Wow, Double Decker really is powering along – that early start has a deceptive effect on one’s perception.  We only have four episodes to go now and there’s still no sign of a link with Tiger & Bunny (I’m betting on prequel, if anything).  And while the series continues to be really entertaining on a stand-alone episodic level, I’m starting to wonder what the larger purpose here is.  There doesn’t have to be one, necessarily – maybe the goal is simply to be a good cop serial with a wicked sense of humor.  But if there is any grand design here, T & B-related or not, I don’t see many signs of it yet.

While this one started out in Double Decker’s comedic vein (as is often the case, the tone set by the narrator), it ended up being possibly the darkest episode of the series.  That’s the trend of course, and it’s often the course shows like this chart.  This time around we finally see the military get involved, which makes sense.  They have skin in the game here – they’re not co-sponsoring SEVEN-O out of some sense of civic duty.  They want a skilled and versatile outfit whose military connections are secret when troubling stuff comes up – as Doug refers to them, “direct cases”.

In this, er, case the matter involves a mayoral candidate named Dorman whose daughter has been kidnapped by Esperanza.  One “Secretary Brian Cooper” shows up and “asks” that SEVEN-O get involved.  That means everyone going undercover, and unfortunately leads rather quickly to Doug getting captured – mostly because the whole thing has been a setup by Dorman to make himself look like a hero and get elected mayor.  But of course he’s lying down with the wolves, and the head wolf at that, Zabel.  Dorman has his goals here, but Zabel is mainly interested in capturing someone from 7-0 to tell him (under torture) how the outfit’s Anti-AMS bullets are made.

It certainly isn’t fun seeing Doug being tortured, but there’s an upside to all this – he now knows exactly how Esperanza’s hierarchy actually works.  As to rescue, that’s mostly thanks to Apple and his weird inventions, one of which (my guess is that it really was invented as a covert peeping device) allows he and Rookie to trade messages via Morse code.  Apple and Kirill may not seem like the likeliest among SEVEN-O to quarterback a rescue but so they do, with the help of the rest of the team.  And we get to see Doug and Kirill give a more literal twist on the whole double decker idea.

Looping back to the grand design thing, there is one element of this episode which hints at it – Kirill’s self-pep talk “Don’t think, feel so good!”.  It’s something he heard from grandfather, but it’s apparently (as Cooper reveals) part of something called “Nikai’s Prayer“.  And whatever that is, it’s important to the military – which means Kirill through his family has connections to dangerous secrets and the powerful people keeping them.  That’s the most tangible sign so far that we’ve been building towards something bigger, though there’s not much there yet to suggest just what that might be.