In episode 3, Lazarus appears to have it’s possible formula established. It looks like the show might be going for a Carmen Sandiego-esque globetrotting adventure to find the villain. This episode also seems to establish that the series will be heavy on social commentary of various political issues. We got some cool action and scenery in this episode, which was much more interesting and exciting than the last episode. Without further ado, let’s recap what happened.

We find out the deal with what happened in last week’s cliffhanger. It turns out that a hacker got into satellite surveillance systems and pasted Dr. Skinner’s face everywhere. We get a humorous image of Dr. Skinner’s face on a bikini lady. It appears that a genius hacker is working with him, or Dr. Skinnner is such a polymath that he’s also one of the world’s smartest hackers too. The Lazarus team decides to split up into two places to find clues to Dr. Skinner’s whereabouts. Chris and Leland go to Dr. Skinner’s ritz manor while Axel and Doug go to the homeless camp where Dr. Skinner was spotted.

Chris and Leland disguise themselves as janitors hired to clean up the defacement of Dr. Skinner’s manor and it turns out their excursion was apparently pointless as they didn’t find anything particularly interesting. Axel and Doug’s homeless camp excursion goes much better. They hunt for someone named Jerry who’s an old friend of Axel who’s supposed to be in charge of the homeless camp. They find the person who had the deadname Jerry, who now goes by Jill. Axel still accepts his friend. She talks about discrimination faced by the poor and LGBT people. Doug comments about anti-black prejudice. Jill gives Axel multiple hugs and kisses and Axel has an awkward facial expression while receiving said affection.

Doug continues to interrogate people in the homeless camp while Axel decides to play a playground basketball match with someone at the camp. He uses his gymnastics and acrobatic skills to dominate the game in a pretty cool scene. Doug finds out about Dr. Skinner’s still living grandma in Istanbul and and that leads us to the globetrotting journey. Said grandma is famous for her baklava, which ends up being an important plot point.

Axel and Leland use a futuristic vehicle to travel to futuristic  Istanbul. The city has a pretty cool design, even if the architecture and culture might not be accurate. Because this is set in the future this is future Istanbul, the show has that as an excuse. At least the setting looks pretty cool. It’s been a while and we finally get to the obligatory fight scene. Generic thugs pop up and Axel uses his flips, spins, and other tricks to provide stylish action while Leland just stands there. It appears that just like in episode two, Axel does all the cool stuff while the rest of the Lazarus team just stand around. It would be cool if the rest of the team showcased their own combat skills, or at least something resembling a personality, but we got what we got.

It turns out that our heroes end up losing the fight and the thugs try to steal the impossible to remove bracelets from our heroes.  Our captured heroes say that they are there for Granny Skinner’s baklava and the thugs say, “Oh why didn’t you say so” and they let Axel and Leland go. They get to eat her baklava and find out that Dr. Skinner planned on visiting his grandma for Christmas but got tied up with his maniacal destroy the human race plan. The episode ends with hacker Eleina saying she has a lead.

We have the potential of a fun formula if we continue this globetrotting theme. The characters and central Dr. Skinner mystery aren’t really clicking, but the Watanabe style has been keeping things afloat. Let’s see what locales we are getting next episode.

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