Tonight’s new Revolution episode, “Happy Endings”, featured a very special cameo by the first known celebrity to survive the blackout: reality-TV star and Poison frontman Bret Michaels! When three of Our Heroes travel to the sideshow campground of New Vegas, Michaels appears as himself, alone on a tiny outdoor stage, cradling his acoustic guitar and lip-synching “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” while the original single plays as background music. Yes, folks, while humanity tears itself apart, all the Top-40 hits of your teenage years will live forever, even without a recording medium to preserve them.

So how did our cast fare this week? Follow along:

Connor Bennett, surviving his cliffhanger: When last we left Connor, he was trapped in Patriot Captain Truman’s office, surrounded by armed guards and only Truman to use as a shield. But Connor has an ace up his sleeve: Miles and Bass providing sniper coverage from outside. Somehow they can nail a Patriot headshot even with the shades pulled down. Connor handcuffs an infected Truman to a radiator, steals away with all the faux-typhus vaccines, and saves all of Willoughby’s sufferers in a fifteen-second mass-medication montage.

Later he scores with Charlie because they’re both young characters and it’s therefore their destiny. For her part, Charlie only gives in because she’s become nihilistic about her lot in life, assumes the Patriots will kill them all, and figures everything’s pointless except whatever tiny pleasures they can scavenge until their doomsday arrives. Remember when she was the chirpy, idealistic one? Being demoted from main character to supporting player hasn’t done her workplace morale any favors.

Grandpa Gene, proud faux-typhus survivor: Five days later, Gene is no longer dying on the table every ten minutes, but still needs Rachel to babysit him through recovery. No action scenes, long speeches, or sudden betrayal for him this week.

Aaron and Priscilla Pittman, nanobot puppets: The former couple arrive on foot in Lubbock at night and reunite with an old friend named Peter (Daniel Henney, the two-gun-totin’ Agent Zero from X-Men Origins: Wolverine), just as the nanobots wanted. Back in their MIT days, Peter was the third wheel who assisted them in writing the code that essentially became the nanobots’ DNA. Those several quadrillion children of theirs really wanted to see their three parents back together again. Reasons? As yet unknown.

Whereas the nanobots gave strange visions and the powers of Pyro to Aaron, and just strange visions to Priscilla (as far as we know), the nanobots have allowed Peter to become a faith-healer. He prays to the Lord (with Bible and all), he lays hands on the afflicted, the nanobot fireflies materialize, and the parishioners watch live and in person as the sick and mortally wounded are healed before their very eyes — no camera tricks, no planted fakers, no stage-magician chicanery, just nanobots happy in their work. Aaron and Priscilla, hardline atheists that they are, mouth off to Peter about how nanobots don’t count as divine intervention, without allowing for the possibility that God might be working through Peter and the nanobots to see His will done on Earth in the midst of so much sin and devilish chaos.

Peter kind of missteps by locking Aaron and Priscilla in their guest room so their heartless chatter doesn’t frighten and confuse the townspeople, but he agrees they have much to figure out together.

The Neville Family, prisoners of the Patriots: In Washington, DC, a beaten-up and demoralized Tom is brought into the Oval Office for a very special meeting with President Davis himself (Cotter Smith, who also played the President in X2: X-Men United). Davis thinks Tom might be useful to him for a very special mission: in order for his secret plans for Willoughby to proceed, he needs someone who knows Sebastian “Bass” Monroe well enough to track him down and execute him. Tom, formerly Bass’ right-hand man in the bygone days of the Monroe Republic, fits the bill best.

The President’s ultimatum: go kill Bass, or else Tom’s wife Julia gets tortured and possibly killed. Julia’s only appearance in the episode is in the form of a black-‘n’-white 8-x-10 photo, verifying that this loyal, strong-willed schemer has once again been reduced to a hostage and plaything for murderers. Tom has only one stipulation for the job: he wants his son Jason sent along as his sidekick. Not only would he be useful, but he’ll be just as motivated as Tom to stay in line and keep his mom alive.

At least five days and 1,200 miles later, Tom and Jason show up in Willoughby, winning Our Heroes’ reluctant acceptance with a cover story about Julia being killed by the Atlanta nuke and them wanting revenge on the Patriots for it. To their credit, this used to be their true story. Alas, no one in Willoughby has been paying attention to their subplot and has any idea that they’ve missed several Neville Family updates.

Miles and Rachel at the movies: While half their team is away on a special mission, Miles and Rachel take a break from post-apocalyptic freedom-fighting to go on a date. They spend a night sitting at a defunct drive-in theater, pretending to watch Evil Dead II, and then capping off the night — as the Kids These Days put it — by finally “hooking up”. Thus does another will-they-or-won’t-they couple cross over the line to the David-and-Maddy side. Thirty-three episodes of widowhood was all Rachel needed before she could move on, I suppose.

Bass and Charlie and their plans for a big heist: Bass is convinced that the main cast is far too outnumbered to take down the Patriots alone, and certainly not cool enough to become the new Magnificent Seven. Since Willoughby seems short on able-bodied rebels, they need hired help, by which Bass means mercenaries. Thus do he, Charlie, and Connor travel by wagon to the tacky shanty town of New Vegas, a land of endless tents, primitive casinos, bare-knuckle boxing, and unbelievable sideshow exhibits such as “the mummified remains of Steven Tyler!”

Bass cobbles together a heist plan on the fly that eventually looks in his head like so:

1. Return to the fight-club job he held down at the beginning of season 2 for one last fight with their “best guy”.
2. While everyone’s watching Bass — a.k.a. returning champion “Jimmy King” — get stomped by a man-mountain, Charlie and Connor hang out in the casino and keep an eye on the guy in charge of collecting winnings from the games.
3. Connor creates a distraction. In the confusion, Charlie grabs the lockbox containing the winnings.
4. Charlie tosses the lockbox in a preselected trash can, removes an identical lockbox from her backpack (filled with worthless rocks), and runs out of town.
5. When everyone spots Charlie carrying a lockbox and chases after her, Connor ceases his distracting, calmly picks up the lockbox from the trashcan, and walks away unseen.
6. When the pursuers get too close, she drops the lockbox and saves herself. They recover it, open it, see rocks, hear sad trombone.
7. Bass continues holding everyone’s attention as the man-mountain tenderizes him with his fists. As soon as he can tell that news of the heist has drawn away the big gambling boss (Timm Sharp), he stops playing rope-a-dope and quickly dispatches his opponent with a keenly choreographed ferocity.
8. Bass reunites with Connor and they walk away as if nothing had happened.
9. Bass reports to a local warlord named Duncan Page (Katie Aselton from The League), who’s agreed to let him hire ten or fifteen mercenaries at thirty diamonds apiece.
10. Return to Willoughby. Destroy all Patriots.
11. ???
12. Take over the world.

I’m surprised step 4 works, but I suppose it’s possible that one of the tents might contain a lockbox salesman who carries multiples of that particular model of lockbox in stock. You wouldn’t think such lockboxes are terribly common in such a devastated territory, and yet there they are, two of ’em exactly alike. Lucky, that.

Alas, things go horribly wrong at step 8, for which Bass and Connor planned the world’s worst escape route. Instead of sticking to the shadows, hiding out till the coast is clear, or even throwing on a pair of Some Like It Hot cheesy disguises, they decide it’s a great idea simply to stroll away in the middle of an open plain. Period. For some reason they’re surprised when the casino guys catch up and capture them both. If video games were still around, they’d be terrible at stealth levels.

To be continued! Eventually. Revolution will be taking the next three weeks off while NBC covers the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. After snow-sports are over, see you then!

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If you missed all of last season and would rather read about Revolution than spend hours playing TV catchup, the MCC recap of the season 1 finale has links to MCC recaps of all first-season episodes, in all their uneven glory. MCC recaps for the current season of Revolution are listed below as handy reference for whatever reason. Thanks for reading!

9/25/2013: “Born in the U.S.A.”
10/2/2013: “There Will Be Blood”
10/9/2013: “Love Story”
10/16/2013: “Patriot Games”
10/23/2013: “One Riot, One Ranger”
10/30/2013: “Dead Man Walking”
11/6/2013: “The Patriot Act”
11/13/2013: “Come Blow Your Horn”
11/20/2013: “Everyone Says I Love You”
1/8/2014: “The Three Amigos”
1/15/2014: “Mis Dos Padres”
1/22/2014: “Captain Trips“