The episode starts with the black-and-white John-Doe-O-Vision as our hero walks into his broker's office; cut to colour as said broker looks up from his fried-egg sandwich and says, "Fasten your seatbelts, because here he is!" I don't honestly know for sure if it's a fried-egg sandwich, but if I were a stockbroker sitting at my desk, that's what I would want to be eating. John responds, "I woke up this morning with a taste for pork bellies." Mr. Broker starts muttering about how commodities are a high risk. John sits down and starts to pontificate, and I'm not even smart enough to recap what his exact reason is for wanting to do some pork-belly speculating, but it does have something to do with the International Association of Icebergs announcing that G-72 is about to break right off. Mr. Broker asks the very pertinent "what does this have to do with pork bellies" question, to which John replies, "Just buy now -- 50,000 futures." Apparently, as John explains, the increased water temperature from the melting iceberg means more precipitation in Bolivia, which in turn means great revenues from pork bellies. Can someone dig up John Maynard Keynes from his grave and ask him what all this means for me? Thanks. Blah coffee, blah relationship to pork bellies, blah whopping profit blah. Mr. Broker is stunned. He's made enough of a commission in the last, oh, three minutes to put one of his kids through university. Still looking stunned, Mr. Broker shakes John's hand and says, "See you next week." Ah, gloating -- geniuses really do it best. And our international man of mystery is off.

John Doe HQ. John Doe's phone rings, and Karen sighs, loudly because, well, the phone ringing interrupts whatever she was doing at that particular moment, which from the looks of things was putting a book on a shelf. She answers, "Doe's place." She then proceeds to have a conversation with a non-character named Colin about how they're still "good" on the Baltic room. Oh, wait, Karen wasn't actually working; she was "snooping around" John Doe's apartment to "find out what he's all about." Is it the mandate of every single show I recap that there be an annoying "assistant"? Why does he have an assistant, anyway -- he doesn't even have a real job? Right. She's "comic relief." Yes. I use those terms both sarcastically and lightly. Can I do that in one sentence? Any. Way. Karen waxes on about how Doe's got no "snapshots of friends or family." She pauses in her peasant blouse to muse, "No music, no DVD collection, ah, there's nothing personal here." Then she says, "Hey! Does that credit card thing really work?" With the phone tucked under her ear, Karen jumps over to a locked door, and breaks into the very room her employer has deemed off limits.