Night Train



Well, here we are again for the Sentinel obsessed. Lots of spoilers and useless info regarding Jim and Blair ahead.

Night Train opens with Blair banging on drums. Blair and Jim look good doing anything, but I have a "thing" for them doing anything jungle related. I love AUs set in the jungle and my fav episodes and stories relate to the jungle and their animal spirits. Needless to say, Blair is wonderful trying to "cure" or at least help out our sick little Sentinel. Jimmy has a cold. Blair tries herbal remedies, jungle music and some horrible-looking concoction in a pot which, when Blair inhales, has Blair choking! And he wants Jim to inhale with those sensitive senses.

The scene in the hallway walking into the bullpen with Blair passing out tissues to Jim is precious. Blair throws a small fit about being sneezed on. Jim obviously doesn't know how to cover his mouth. BTW, Blair has on one of my fav shirts. The dark one with the white stripes that buttons up the front. I think this is the same shirt he wears in Love and Guns. I like when they wear the same clothes. It makes you feel like they're normal guys. They do laundry.

Then we have the touchy/feely Simon/Jim scene. I say this because lots of fanfiction has Jim and Simon as macho, cold-hearted guys. Hey, this is about as senimental as you can get. I thought Simon was going to cry on Jim's shoulder and Jim was going to pat Simon on the back here. It is a nice scene, showing how much the divorce is upsetting Simon and that Jim has had some regrets too.

The discussion in the back of the car between Jim and Blair is really cute. I like it when Jim "divulges" the information and then tells Blair they're going to have to kill him. Blair's face is just plain exasperated. So Jim really doesn't tell Blair what's going on and this takes us into the funny scene in the train. While Jim is checking doors and rooms for safety, Blair is off in the Sandburg zone ranting about mutant babies and fingers falling off because of some weird biological thing being transported. I like when he tells Jim he's an anthropologist, not a biologist. Jim finally comes clean and Blair is relieved to find out that the package is a man, but squicked to find out the bad guy is responsible for killing lots of people.

Oh, when the big strange guy whom Jim keeps looking at and can't place, makes his first appearance, he squeezes between Jim and Blair. I love the Blair hand movements telling us the guy is from the primate house at the Cascade Zoo. He screws up his face and holds his hands up, he's THIS big, Blair tells us.

Jim calls Blair "Junior" when they're in the train car and after they introduce themselves to the protected witness, Jim handcuffs Blair and the witness together for some strange reason. Then Jim leaves to go and check things out. He tells Blair not to let anybody else in the compartment and Blair says they should have a special password or something so Blair can identify who is trying to get into the compartment. Jim smarts off and says to Blair, when you ask who it is, I'll say Ellison. Then you'll know it's me. Funny scene. Jim just isn't into the espionage groove.

We have several changes of scenes to the Cascade PD and Simon and Carolyn. Just suffice it to say that I like Simon and that Carolyn bugs me.

Well, our Jimmy then goes and does something really stupid. He decides to take some cold medicine. Needless to say, if you've seen the bloopers, his head explodes. It is the non-drowsy formula and Jim is flying high in just a few minutes. His senses overload. He makes a beeline to the john and I can't ever figure out how come the light bulbs didn't burn his hands. His sense of touch is wacko and he doesn't even flinch when he unscrews two light bulbs. Just a stupid observation.

Anyway, he's overloading big time. He does the smart Sentinel thing. He finds his Guide. I like the scene outside of the compartment when Jim tells Blair his senses are out of control. Blair asks him to tell him what's going on. Then Jim says something I love, do you want a laundry list? I can picture Jim always making lists seeing he's so anal. Blair says yes. Jim explains and when Blair says it sounds like menopause, Jim goes ballistic. He grabs Blair and pushes him against the wall. We have deja vu from The Switchman. Blair talks him down (as usual). When Jim finally let's slip about talking the cold medicine, Blair knows exactly what's wrong and tells Jim he has to muddle through until the medicine is out of his system.

Jim then smells gun oil and they go back into the compartment. Jim gives Blair his gun and tells him to shoot anybody without Jim's face who comes through the door. Blair never hesitates, takes the gun and says, You got it. Jim then goes out, fights with the bad guys and gets tossed out the train window.

Unfortunately we go into some of the yucky blue screen stuff. Jim is hanging under the train. Jim's cell phone rings and he tries to answer it. Stupid Jim. Anyway, in spite of the bad idea, there is tucked into the midst of this silly train thing, a wonderful scene. Jim remembers Blair's instructions about blocking out one of his senses, his sight, and concentrating on his hearing. The flashback scene shows Blair looking exceedingly yummy in his glasses and a plaid shirt, explaining to Jim how to zone out the lights. He's rigged up this contraption that flashes lights into Jim's eyes while soothing music is playing. Jim doesn't like the looks of things and protests (of course!). Blair tells him that if he doesn't want to learn to control his senses, that's fine with him. Jim settles down and learns to zone out the lights and concentrates on the music.

So Jim uses this technique while crawling along the underside of the train and reach safety. But when he finally hauls his butt out from under the train and into the compartment, the conductor thinks he's a train jumper and whacks him a good one. Jim is now sleeping.

Back to Blair and the bad guy. Did I mention there is a BOTW in this episode? She is irrelevant. The bad guy turns on Blair and handcuffs him to the woman. We have some Blair is a dog scenes with him sniffing the girl while they are trying to reach the backpack with Blair's swiss army knife in it. That knife has a life of its own. It shows up in a lot of fanfiction stories. Jim and Blair use it on occasion in other episodes.

Jim and Blair are finally reunited. Blair is happy. "You're alive!" he tells Jim. I don't think he had any doubts actually. He did tell the girl that Jim was a special kind of guy. There are several more cop scenes with shooting and car chases and train chases. Jim looks good all scuffed up, BTW.

Anyway, the bad guys are caught and we are finally back in Cascade at the station. Jim comes in all cleaned up, looking very fine in another nice, tight t-shirt. Blair looks pretty good himself for being up all night handcuffed to that woman. The best thing about the final scene when Jim agrees to more of Blair's experiments (not!) is when Jim pats Blair's cheeks. I love when Jim does that. I bet Blair does too.

The End.

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