Summary
Some hilarious moments of contrivance notwithstanding, “Point of No Return” raises the stakes a little with a trip to Mexico and a big-ish plot revelation.
This recap of National Treasure: Edge of History Season 1 Episode 7, “Point of No Return”, contains spoilers.
As we approach the end of National Treasure: Edge of History, we’re starting to get that feeling of the stakes being heightened. I mean, look at Jess. She isn’t just being framed for a murder, but also faced with the possibility of never being able to return to the United States once she commits to traveling to Mexico. There’s an administrative process she can undergo, which is referred to as a “parole” period, the irony not being lost on Oren, but that’s not suitable for the heroines of action-adventure TV shows. We’ll deal with the ins and outs of citizenship later – we have a treasure to find!
National Treasure: Edge of History Season 1 Episode 7 Recap
Jess is the prime suspect in Sadusky’s murder because Billie has deep faked an audio recording in which she admits to poisoning his tea, though admittedly with a distinctly British phrasing that becomes a plot point later. (Ethan explains basic linguistic tendencies to Agent Ross, and for some reason is allowed to take the evidence home with him, but let’s not get hung up on the details.) I don’t for a single second believe any of this will matter in the long-term, but it’s at the very least an excuse to keep Ross, who has thus far felt mostly detached from the main treasure-hunt plot, to remain shackled to the goings-on in Mexico.
As is expected at this point, the entire Scooby gang ends up taking the Mexico trip, except for Liam, who has only just been discharged from the hospital and is short a phone after his dip in the lake. Luckily for him, his Graceland performance went viral, so the bar is packed with people wanting to hear him sing. His boss is willing to pay him a grand in cash for one song, so we’ve contrived yet another excuse to have women swoon over his vocals, but this whole sequence only exists so he can play a love song he has written that solidifies his feelings for Jess, and so he can see Myles in the crowd.
Myles, it turns out, is having second thoughts about his involvement. He rejects the payment Kacey sends him for providing the incriminating evidence against Jess to the FBI, and he reveals to Liam that it was him who pulled him out of the river, thus saving his life. He also preserved his phone. This unlikely team-up will probably yield some fruit next week.
The bulk of the puzzle-solving action occurs in Mexico, where Billie is also headed because – get this – she ends up sitting next to a woman in jail who solves the Alamo puzzle for her. That’s the most hysterical bit of contrivance in “Point of No Return”, but the rest of the shenanigans aren’t far behind, as we’ll see.
In the meantime, though, there’s some very heavy-handed social commentary business – the border guard says “Welcome home” to Jess as she enters the country, but the local market traders volunteer to speak English because they can tell from her Spanish that she’s not a native speaker – and the Big Reveal™ that “Salazar” is really Jess’s father, Rafael, who has remained imprisoned for two decades in order to protect Jess from the real Salazar.
Jess doesn’t take this well. She’s still buying into her mother’s description of her father as a self-centered good-for-nothing, and the whole extended incarceration thing seems to validate that description. Jess has to break the news that Manuela died of cancer a year ago and that she has figured out everything to do with the Daughters of the Plumed Serpent herself since her mother clearly didn’t want her to get involved. Rafael, though, knows that if she got this far she must have enough of his DNA to be compelled to see the quest through, so he gives her another clue that leads her – easily, as ever – to the third and final box.
For what it’s worth, the box is hidden in the pipe of a convent organ, which is worth the detour just to hear a panicked Oren describe a group of nuns as a “flock”, which made me chuckle more than it probably should’ve (the real term is apparently a “superfluity” if you’re interested). Once disassembled, all three boxes create a map presumably pointing to the treasure, but Jess, for once, can’t figure it out. She knows someone who will be able to, though – Rafael.
The issue is that when Jess arrives at the prison, Billie is already there. She, too, has learned that “Salazar” is really Rafael, and since Jess wagers that she’ll probably try to have him killed, she decides to break him out of prison.
For her, that should be pretty easy.
