Previously: KABOOM! The Washington Monument blowed up real good! And that probably took a pretty big chunk of the special effects budget, so we can expect to see it a lot from now on. When things bog down, we'll probably see characters get a thoughtful look, then a thought bubble will show the Washington Monument blowing up in slow motion. It could be the new going-to-commercial tag.

But enough about the extremely expensive demolition of the Washington Monument. Let's return to the narrative, in which Sophia's bus goes through a portal. As you may remember, they had just enough uranium (or "portal juice," which is a lot more fun to say, not to mention less reminiscent of certain real-world issues) to portal one bus, so the other two had to get exploded. That took care of Thomas and Isabel, too. Going through a portal takes longer than you'd think, and there are a lot of sound effects and blue lights. When the dust clears, their bus is in that gated community that Thomas set aside. Sophia and about sixty of her compatriots have successfully escaped!

In the White House, President Martinez has some monitors that show him the two burnt-out busses. He wants the troops to get in there and get identifications for all the people who were on them. That's pretty gruesome work, judging from the size of the fireball that killed the 120 (or so) people in there. But they've got some "cameras on the ground," which probably means that everyone in the Situation Room will get to see everything that the troops see. These people need to learn to delegate a little, don't they? We don't need the President of the United States and the Director of the CIA micromanaging every single thing. I guess Sterling might not actually be the Director of the CIA, because he's got a lot of other responsibilities too. My point is that it's probably a pretty complicated technical undertaking to be broadcasting helmet video from Los Angeles so the people in Washington DC can watch over people's shoulders. It's hard enough work to be stacking up burnt corpses without knowing that the president is watching you at all times. Sterling isn't even watching, because he has to congratulate Simon on a job well done. Which is weird, because Simon didn't have anything to do with this operation. He didn't even know it was happening until last episode. Then Sterling and Martinez slip into the hall for a secret conversation.