The Checklist: Treadstone (S1 Ep8) “The McKenna Erasure”

Episode 7 of Treadstone ended in cliffhanger fashion, so let’s not waste anytime as we find out if Doug McKenna survived and put Episode 8, titled “The McKenna Erasure”, to The Checklist test…

#1- Did Doug McKenna survive the explosion?

Not surprisingly, one of the main characters on Treadstone, Doug McKenna (Brian J. Smith), was not killed off in a random explosion before the season finale… but there was some explosive action as Doug (and wife Samantha) found themselves tangling with the “asset” that Doug learned about back in Episode 6.

After a great fight scene with this other asset (his name is Vincent by the way) that ends with Vincent dead… Doug gets the bright idea to fake his own death and assume Vincent’s identity so there will no longer be anyone looking for Doug (why look for him if he’s dead). 1/1

#2- Did we catch up with rogue CIA Agent Matt Edwards and cicada on the run Stephen Haynes? And more importantly did the CIA catch up with them?

When we last saw Edwards and Haynes, Edwards had refused a direct order to kill Haynes… instead deciding to work with Haynes to get the answer to the burning questions, WHO is waking up the cicada agents and WHY?

But Edwards decision did not come without a price… CIA head honcho Levine sends out a team to take out Haynes (and Edwards if necessary). Edwards and Haynes have their showdown with Levine’s CIA team… one of them ends up with a bullet in the back of his head, the other ends up with the CIA up his ass. 2/2

#3- Did Tara take Nolan up on his offer?

Last week was a rough one for Tara… she lost her friend Megan and voluntarily parted ways with Sebastian before he met a similar fate as Megan. Tara reached out to another old contact Nolan to see what information he had on the Treadstone project… he didn’t share anything over the phone but told her if she was ever in his neck of the woods to look him up.

Never afraid to do some globetrotting, Tara pops in to visit Nolan to ask him about Treadstone, former KGB agent Yuri, Stilleto Six and with Nolan’s help Tara ends up with a new piece of the puzzle… the name and whereabouts of Petra! 3/3

#4- Are the storylines finally intersecting?

Season 1 of Treadstone is now 80% complete and we are finally starting to see some of the storylines connect… remember last week when SoYun went incognito and went into a nightclub? At this nightclub, Petra’s former KGB lover is about to get the ball rolling on his deal to sell the Stilleto Six nuke to North Korea’s own Col. Shin (the man who activated SoYun and plans on using her husband as a fall guy).

Also as “The McKenna Erasure” was wrapping up, we see Tara knocking on the door of a farm house… the farm house Petra calls home. Petra invites Tara in for some tea, and has a gun behind her back when she does it! 4/4

#5- Did we get more J. Randolf Bentley flashbacks?

I know I may get hung up on this aspect of the series, and I am well aware there are a lot of moving parts and they only have about 44 minutes each week. But J. Randolph Bentley was the character that Treadstone kicked everything off with… the character and the show made a fantastic first impression on me and JRB and the series are forever intertwined in my mind, so when we don’t get a Bentley flashback, it feels like something is missing in my estimation. 4/5

• Final Score = 4/5 (80%) Not a perfect episode but still damn good and it really set the table for the final two episodes of the season to be blockbusters!