As this week’s new Revolution episode “Kashmir” opens, Our Heroes have commuted a full 280 miles from last week’s endpoint in Ford City, PA (or wherever the Allegheny rapids dumped them south of that), all the way east to West Chester, twenty miles west of destination Philly, and home of a Rebel Alliance faction led by special guest star Reed Diamond. The costar of TV’s Dollhouse and Homicide: Life on the Street was a welcome change of pace from the long line of guests I haven’t been recognizing. I presume this means the show’s mighty ratings have finally earned it a higher casting allowance.

Here, Diamond is Colonel Starkey, Rebel Alliance leader who’s understandably having trouble extending any courtesies to the visiting Miles Matheson, “retired” commanding general of the Monroe Militia. Charlie and company stand by freely while Starkey’s men beat on the ex-murderer, until they finally accept his generous offer to help them capture evil President Bass, in exchange for helping rescue Charlie’s poor brother Danny and maybe also coincidentally ending the Monroe Militia’s reign of terror. The night before the planned overthrow appointment, Miles spends his time drinking and doubting whether or not he’ll have enough nerve to kill his former best friend if necessary. Charlie has trouble convincingly encouraging him to stay in touch with his murdering side. Eye of the tiger, Uncle Miles!

Alas, storming Philly isn’t as simple as walking into downtown along one of their narrow interstates. No, one of the ten largest cities in the country formerly known as America is now surrounded by thirty-foot walls and plenty of gun nests. Somehow the architectural aesthetics of Eastern State Penitentiary became all the rage under President Bass’ infrastructure redevelopment plans. Because of this minor impenetrable hindrance, Our Heroes, Starkey, and several disposable rebels have only one option for infiltrating Philly and reaching Independence Hall: a single subway access tunnel that will take them to Girard Station. Based on Miles’ intel from several years ago, it was the only underground entrance the Militia left open, up in the northeast part of the city, requiring a bit of circumnavigation from West Chester. For these folks, the added mileage is the easy part.

Miles cautions everyone that the place is booby-trapped, but purports to know where all the traps are, again based on his ancient knowledge of the way things used to be. Nora and Charlie trust in this assurance so much that they forget where they are and hold an extended discussion of Miles’ history and mental state, insofar as it pertains to Miles’ last known attempt to assassinate Bass, which ended in failure because of lingering friendship. Meanwhile, Aaron makes small talk with Ashley, 19-year-old rebel of Syrian descent who’s fighting with the Rebel Alliance in honor of the father who made her freedom possible. Aaron has trouble thinking of himself as a bona fide Rebel, but slowly realizes that he hasn’t exactly been watching life from the sidelines lately.

Character moments are rudely interrupted when Charlie steps on a surprise mine Miles didn’t see coming. Sure, maybe they could’ve been more careful and watched where they were going, what with the warning about booby-trapping and all, but it would be uncouth to mention this to them and make them feel self-conscious about their own absentmindedness. Or we could blame Miles for assuming that the Militia hates change and has kept all its security plans identical after their commanding general revolted against them. (Simple security protocols? Who observes those, right?)

Nora, resident explosives expert, stalls the mine just long enough for Charlie to dive to safety, but the delayed explosion is still destructive enough to collapse the tunnel behind them. Now that they’re ostensibly trapped and sealed inside several miles of access tunnels, their torches and lungs somehow use up most of the oxygen supply, causing Our Heroes to hallucinate throughout the episode. At first I thought they’d wandered into a batch of Baskerville gases, but nothing else in the episode supports this theory, except the part where I’d believe it as a plot device much more readily than mere oxygen deprivation.

First Miles imagines a sneaky Militia scout shadowing them. While walking through a waterlogged catwalk set from The Poseidon Adventure, Nora imagines being shredded by a sewer gator. Aaron ignores a haranguing from the nagging specter of the wife he abandoned, which his rational mind has no trouble realizing is imaginary, thus giving him the strength to walk away from her again. Miles daydreams an entire sequence in which a happy, huggy Bass greets him at Independence Hall (where Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” blasts from an unseen boombox) and represents for the microscopic part of his mind that, if invited back against all odds, could conceivably be tempted into resuming his old job as Head Evil Henchman.

Charlie imagines herself spending the episode giving Miles a series of pep talks, assuaging his jangled nerves, and reminding him that everything will be fine. Wait, no, this happened. Someone in the show’s chain of command decided it was finally Charlie’s turn to be main character while Miles takes a back seat to wrestle with his flaws.

After they find Girard Station bricked over (curse that flawed, years-old intel! It seemed so accurate!), the crew wanders further along the tunnels until they reach fresh air at last…whereupon Starkey guns down poor Ashley and most of the nameless crew members and declares Miles officially captured. Just as Laurence Dominic once proved to be more than he seemed, so does Starkey reveal himself as a Monroe Militia double agent, whose two years of undercover work have paid off in the form of the biggest catch of all.

Too bad for Starkey that Charlie is somehow sneaky. She gets the drop on him with a quarrel bullseye in his chest. He punctuates his death scene with one last shot that grazes Charlie’s temple and drops her to the concrete. The combination of her very first bullet wound and her very first concussion finally induces her own overdue fugue, in which she dreams she’s still living back home with her dad — before the pilot, before Neville murdered him, and before all those time-consuming walks began. Before she can succumb to this vision as if it were a form of heaven, she finds her way back to the land of the living because Miles is under the impression that shouting at someone is the best cure for their concussion. I guess I can’t argue with his results. With that, Our Heroes gather themselves once more, swear they’re ready, and sally forth into the airy night, their fate To Be Continued.

Meanwhile in the subplot, Rachel shows off the power of the pendant to Neville and some new captain named Burke by using it to activate a radio so she can listen to Led Zeppelin’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You”. If this weren’t coincidental enough, the episode also ends with an ad for a new Led Zeppelin greatest-hits collection. What are the odds?

Rachel continues her task of building an amplifier for the precious pendants of power so that their range can extend beyond the current 9-10 feet and conceivably jump-start Monroe’s WMD collection. At the behest of Neville’s paranoia, Monroe brings in a second scientist to verify Rachel’s handiwork — Dr. Bradley Jaffe, whom we last saw two weeks ago when his daughter was being tortured because of Rachel’s shenanigans. Dr. Jaffe calmly inspects Rachel’s handiwork and — showing her all the loyalty she showed his daughter — announces the “amplifier” is a bomb. Monroe is neither happy nor huggy.

Monroe decides a personnel change is in order, and prepares to replace Rachel with Jaffe. Before this sensible yet deadly plan can be carried out, Rachel stabs Jaffe squarely in the chest, a single blow with a short Phillips screwdriver that an Olympic bodybuilder would have trouble driving through a sternum. She wails and apologizes to her victim as he slumps to the floor for the sake of her job security, and I suppose also for her own family’s safety and hopeful reunion, which I expect will consist of hours of tearful confessions as the Mathesons compare their body counts.

Next week, then: the fall finale! It’s the last episode before the show goes on hiatus until late March and leaves a gaping hole in my weekly writing schedule. But it’s the big showdown between Miles and Bass! Best friend versus best friend! Despot versus derring-doer! Mustache Dad versus The Cape! BE THERE. Even if it means having to walk three hundred miles to the nearest working TV.