As the camera zooms in on our heroine, the camera jumps back, startled. What was that? The camera sniffs gingerly around the scene, trying to get a new whiff of the scent. It slowly creeps up as it realizes that yes, yes. That's the smell of a serious shout-out. Woo hoo! Want to hear it? I thought so. Max is in the bathroom of her squat and realizes that she is out of toothpaste. She starts ranting about how she can barely remember a time when you could walk into a store and the shelves would be lined with products. If you wanted toothpaste, you went out and bought some toothpaste. Kendra, the roommate, jumps up to offer her a replacement toothpaste concoction of baking soda and peppermint oil. And then (drum roll please) Max says, "That's what I don't get about this whole economic breakdown thing. There's a huge toothpaste shortage, but you can buy peppermint oil." Ta dah! That is a huge shout-out to a discussion we've been having in the forums about how, say, this show makes no fucking sense. Ever. Like how the couriers drink Heineken all the time, yet coffee is some hot commodity. Or how Max buys Captain EO a grapefruit for his birthday and he's excited. I mean, would you be excited about a grapefruit? Well, I guess if the Captain gave me a grapefruit I'd be excited. Anyway. Major shout-out. Thanks, writers! Now, back to our regularly-scheduled crap.

Kendra has scored some temp job translating documents for a Japanese doctor, and she doesn't know how to spell polymerase. So she asks Max. Who gives her a mini-lecture on recombinant DNA and the role of enzymes. Kendra and I stare at Max for awhile. Kendra calls her a goofball. I am thinking Log. Log. Log. Log. She's that good an actor. Wouldn't you rather be watching Ren and Stimpy, too? Max peers at the papers Kendra is working on. Gene resequencing. Manipulation of RNA nucleotides. Kendra says that the Good Doctor, Tanaka, took a crack baby and manipulated his genes until he was a child genius. Max is intrigued, because if the Good Doctor can fix a kid with "the IQ of broccoli," he can certainly take care of her seizures. She asks if she can read the papers before Kendra leaves for the conference where the papers will be presented. And, writers, perhaps in the next episode you can explain to me how Max knows so much about genetics. I have yet to see a flashback of the small soldiers in chem lab. Maybe if you are genetically enhanced, you have access to a sort of collective unconscious of genetic information. From the cradle, you know all about codons and telemeric degradation and gene sequencing. But I guess that would mean Max and Dolly the Sheep have more in common than their acting ability.