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The 4400: “The New and Improved Carl Morrissey”

Oh, cool. We actually got a series theme on this episode. Granted, the theme sounded a little like a cross between a certain West Side Story song and Garbage's “# 1 Crush.” But apart from that...

If anything stinks worse than being abducted by some mysterious entity and kept away from your loved ones for years on end, it is being brought back and finding out that things have gotten worse in your absence.

In the case of 4400 returnee Carl Morrissey, what had gotten worse was the neighborhood that he and his wife Gracie live in. The local park was being been overrun by muggers and graffiti artists and the old job that he loved had him being bullied by a supermarket manager who had it in for him.

Then Carl found out he had superhuman reflexes. He started to literally clean up the local park, halted an assault in progress and ended up making the local papers. He even managed to make the bullying supermarket manager back down. Tom and Diane from the previous episode came to investigate him but by then, Carl had convinced himself that he is on a mission from -- well -- whatever entity gave him his powers. So he went back to the park for yet another time...

Meanwhile, former Korean War Navy pilot Sam Tyler had gotten together with fellow returnee Lily Moore. Lily was the granddaughter of a former girlfriend of Sam's -- a white woman whose photograph had gotten Sam in trouble with his white colleagues. She still looked like her grandmother did when Sam knew her in the days prior to his abduction. Needless to say, Sam was not her actual grandfather. But had he not been abducted, he was close enough to Lily's grandmother that he could have been.

Anyway, Lily was also pregnant with a baby that she had no knowledge of conceiving, an infant whom -- as long as she knows -- belonged neither to Sam nor her ex-husband. And speaking of her ex-husband, Lily found out the hard way that the restraining order he took out in the last episode was still in effect when she tries to go to his house and secretly spy on Heidi -- the daughter she had with her ex-husband prior to her abduction. Her ex had since remarried and it was only due to Sam's intervention that he got persuaded to drop the charges against Lily.

In other news, Diana continued to bond with Maia Rutledge the psychic girl and eventually adopted her. Tom suspected his nephew Shawn had magical healing abilities and that he used them on his son Kyle. But he could not prove anything. Shawn found out that his brother's girlfriend Nikki had a crush on him and in the process of trying to discourage her, he accidentally gave away the fact that he can heal things.

Tom's current boss Dennis Ryland (played by Peter Coyote*) had a conversation with him convincing him to sign the papers making Tom's divorce final. Then something happened to Kyle in the hospital and Tom started wondering again if maybe -- just maybe -- something Shawn did was responsible.

Say goodnight, Gracie.

* Yes, the same Peter Coyote who played a pivotal part in E.T..