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'Project Blue Book' Season 2 Episode 4 Review: Hynek and Quinn are just pawns as Susie and Mimi dig deeper

Hynek and Quinn might be investigating claims of UFO sightings but Mimi and Susie are bigger badasses in their own personal quests

Spoiler alert for Season 2 Episode 4 'Hopkinsville'

For three weeks we have seen Dr J Allen Hynek and Captain Michael Quinn work their hardest to debunk the craziest, most bizarre claims of aliens and UFO sightings in and around Roswell, New Mexico, and the infamous Area 51.

While most of them were busted, the two members of the titular investigation were also able to get their higher authorities — General James Harding and Hugh Valentine — to admit that there was some cover-up that went into the whole investigation undertaken by the US Air Force. But as we navigate Hynek and Quinn's journey through dissecting the Hopkinsville incident, we also learn how the two of them are being practically used as pawns for the government's agenda, while back home, their significant others, both Mimi and Susie, pay their own share of dues for the same investigation.

The episode begins with us being thrown into the middle of the eponymous Hopkinsville incident where Jimmy Jay Schumacher and his family and friends get terrorized by what they claim are aliens, two nights in a row. Upon hearing loud commotion outside, Jimmy took a shotgun to charge at the source of the noise and was instead met with glowing light, that soon looked like a possibly three-foot tall creature, approaching him with its arms raised over its head, as if in a friendly gesture.

Upon shooting it, the creature, still unharmed, manages to flee into the woods and once Jimmy rushes in to tell his family about what he just saw, about 15-20 of those 'little green men' arrive in a siege, teasing and mocking the residents of the Schumacher home in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, with their abnormally large heads, beady little eyes, and three-fingered hands giving the family the idea that they are most likely extraterrestrial.

Once reported, Hynek and Quinn are put in charge of debunking the theory and this is pivotal as parallelly, we hear Hugh tell Harding that the 'pawns' in their game are already off to the location to bust Schumacher's claims. Moreover, last week's 'Area 51' focused episode ended with Hugh telling Harding how they need to fire the first shots now that war is almost here, so its possible that by distracting Hynek and Quinn with yet another investigation aimed at debunking the claims, the two generals are carrying on ultra-secret Air Force operations, spurring the war between America and Russia.

Speaking of Russia, Susie really has the worst end of the deal this episode. We see her and Quinn finally in peace but Susie is tasked with the mission of kidnapping Quinn and bringing him to her bosses which she fails to execute, leading to her being taken hostage by the same people. We also learn that Susie has a daughter that Susie's boss Daria threatens to recruit when the girl is of age; Susie protests but by this time she is already tied up and being prepared to be buried alive, making things even sadder in retrospect for Quinn, the man who has never really found something to cling on to for dear life, and when he finally does, it is this spy-hostage situation.

The only respite in all of this is Susie being able to make it out of the grave alive and eventually ambush her boss, threatening her to forget about targeting Susie's daughter and getting away with the whole crisis, now that Daria knows there's no taking Susie down. All of this happens parallelly, when Quinn finally opens up to Hynek about his personal life in what has been the bonding moment between the two characters on the show so far.

Hynek analyzes Quinn to be a man who desperately wants children, but past traumas don't allow him to pursue that. In turn, Quinn tells Hynek about this new woman in his life that he has fallen for Susie, and Hynek tells Quinn about how even after 15 strong years, he is still taken away by how much he likes his wife, Mimi, who unbeknownst to him is on her own little investigation about the Hopkinsville incident along with her UFO group buddy, Evan.

Mimi's investigation brings her to the same farm festival where Schumacher works and Hynek and Quinn are present too, and soon they learn that the bright green 'alien handprints' the two had seen in the woods is nothing but a hoax painted on by the same farm paint Schumacher uses on his livestock. With that hoax busted, one would think the duo's troubles are over, but not so fast; waiting with information is CIA agent Daniel Banks from the previous episode who approaches Hynek and Quinn with the sketch of an 'alien' that a subject of MK-Ultra - a super classified CIA intelligence program has drawn.

The subject, called Rebecca, claims only Hynek and Quinn can save them from the incoming invasion and surprisingly enough, the sketch matches that of Schumacher's testimony of what the 'little green men' he was attacked by.

After spending days trying to debunk the mystery, Hynek goes back to the comforts of his home while Quinn returns to find Susie sleeping peacefully in his bed. In all this time he has been gone, Susie got abducted, hit in the head by a spade, buried alive in a grave, come out of it, threaten the people trying to get rid of her and return to the comforts of the man she feels safe with. Could she be a new recruit by the air force to distract Quinn for the cover-ups to come? Or are the Hyneks in bigger danger now that Susie's ties with the spies are over?

'Project Blue Book' Season 2 airs on Tuesdays at 10 pm on History.