the house, but somebody on the other line picks up and the phone goes dead. Suspicious, the team heads to Montrose.
The SUV rolls up to a tidy, modest house. Charlie and Ray get out and look around and approach the house. They knock and hear a faint, muffled voice calling for help. Charlie and Ray exchange a quick glance and draw their guns. Charlie swings the door open and aims his weapon at Sandra Roland, sprawled on the floor by her wheelchair. She fell trying out of her wheelchair while trying to get to the phone. Charlie rushes to her aid as Ray walks into the living room, coming from the back of the house, photo in hand. He holds up a photo booth picture strip of Starla in various intimate poses with Mars. Starla isn't a hostage. She's Mars' girlfriend.
Starla and Mars sit in her car. Mars holds up a gun. They kiss passionately.
Back in the living room, Charlie, Ray, and Lloyd sit across from Sandra, who's now reeling from the bad news. Upset, she begins talking about how Mars changed Starla. As she begins to talk, Perry Roland, Starla's dad, rushes through the door and kneels beside Sandra, telling her not to say anything else. He looks towards Charlie and Ray and explains how Starla is a good girl who just gets mixed up with the wrong guys. She and Mars were only dating four weeks before his arrest.
Back at the office, Julianne breaks Mars' juvenile record. Shea takes the pages and paces the bullpen, reading, while Erica sidles up to her to ask what the deal is between her and Ray. Julianne, uncomfortable with the question, tries her best to play it cool, telling Erica there isn't anything going on between them. Erica takes it. She's interested. Before Julianne can think about retracting her words, Shea interrupts as he starts reading through Mars' file. "At eleven Mars was cited for shooting his neighbor's cat with a BB gun. At thirteen he was cited for making threatening calls to a teacher. At fifteen --" Lloyd, sitting in the SUV in front of Starla's parents house is also skimming the file on his laptop. He continues "-- he was arrested for burning down a homecoming parade float." Lloyd looks at Charlie and Ray and tells them that these two people mixed together are a dangerous pairing. He asks Julianne, who's on the phone, if she could find out how Starla's mother died, but it's difficult because Starla has no previous criminal records. Lloyd then holds up his fists and explains personalities are like molecules, and certain molecules react with one another, sometimes dramatically. He uses Charlie and Shea as an example. Two dark-skinned males, one raised in poverty and driven to a life of crime, the other colleges educated and now working for the government. Together, Lloyd says, they're explosive. Charlie turns to Lloyd, gives him a look, and tells him to get to the point. Starla and Mars fell hard for each other, he says. That's a synthesis reaction. Lloyd continues: "Two simple compounds combining to create something altogether new. Passive female finally defies parents and goes rebel, and latently aggressive male finally crosses over to overt violence because she validates and encourages his basest fantasies. The question now is, how far do those fantasies extend?" Ray looks concerned and asks Lloyd if he thinks there will be more bodies. Lloyd nods. There will be.
At the same time, Mars and Starla pull up to a convenience store and hop out of a truck. They march inside and Mars starts shooting.
Later that day, the store is crawling with cops and ambulances. The team is inside, looking over the gruesome playback from the security cameras. Ray stands over a body beneath a bloody sheet. The person posed no danger to them, and they had clean access to the register. They're just killing for the fun of it now. Lloyd explains that they're spree killers, similar to Bonnie and Clyde. Charlie looks at Lloyd, "bad chemistry" he says. Erica chimes in, points to the security monitor, and asks if the guy in the kitchen overheard anything useful. On the monitor, the team sees Mars shooting up the store and a male customer scrambling to the kitchen. Charlie and Ray head into the kitchen to find Patrick Malloy hiding in a small space underneath the sink. It's his wife who's under the sheet.
Outside, Patrick, clearly shaken up, sits in the ambulance while Charlie and Lloyd confer nearby. Lloyd approaches Patrick and takes a seat next to him, first asking if he heard or saw anything. Patrick is completely unresponsive, so Lloyd takes a different approach and tells him about the Nepalese Egret, a bird that builds her nest in riverbanks near crocodiles. When the crocs attack, the bird flies away to save herself so she can take care of any eggs that survive. Lloyd looks at Patrick and explains that's what he did for his kids. A little calmness flushes over Patrick.
Back inside, the team is looking over more footage from the security camera. Erica notices that Mars walked towards the back of the store and perused a rack full of pamphlets and other tourist traps. Charlie and Lloyd walk back inside and tell the team that Patrick told them that Starla and Mars took his wife's keys and mentioned something about a "roll in the hay." Erica goes to the rack of tourism pamphlets and scans them. She plucks out a pamphlet with a hayride on the front and shows it to Charlie. It's for the Highland Lakes Fairground.
The SUV pulls up to the fairgrounds and Charlie, Erica, and Shea get out. Charlie tells Shea to stay in the car while he and Erica try to flush them out. Shea, not happy, gets back in the car.
Ray and Lloyd return to the office and Julianne hands them a binder stuffed with pages on everything she has found so far on Mars and Starla. Ray tells Lloyd to sit down and start reading. Ray walks off, leaving Lloyd alone with the binder. Julianne walks over and brings him a cup of coffee and asks him for advice. She asks if there was someone she felt strongly about, should she let that person know. Lloyd, suddenly interested and thinking he's "that person," quickly tells her to go for it.
At the Fairgrounds, Shea sits in the car, looking at the keys in the ignition: temptation. He has a brief flashback to Charlie telling them if they attempt to escape, their sentences will be doubled. He takes a deep breath, and steps out of the car. On the other side of the park, Charlie and Erica see a broken window and approach the manager's office. Charlie kicks in the door and sees the grounds superintendent lying dead on the floor. His wallet and key ring are missing.
On a roadside picnic area, Starla and Mars are getting intimate in the back seat of the Volvo they stole. A police vehicle pulls up and an officer knocks on the window. Mars slowly rolls down the window in the back.
In the office, Ray, Lloyd, and Julianne stare in horror at the monitor, looking at the footage from the cop's dashboard camera. On the monitor, the cop is peering into the window when a shot rings out and he staggers back. The rest of the team arrives at the office and rush over to watch the footage. On screen the see the cop stagger back to his car with Mars behind him. Ray tells Julianne, who also can't watch, to turn it off, but Lloyd says to keep it on if they really want to know what these two are capable of. On screen, Mars puts his gun up to the cop's head and releases the trigger. Ray, clearly upset, stalks off across the bullpen. "These two are going down," Charlie says quietly.
Early the next morning, Charlie holds up a newspaper with the photo of the dead cop, the headline reading "3rd Victim!" Charlie tells the team that they didn't release any information about the dead park superintendent in hopes that Starla and Mars will slip up and use one of his credit cards. Ray joins the team and tells them that the police cruiser they stole was ditched, but no other reports of a stolen vehicle have been made. Julianne tells the team that she has been compiling a list of Mars' known associates and found out that while he was awaiting trail, he shared a cell with the notorious bank robber Harry Lee Redden, who was a stickler for changing vehicles and hiding out in obscure places. Mars must have taken a lesson from him. Erica tells Ray that she'll tag along to help question Redden. Knowing that a little eye candy never hurt, he agrees. Julianne, suddenly worried, watches Ray walk off into the kitchen. She takes a deep breath and follows him. She offers to print a map to Sing Sing, but Ray reminds her that he's been there a thousand times. A beat, then she leans in to plants a kiss on Ray's cheek, but he's caught off guard and it lands on his lips. He steps back, surprised, while Julianne looks utterly mortified. He asks if she's ok, then hurries to the door.
Erica and Ray sit in an interrogation room at Sing Sing. Ray apologizes for "pimping" her out, but she reassures him that she's fine. Redden, cuffed, walks into the interrogation room, not happy to see Ray. He takes a seat across from them and Ray tells him that if he cooperates, he’ll get one hour a week of unfiltered Internet access. Redden agrees, and tells them that Mars was a weird, quiet guy who asked him a lot of questions while they shared a cell. One piece of advice that Redden left Mars was that if he's going to hide out, he might as well pick a nice place.
At a McMansion in the suburbs, Starla and Mars playfully kiss each other as the walk down the winding staircase, Mars holding a bottle of champagne. They walk towards the kitchen, passing the family that lives there, all bound and gagged with duct tape, in the living room.
Shea watches a tow truck haul the stolen police car from the lake. Ray tells Charlie that they're breaking routine, possibly looking for a place to hide away. Erica, on top of a hill, calls the team over She points to a subdivision of massive homes.
Leaning over the hood of the SUV, surrounded by a half a dozen cops, the team looks at a map of the area, trying to figure out Starla and Mars' next move. Shea tells the team they're not going to pick just any old house. Charlie calls the cops over and starts to introduce Shea by his full name, who quickly interrupts him giving the cops an alias. He tells them to look for a home without an alarm system sign out front, any homes with bad exterior lighting, and homes without dead patches of grass, because dead patches usually means they have a dog.
In the living room of the hostages' house, Mars struts back and forth in front of the captive family, brandishing a police shotgun he took from the car. Starla sits on the back of the couch, gently braiding the daughter's hair. Haley, the daughter, mumbles something behind her gag and Starla peels off the tape and Haley tells them to take anything they want. Starla chuckles, gets up, and tells the family she has to run some errands. She takes the keys to their Mercedes.
At the office, Julianne is reading a newspaper article on the screen. The article is about a car accident that killed Starla's mother. An eight-year-old Starla was in the back seat and the rescue crew had to use the Jaws of Life to open the car door, and then a saw to cut through her mother's lifeless body to rescue her. No wonder she has a death fixation, Lloyd says. Julianne walks to her computer and notices that somebody has made a purchase with the fair superintendent's credit card. She hops on the phone with the rest of the team.
Starla emerges from the supermarket, wearing oversized sunglasses and a scarf on her head. Just before she can get into the Mercedes, two police cars squeals into the parking lot. Starla looks at the Mercedes, and then backs away from it, like it's toxic. She ditches the keys and calmly leaves the parking lot on foot.
Charlie, Ray, Shea, and Erica are in the SUV, surveying the area. Shea looks out the window and sees Starla walking away from the parking lot. Shea leaps out of the moving SUV and runs back toward Starla, who spins around to see the vehicle -- and Shea -- racing back her way. She drops the bag and runs as fast as she can. Shea chases and tackles her. Ray scoops up the fallen bag as he and Charlie catch up. Erica helps Shea hold onto Starla. She's breathing hard and looking up at them, wild-eyed.
Starla sits, smiling and handcuffed to a table in the back of an out-of-business furniture store that the team has commandeered. Ray leads Lloyd to the back towards Starla.
Back at the hostages' house, Mars is pacing around the living room, anxiously waiting for Starla to come back. He's getting more nervous and angry as each second passes. Haley, seeing that Mars is becoming impatient, says that maybe Starla took off and left. Mars, frustrated, splashes a beer on Haley. She keeps quiet.
Shea is walking around the subdivision. He knocks on of the doors and gets to answer. He checks the mailbox and heads back to the street where Charlie stops him and pats him down.
Lloyd is sitting down with the Starla, continuing his questioning, but still not getting anywhere with her. Ray walks over to the table to confront Starla, but she turns her body away from him, making Ray walk around the table to speak with her. This catches Lloyd's attention. Lloyd then offers Starla some water, and instead of sliding her cup towards Lloyd, who's at the other end of the table, she simply points to her glass and makes Lloyd reach across. Lloyd calls Ray away from the table and tell him that his assumption was wrong about Starla. Mars isn't the dominant one, she is. He could tell simply by her body language and attitude. Ray takes it in a beat then tells Lloyd he has a plan and walks to the car.
At the hostages' house, Mars is still pacing, worried. He tells the family to get up and go to the basement. Haley, knowing once they're down there they're not coming up, tells Mars that maybe Starla got lost and to give her a little more time. Mars thinks about it, then storms out of the room.
Starla is cuffed in the backseat of the SUV. Ray gets into the driver's side and when he sits down, his keys fall out along the console. Starla notices, kicks off her shoes, and grabs the key ring with her toes. Starla frees her hands, grabs Ray's gun out of his holster, a puts it to his head. She tells him to drive.
The SUV pulls up to the hostages' house. Starla prods Ray and Lloyd out of the car and towards the front door. A frightened Lloyd tells Ray to disarm her before they get into the house, but before Ray could try, Mars is at the front door, gun pointed at their direction. Ray and Lloyd get dragged into the house where Ray spots the hostage family on the couch. Starla tells Mars to shoot Ray and Lloyd, but before Mars can react, Ray speaks up and asks why she just doesn't do it. Mars clutches the shotgun, scared, but not moving. Starla raises Ray's gun to his head and pulls the trigger, but it's not loaded. She realizes it's a trap set by Ray and tells Mars to shoot. Before Mars can raise his gun, Charlie appears out of nowhere and knocks Mars' gun up as it fires, blowing sheetrock from the ceiling. Erica secures Starla before she has a chance to get away.
Back at the office, Shea appears at Charlie's door, holding up the "Seinfeld" sneakers. He puts the sneakers on Charlie's desk, telling him that he thinks he’s deserved the right to get his boots back. Charlie agrees and tells Shea that he doesn't distinguish between shades of color. Shea looks at him and tells him the only color he sees when he looks at Charlie is blue.
Outside, Ray crosses the office to Julianne's desk, asking her what happened earlier. Julianne awkwardly apologizes, telling him she only meant to kiss him on the cheek. Ray gives her a hug, and then heads to his desk. Lloyd is watching from the hallway, stunned to learn it wasn't him she was talking about.
Ray walks into the kitchen and turns around to find Lloyd behind him. Lloyd tells him that he shouldn't lead Julianne on. Ray, unconcerned with Lloyd's opinion, tells him he's not. Lloyd knocks the water cup Ray's holding out of his hand. Ray throws Lloyd up against the wall, soon realizing that Lloyd has the crush on Julianne. Ray lets go of Lloyd, smirks, and tells him he can buy her flowers, but just keep him out of it. Ray leaves the room, leaving Lloyd, dumbfounded, alone.
Cast[]
Main Cast
- Laz Alonso as Charlie Duchamp
- Domenick Lombardozzi as Ray Zancanelli
- Brooke Nevin as Julianne Simms
- Malcolm Goodwin as Shea Daniels
- Serinda Swan as Erica Reed
- Jimmi Simpson as Lloyd Lowery
Guest Cast
- Rodney Eastman as Mars O'Connell
- Scout Taylor-Compton as Starla
- Sarah Orenstein as Sandra Roland
- Stewart Arnott as Perry Roland
Production Notes[]
In the scene in which Mars killed his mother at the Wallkill Correctional Facility, he was actually holding a "blood sponge" in his hand. The sponge was soaked with blood so that when Mars squeezed it, it appeared as though blood was oozing from the knife wound.
The Highland Lakes Fairgrounds scenes were all shot at a conservation area on the outskirts of Toronto. The Set Decoration Department rented and trucked in all of the amusement park rides and attractions for the day.
A portion of the footage from outside Starla Rowland's house was re-shot months after the original shoot date. Because it was winter by this time, all of the visible snow had to be melted and washed away from the road and front lawn for the sake of continuity.
The mansion featured in this episode was filmed at a stately home in Toronto's Humber Valley. To simulate the bullet from Mars' shotgun hitting the ceiling when he was tackled by Charlie at this location, the SPFX Department installed a plaster rig on the ceiling. When the cue came each take, they would release a small avalanche of plaster and dust that would fall to the floor.
The clock that Mars smashed at the mansion was built out of "candy glass" specifically for the scene. Twelve pieces of this easily breakable glass was made for the clock and was replaced for each take.
Music Featured[]
Song: "Put 'Em In Their Place"
Artist: Mobb Deep
Album: Blood Money
Song: "Know The Ledge "
Artist: Eric B. & Rakim
Album: Don't Sweat the Technique